Spes Magna Games

As mentioned last week, Bosukumo’s lair consists of four levels connected via strong teleportational magic. This magic is subtle because it is blended into the very structure of the interconnecting passageways that run between the levels.

Whenever the players’ characters enter a level, roll 4d10 to determine what passages lead away from each of the outer archways. Orient the passages so that they best connect each archway. Roll 1d4 to determine to which level each passage leads. A second 1d4 determines to which outer archway the passage connects.

1 = Entry Level
2 = Eight-Pointed Star Level
3 = Halls and Rooms Level
4 = Water Pit Level

1 = North
2 = East
3 = South
4 = West

Don’t worry about repeats or strange results. For example, it is possible that the northern outer archway leading away from the Water Pit Level leads to the norther outer archway of the Water Pit Level.

Tags: Goblin Spider Lair, maps, Monday Map

Well, it’s been a bit since I’ve posted anything here. So, let’s see if some structure can help. On Mondays, I’ll post a map. On Wednesday, I’ll post about what can be found in the areas mapped. On Friday, I’ll post a monster. That might work.

Today, I present four artisanal dungeon geomorphs. Each geomorph has been loving crafted by hand, drawn first with a freshly sharpened Dixon Ticonderoga soft HB 2 pencil and then carefully inked with both a black TUL Fine Liner and a black Paper Mate Flair M felt tip pen. The final step involved using an eraser to remove stray pencil lines while at the same time avoiding as much as possible smearing the ink. I’ve used this method to produce maps for nigh on four-and-a-half decades. The results speak for themselves.

N.B. One square equals 10 feet.

Tags: Goblin Spider Lair, maps, Monday Map

I took a break from grading book reports and pulled out the Four Evil Brothers’ Fortress map (FEBF), a blank sheet of graph paper, a pencil, a couple of black markers, and an eraser. Some time later, I had remapped FEBF’s northwest quadrant, as you can see below.

I tweaked the layout a bit, most obviously by adding some thickness to the walls. FEBF’s exterior wall is 5 feet thick. Interior walls are usually about half that, although there are few places where the walls are thicker. I also changed the map scale from 10 feet to a square to five feet a square. The quadrant barely fits on the paper, but it fits.

I left off all the doors. The original write-up included brown puddings as wandering monsters, and brown puddings eat wood and leather. Given how long FEBF has been abandoned, it’s reasonable that brown puddings would have devoured most wood and leather in the complex. FEBF was built in a swamp, and I like the idea of swamp monsters more or less having free run of an ancient fortress of evil. It’ll change the ecology of the place a bit, I’m sure.

I also like the idea of a dungeon crawl without doors. Nothing to close or open. Nothing to barricade or listen at. Adventurers with light sources will unintentionally cast illumination into shadowy corners. The thick walls, all made of stone, baffle or block sound. Add details related to years of humidity, darkness, moisture, and rot, and the entire place is likely rank with mold and fungus.

How long before explorers develop respiratory problems?

Tags: dungeon crawls, maps, place of power

Merry Christmas!

The twelve days of Christmas are almost over, which means Santa’s Holiday Bag of PDFs for 5E D&D will be going away soon. If you’ve not gotten your bundle yet, there’s still time. Also, The Lady in the Shoe, a short adventure for 5E D&D, received a four-star rating today. That’s cool. I dig four stars. I’m a bit curious, however, since it’s just a rating, not a review, but still that’s four stars.

In homefront gaming news, our Saturday game, diminished to a mere two players (excluding me as GM) finished our year-long d20 Modern/Call of Cthulhu campaign that featured time travel, mind/body swapping, space stations, the return of the Old Ones, and rocket-building followers of Nyarlathotep working with Nazis in a secret base within an Egyptian pyramid.

Grant and Kelly, the last two active PCs, infiltrated the pyramid. Using a combination of stealth, memory-clouding magic, and disguises, they made their way to the payload module of the rocket. Kelly being a literal rocket scientist modified the rocket’s telemetry so that it would not complete its decades long flight toward the Sun to create the apocalyptic solar event that started the campaign in our somewhat distant future. Grant and Kelly realized they had little chance to sneaking back out of the pyramid without being detected. So, they concealed themselves in the rocket, which blasted off on schedule. Grant and Kelly died by the time the rocket left the Earth’s atmosphere, confident that they had averted the end of the world that they had witnessed from the decks of Space Station Alpha.

Our next Saturday campaign kicks off in a couple of weeks. It looks like we’re turning to Savage Worlds with elements of Broken Earth adapted to what will likely be a sandbox-style campaign. From the Broken Earth Player’s Guide, the main focus will likely be on the equipment and the community building rules. I’ve not read through much of the Broken Earth core rules, so I don’t how much that will come into play, but since I’m not GMing, I guess I don’t need to worry about that too much.

I’ve not abandoned the Cliff of Crypts. I’ve completed maps for each level of the crypts, including ghoul tunnels leading to caves. I’ll likely use the maps for a new adventure, but at the moment I’m up in the air about the adventure’s system. Not sure where I’m going to land, but possibly my feet will alight upon For Gold & Glory.

Nota Bene: The links in the previous three paragraphs are affiliate links. If you clink and buy, I get a few pennies.

Tags: game play, maps, place of power

Merry Christmas!

Last post, I mentioned the eerie Cliff of Crypts and the Ossuary Coven, three undead hags who possess terrible magic power and know the secrets of crafting magic weapons from bone and sinew. It sounds like a good idea, so I whipped out some graph paper, pencils, and Paper Mate pens. Here’s the initial results:

As you can see, there are four levels within the cliff. Each level is the final unresting place of important members of the upper five social classes of the people who built the crypts. The most important social class occupies the uppermost level, and each subsequent lower level represents a lower social class. The priest and warrior levels are connected by means of a ladder, which represents that these two classes shared leadership and that mobility between the two classes was possible.

The lower three levels represent the traders, scribes, and merchants. The traders were distinct from the merchant class by virtue of the former voyaging to other lands in order to bring in wealth. Merchants did not travel. They represented mercantile interests by running shops, warehouses, et cetera. The scribes worked with all of the other classes to ensure accurate records of treaties, laws, accounts, and so on were maintained.

When the crypts were built, the valley had not yet been flooded. Some time ago, torrential rains created enormous mudslides that deforested sections of the valley’s highlands. The resulting logjam blocked the normal course of the valley’s river, creating a lake and flooding the merchant level of the crypts. During the rainy season, water levels in the lake rise sufficiently to flood the scribes’ level as well.

As you can see, I’ve penciled the priests’ level. I leaning toward adding ghoul tunnels in the space around the level. These tunnels could provide other connections to the lower levels as well as natural caves. After all, what’s a crypt complex without claustrophobic ghoul tunnels?

Tags: maps, place of power