No-Artpunk Contest: Bergummo's Tower

Happy to report that I received a positive review for my adventure, Bergummo's Tower, in Prince of Nothing's "No-Artpunk 2" contest. The competition looks pretty stiff, so I'm not sure of my chances for being selected, but I'm grateful to have received a passing grade and moved on to the final round.

Here's Prince's review, as well as a list of the other entries.

Here are my playtest reports from the first time I ran it (sessions which led to a few changes in order to make things work that weren't). I wrote the adventure as an intro to 5e but in an OSR-style. The contest rules stipulated, however, that the adventure must be written in an old-school system, so I converted it to OSRIC.

Here is the OSRIC version if anyone would like to download it for themselves. I don't have the 5e version ready yet, but I'll format it and post it here soon.

Moormist Manor

I drew the picture below in 1984, in Mr. Griffin's 3rd-period American History class. It started as errant scribbling, but by the end I had created an image that would occupy my mental space for nearly four decades.

Lurid Lairs: Owlbear Den

While the Gloomy Forest is a dense, old-growth woodland, it also lies in the highlands of Brackleborn province. The underlying terrain consists of steep-sided hills, with deep valleys running between them. Climbing the hills involves rigorous activity that eats up valuable daylight, meaning the party has tended to follow the maze of gullies, culverts, and channels that characterize the forest at ground level. They haven't quite realized how many areas and encounters are up on the hillsides that they've simply wandered beneath without ever realizing it.

Some of these encounter areas are lairs, the denizens of which populate the wandering encounter tables. If the players can locate a lair and wipe it out, then that creature type might disappear entirely from the tables. While a lair persists, it also generates an additional encounter check if the party wanders within a certain distance of it. Thus, wiping out a lair of monsters can have long-reaching exploration benefits.

I've sprinkled lots of these encounter lairs across the Gloomy Forest map: peryton nests; an awakened grove full of intelligent animals, plants, and myconids; a bullywug village; an ancient cemetery; an ettercap nest; etc. 

One such lair is the following owlbear den, a bit of content I cribbed from my old Frozen North campaign. With a few minor flavor changes from a Viking-style setting to a European/fey one, the content works just as well here. Reusing adventures is something I'd always avoided in the past...no idea why. It saves so much time and effort, and let's me revisit the adventure with a fresh perspective. With the right changes, I've even reused adventures for the original players and they didn't catch on.

As with most monsters in the 5e Monster Manual (particularly the classic monsters), I've had to de-neuter their archetypal special attacks. I don't know why 5e took away some of the core monster abilities (like the owlbear’s classic hug attack, or the rust monster’s ability to eat magic weapons and armor...it just makes no sense). I digress; my owlbears will hug the crap out of you. Changes to the core monster are described below.

Owlbear Den

This is the lair of a sleuth of owlbears—(8) “sows,” (6) juveniles, and a massive “boar.”

Bergummo's Tower Playtest - Session 6

 As they put their heads together about what to do next, the party members realize they never fully searched the plinth room, so they return through the green mist to do so. They already know there are two secret doors in this room, one of which was opened by turning the dials on the plinth. They opened the second secret door from the other side, after descending the pit in the red mist, melting the grate with green slime, and ascending a subtly-sloping corridor. 

Bergummo's Tower Playtest - Session 5

Vic pokes his head into the 15x20 room and shines his candle around. Rotting velvet curtains line all four walls, save for the north corner of the west wall where a brightly-colored tapestry hangs. With his hand crossbow, Vic fires arrows at the sapphire floating slowly around the tip of a 6-ft. iron pole set into the middle of the floor. He hits the grape-sized gemstone several times, but fails to dislodge it from its orbit. Undeterred, he finally hits it with enough force to knock the sapphire loose. Its glow subsides as the jewel falls to the stone floor. Luckily, it is not damaged.

Bergummo's Tower Playtest - Session 4

With the party still working out the enigma of the bronze buttons emblazoned with sigils of the four seasons, Cane suggests correlating the mist colors to the seasons (red = Summer; blue = Winter; yellow = Fall; green = Spring). Vic presses this combination of buttons, but it only summons a pair of cockatrices to the south platform. After a brief fight, the party kills the horrid creatures.

Bergummo's Tower - Playtest Session 3

The spiral staircase descends 30 ft. below the cellar to a large, unlit room (the dwarves estimate the party is now 40-50 ft. beneath the surface). As Saynard’s bullseye lantern scans across the walls, the light reveals an octagonal-shaped chamber of finely-laid, dressed stone, with a 15-ft. high vaulted ceiling. A thick layer of dust covers the floor. In the center of the room, from floor to ceiling, stands a wide stone “column” within which the spiral staircase winds back up to the cellar.

Bergummo's Tower - Playtest Session 2

After hearing some movement downstairs (soft shuffling noises), Cane repositions himself, hiding behind some debris and taking a bead on the staircase doorway with his bow. Steeljaw drags Aerion’s and Saynard’s paralyzed forms over to the far wall, then hugs the wall next to the staircase doorway with his axe raised. Vic slides into the darkened bedchamber to the south and sets up an ambush. All three active party members now hear a gentle creaking as some creature carefully makes its way up the rickety stairs.

Bergummo's Tower - Playtest Session 1

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...

Bergummo's Tower

I've loaded the adventure into Roll20 for my playtest sessions, which I hope to begin soon. This is the illustration of the tower's exterior I made for the landing page.

Bergummo's Tower -- The Vaults Below

I finished the second map for the next adventure I intend to publish called Bergummo's Tower. Below the ruined tower is an arcane vault holding some of the wizard Bergummo's greatest treasures. The entire complex is a series of puzzles to open the various vaults, and has a good mix of problem-solving, ability checks, and combat.

I've recruited four of my veteran players to playtest it, which I hope to do in the next couple weeks. Here is the map.

Bergummo's Tower

I'm preparing my second adventure for sale on DM's Guild (my first being Elf-bane), and this is the first part of the dungeon map -- the crumbling tower of a long-dead wizard. 

When I first started tinkering with Roll20 in 2015, my friend John, whom I've played D&D with since my freshman year in college and who lives in a different state, popped on and rolled up a character. I built an adventure on the spot and ran his new wizard character plus an NPC fighter through "Bergummo's* Tower." It's what hooked both of us on the potential for online gaming to allow us to play together again after many years.

Despite being created pretty much on-the-fly, the adventure really worked. It laid the initial groundwork for what would become a 5-1/2-year long campaign that, at one point, had 8 players. The campaign concluded in epic fashion after 118 sessions back in August of 2020.

I always regarded the initial adventure as a great success, so I've gone back and retooled it, expanded it quite a bit, and created new maps. I'm pretty proud of how it's turned out, so here's a sneak-peek. I'm going to run my Tuesday night Roll20 group through it as a playtest, then I'll make any necessary tweaks and publish it.

*Bergummo is an obscure name I pulled from something. If anyone knows the reference, I'll send you a free pdf of the adventure.