The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower – Part 4: The Forgotten Caves

Finally getting back to this series after reviewing thirty submissions for Ben Gibson's Adventure Site Contest 2, including my own submission. No winner(s) have been announced yet as the final reviews continue to trickle in, but I'll certainly post the big announcement when it happens (should be soon).

In Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series, I described several of the major pieces of a kilodungeon I smashed together from various old adventures: specifically the Manor House and Sea Caves from U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and the Sample Dungeon from the Holmes Basic Rulebook. Part of the Sea Caves level borrowed a few rooms from a third dungeon—Zach Howard's excellent Forgotten Smugglers' Caves. This post will cover the remainder of that dungeon, which is situated between the Zenopus Dungeon level and the Sea Caves.

Since Zach has already written up this entire thing on his own blog, I don't want to repeat too much here if I can help it. Instead, I have received the author's permission to reference his material so I'll simply cover the things I changed or added to suit my own purposes. I didn't change very much of the content, as the adventure is already well-designed; I simply reworked the map to fit the other levels, and integrated the material into my backstory of the site, tweaking a few things here and there to make it better fit the overall dungeon concept.

The original Forgotten Smugglers' Caves (FSC) is an add-on to Holmes' Sample Dungeon, taking the details of the smugglers' cave and imagining a whole hideout, abandoned long ago due to a curse perhaps laid upon the caves by Zenopus himself. The Sample Dungeon sits below the seaside village of Portown in the original writeup, and characters can find info about the FSC there.

I incorporated some of Zach's intro material into my rumors table for Saltmarsh, merging the groups of smugglers from the Sample Dungeon and U1 into a single band of pirates. Another party motivation provided in his adventure is a fisherwoman named Fenza the Fearless (perhaps related to Lemunda the Lovely?), who has discovered a mysterious cave that she needs help exploring. I placed Fenza as an NPC in Saltmarsh, but so far my players have not met her. 

The additional background of the FSC describes how the destruction of Zenopus' tower collapsed the entrances to these caves, blocking them off from the outside world for years. In describing Sanbalet's backstory in Part 3, I kept the detail of the tower exploding in green flame (an event which Sanbalet witnessed as a young deckhand) and collapsing the "forgotten" caves. Though Zenopus, the pirates' former benefactor, never emerged from the wreckage of his tower, the smuggling operation eventually resumed from the Sea Caves. Sanbalet never "forgot" the old caves and its treasures, however, and when he wrested control of the pirate operation from the former boss, he began the task of finding a way back in.

This is Zach's map for his adventure, but of course I needed to reconfigure it to match up with the other maps. First, I turned his map 90 degrees counter-clockwise, then inverted the whole thing left-to-right. After moving rooms 1–3 and 8–10 of the FSC to the Sea Caves level, I reoriented several of the rooms to connect to both the Sea Caves level below and my additions to the Sample Dungeon level above. 

Overall, I left as much of the level's original orientations as possible, though I removed the maze layout and truncated the long distances of some of the original hallways so as to fit the confines of the sea bluff that contains the site. This was the scratch map I began working from:

Forgotten Caves Conversion – Map 1 (scale = 10')

As this level is about midway up the height of the bluff, the overall "interior" space is slightly diminished from the Sea Caves level below it. The natural boundary of this level (the thick, solid black line) represents a roughly 20 ft. increase in elevation from sea level (the band of lighter shading beyond it. The shaded caves are the pieces of the FSC that were moved to the Sea Caves level.

From the scratch map, I drew a sketch map with my new orientations, and rekeyed the entire level to follow a different flow of progression. When completed, the sketch map looked like this:

Forgotten Caves Conversion – Map 2 (scale = 10')

Though I didn't need to, I gave the map a third pass to make it more cavernous in appearance and better match the look of the rest of the maps. The final map looks like this:

Forgotten Caves Conversion – Map 3 (scale = 10')

Changes and Additions

• Dungeon locations are keyed with the letter 'F'. Thus, the adventure key for the Forgotten Caves level begins in the original adventure's location 4, which I rekeyed as area F1.
  

• F1 and F2 (originally FSC area 4 and area 5) are unchanged (other than directional indicators).

• F3 (orig. area 6) is mostly unchanged, though I set the bat population to 40 and expanded the bucket map to include areas F2 to F7, with an indication of the secret passage in F7.

• F4 and F5 (orig. area 7 and area 23) are unchanged.

• F6 (orig. area 22) is mostly the same, though I gave the paintings and rugs some descriptions and treasure values:
  

  The paintings and rugs are of fine quality. The paintings depict: a battered ship on a stormy sea (painted by a master, 1,200 gpv), a coastline (500 gpv), a nude maiden reposing with a fan (500 gpv), and a portrait of a grim-looking seaman (150 gpv). The six exotic rugs are from a port in the far east (250 gpv ea.)

  Anyone looking upon the portrait of the seaman must save vs. Petrification or be cowed and forced to turn away from his penetrating gaze. Trying and failing a second time causes the PC to lose one point permanently from their Prime Requisite score and be unable to look at the painting thereafter (a Remove Curse spell restores the lost ability score).
  

  Anyone rolling a nat-20 on either save notices a hidden map in the painting's image. The map points to a secret location down in the swamp below the manor bluff: a cairn of stones covering a huge chest containing 12,838 gold coins (1 gpv ea.)

  I also added a sleeping area cordoned off by an elaborate painted screen of teak wood weighing 80 lbs. and being extremely fragile, but worth 1,200 gpv. Finally, I established hard treasure values for the various books and curios which have a dice range in the original version (increasing some of the values above the given range to boost xp take).

• F7 (orig. area 21) is mostly unchanged, though I put the dice dragon's nest beneath a pile of broken chairs and established the values of its gem "hoard."

• F8 (orig. area 24) is unchanged.

• F9 (orig. area 25) is mostly unchanged, except that I increased the trap damage to 2–7 and added a save to avoid double damage and the severing of the character's hand (a callback to the one-handed skeleton in area F7/FSC 21). I also reduced the number of sarcophagi from 13 to 11, and added the following detail to give the party a little hint in resolving the pirate's curse:

  The nameplate on the coffin in the “newest” sarcophagus has been scratched off and is illegible. Carved into the lid above it is a new name: “Mot Daxor” (see F15).

• F10 (orig. area 17) is unchanged, although I moved the details of the brick wall to its own location (F12).

• F11 (orig. area 19 and area 20) is unchanged, except the trapdoor now opens onto the Sample Dungeon level (area D17). I also added a detail about scratch marks on this side of the trapdoor, as though someone was clawing at it. This is a hint to the grim fate of the original pirates who were trapped in these caves when the tower of Zenopus blew up and collapsed the other exits.

• F12 just contains the brick wall details from original area 17.

• F13 takes most of the material from original area 15 and moves it to the map location of original area 14. I also designed a siderail for the second cart, allowing the smugglers to keep two carts running the full length of the rails without having to offload one and reload the second cart at the mid-point.

• F14 contains the rest of the material from original area 15.

• F15 (orig. area 13) is unchanged.

• F16 (original area 18) is mostly unchanged, though I described the cavern's phosphorescent glow as being green-tinged and magically nourishing to the plants growing here. I also added a detail that the glowing fungus could be scraped off and used as a makeshift torch for an hour or so. Finally, I changed the "reptilioid" statue to a fish-folk one instead, to tie in to the ancient school that once lived in the Sea Caves below, limited its ability to teach spells to 3rd-level or lower, and made the choice of taught spell random (though not one the player already knows).

• F17 (original area 12) is largely the same, though I made the gem-polishing effect automatic, turning a rough stone worth 1–10 gp into a polished gem worth double that value, with a 1:6 chance of being worth five times the value instead. I limited the number of stones that could be found by searching around the pool to 30, and reduced the chance of attracting the slurry while searching to 1:10 per turn.

  I also added a detail that the ceiling fungus cast a bluish-white light and that:
  

  If damaged by anything other than fire (which kills it), the entire patch releases a rain of oily sap that covers everything in the room. The sap can only be washed off with alcohol, and continues glowing for the next 12–48 hours (treat as Faerie Fire for the duration).

• F18 (original area 11) is mostly unchanged, except I added a detail that the ceiling fungus here glows red (harmless but sinister-looking), and I require PCs trying to ford the stream or move down the channel to roll their Strength or less on 1d20 each round. If they ail, they lose their footing and get swept downstream to the Sea Caves level. I also made the stones on the stream floor the same as the quartz in F17.

And that's it for this level, a fun little side jaunt that just tied nicely into the other pieces I'm using for this dungeon. Thanks to Zach for letting me delve into it here. 

I forgot that in my previous post in this series, I stated that this one would cover the Estate Grounds but I did the Forgotten Caves instead. The next post will definitely be the Estate Grounds and then the naga's lair from N1. The final piece will be the town of Saltmarsh.

Owlbear Hill — Adventure Site Contest 2 Post-Mortem

My reviews of submissions for the Adventure Site Contest 2 are complete, my scores are turned in, and I've spent some time reflecting on what I learned from the experience, both as judge and adventure site designer.

Thanks to the other judges: Ben Gibson, BX Blackrazor, Owen Edwards, and Grützi for their kind and fair words about this adventure, and for all the hard work they put in to conduct their contest reviews. I was honored to be asked to judge, and I hope I brought something helpful to the table. 

Also, congratulations to all the contest entrants. I've said before that it takes a lot of guts to write something and put it out there for other randos to critique. I have respect for every author and encourage everyone to keep writing, as all the entries had good, creative stuff in them.

Yes, my reviews were nit-picky, far more than I am in "real life," and yes, they were long-winded, but I believe it's more important for the author to hear what doesn't work than it is to hear what does. Criticism, not praise, is the entire point of the editorial (judging) process. And to make sure the criticism is sound, you have to dig into the details and tear things apart to get at them. 

I went through each submission with a fine-toothed comb and double-checked the rulebooks (where I could) to form my critical questions. Often, I found the answers; sometimes, I found new questions. I put everything out there in terms of what I noticed, even if it was nit-picky, off-base, or purely personal opinion. Everyone's tastes are different and I'm just some guy on the internet, so the stakes of my criticism are low. My only goal was to give an honest and thorough evaluation of each site, from the perspective of a DM preparing to run it in a few hours.

The most valuable lessons about professional writing I ever learned were from the experienced editors who were hardest on my work. Their lessons stay with you, help you recognize the same mistakes next time before you make them. I certainly carry them over into my own editorial duties, contest or otherwise, and I hope all the authors take my reviews in that spirit. 

In the spirit of accountability, on the other hand, I thought it would be fun to apply some of the same critical standards I used for the contest submissions to my own work. I won't be scoring the categories numerically, of course, because I already think my adventure is GREAT! 5 out of 5!! 

Kidding, of course. There are actually lots of flaws and things that bothered me about my entry, regrets big and small, and could-have-beens that I forced myself to live with to meet the contest guidelines. Instead of giving it a score, I'll discuss my personal satisfaction with the results. I'm also including some design notes and elaborating on the original writeup. Stuff that might help someone trying to run it better understand my intentions. 

Since the methods I use for judging are subjective, I'm going to apply some of the questions/criticisms from other judges to test my creative premises. This is for no other reason than to have something to bounce off as a discussion point, because it represents something in my writeup that probably needs clarification. I accept their critique as 100% valid and agree with most of it—and much of it was positive—but where I can provide an explanation for my creative choices, I will.

 Onward!

Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: The Warm Caves of the Ts'ai Dragons

I can't quite believe it, but here we are at the last Adventure Site Contest 2 review. This has been an interesting ride, and I plan to post some follow-up thoughts on the experience after taking a step back and considering what I've learned. It's been eye-opening, frankly, and has made me reconsider how I go about my own dungeon designs. I'll expound further, but congratulations to everyone who submitted something this year. It was a distinct honor to be chosen as a worthy judge, so I hope I've lived up to expectations.

On with the review!

The Warm Caves of the Ts'ai Dragons

Author: Sneedler Chuckworth
System: OD&D
Party Size: ?
Level Range: 5-7

There is no introductory text. The writeup simply plops the reader into a list of adventure hooks. In the first one, an evil wizard offers to train the party's magic-users for free if they retrieve an important document. The second hook is a treasure map to the location of powerful magic arrows. The third and last hook is a report about a dragon running amok in the hinterlands.

So, the first hook sets the tone for the text. The "dread wizard Zothblimzo" desires an arcane treatise written by his hated rival Forxximon, another magic-user. The names are goofy and tricky to pronounce, but I don't mind that so much. It does suggest that Sneedler Chuckworth's adventure isn't taking itself seriously, which can work if handled properly. The unseriousness is reinforced with the subject of the desired treatise regarding "the mating habits of Fire Elementals." Hm. 

Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: Galactic Funtime

Galactic Funtime

Author: Shawn Metcalf
System: Stars Without Number
Party Size: 4-6
Level Range: 3-5

The Galactic Funtime entertainment center thrived, separating people from their money and replacing it with fun. Of particular note was their Build-A-Spider center, where sophisticated and underregulated genetic assembling technologies allowed for the creation of living pets resembling Soupy Spider, Galactic Funtime’s corporate mascot. These pets were harmless, unable to reproduce, and designed to perish within a week. Sadly, the miniature nuclear reactor the center had installed to handle the energy requirements started to leak without regular maintenance. The genetic material used mutated, and began producing spiders that were dangerous, had normal life spans, and could reproduce. Before the machinery broke down completely, spiders with more severe mutations were created. Now the building is overrun with them.

This reminds me of the setup for a Paranoia adventure. I loved that game's hilarious take on a post-apocalyptic world, but unless you had the right set of smart players and a DM with a well-tuned sense of humor and great pun delivery, much of the game's comedic value fell flat or went unappreciated. Jim Holloway's art was kind of perfect for it, too. I'm already rubbing my hands in anticipation.

Up front, I know nothing about the adventure system, Stars Without Number, but I have read good things and I am a fan of sci-fi RPGs (even though I've rarely had the opportunity to play in one). As my take is severely limited, I'm only dealing with the narrative elements for this review and will leave any rules or procedural questions alone.

Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: Wailing Tower

Wailing Tower

Author: ShockTohp
System: Adventurer Conqueror King
Party Size: ?
Level Range: 4-6

In the salt district of the city, an old moldering water clock sits rusting. This marvel of hydraulic engineering, a gift from the local dwarf vault, was created as a heroic burial site of a human general of great renown, who once saved the dwarfs from a horde of lizardmen. The hero was interned (sic) with his spoils in a crystal dome, located in the basement of the tower (and surrounded by its reservoir) but in such a way as to allow admirers to look down on the interred from the ground level viewing gallery. However, its glory days are long gone, and the clock has been abandoned by its keepers. Now its ancient waterwheel creaks and groans, the machinery inside screeches like a tormented beast. While it was once protected by an army of statues, many whisper the enchantments have long since drained into the earth below, leaving the grave vulnerable to pillage by those who would rob the dead.

This adventure site is written for ACKS, with which I have no experience playing or running, though I understand it's built on the BX chassis. I'm not going to focus too much on rules issues but if I get something wrong, feel free to correct me and I will update the review.

Alright, so the centerpiece of this adventure is a water clock—a timekeeping mechanism housed within a tower that is slowly rusting away due to engineering neglect. It is a monument to, and the burial place of, a legendary human general. The site is haunted by a banshee—the spirit of a jilted lover who died heartbroken and penniless after being abandoned by the general long ago.

R.I.P. Chesty

 Farewell, my feline friend.

You were a great companion, a one-of-a-kind mister, a stalwart mascot of our Tuesday night group, and a hardass placeholder DM when I had to leave the table for a quick bathroom break.

 Fight on, little buddy, until we meet again in Valhalla!

 

Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: The Grand Retreat of the Great Sage Tellah

The Grand Retreat of the Great Sage Tellah

Author: thanateros777
System: BX
Party Size: ?
Level Range: ? ("mid-level")

Beneath a ruined resort is an underground complex created by a bygone sage for his personal amusement and examination, accessible only by a small outbuilding long overgrown and ruined. Deep inside may be fortunes and perils alike, as the Great Sage was an eccentric, if not abnormal man. What mysteries and riches may the eccentric wizard’s sanctum hold?

So when I opened this PDF, I was nearly blinded by the Moiré pattern on the page—a font so compressed as to remove all but a sliver of white between the characters. Waves of interference made my brain shut down for a second time in this contest. See for yourself...