Below Gwarnath

It's funny how inspiration works. A few years ago, I was running two different 5e campaigns. One campaign, for my tabletop group of noob players, was a forest hexcrawl in a pretty classic, vanilla-fantasy setting. The other, for my online group of long-time players (35 years or so), was another hexcrawl, a re-imagining of B2 through the prism of the American Southwest. Both campaigns occurred in the same world, at the same time, but in different regions.

The former campaign ended successfully, and we moved on to playing Labyrinth Lord, then transitioned into AD&D/OSRIC where we are now. The latter campaign ended poorly, and I dissolved it with a bad taste in my mouth that sort of soured me on that campaign world. 

When I shifted my tabletop group to LL, I developed a kilodungeon based on a mashup of U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and the Sample Dungeon from Holmes Basic. We used the Advanced LL rules, which was a good bridge from 5e. When they got to 3rd level or so, I began using OSRIC and they didn't really notice most of the rule changes. Technically, this kilodungeon exists in my 5e campaign world, and the girls are still gaming in it. I haven't returned to online play (as a DM).

Since rediscovering the simpler joys of the legacy rules, however, I've been considering a new campaign setting that better embodies classic adventure gaming. I want something less vanilla with more pulp elements. I want to inject some sci-fi and weirdness (but not gonzo-weird). And I want the players' activity to be mostly centered around a single megadungeon.

I've flirted with this concept over the years, and have accumulated multiple folders filled with various notes and ideas about what I could do. From my old King's Realm campaign from the 90s and 00s, I had the Lost City of Cwm Cannadr, a never-visited megadungeon within an ancient city that was swallowed by the mountains. From my 5e world, I had the Catacombs of Remedios, a magical, ever-changing labyrinth beneath the capital city, and Cragmoor, the multilevel, mountainside lair of an ancient red dragon. I have my abandoned Dungeon23 attempt: Tunnels Beneath the Earth, and its spiritual cousin in the unfinished Deep Vaults material. Most recently, I completed the 10-level Hurricane Dungeon, which I'll return to below. This is a lot of solid design work just sitting there, unused.

Though these dungeons are all different in background and scope, they share the same author (obviously), and certain stylistic and creative threads are all there as connective tissue. I just haven't hit on the right idea to tie everything together. The things I've come up with just haven't inspired or energized me to dive in to the work and start sewing the pieces into shape. I certainly don't mind tropes (in fact, I love them), but I just want the unifying creative idea to be a solid one.

So, last week, one of my long-time players from my 5e Badlands campaign expressed interest in learning about 1e. I agreed to walk him through the character creation process, and then run him through a little scenario (sometime in the near future; this hasn't happened yet). I'm finalizing two adventures to publish in the next few weeks or so, and I am at the stage of editing and layout that is boring and convenient to procrastinate on.

Needing a creative palate cleanser, I decided to work on the scenario for the playtest session. I had a blast developing the Hurricane Dungeon using the stocking tables, but I never used the random dungeon generation part for the map layout. This seemed like a fun excuse to try out those tools. Using the OSRIC tables, I drew the map in Roll20 as I rolled it out, with the default R20 grid size of 25x25 squares. At a 10' scale, this amounts to 62,500 sq. ft. of dungeon... a nice, contained little area to bang around in that wouldn't require a ton of work on my part. This is how the map ended up in Roll20...

Its a pretty low-res screenshot, but the basics are all there. I drew Room 1 and the stairs up as the entrance, then everything else was rolled out straight on the tables, including the stairs down. Unfortunately, there were no "Trick/Trap" results (bummer). I had to modify a few of the room dimensions and passage directions to fit the space, but that's to be expected. I also did the initial stocking rolls to determine the room contents, which you can see in small print (e.g., 'E' = Empty, "M+T" = Monster and Treasure, etc.) 

I rolled contents as soon as I completed drawing each room, which is different from how I handled the Hurricane Dungeon stocking. For that, I rolled a list of contents and then decided which rooms to place each piece of content in on the pre-existing maps. Here, once I knew the base contents of each room, I went back and rolled out the individual monsters and treasures. One thing I kept forgetting to do was roll passage width, which is why most hallways are only 10' wide, but in a limited space like this, I was fine with it.

I then took my monster and treasure lists and began outlining the dungeon key. That's when inspiration struck. At the top of my outline, I wrote the following stream-of-consciousness elevator pitch for the dungeon:

"The ancient city of Gwarnath lies in ruins atop the Plateau of Jjin. Hidden among the wreckage, numerous darkened portals, shafts, and broken stairs descend into its subterranean vaults. Tales of great riches and fabulous treasures abound, but the ruins are infested with monsters from the old world."

Not particularly original or groundbreaking, but something in those dashed-off lines sparked my imagination. Suddenly, I had a campaign concept that ties together all of my unused material in an unusual yet still-familiar setting. This "throw-away" adventure for a one-shot playtest will now form the cornerstone of the development of a megadungeon campaign that uses the previously-created material, stitched together by dungeon sections generated using the random tables and some of the custom methodology I used for the Hurricane Dungeon (a process which I've come to really enjoy... making creative sense out of random die rolling is a fun challenge).

I took the Roll20 map and applied my house style to come up with a new map, now with some branches leading off this 25x25 section into adjoining sections, to create a bigger level (eventually).

New ideas are flying, thoughts are being collected, and plans are developing, but this is the energy and motivation I've been missing for my home game. And its a setting I can use for both my tabletop group and online. I'll discuss the development of the outline and key in a near-future post.

Recent Reviews and Coming Content

Sorry for the ham-handed alliteration. I've had lots of coffee this morning and feeling cheeky. I've been hard at work on a few things so I haven't had a chance to post much recently, particularly after the marathon blogging run for the Hurricane Dungeon. A few things to mention, though...

Judging is wrapping up for Coldlight Press's third-annual Adventure Site Contest and the winner(s) should be announced soon. Reviews for my Ophidian Temple submission were mostly positive, though JB applied his well-honed perspective and brought up several points I didn't consider while writing. I (politely) disagreed with some of his points in the review comments, and after some additional discussion, he graciously improved my score a skooch. There are no real stakes in this contest, but the goal is to improve as a designer. If one can meet and exceed JB's demanding criteria (which I 100% appreciate), then you know you've accomplished something.

UPDATE: I somehow missed Owen_E's review of my contest submission.

Speaking of demanding criteria, Bryce over at tenfootpole.org reviewed my recent published adventure, Bergummo's Tower and awarded it a prestigious "The Best" ranking. I was pleasantly surprised that he had even reviewed the adventure, much less put it among some really heavyweight awesome adventures in that short list. I won't lie, it feels good. I don't crave validation, but it's always nice to receive.

What's coming up? I have a second adventure nearly ready for publication called "Aethelberd's Tomb," a fairly straightforward exploration of a crypt below the ruined keep of an ancient warlord. It's a nice little expansion of a dungeon I've run several times now, and was even a One-Page Dungeon submission some years ago. I think it's a solid delve. All that's left is to finish the cover illustration, which I am currently blue-lining. Here's a sneak preview...

After that, I have about a dozen adventures in the queue to format and publish over the next months and couple years: Some are old dungeons I'm pulling out of mothballs to refresh and retool; others are fairly new in my repertoire, designed with my rediscovered love of the classic methods and principles of adventure gaming.

Upcoming titles include:

• "The Haunted Chapel" (a dark secret beneath the ruins of a holy place).
• "Bugspittle's Hive" (a spiritual sequel to my ASC 1 entry, "Etta Capp's Cottage").
• "Fire Forge" (a high-level mission to assault a fire giant's caldera lair).
• "Oleg's Problem" (classic dwarven-miners-digging-too-deep dilemma).
• "The Drowned Gates" (a cavernous kilo-dungeon).
• "The High Ice" (a travail to the glacial lair of an ancient white dragon).
• "Owlbear Hill" (a full(er) version of my ASC 2 submission that didn't make the cut).
• "Isle of the Dead" (my too-long-delayed Mythic Greece-inspired adventure, which is 95% done). 

After "Aethelberd's Tomb" is released, "The Haunted Chapel" will be next, as I'm nearly done formatting, but still working on pieces of the content and redrawing the map to my house style. I'll feel good if I can get half the bullet list finished and uploaded.

I also intend to keep posting here as frequently as possible. Cheers until next time!

Bergummo's Tower for OSRIC Is Now on Sale at DriveThruRPG

A couple years ago I entered Prince of Nothing's "No Artpunk Contest" by converting a 5e adventure I'd designed for my home table to OSRIC. I was already committed to shifting back to Basic/Advanced D&D, as my disenchantment with 5e had reached a critical point. The 5e version was written with classic-style adventuring principles, however, so I found it converted pretty easily to the older ruleset. I also needed to abide by the contest limitations, so a few other other changes applied to the OSRIC version of the adventure. I was actually still play-testing the 5e version (for the second time) when I entered the contest.

Prince's review came back pretty positive, but I didn't quite make the cut for the finalists. At the time, I intended to publish the 5e version on DM's Guild/DriveThruRPG, but after being reprimanded for defending Oriental Adventures in the product comments, and then having an email fight with the site's CSRs for calling out a blatant double-standard on a different product, I pulled my adventures off the site and stopped doing business with them.

Unfortunately, if you want to publish game materials, they're pretty much the only game in town. I'm looking into Lulu, but itch.io seems like a nightmare and I have no large following to draw attention to a product for direct sales. I'm not really looking to make money (based on past efforts, I won't), but I have a good deal of experience (40+ years) designing adventures, I have a ton of existing material in my campaign folders, I know a lot about writing and layout, and it's a creative exercise that gives me a lot of personal satisfaction and joy. I wouldn't mind earning a few bucks for the trouble, either, so what the hell...

I took my OSRIC version of Bergummo's Tower, rewrote the copy (reducing word count by about 15%) and redrew the maps to clean up a few things I didn't like. The final result is now up for sale at DriveThruRPG.

Here's the cover...

...and the annotated dungeon map as a preview.

It's a challenging gauntlet of puzzles, tricks, and monsters that will test even the most experienced players, but stays simple enough to avoid getting bogged down over impossible riddles and inscrutable clues. Check it out and let me know how it plays at your table. 

I'm currently working on two other adventures for publication, with a list of six more I plan to release over the next year or so. Hopefully, I can contribute to the effort of bringing this ruleset and style of gaming to new players.

The City of Sheval

From 1989-ish until 2010, I ran a campaign world called King's Realm, a pastiche of medieval Europe and Scandinavia, classical Mediterranean, and Biblical North Africa/Levant. Underlying it was a sweeping Arthurian-style mythology and world history that developed over those 20+ years into quite a lot of material. Many of the same players participated in the entire campaign and by the end were quite high-level and in charge of their own demenses. 

I used to hand-draw everything in the early days, before consumer graphic design software came on the scene, and this is a map of one of the realm's major cities. That campaign had a social rank table that new characters rolled on, and one player actually ended up being the son of the lord of this city. I always liked how this drawing came out, and the city played a recurring role the campaign, particularly in the early days.

FROM MY CAMPAIGN NOTES:

The flat, grassy horse-plains of the south-western realm slope steadily over many leagues to the ocean, before dropping off to a beach of fine white sand. Sheval, the second-largest city in the realm, sits on the shore of the Southern Sea, where the Westfork River from Lac Glimmere flows into the ocean.

The granite walls of the city shimmer in the bright southern sun. The buildings of whitewashed wood and bleached shingles reflect the many cultures that make Sheval their home. Two stout keeps and a series of smaller fortifications anchor the city’s defenses, and watch over the constant ship traffic that arrives and departs from its many piers.

The city’s chief landmarks—the duke’s expansive estate and the magnificent Cathedral of St. Just—lie at its heart. The shanties and warehouses of Lowtown, while certainly the rougher section of the city, are still well-built and orderly, hardly a slum. Still, soldiers watch the district vigilantly from the top of the Gaol Tower.

Just inside the main northern gate is Sheval’s famous open-air market faire—an elaborate and ever-changing city-within-a-city. The market’s innumerable tents, stalls, and carts are a hive of commerce, an intense barrage of colors, sights, smells, and sounds. Peddlers, hawkers, and mongers shout constantly for attention, and the persistent clinking of coins signifies the huge volume of trade. While not quite the equal of the market in Swordgate, Sheval’s faire is certainly the most impressive in the King’s Realm.

A full legion of troops is billeted in the city. One quarter of these troops consist of light and medium cavalry forces, Sheval’s legendary horse-warriors. Their mounted combat skills and the superb quality of their fast, powerful steeds are unmatched on the battlefield. Another third are “marines,” who spend part of their tour of duty at sea, protecting the merchant fleet from pirates and enemy forces. Finally, the city is the home of the Templar Order of St. Just, a cadre of heavily armored holy knights dedicated to upholding the law and meting out justice to the guilty.

Cultural Equivalent: French/Breton
Ruler: Duke Renard d’Argent
Patron Saint: St. Just the Lawgiver

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Curséd Caverns (Level 9)

With this map, the eighth of nine, we come to the finale of the Hurricane Dungeon. Out of all the levels, I fiddled with the content on this one the most as I wanted to both wrap up the threads that developed while writing, and come to some sort of conclusion at the bottom. This doesn't preclude expanding the levels and restocking the plundered areas, and there's a whole 'nother, even-higher level adventure to be designed for the Ivory Tower in the palace ruins, but the party can also call it a day if they conquer this level.

The original penultimate map is a more well-defined "location." I mean to say, it has a presence and implied function just by looking at it. It screams "evil temple" and seemed perfect for a conclusion-type area.

I like underground rivers, but even more than that, I love underground lakes. Gary really captured my imagination for natural underground spaces with the D-series of modules (and Tsojcanth, to a lesser extent). "The Sunless Sea" is just such an evocative name, and if the drow hadn't been co-opted by Forgotten Realms' "Underdreck" and turned into lame edgelords, I could have easily seen myself adapting Gary's source material into a full-on underground campaign.  I also relished accounts of the Black Reservoir level in Castle Greyhawk, so this level map is kind of my homage to all that.

A big lake in a cavern projects fear, creates a sense of vulnerability, implies unseen threats and alien danger... and, more importantly, suggests hidden treasure. Who knows what might be trapped in this cave beneath the black water? That scene in The Two Towers (the film) in which Gandalf fights the Balrog as they plummet down a chasm, then emerge into a vast space with their fires glimmering across the black water as they fall... I think it's my favorite scene in the entire trilogy. 

My first thought was to make this a drow temple-outpost, but as I said, I kind of hate the modern drow and wasn't sure I had a decent spin on the classic version, so in the course of writing the upper levels, I decided to make the inhabitants of the lowest level a mere cult of demon-worshipers. I made the decision earlier in the writing process, though I don't remember at which point (maybe as I was figuring out who the NPCs were for the Level 5 stocking roll), but the idea developed into a lot more than that by the time I got to writing the key for Level 9. Certainly, the decision gave me a generic creative goal to work toward that I (hopefully) make pay off at the end.

This level had a few more rooms than the previous two cave levels, and I added a few more just to provide extra living space for the cultists. I also added the new access from Level 8, plus some doors and other details like ledges and columns, and cleaned up a few incongruities and flaws in the map that were bugging me. After adding the title, scale, and shading, along with level key numbers, the map turned out like this:

I made my content stocking rolls for the original 26-room dungeon level and came up with the following initial results:

–Empty: 9 (34.5% / 35%)
–Monster:  8 (31% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 6 (23% / 25%)
–Stairs: 0 (0% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 0 (0% / 5%)
–Treasure: 3 (11.5% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines). After adding 5 more keyed areas to the map, bringing the total to 31, I counted them all as "Empties," knowing I would have to fudge the final number in order to house the extra cultist encounters I intended to add to the temple. So, out of the now-31 rooms, the numbers looked like this:

 –Empty: 14 (45% / 35%)
–Monster:  8 (26% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 6 (19% / 25%)
–Stairs: 0 (0% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 0 (0% / 5%)
–Treasure: 3 (10% / 5%)

As I filled out the key, added new enemies (and removed some), these percentages changed again, but I'll get into that further below.

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Curséd Caverns (Level 8)

Continuing down into the depths of the Hurricane Dungeon, Level 8's map was drawn on the fifth night without power. Like the previous cavern map for Level 7, there are only 21 encounter areas here, so about half the number as the "finished" levels.

I like underground rivers, so this map has a big one winding right through, with many side caves and tunnels filling out the level. A pair of waterfalls, various ledges, and a series of rapids provide some nice natural obstacles as well. There are no ways off the level other than the river channel, so I needed to add a few; specifically, the three tunnel connections from Level 8.

As for connecting this level down to Level 9, one major thing complicated the situation: Level 9 is not directly below Level 8. Rather, it is down one level but shifted completely to the right. On that map, the river channel enters the level in the top-left corner, directly connecting to the river outlet on this map. This means that the likeliest routes down to Level 9 would be in the upper-right portion of the Level 8 map.

I also rolled one "Stairs" results on the dungeon stocking rolls, so I added a single tunnel down to Level 9. This provides for only two routes off the level (including the river channel) which results in a bit of a bottleneck to further progress. The party will have to either master the river channel somehow, or locate the cave with the statue where the new tunnel leads down. Usually, you don't want bottlenecks like this in your dungeon, but it's not so bad in this case.

That's because the layout of this level makes it clear that the dungeon "rooms" lie along the river's descending path, so it should seem logical to the players to investigate the downstream area where the river leaves the map. If they do, they will find that the river dumps via waterfall into a huge cavernous reservoir overlooked by a ziggurat temple carved into the wall. At the top of the falls, another cave entrance leads into other areas of Level 9. How they reach this area is up to the players and their resources, but it will at least be obvious that more dungeon lies in this direction. Even if they can't manage to get further downstream here, the knowledge of this area should motivate them to search the E side of the level for another route in this direction, in which case they will quickly find the new tunnel in the cave with the statue.

For some reason, I labeled many of the natural features by writing on the original map, which I didn't do on the others. I took the opportunity to remove the extra words and clean up a few things while adding river fords in two obvious spots. One of the "Trick/Traps" I rolled was a collapsing bridge, so I drew a span over the river. I also drew a connecting tunnel between two previously-isolated caves to give the level a little more flow. After adding a key and shading, the map turned out like this:

My content stocking rolls (for a 21-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 9 (43% / 35%)
–Monster: 6 (29% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 3 (14% / 25%)
–Stairs: 1 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 2 (10% / 5%)
–Treasure: 0 (0% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines). Another high-empty, low-treasure level unfortunately, but I'll have to make due.

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Curséd Caverns (Level 7)

With this level, we move into the lower third of the Hurricane Dungeon, a series of natural caves and tunnels I titled "The Curséd Caverns." (Yes, it's not a very original name, but that's sort of the point with this throwback adventure.) This was actually the map I drew on our fourth night without power, but I moved some of the maps out of creation order to put similar-looking maps together. I enjoy drawing natural cave networks and I was happy with how all three cavernous maps turned out.

This one is interesting because three tunnels lead off the map , enabling it to link it up with additional levels. It has plenty of loopy-doopiness which is essential for a good cave level, although the southern-most portion of the map is bottlenecked by a single passage.

A major negative issue with this level is the fact that it only has ~20 distinct "rooms," which is slightly less than half the average number of the other levels. I could have increased this number by treating some of the larger caverns as multiple spaces, but I didn't want to get into issues of dungeon logic. Having too many creatures and things crammed into directly adjacent spaces starts to strain believability (despite the fact that the format has pretty low thresholds already).

I seriously considered this option up until the time of writing, but once I started keying the level, I felt it ended up with the right density of encounters. I didn't design these maps with any purpose or even end-use in mind. Were I to create maps specifically for a megadungeon (rather than the reverse happening here), I would make sure that each level had a proper number of rooms (minimum of 30) and enough accessways between the levels.

Speaking of which, I had three staircases and three chutes from the upper levels to connect to this level. I also rolled one result of "Stairs Down 1 Level" in the stocking rolls, and I already had the three existing accessways leading off the map. In addition, one of the stairs from Level 6 continues down to Level 8. I built the various stairs from pieces of the other maps, and added a few extra details from the key like ledges, a bricked-up wall, a set of double doors, a pile of guano, and a pool of magic water. I also created a new tunnel to connect areas 14 and 19, just so that end of the dungeon didn't feel so isolated and linear. When completed, the map came out like this: 

My content stocking rolls (for a 20-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 9 (45% / 35%)
–Monster: 4 (20% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 4 (20% / 25%)
–Stairs: 1 (5% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 2 (10% / 5%)
–Treasure: 0 (0% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines). I was disappointed in the high number of empty spaces and low amounts of treasure on this level, but kept the results as rolled.