I started running a 5e campaign for my girlfriend and three of our friends who were interested in trying out D&D. I was already pretty disenchanted with 5e and planned to run Basic D&D for them, but then two of them purchased the 5e Players Handbook before I could establish my intention. Since I was already running a 5e campaign online and knew the ruleset well, I just started up a 5e tabletop campaign for them.
By the time they got to 5th-6th level, however, they were becoming overwhelmed by the number of options and character-build decisions they had to contend with. So I began explaining the gameplay of earlier versions of D&D, similar concepts without the constant decision trees and build mechanics. They wanted to try it out, so I brought their 5e campaign to a conclusion and began setting up a new campaign.
I waffled between using OSRIC or Labyrinth Lord for the ruleset, but ultimately chose Advanced Labyrinth Lord with a few house rules (such as Ascending AC) thrown in, just to make the transition from 5e a little easier for the players. I've already wrapped up my other, online 5e campaign as well, and told those guys if I run anything for them in the future, it's going to be OSRIC...period.
For this new campaign, I decided to mash together a few low-level Basic/AD&D adventures: U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, the Sample Dungeon from the Holmes Basic rulebook—commonly referred to as The Tower (or Dungeon) of Zenopus, Zach Howard's expansion of the Sample Dungeon (entitled The Forgotten Smugglers' Caves), and the dungeon lair in N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile-God. I also planned to expand some of the dungeon levels to provide bridging material for the individual adventures. My goal was to turn the various pieces into a multi-level, interconnected adventure site (a "kilodungeon") that had many different things going on within it.
The first few sessions of the campaign had a high death count as they adjusted to the new play style. I told them it was deadlier and urged them to take care, and I didn't show a lot of mercy so as to hammer home the difference in play. They learned some new gaming skills, adapted quickly, and all have now survived to 2nd level and are advancing on 3rd. We've played about 10 sessions over the last few months and, so far,
it's proven to be a popular change from 5e. As we move forward, I'm beginning to
incorporate bits and pieces of AD&D/OSRIC, and I hope at some point
in the near future I can make the full transition to OSRIC.
To prepare for the new campaign, I had quite a bit of structural work to do to integrate the different adventures. The first step was to chop up the maps in Photoshop, starting with the centerpiece location, the "haunted" alchemist's manor from U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, a great little adventure site with high verisimilitude and featuring many dangers for low level characters. It also has a great "twist" in that the characters expect a haunted house but wind up encountering a criminal gang.
There are lots of venomous monsters, though none have insta-death poison (I prefer damaging or debilitating poisons in most cases, with save vs. Death poison being reserved for the nastiest creatures). The giant centipede encounter in the kitchen nearly wiped out the party during play, who were only saved by DM retcon after realizing I'd badly misread the poison details in the original manuscript (which is markedly different from the Monster Manual description). There is also some yellow mold that did kill one player-character. Treasure is pretty skimpy until you reach the end and can capture the smugglers' ship, but that problem is easily remedied.
Connecting everything together was going to be the main challenge, so the manor house would serve as the anchor point to which all the other dungeon pieces would be oriented. This is the original map from U1:
 |
| Original Manor Map (scale = 5') |
I chose a location for the site in my campaign world, but to fit properly I needed the manor to reverse its position on both the horizontal and vertical axes; that is, the front door needed to face north and the east wing to face west. I also took the opportunity to increase the map scale from the original's 5' squares to 10' (to open up the cramped manor spaces a bit), fix little architectural incongruities (such as the improper placement of fireplaces), and clean up the weird grid alignments. Finally, I added some DM notes to the map.
Other than the adjustments I detail below, the only major changes to the original module's writeup involve revising the manor's background (including Ned Shakeshaft's "mission" and situation in the house), swapping out a monster, altering certain treasure items, and adding more gp-value treasure to boost the adventure's XP haul (especially since I don't intend to use the Sea Ghost section of the adventure, nor the tie-ins to U2 and U3). I'll dive more into the background/plot changes in a future post because I incorporate elements of all four adventure scenarios into a unified whole.
After flopping the maps and making some subtle changes, my manor maps ended up looking like this, starting with the ground floor:
 |
| Ground Floor (scale = 10') |
Changes
- Manor locations are keyed with the letter 'M'.
I widened the Entrance Hall (area M1, orig. 1) to match the rear wing of the house and be more structurally accurate. Doing so slightly shortens rooms M2 and M3 (orig. 2 and 3), including the hall between, but with the increase in map scale, the rooms still end up larger than the originals.
I added columns in M1 to support the balcony above (indicated by the shaded areas), and redesigned the accessway to the rear wing, replacing the open hallway on the south wall with two sets of double doors, one leading to M7 (orig. 7), the other to M8 (orig. 8).
- The dotted line indicates the smugglers' path through the house (I changed the bad guys from smugglers to flat-out pirates, but I'll discuss that change later).
I aligned the hallway to M4 (orig. 4) with the grid, shrinking the width of the Study (M3) but increasing the width of the Library (M2).
I removed the fireplaces from M2 and M3. Fireplaces and chimneys have specific engineering principles, with rooms on multiple floors being designed around a chimney which, by necessity, must extend straight up from the foundation to the roof. The chimneys in the original map would pass right through the floor of room 11 above it (a case might be made that they're "close enough" to the fireplace on the upper floor, but that's not really how chimneys work from a structural load perspective).
I rearranged the fireplaces in M5 and M6 (orig. 5 and 6) and the door between them to make more architectural sense as well.
The rear wing is largely the same, but with a more sensible layout. A normal manor would not have the accessways to the dining room and drawing room be within direct sight or sound of where servants are working.
- The fireplaces in M7 and M8 are more appropriately arranged, and a new fireplace has been added to the Kitchen (M9, orig. 9). The fireplaces in the original rooms 7 and 8 are sort-of beneath the fireplace on the 2nd floor above, but that seems implausibly engineered. There was a small fireplace already in the original room 9, but adding a second one made sense.
I replaced the large spider in the Drawing Room (M8) with a giant ferret. There are already large spiders elsewhere in the adventure, so I wanted something different here.
I replaced the door between the Kitchen (M9) and the Scullery (M10, orig. 10) with a wide accessway, which you would want in a working kitchen.
 |
| First Floor (scale = 10') |
Changes
I pretty much redesigned the entire floorplan of this level.
I merged orig. rooms 13 and 14 into M13, and kept the 2 large spiders in the merged M13 bedroom.
I repositioned the fireplaces in M13 and M14 to connect with the fireplaces in M5/M6 directly below.
I moved the signal lantern details from the now-deleted orig. room 14 to M14 (orig. 15); I also moved Ned Shakeshaft from M14 to M12 (orig. 12). In my version, Ned isn't working for a merchant in town, he's a freelancer looking to join the pirate gang. When the pirates caught him sneaking around the house, he tried to explain his presence but they knocked him out instead, tying him up and leaving him in this room for interrogation later.
When the party meets him, he claims to have been checking out the rumors about riches to be had here when someone got the drop on him and knocked him out; when he awoke, he was tied up in this room (all of which is true enough). So far, the party's thief has taken a shine to Ned and brought him along on the adventure. She's going to be very disappointed when Ned eventually betrays the party to the pirates (probably by assassinating one of the party members during a fight).
I repositioned the Guest Bedroom (M15, orig. 16) and its fireplace, as well as the Servants' Quarters (M16, orig. 17) where I added a fireplace.
The Boxing Room (M17, orig. 18) was reduced and I added the Head Servant's Quarters (M18).
The fireplaces in M16 and M18 connect with the fireplaces in M7/M9 below.
I added a couple of jewelry pieces to M18, as well as a journal containing references to a secret door in the cellar and a "...mysterious tunnel in the garden." The garden tunnel is the main entrance to the Sample Dungeon from Holmes Basic, which I'll get into when I detail the Manor Estate in another blog post.
In the original manuscript, keyed area 19 indicates the busted stairs to the Attic and describes what was up there. I merged the stair details into M17 and created an actual Attic level.
 |
| Attic (scale = 10') |
Changes
The original didn't include a map of the attic level, so I drew one out. I placed the chimney locations to connect with the fireplaces below, and separated the attic into four sections with timber partitions.
I changed the stirge's treasure from a +1 Ring of Protection to a Ring of Invisibility. There's already another Ring of Protection downstairs in M8 (and a third one on the magic-user serving aboard the Sea Ghost, although I'm not using that section).
I also added a chest hidden under some old tools and a tarp, containing coins and gems to help boost the manor's overall treasure haul (and reward thorough exploration).
Below the manor are the Cellar and the Sea Caves. This is the original map of those areas:
 |
| Original Cellar/Sea Caves Map (scale = 5') |
I chopped areas 25–30 from this map, as the bluff between the manor level and the ocean level now contains several dungeon levels between them. These excised caves will reappear when I get to the Sea Caves level in a future post. My cellar map now looks like this:
 |
Cellars (scale = 10') |
Changes
I redesigned the whole floorplan of this level as well, shrinking the smugglers/pirates' quarters slightly while expanding the off-limits/secret areas and adding a new location (M25). I also added support pillars in all areas, as any proper foundation would have.
I changed the layout of the Wine Cellar (M20, orig. 20) to make it more of a "maze-like" area than an open room. While examining the body, one character got infected by the rot grubs. Describing the worms burrowing through the flesh of her arms freaked everyone out, and her first instinct was to cut them out with her dagger (which I let her do even though fire is the proscribed solution...same result). The incident caused them to leave the body—and the obviously-magic suit of plate armor—alone.
The main Cellar room (M21, orig. 21) remains the pirate-gang's quarters. I skipped the original writeup's "staged" locations for the various smugglers, and opted instead for creating a rough schedule of activities in which the total number of pirates stationed in the lair varies over time. I also randomized the number of personnel in the original locations (including the caverns far below). When the party enters the Cellar (depending on day/night), there are a random # of pirates here, and some percentage of them sleeps/eats/recreates.
There is a recurring chance, while the PCs are here, that more pirates return to this room via the secret door from the cavern level (revealing it in the process). Finally, there is a chance that the illusionist, Sanbalet, is in his quarters (M22, orig. 22); otherwise, he is overseeing operations below. Sanbalet's goals are much more complex and wide-ranging than in U1. He also vies for control of this site with the thaumaturgist from the Sample Dungeon. I'll review all this in a future post.
The secret staircase still leads to the Sea Caves, but it is now a much longer route. Another secret door partway down (and unknown to the pirates) leads into the Dungeon level, which is made up of the Sample Dungeon plus my own expansion sections.
I reoriented room M22 and created room M23 (orig. a spur of 21) as a sort-of cellar vault. This puts the "warning sign" behind a second door and creates just that little extra requirement to explore further in order to become aware of a point of interest. The cold, empty room behind the outer door, with an inner door, barred from this side and scrawled with "DANGER!" just makes for a creepier transition.
I separated the six obvious skeletons in M24 (orig. 23) by moving four of them into a newly-added Crypt (M25). Only two are now visible laying on the floor in M24, while the other four rise in M25 to join the fight. The back of the fireplace is also visible on the east wall—a clue to the secret room on the other side.
In M25, I added a pair of trapped chests, one of which is empty; the other contains gp-value loot (coins and gems) to boost the overall treasure haul.
- I added a fireplace to the Laboratory (M26, orig. 24) because it made sense for there to be one here. It connects with the fireplaces/chimneys in M5/M6 on the first floor above.
With the new manor layout in place to serve as the anchor for the entire rest of the "kilo-dungeon," I moved on to the next task, which was to configure the Sample Dungeon so that it aligns properly with the updated manor. I'll detail that process in the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment