The Hurricane Dungeon – The Upper Works (Level 3)

Level 3 was the third map I drew during the power outage. The direct correlation between creation date and level number ends with this one, however. The level has a few unique features to the other maps I'd drawn so far. For one: It has an entrance portico and an exterior area (bottom); two: It contains no routes (stairs, etc.) to other levels; and three: It has a teleporting passage similar to Level 1, but its destination is "off-screen."

Again, these maps were just unrelated doodles at the time I drew them so I wasn't concerned with logical structure or access points. This particular map's weird features (at least the first two) created some design challenges as I developed these maps into the mega-dungeon.

The problem posed by the front entrance/exterior comes when lining up the maps. I didn't want to "shift" any of the maps if I didn't have to. In this case, if you lay the first three maps on top of each other, the exterior cliff wall drawn on level 3 intersects with a few areas on levels 1 and 2 above it. It's a discrepancy that's fairly easy to hand-wave if you're not nitpickey. But I am, so I accounted for the exterior space in the key, describing it as a recessed area carved into the cliffside. This kinda deal: >>>

Not the greatest solution, but it works. Especially because shifting the dungeon would have complicated some of the level connections that I still needed to add to the map. There were already two stairs and an elevator to be added from Level 2, and my stocking rolls added another two stairs down to Level 4. Counting the main entrance and teleporting passage as additional routes, Level 3 has seven points of access – not bad at all. (I added an eighth access point in the stirges' room, and the dungeon's ventilation system adds even more, unquantified access points, but both require miniaturization of some sort so I'm not counting them in the total.)

After placing all the new stairs and marking the destination point of the elevator, and then adding a title and key, wall shading, and some incidental details (such as blockages and a pit trap), the map came out like this:

 My content stocking rolls (for a 37-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 16 (43% / 35%)
–Monster: 3 (8% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 14 (38% / 25%)
–Stairs: 2 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 0 (0% / 5%)
–Treasure: 2 (5% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Upper Works (Level 2)

With the Level 1 key under my belt, writing the key for Level 2 was simply a matter of refining the format using the map I drew on our second night without power. Note that I did connect this map with the first map, via the stairway in the center-west portion of the map. I included only one other exit from the level to the east-southeast, hidden behind a secret door. 

There was also the nearby circular room with two levers and a floor circle, which I recall thinking of as some sort of elevator platform/shaft while drawing; but it, too, was concealed behind secret doors. Getting off this level would be a challenge, as providing those inter-level connections wasn't an objective at the time I was just doodling a map. I also wish I had drawn passages leading off the map, to expand the level horizontally. I mean, I still can with some Photoshop trickery, but I wish I'd thought to.

In designing Level 1 for this megadungeon, I added two stairs down to level 2, so I knew I had to add those connections to this map as well. My stocking rolls came up with two additional "Stair" results: one "Stair down 1 level" and one "Stair down 2 levels." The descending stair on the original map (near the "elevator" room) was proving difficult to sync up with the map for level 3, so I made that stair the one that went down two levels (to Level 4) and made both newly-rolled stairs a single-level drop to Level 3. The elevator platform ended up also descending one level to Level 3. 

After adding the new points of egress, keyed room numbers, a title, and shading, the map looked like this:

 My content stocking rolls (for a 40-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 11 (27.5% / 35%)
–Monster: 10 (25% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 13 (32.5% / 25%)
–Stairs: 2 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 2 (5% / 5%)
–Treasure: 2 (5% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).

Classic Monsters Revisited – The Tween (Fiend Folio)

While stocking the Hurricane Dungeon, one of the monster results came up as a tween from the AD&D Fiend Folio. That book is mostly a collection of monsters from the UK gaming magazine, White Dwarf, which covered a variety of RPGs in the early days before it became the house mag for Warhammer. Many of these creatures first appeared as submissions to the magazine's Fiend Factory column, by authors of varying levels of expertise and creativity.

Some are well-crafted and interesting, but most are simply variations on other monsters, with few distinguishing characteristics (other than appearance), or are just completely unnecessary. A handful of monsters were contributed by Gary Gygax, pulled from his previously-written adventures and added to what was essentially the second "monster manual" before the third monster manual became the official Monster Manual 2. Certain Fiend Folio monsters are passable-to-great; the rest are hit-or-miss (with lots of complete whiffs).

Having never used a tween before, I was eager to give it a fresh look. The tween's most interesting characteristic is a rudimentary form of 5e's Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. (Perhaps even its "inspiration"?) The tween is essentially an ethereal "ghost" that attaches itself to a host, forming a shadowy doppelganger that provides a tremendous benefit to its host, but at a high cost to everyone else. The creature's presence is summed up with this wildly generous understatement: 

A character with a tween partner is therefore something of a mixed blessing to any companions.

That's because, while the tween's "partner" (it's host organism) gains the ability to make two dice rolls whenever a roll is required and take the better result, every other creature within fifty feet of the tween must do the same and take the worse result. This includes the tween host's allies. It's a "luck eater," basically, transferring the misfortune of others to the benefit of its host (and it, presumably). This looks awesome on the surface, but it has some enormous flaws.

 For one, by adding this to your campaign, you're doubling nearly every roll made at the table, on both the players' and the DM's side. The description of this ability reads:

(A)ny character or creature with a tween 'partner' has two die rolls instead of one, whenever a die roll is called for, and may select the more advantageous of these rolls. (This applies to 'to hit' rolls, saving throws and the like.)

The phrase, "...whenever a die roll is called for" is a bit ambiguous as to the type. (Is it all die rolls?) We can assume, based on the two examples provided, that the design intends for this to apply only to rolls made with a d20 (as is the case with Advantage in 5e), and not to rolls for things like hit points, weapon damage, etc.

But what about percentile rolls for success, such as for thief skills? The tween's description suggests that it is manipulating the environment around its host to make this "luck" happen (guiding the host's weapon, for example), so shouldn't it also apply to finding a trap or picking a lock? 

In any case, the result is a lot of extra rolling for the host and his fellow party members. And that's not even taking into account that the DM will have to roll twice for every single NPC and monster within 50' and run all those numbers as well. The game will inevitably slow to a dice-rolling, number-crunching crawl.

A second flaw with this design is that the tween's presence would be an intolerable situation for most players (I would think). I mean, if I were a player in this group, my character would have to deal with the situation in the short term until we left the dungeon and got back to base, but that tween-inflicted character won't be making a return trip (not with my guy, at least). 

I can't imagine any party of players accepting "bad luck" on every roll (according to statistical breakdowns of 5e Disadvantage, this equates to –5 or so on average). There's just no way. That's an enormous penalty in AD&D and a recipe for interpersonal conflict between characters (and perhaps even players). It will get someone killed eventually. I can see a character being forced out of a group over this situation, which sucks. It's one thing if the characters create that conflict themselves; it's quite another when a random roll forces it on them.

Worse still, the tween can't be countered by normal spell means, like Remove Curse. The description says that once a tween selects its host, it "...will remain permanently with him until he or the tween dies." That's pretty definitive, so it doesn't sound like the party can convince the creature to bugger off. The only way to be rid of the tween's luck effect is to enter the Ethereal Plane and kill it. But it's a Neutral creature ostensibly trying to help its host, which may pose a moral dilemma for Good characters (this is kind of cool). A lenient reading of one line gives DMs a bit of an out if they want to grasp it: 

The tween has the ability to see a few seconds into the future and is able to increase its host's luck.

Those two clauses suggest that perhaps this ability can be turned on and off by the tween, instead of being always-on. That would change the calculus dramatically, giving the player an incredible ability, but requiring them to use it situationally (mainly by separating himself from the party by 50' or more during combat... a tricky proposition). Still, a lone thief with such a tween would be a powerhouse. 

I don't believe that is the intent, though. I think this is just a dick-move monster, as designed. This is not an uncommon situation with the Fiend Folio.

I've kept the tween encounter in the Hurricane Dungeon to stay true to the dice rolls, and I'm curious to see what happens if one of my players ever "acquires" it. In the level 2 writeup, I adjusted the tween's effect to be a straight –4 / –20% penalty to others, so as to reduce the number of rolls the DM has to make. The host rolls twice for their bonus, and player allies can opt to either take the straight penalty or make two rolls at disadvantage instead.

For my home game, I may even alter the tween's effect even further to make it on/off (at will, triggered at the beginning of the round), and say that every time a player used the advantage ability, a single random creature — friend or foe — within 50' would suffer the disadvantage roll (instead of every other creature). 

That way, it's a bit more balanced and usable, and the number of extra rolls is kept to a minimum. I like magic items with caveats that make them somewhat dangerous to use, and this is like that. Fellow players may be able to more easily swallow the choice to accept a personal risk of penalty in order to give a comrade a big extra bonus in a critical moment (and potentially inflict the penalty on an enemy). It then becomes a tactical decision, rather than the "mixed blessing" of an arbitrary, likely-lethal, party-busting curse.

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Upper Works (Level 1)

The first level of the megadungeon is, in fact, the first hurricane map I drew on the night of September 29. The storm rolled in around 3–4 in the morning, but when I'd gone to bed a few hours earlier, my area wasn't really expected to get much beyond some heavy rains and high winds. The hurricane took a big swing to the northwest and passed right over us on its way to some Biblical-level destruction less than 100 miles north. That area is still badly messed up 11 months later.

I woke up on my office couch around 4 AM because I could hear the roof creaking (never a good sign). You could feel the shifting air pressure. I got up and looked outside, but noped back inside when I realized how intense things had gotten. I'm originally from South Florida and went through many hurricanes as a kid, so I knew this was a big storm. I got in bed in my shorts and t-shirt, with my heavy boots in easy reach, and just lay there listening to the winds howling and the sheets of rain lashing the house.

I'd heard some trees going down at some distance away, and we lost our power around 5, but at 6 AM I heard the first tree(s) come down in my yard. A neighbor's mimosa fell across my backyard, taking a second tree (and part of his fence) with it. That was it! I got out of bed and started a vigil. I live in an older section of my city (my house was built in 1929) and have several hundred-year oaks within crushing distance (not to mention a few dozen smaller, but still-dangerous trees). 

So far, just the two trees had come down near me, but as I stood at my back door and watched, another 12 trees in my yard came down between 6 and 8 AM. My house sits on a moderate hill slope, and after the the torrential rains soaked the ground, the hurricane winds came up the slope, "against the grain" of the tree roots, and just toppled them, one after the other. Luckily, none of the oaks fell, but my neighborhood was now officially a disaster zone. My girlfriend slept through the whole thing. A crazy time and hard to believe it has already (only?) been a year.

The hand-drawn map came about while reading the DMG by candlelight that first night. I got tired of reading but felt some creative energy, so I just started doodling on a graphing pad. I began by rolling on the random dungeon design tables, but got bored with that so I started over drawing on my own, letting the rooms and corridors flow out of the pencil without any real design concept. I love creating maps and it usually doesn't take me long to start sorting out a good, logical floorplan. I ended up with this map:

Since this was only a drawing exercise I wasn't worrying about connections or routes between levels. As drawn, there is a staircase from "a" level above in the upper-left-center of the map that serves as the level "entrance." A second staircase to the left of that descends to "another" level below. There's also some teleporting halls with 4 entry/exit points, though there is an error, with only three letters (A–C) represented instead of four (A–D).

As I began developing this map into a connected dungeon complex, I realized I would need to create additional routes between the levels. I did not want to mark up the original hand-drawn maps (call me sentimental), so I used Photoshop to add some details to the digital image. Some of these details are copied from fragments of the existing map and repurposed elsewhere. Other details were hand-drawn on paper, scanned in, and converted into .pngs which I dropped into the map image.

I also created fonts for numbers and upper- and lower-case letters from my own handwriting, with the same pens I used to draw the map. After dropping in the room key numbers and a level title, fixing the issue with the mislabeled teleporting hall, placing a new grid, and adding shading to the solid walls of the dungeon, I ended up with this map:

Next, I settled on a methodology for stocking the dungeon, relying mostly on the AD&D/OSRIC tables to flesh out the level contents. My first set of rolls (over a total of 42 dungeon locations) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 19 (45% / 35%)
–Monster: 8 (19% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 10 (24% / 25%)
–Stairs: 2 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 0 (0% / 5%)
–Treasure: 3 (7% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).

The Hurricane Dungeon – Surface Ruins (Level 0)

This post begins a series that will examine the process of turning my Hurricane Maps into a proper megadungeon, using the guidelines provided in the stocking tables found in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide and recreated in OSRIC. The methodology I'm using to create the dungeon levels sticks pretty close to these two sources, with a few modifications based on personal preference and a desire to expand the source of monsters across the three original books (favoring OSRIC stats over AD&D stats where the monster exists in both sources).

By the time I finished rolling up contents and writing keys for levels 1–3, I had built enough background connections into the material to warrant adding a surface ruin, to not only serve as an entrance area into the dungeon, but also provide a few clues as to what lies beneath. As a result, I'm starting this series with what is technically the fourth level I rolled out and keyed: The surface (level 0) of the dungeon.

Most of the interior dungeon levels have 35–45 chambers or obvious locations, so I was calculating the surface level as having half that many, or 20 potential areas. The surface ruins will have already been picked over, meaning little of obvious value should remain except natural lairs and a few secrets.

Since I intended the exterior space to have a larger map scale, I first placed the dimensions of the dungeon-scale (10' sq.) graph paper sheet in the (approximate) center of the larger-scale (20' sq.) graph paper sheet, then sketched out the map in pencil. Thus, each dungeon level map fits inside the boundary of the outer palace walls.

After a few corrections and retakes, I drew over the finished sketch with a Sharpie ultra fine-point and added more detail with an even finer-point Pilot Precise V5.

I finished off the map in Photoshop, adding shading and a key (this step was performed after making the content rolls and figuring out their locations). I considered drawing separate (10' scale) maps for the outer ruins and palace interior, but decided against it. I like the flexibility of uncertainty that makes it easier to add stuff later. Any interior encounter areas will be easy enough to sketch out on the battlemat, ad hoc.

I made all the content stocking rolls using the methodology I established. My results for the 20 estimated surface locations were:

–Empty: 9 (45% / 35%)
–Monster: 3 (15% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 5 (25% / 25%)
–Stairs: 1 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 1 (5% / 5%)
–Treasure: 1 (5% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC). They came out fairly close to the statistical percentages, leaving me with 11 locations to key (since I won't bother identifying or keying this level's empty spaces).

D&D Timeline

I started playing D&D sometime during 1981, but I've never been sure exactly when. I knew it was on or near my friend Kenny's birthday, because his mom gave him the Holmes Basic set (with B2) as a present.

I'm pretty sure it was the day of, because I was there when he opened it and we were both blown away to finally have our paws on the game we'd been hearing about. We spent that entire weekend sitting on his bedroom floor, diving into the rules and playing B2 like a violent version of Monopoly.

I lost contact with Kenny over the years but reconnected with him on social media. We don't live near each other and have unfortunately failed to catch up online. A few days ago, I happened to see that it was his birthday in my notifications and the light bulb went off. I now have an approximate date (mid-August) and perhaps even an exact date (August 18) for the start of my long journey into this hobby. Great memories!

The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower –The Adventure

I recently formatted all my notes into a PDF format suitable for use at your table. This is 100% a fan-made conversion of existing work with bits of my own creation sprinkled throughout. I make no copyright claims to any of the source material. I worked it all up for my home campaign, but the originals remain popular adventures to this day. If someone wants to use my work as inspiration for their own versions, feel free.

A special shout-out to Zach Howard at Zenopus Archives. His enthusiasm for the Sample Dungeon in Holmes Basic, and his own homebrew expansion of it, inspired me to develop this adventure location for my players and include it in this adaptation. Be sure to visit his site to see the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave in its original glory.

>>The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower for Labyrinth Lord

>>The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower for OSRIC/AD&D

>>The Adventure Maps

>>Things to Do in Town Handout 

_____ 

Thus far in my campaign, the players have mostly cleared the manor house and explored much of the estate grounds. They fought pirates in the manor basement and discovered the fate of the missing alchemist. After a tragic expedition into the naga's lair below the bluff, they delved for a bit on the dungeon level (via the garden entrance).

Most recently, they found a boat pilot willing to take them into one of the sea caves. There, they battled a giant octopus, fought some more pirates, freed Lemunda the Lovely from captivity, and found a tunnel entrance into the bluff. They also noted a flooded tunnel to the east, accessible via a shallow shelf at low tide. At first, they thought to go north, further into the sea cave level where they assumed pirates would be waiting. Instead, they decided to take the opportunity of low tide to venture east.

They soon entered a side cavern divided in halves by a rushing river of fresh water that emptied into the sea cave nearby. The cave was protected by a giant crab, hidden beneath the sand, which got the drop on the party but failed to hit with its pincers. Upon defeating the crab, the party found a long stairway leading up to the dungeon level, where they entered a room with a sundial, a strange bronze mask, and a riddle. Figuring out the riddle, they caused the mask to speak and offer an answer to a single question. They asked about the "Philosopher's Stone" they found in the alchemist's secret cellar chamber in the manor, but the mask made no reference to the party's stone, speaking only of what the "legends" say about such an item.

Leaving this room, they next came into a crypt chamber with a dirt floor and smashed-open coffins. Within, a pair of ghouls dressed in finery feasted on the bloody entrails of one of the thaumaturgist's unfortunate goons. Horrified, the party attacked, but within moments two of their party had succumbed to the undead's paralyzing touch. Things looked grim for a moment, but after a flurry of well-placed blows, both ghouls lay dead.

Searching the various coffins and burial niches turned up a small fortune in gems, jewelry, and old coins. In one of the niches, the party found a tunnel that had been clawed to the surface, the exit of which the party had already discovered previously while exploring the garden cemetery. Dragging their paralyzed comrades out of the hole, the group returned to town, but from their discussions it sounds like they want to keep exploring the dungeon level and will return via the cemetery (they have more questions for the mask).