Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: The Caverns of Despair

Continuing my reviews of the submissions for the second-annual Adventure Site Contest.

The Caverns of Despair

Author: Kurt
System: AD&D (Oriental Adventures)
Party Size: 6+
Level Range: 4–7

Deep in the swamps, a deadly evil festers within the ancient caves of Feng Hua - a small army of chaotic bandits, led by a gargantuan man, wielder of a legendary black longsword with a fist-sized nacre embedded within its hilt. The sleepy frontier town of Pai Lo, perched on the edge of civilization, lies a mere ten miles from these accursed caves. For months, it has suffered under relentless raids, as have its neighbouring hamlets to the east and west. Crops are burned, livestock slaughtered, and children taken in the dead of night. The town's leaders, weary and desperate, have turned to the only solution left: hiring mercenaries and adventurers to cleanse the caves of the evil that has taken root within.

Awesome...an Oriental Adventure! Or is it?

The intro is all a pretty standard D&D setup. The villagers pay the PCs 12,000 GP in loot plus the hands of the village shaman’s three daughters to take care of the bandits. A list of six rumors is offered, two of which are false. I don't care much for false rumors unless the DM provides the fake info to the players via a source that the players would have reason to doubt. Actually-false rumors tend to produce pointless, session-wasting efforts and create confusion among the players who believe the DM is giving them legit game information. Worse still, one of the "false" rumors in this case is that the bandit chieftain (an ogre mage) is "skilled in the art of shapechanging." One of the ogre mage's chief abilities is polymorphing, so what is false about that rumor? Granted, this discrepancy will be invisible to players, but it's a discrepancy nonetheless.

Despite this, the rumors establish some important adventure points: The bandits are led by a shapeshifter; they are allied with demons; they worship the "god-killer" Ma Yuan (nice inclusion from the Deities & Demigods book); and they have monstrous pets, though the "wolf-monkey" description is likely to draw blank stares from the players. So far, we have many of the elements of a classic (if generic) oriental adventure.

Adventure Site Contest 2 REVIEW: Sausages of the Devil Swine

I was invited to help review and judge the submissions to Coldlight Press's second-annual Adventure Site Contest. Last year's competition resulted in the Adventure Sites I compilation of the top-rated submissions, which included my own adventure. There were 30 (!) submissions to this year's contest, so here is my review of the first adventure on my list (and my first review of someone else's work).

Sausages of the Devil Swine

Author: John Nash
System: BX
Party Size: 4
Level Range: 5

A curse afflicts the good people of Piggton. Insatiable hunger drives them to eat until they are sick and no one knows where the compulsion comes from, nor why some are affected and others not. At night, snuffling and grunting is heard outside. Those who go out to investigate vanish. 

The setup for this adventure site involves a town built on the ruins of an ancient settlement. Lately, many townsfolk have fallen ill with a strange malady that causes them to eat so much that they get sick, but no one knows why. The priests in the temple are completely overwhelmed with the victims. In "unrelated news," the rivalry between the town's two butchers has driven one of them to extremes: He sells sausages at such a low cost that his competition is in danger of going out of business. Worst of all, monsters from the nearby ruins have begun ravaging the town at night. Their depredations are causing the townsfolk and local merchants much angst. Won't someone do something?

The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower – Part 3: The Sea Caves

In Part 1, I reconfigured the Manor House from U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. In Part 2, I adapted the Sample Dungeon from Holmes Basic. Next, I took the excised map sections from both and created a Sea Caves level. Part of this level (the explored part) serves as the pirate base. Another dungeon level—derived from Zach Howard's excellent Forgotten Smugglers' Caves—exists between the Dungeon level and the Sea Caves, and I incorporated several areas from that into the Sea Caves level as well. I'll cover the full FSC level in an upcoming post.

By this point in the campaign, I had a pretty solid sketch map of the bluff's macro-area, showing the exterior orientations/positions of the house, the tower, the gardens and estate wall, and the not-so-obvious areas such as the sea cave entrances and a "muddy mound" in the salt swamp below the bluff. 

More importantly, by the time I got to mapping out the Sea Caves level, I had already shared the sketch map with the players, who did a really good job scouting out the whole area before delving too deep. This locked in the positions of certain sea cave entrances that had to connect with the finished Dungeon level map.

To start with, I took the bluff coastline from my sketch map and aligned it to the 4:1" grid on a blank Photoshop canvas (24" x 24", 7200 x 7200px). Then I took the sea cave segments I carved out of U1, the Sample Dungeon, and FSC, and aligned their grids to my map grid. I then reoriented and repositioned the segments to fit the bluff layout. 

I wanted the U1 sea caves to point west, to match the repositioned west wing of the manor from which the pirates signal their ship and guide the longboats into shore. I also increased the map scale for the U1 piece from the original 5' per square to 10', same as with the manor maps, to open the spaces up a bit. Green arrows indicate where the original sea caves will connect with the sea.

Adventure Site Contest II – Deadline for Submissions is One Month Away

With a month left to go, I turned in my submission for Coldlight Press' second annual Adventure Site Contest. I've titled it Owlbear Hill and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, thematically.

I've estimated it as appropriate for a party of 4–7 characters from 5th to 7th level. I was hoping to get it playtested before turning it in, but corralling a group of family men in their 40s to 60s is challenging in the best of times, much less over the winter holidays. I ran some solo fights using pre-gens and they were sufficiently tough without being easy TPKs. Much will depend on the characters' levels and capabilities (though that is always the case). 

If I've designed it accurately, a party of all 5th level PCs is going to have a hard time, while a party of all 7th levels is likely to come out on top without serious risk unless someone screws up. There's almost 95,000 xp in monsters and treasure (and much more if the players sell the magic items). For a party of five adventurers, that's about 19,000 xp each—enough to take a 5th level fighter to 6th, or a little more than halfway from 6th to 7th. Getting all of it is another story, but even if they only collect one-third, it's still 6-7k; not a bad haul.

Like Etta Capp's Cottage—my submission for last year's contest—this one started out as a simple adaptation of a previously-created monster lair. I have a folder filled with dozens of these things I've written over the years. In this case, it was an owlbear lair I first built for my Cold March campaign (my campaign world's "Viking region"). The original was designed between game sessions as an adventure site for 5e, after the party encountered some owlbears during one of their overland journeys and decided to track them back to their den. I later repurposed the site as a "lurid lair" in my 5e Gloomy Forest campaign (from which Etta Capp's Cottage also emerged).

The lair was a bit rough around the edges because I only had a short time to put it together, but I liked some of what I came up with, particularly the idea of using owlbear feathers as "treasure" and the hidden tomb with a doomed party of adventurers who died while trying to plunder it. As I began to convert it to AD&D, however, it seemed too "basic" for a contest in which some really talented designers are participating. It lacked punch and wow... fine for a quick session with my regular players, but unsatisfying for a global audience of discerning DMs.

I'd already decided to expand on the lair, but tacking on a whole tomb seemed the obvious and boring route. I wanted something different. While reading the owlbear's description in the Monster Manual, I took note of the opening sentence: "The horrible owlbear is probably the result of genetic experimentation by some insane wizard."

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this idea, but suddenly I had my adventure site's elevator-pitch: This will be the lair/laboratory of a crazed magic-user who is producing an army of owlbears to unleash on the nearby town. As I continued flipping through the MM, however, I noticed how many other creatures are either known or said to have been created by some variation of "insane wizard's experimentation." This continued into the Fiend Folio, with lots of other ideas from the Monster Manual 2 as well. The adventure site spun out from there.

One of the fun things about contests like this are the submission guidelines establishing a hard page count and reader usability standards. They force you to boil everything down to its essence, trim off the fat, and parse your copy down to fit as much evocative content as possible within the limited space and layout restrictions. Some people keep it light and simple, with plenty of white space in the manuscript...all perfectly fine and admirable. I'm kind of the opposite...I try to include as much copy as I possibly can, clawing for every scrap of page space within the limits.

And though I'm obsessive about my own map-making, there is no creative pressure to create a work of art. The charm of a hand-drawn map takes me back to the early 80s when buying a pad of blank graph paper released a flood of imagination and adventure. Making maps was what really hooked me on D&D, and I figure out so much about the dungeon and what's going on within it by simply sketching, drawing, then fine-tuning the map. For me, it's as much a part of the content creation process as the writing of it.

On the flip side of the creation process, it can be frustrating to have to slice off chunks you really like due to the space constraints. In the original version of Etta Capp's Cottage, for example, there's an underlying story concerning her origin, the identities of the bodies in her lair, and the existence of a mysterious suitor who sends her gifts. Losing all of that was tough, but the condensed version still keeps much of the mystery while being vague enough (by necessity) that any DM can now put their own stamp on it.

With Owlbear Hill, I had a whole "slime lab" section in which the insane magic-user was crossbreeding various oozes and jellies with a gelatinous cube "starter," pumping out miniature transparent cubes with different slime effects, but I had to lose it. A couple pieces of the slime lab remain in the final version, and I'll repurpose the rest for something else. (Maybe do a sequel for ASC III??)

Once the reviews and voting are done (probably sometime in February/March), I'll publish the full details of the adventure site in a future post, whether it gets chosen for the final publication or not. As a preview, here's the introduction and site map.

"There’s a spot back in the woods they call Ol’ Bare Hill. Used to be a Chaos temple on top way back when, but then the Law came and knocked it down. We don’t go there…ever. These troubles that are going on…it’s that hill, I’m telling you."

I'm also a judge in this year's contest, though I'm a little nervous about my review/critique skills. Still, I've read, written, and run hundreds of adventures over the years, so I have some experience to bring to the table. Looking forward to the challenge.

EDIT: I participated in an episode about the contest over on the Classic Adventure Gaming podcast.

The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower – Part 2: The Dungeon Level

In Part 1, I rearranged the old manor house from U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh to serve as the anchor point for the rest of the other adventure maps. Next, I took the original map from the Sample Dungeon in Holmes basic and sized it to the same 4:1" grid I used for the manor map. The grid in the Sample Dungeon map is hand-drawn and inaccurate, so I aligned the central vault (area A) to the accurate grid and adjusted all the passages and rooms that branch out from it. Then I placed an overlay of the manor outline over area A.

Original Sample Dungeon Map with Manor Overlay (scale = 10')

To fit the geographic location in my campaign world chosen for this site, the Sea Caves need to face south instead of west. To make that change and keep the basic flow of the dungeon, I also need to reposition rooms H, I, K, L, and M, as well as the connection from room J. 

The Sinister Secret of Zenopus' Tower – Part 1: The Manor House

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.

Hurricane Dungeons

Helene hit my neck of the woods pretty hard. I was without power for 9 days and just got internet back a few hours ago. My yard is a disaster, but I feel fortunate that there was no major property damage or injury to my family and friends. It was much worse to the north of us...cataclysmic even. Living a week without lights and technology was a major inconvenience, but nothing compared to what others are suffering from the storm.

I'm a night-owl by nature and can't really get to sleep before midnight/1 AM, so I spent a lot of that time reading by candlelight, mainly the AD&D DMG—a copy of which I just recently reacquired after selling my D&D collection back in the 90s. It's a sometimes-difficult read, but something in Gary's language is magical and really inspires me.

I typically hand-draw a sketch of any adventure I'm working on, but then create the finished maps in Photoshop. Map-making (and world-building by extension) was the juice that got me into D&D in the first place. I pored over maps in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Belgeriad, and many of my other favorite fantasy novels. I even decided to become an architect! (I didn't.)

Rather than pay attention in class, I drew elaborate interiors of complexes and spaceships, like this...

So, D&D was a natural lure, and I have tons of hand-drawn maps from my youth. I still love to create maps, and since I was just sitting in the dark, I thought I would try drawing a finished map by hand on actual graph paper. I was happy with the results—nothing elaborate; just a bog-standard labyrinth with little forethought to design. I just let the pencil flow.

Pleased with the results, I did another one the following night, and then ended up doing one each night of the power outage. I tried keying the first map with the random tables in the DMG, but the results there were pretty empty and boring. I might try to key these someday for fun, or use them for a rando dungeon level here or there. In any case, these maps are a memento of the storm.