I finally started my playtest sessions for an upcoming publishing attempt. I'm mostly checking the adventure for balance issues, but I'm also test-driving a few house rules and ideas I have for improving my regular game.
We're playing 5e on Roll20 every Wednesday night, and I estimate the adventure will take 4-5 sessions to complete. I like 5e's core mechanic, for the most part, but I prefer OSR adventure design principles. Hopefully, this is a decent blend of those factors.
Five of my Tuesday-night players rolled up (2) characters -- one primary and one replacement in case the primary dies, although I am letting them swap out characters (if they desire to) whenever the party returns to base camp.
I gave them this brief adventure synopsis and then started them right at the dungeon...
Your party came into possession of a map with directions to the abandoned tower of a long dead-wizard. The tower stands deep in a nearby forest, and whispered rumors tell of fantastic treasures kept within, waiting for those brave or foolish enough to enter.
You and your comrades decided to form an expedition to investigate the rumors, and your party followed the map to the area. It was a long, arduous journey to reach the site, so returning to town for rest and resupply would not be an easy undertaking. Your party establishes a base camp several miles from the tower site, and half your expedition prepares to make the first foray: Aerion, dwarf paladin; Cane, wood elf monk; Saynard, human bard; Steeljaw, dwarf barbarian; and Vic, halfling rogue.
After a restful night, your party sets off shortly after dawn. After traveling through thick woods for two hours, you arrive at the spot marked on the map at 9:00 AM. There, you find a modest structure—a crumbling, three-story stone tower with a conical, shingled roof—standing in the middle of a forest clearing.
Thick, leafy vines shroud parts of the exterior wall. Brickwork has fallen away in places, leaving gaps in the tower wall. Part of the tower roof sags and patches of shingles are missing. Narrow, darkened windows stare into the surrounding forest. The front door is gone and the doorway stands wide open.
The entire area has a strange atmosphere about it, almost “humming” with unseen energy that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. As you approach the tower, the forest becomes noticeably quieter.
Here is the session report...
The party crosses the clearing to a short flight of weathered steps leading to an open doorway. Vic enters first, peering through the doorway into an empty “mud room.” The flagstone floor is covered with grime, as well as mounds of dirt and dead leaves blown in over the years through the open windows and door.
Vic notices strange tracks leading into and out of an open doorway in the southwest corner. Though not an expert tracker, he clearly recognizes that the tracks are reptilian and the creatures that made them walk upright.
The party moves into the next chamber—a former living room by appearances. Smashed furniture, dirt, and leaves pile up against the walls. Pieces of a wooden chandelier dangle from the ceiling. A moldy, rotten carpet lies on the dirty floor, before a stone fireplace on the south wall. More strange tracks crisscross the room through open doorways on the north and west walls.
The party fans out into the room. Saynard and Aerion cover the other doorways, while Steeljaw moves to the far corner to peer out an open window. He sees the tower clearing and then the forest beyond, but a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. He spots a small, green, reptilian foot and part of a tail disappear behind some foliage just below the window, so he warns the party that something is outside!
As Vic investigates the fireplace, Cane lifts the corner of the rug, but it comes apart in his grasp. On the floor underneath it, however, he finds a small iron key. Meanwhile, Vic climbs into the cold hearth, water-stained from years of rain dripping down the flue. Peering up into the chimney shaft, he spies two hideous giant centipedes scuttling about. They don’t seem to spot him, so he ducks back into the room and warns the others.
As his comrades get into position, Vic tosses a piece of a smashed couch into the hearth, which causes the hungry centipedes to emerge. Steeljaw smashes one giant centipede with his axe, while Cane kills the second with a crushing roundhouse kick.
With the insects dead, Aerion and Saynard move into the room to the north, while Cane helps Vic climb up into the flue. Steeljaw, meanwhile, moves to the doorway into the mud room to watch for possible incoming intruders.
The room to the north turns out to be an old kitchen. The remains of a butcher’s block, a shattered porcelain basin, and pantry shelves are piled in the southeast corner. Between the windows on the north wall stands a coal box and a badly-dented iron stove, its stovepipe toppled to one side. More strange tracks crisscross the room and exit through an open doorway to the west.
Saynard checks the blackened coal box and finds it empty. He then peers into the battered stove and sees only ancient ashes. Aerion enters the west doorway into a former dining room, where the ruins of a fine oak table and chairs, a dish cabinet and sideboard—along with heaps of smashed dinnerware—litter the room. The outer wall has crumbled in two spots, creating gaps in the stonework large enough for a man to squeeze through. More of the strange tracks crisscross the room and exit through an open doorway to the south.
Back in the living room, Steeljaw maintains his watch on the mud room while Vic climbs up into the chimney. Between the tower’s floors, Vic finds a niche where the centipedes nested. It is filled with moulted chitin and rodent bones, but nothing of value. He continues on up from the ground floor until he reaches another chamber on the tower’s first floor—what appears to be a former bedroom.
As Aerion peers out the gaps in the dining room wall, he sees the tower clearing and the forest just beyond. He notices that the vines on this side of the tower seem particularly heavy and would partially obscure the wall gaps to someone looking from the outside. The vines seem thick enough to climb, as well.
Saynard moves into the adjacent room to the south, which appears to have been a library. Several smashed padded chairs and bookshelves are piled in the corner underneath a rickety-looking wooden staircase. More strange tracks crisscross the dusty floor and head up the stairs. An open doorway to the east leads back out into the living room. As Saynard begins thoroughly searching the debris pile under the stairs, Aerion enters the room and inspects the rickety staircase. He sees the strange tracks scaling up and down the stairs.
Cane and Steeljaw guard the living room while, upstairs, Vic moves cautiously into the bedchamber. The wreckage of an ornately-carved, four-poster bed, a wardrobe, and a trunk are piled in the center of the room. The floors are made of wooden planks on timber beams, and the way they bounce under the halfling’s feet tell him they are likely rotten. As was the case downstairs, the interior walls on this floor are coated with grime and mold.
Avoiding the center of the floor, Vic creeps along the outer wall to the open window. Looking out, he sees the tower clearing and the forest just beyond. A few feet below the window is the roof of the ground-floor mudroom. It would be easy to climb out the window onto the roof (or vice versa). From the window, he moves carefully to the room’s only exit—an open doorway to the north.
Downstairs, Aerion cautiously mounts the rickety staircase, trodding step-by-step across the creaking boards. The entire stair sways and buckles with each step, but he makes his way safely to the top, where he enters some sort of parlor. Shafts of daylight shine through the open windows, as well as through another large gap in the crumbling exterior wall.
The room is shrouded in cobwebs, and large piles of leafy debris and busted furniture gather in the corners. Aerion notes the sketchy-looking wooden floor planks covered in dark grime. The strange tracks enter the room, but then seem to immediately retreat back downstairs. Most of the floor in this room is unmarked by the tracks, despite open doorways to the east and south.
Elsewhere on the same floor, Vic peers into the adjacent room to the north of the bedchamber, which appears to have once been a study. He immediately notes that there are no windows in this room, for it is only dimly illuminated by light coming in through the bedchamber’s doorway, as well as from another open doorway to the west.
A rickety wooden staircase ascends to the tower’s second floor, and the broken remains of a desk, chair, and table are piled under the floor area beneath it. Vic crosses the chamber and spies through the western doorway, where he sees two familiar faces.
On the ground floor, Cane moves into the library and nimbly darts up the rickety staircase. It sways a bit, but his agile grace carries him along with ease. He and Aerion move into the parlor at the same time, just as Vic pokes his head into the room from the eastern doorway.
After giving their mutual reports, Vic and Cane decide to head upstairs while Aerion volunteers to check out the doorway to the south. Downstairs, Saynard wraps up his limited search, and he and Steeljaw begin to move carefully up the stairs.
In the study, Vic climbs onto the stairway banister and agilely scales the narrow beam. The railing sways to and fro, but the nimble halfling keeps his balance. At the top of the stairs, he notices vines lightly draping the top-most steps. As he reaches them, he can see into a large open chamber, lit by shafts of daylight streaming in through holes in the tower’s sagging, conical roof.
Clinging vines have crept in through holes in the rotting roof, and they now cover the southern and eastern portions of the room (where the staircase enters). Birds flutter nervously about the rafters of the peaked roof thirty feet above. In the center of the room—about eight feet off the floor—a faint, golden glow emanates from a box lantern made of iron and frosted glass, which hangs by a long chain from the roof’s peak.
While Saynard navigates the rickety staircase from the ground floor, Cane mounts the staircase to the second floor to join Vic. Aerion, meanwhile, has moved into the room south of the parlor to investigate. The chamber is oddly-shaped due to the stairwell wall, but it appears to have been a simple bedroom, for it contains the remains of a bed, a wrecked wardrobe, and a busted table. Part of the exterior wall has crumbled away, creating a large gap near the cobweb-covered ceiling.
Aerion begins searching the debris pile on the floor as Saynard reaches the parlor just outside and looks around. Downstairs, Steeljaw begins his careful climb of the stairs. Upstairs on the second floor, Vic and Cane ponder the lantern and the vines. Cane offers to investigate the lantern so he tentatively steps out onto the mat of vines covering the floor.
At first, the vines seem to reinforce the rotting timber floor buckling beneath his feet, but as Cane nears the center of the vine mass, the vines become so thick, they begin to catch around his ankles and hinder his progress. He breaks loose and moves to the western side of the room, where the timber floor is clear of vines, but rotten.
In the bedroom downstairs, Aerion pokes through the wrecked furniture and fails to notice a shadowy mass maneuvering on the ceiling high above him. Descending on a thin webline, a giant spider pounces on the dwarf, biting into his fleshy neck and injecting him with enough venom to kill a horse. Despite the dwarf’s natural poison resistance, the spider’s bite does him in. Saynard watches in horror through the doorway as the whole event unfolds.
Upstairs, Vic hears Saynard’s terrified gasp and informs Cane of some sort of commotion. He then moves quickly down the staircase to help his comrades. Cane stays behind to inspect the lantern further. Meanwhile, the giant spider leaves the paralyzed dwarf and emerges into the parlor through the open doorway, biting Saynard and dropping him just as Steeljaw reaches the top of the stairs.
Seeing his comrade fall before him, Steeljaw becomes enraged and brings his mighty axe down on the spider’s head. The spider shrieks in pain and lunges back, but Steeljaw’s axe swings around again and cleaves the spider in half, spraying the room with blackish-purple goo. Vic looks on from the study doorway, but then hears a new commotion from upstairs.
There, while investigating the box lantern, Cane notices that one of the frosted glass panels has a hinged door, allowing it to be opened. He also notes that the golden glow emanating from the lantern is steady, not flickering like a flame. As he peers carefully at the lantern, he suddenly becomes aware that the fluttering birds in the rafters above it are becoming agitated.
Suddenly, the “birds”—four stirges—swoop down on Cane, diving at him with their needle-like beaks. Cane darts across the vine mat, dancing nimbly to avoid becoming entangled in the clinging vines, and attains the staircase. Before he can get down the stairs, however, two of the stirges find their mark and stab their beaks deep into his body. As he falls, unconscious, across the steps, the famished creatures drink deeply of his crimson blood.
Still enraged, Steeljaw moves past Vic and races up the rickety stairs (which hold). He kills one of the stirges attached to Cane with his axe, but the other two stirges swoop in on him. One finds its mark and begins drinking the dwarf’s blood. Vic also races up the stairs, moving past Steeljaw and then killing the stirge attached to the dwarf. While Steeljaw takes care of the remaining stirges, Vic tends to Cane’s wounds and stabilizes him. When the other two stirges are dead, the pair carry Cane’s unconscious form to the parlor.
Steeljaw retrieves one of Aerion’s healer’s kits and binds everyone’s wounds. Cane regains consciousness shortly after, but Aerion and Saynard are still paralyzed by the spider’s venom and, though alive and stable, are unable to move. The party decides to rest here for a while, but then Cane hears someone (or something) moving around downstairs.
The session ends here…
(It is now 9:45 AM.)
Session 2 >>
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