Two of my dungeons in action

It always makes me happy when other people play the dungeons I share here. I want to highlight the play-reports and versions made by A Level 3 Dork. They repurposed two of my dungeons for their OD&D campaign. My Maze of Amazement & Death became their Lair of the Serpent Men. And my Temple of the Berserkers was transformed into, well, another Temple of the Berserkers, only these Berserkers are UNDEAD, HELL YEAH

They are good examples of how far simple reskinning can go. Reskinning is an easy and fun way of integrating a dungeon into your campaign's setting. For example, my Temple of the Berserkers has remnants of modern technology - a CCTV security camera and a television screen. In A Level 3 Dork's version, the television screen became a scrying pool. My "14 Spiders" are transformed into "14 Child-Faced Spiders", yikes! In my version, I already had "Pale Children (as Goblins)" to make low level monsters more interesting, so such palette-swapping is part of the DNA of the adventures. 

A Level 3 Dork also writes that 

"Its really quite funny how two simple dungeons have led to nearly 10 sessions worth of play so far. Our next session will see an Undead Army of Berserkers (controlled by the PC’s, or so they think) going toe-to-toe with a small army of Gnolls."

So, let us all wish luck to the party on their path to becoming the baddies as leaders of an undead army!

"Comus" by Arthur Rackham

[Actual Play] The World of Tomorrow, Session 12: I’m going deeper underground / there’s too much panic in this town

Back to dungeoneering!

 

• Psamtek, the psionic Grey pilot (Halfling 4)
• Keteus, the dark prophet or something (Magic-User 4 with Space Age Sorcery spells)
• Ugazum, the gladiator (Fighter 3)
• Phireus, priest of the Mountain Mother (Cleric 4)
• + Rex, riverboat captain (Fighter 3, NPC follower)

 

The party waited for the next anti-light phase, then moved out. Rex led them up the south ziggurat. They just barely avoided a Black Sun paladin patrol and reached the top platform. Here, nestled between a bricolage of latter-era habitats, they found a large round concrete platform and a small concrete building (which looked like the creepy abandoned building where Demi Moore picks up her doses in The Substance). They forced the door, cleaned out some rubble, then forced another door (its code lock without power) and found an elevator. This too was without power, so they opened a hatch in its floor, climbed down and managed to reach the ladder in the side of the shaft.

The descent was LONG, at least 500’. At one point, they disturbed a flock of small flying creatures, and Ugazum fell off the ladder. Keteus saved him with a Wand of Flying (they had picked this up back in the Spire of Iron & Crystal, an ivory wind with wings carved into it, they thought it might be for flight, but weren’t sure…).

At the bottom of the shaft, they dropped into a concrete-walled complex. In the first room, they flipped a switch and restored auxiliary power (small red lights along the corridors and door keypads online), but decided not to bring on full power just yet.

They explored the west-bound corridor and ran into a closed door marked “Workshop”. They tried 1312 (ACAB!) at the keypad to no effect.

They turned around and took the stairs at the intersection. At the upper level, the north-bound corridor was closed off with yellow-black “Danger!” tape, so they went east to another door.

They examined the keypad to see if any of the buttons were particularly worn: yes, 1, 2 and 4.

[For the keypads, I generated the codes by rolling 4d10, one for each digit. For this door, I rolled 1412 :D So I handwaved it that if they put in 1312 again, it would be close enough]

They entered the room, a storage area for tools, equipment, spare parts, etc. The north wall of the place had caved in, opening into a moldy underground tunnel.

Psamtek picked up some weird psychic vibrations from one of the crates. He managed to commune with a hive-mind. They opened the crate and found a formicarium with psionic ants! They decided to leave them be for now and marched into the moldy tunnel.

Appendix N for The World of Tomorrow

The World of Tomorrow, our science fantasy campaign, is pretty much built with a kitchen-sink approach. The initial pitch can basically double as the Appendix N: “moebius jodorowsky tangerine nightmare oranssi mutant pazuzu heavy metal barsoom carcosa acid police surf”

The main rules are: If it could be published as a DAW book or an ACE Double… if you can imagine it on a sick space/psych/prog rock album cover… if there is a conspiracy theory about it… then it fits.

Due to its eclectic and expansive nature, I could probably list off every piece 1960s-1970s sci-fi and dystopian fiction and every krautrock album ever. But that would defeat the purpose. So I will try to limit myself to a couple of key entries for each category.

Books: the biggest influence is Fred Saberhagen’s “Empire of the East” series. It’s chock-full of COOL SHIT that you can steal for your post-apoc sci-fant games. “The Elephant”? A must. Radar stations as scrying magic. Nuclear demon lords and their satraps. Good stuff. Read them if you can. The main protagonist is kinda bland… But the world is great. Add Lin Carter, Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson's early stuff...

Movies: oh boy… Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes + Beneath the Planet of the Apes, 2001: Space Odyssey… Hard to narrow this down. Phase IV too, for sure.

Comics/art: yeah, Moebius is the big one here. No explanation necessary. Mike Grell's Warlord, another great hollow earth weird fiction title. A lesser known entry would be the stuff from Planet Comics, in particular "The Lost World" which ran in #21-69 (1942-1952).

Other RPG stuff: McKinney’s Carcosa (I use a bunch of tables for robots, weapons…), Gamma World, Mutant Crawl Classics – actually, from these last two, I borrow very little specifics, but definitely lean into the same atmosphere.

Computer games: Fallout 1 & 2, for sure. The most powerful motif for me is the Vault suit, which always marks the wearer as either/or a weirdo, a demigod, a target.

Last, but not least: history/non-fiction… I use my science-fantasy Frankentable extensively, so many characters have names from ancient cultures (Egyptian, Akkadian, Greek…). There are lot of ziggurats, statues, artifacts, stuff that comes from my academic interests. And my non-academic interests in weird shit, conspiracies, cults.

In collage form.

[Actual Play] The World of Tomorrow, Session 11: Seriously, who needs a SIXTH ziggurat?

We’re back in the World of Tomorrow, baby! Can’t stop the science fantasying. 

• Psamtek, the psionic Grey pilot (Halfling 4)
• Keteus, the dark prophet or something (Magic-User 4 with Space Age Sorcery spells)
• Ugazum, the gladiator (Fighter 3)
• Phireus, priest of the Mountain Mother (Cleric 4)

Soundtrack: The Hologram People

So, back in Cryopolis (proud city of the five ziggurats, sixth under construction), the party found a lot had changed in their absence.

Investigating their storage container, they found that it was entered through a ventilation shaft, by a clawed creature.

They found a place to stable the Stegosaurus for a month.

They spent some downtime identifying magic items: Ugazum’s ring-mail shirt (with electric circuits) has actually bonded to his body, but at least it provides ample protection and DOUBLE healing rate. The crystal tablets found in the dragon cave have genetic sequences encoded on them, which can be fed into a machine to cause targeted beneficial mutations.

More Moebius! Because OF COURSE.

Next, they went to the market to find replacement armor for Psamtek (we blamed the loss of the previous armor on the draconic acid breath, but, turns out, it was lost in a battle with skeletons – stop blaming the dragons for everything!!). Luckily, the market had a shop with kids’ size flak jackets (which says a lot about the state of this world). While getting Psamtek’s measurements, the armorer was ready to engage in some light banter: rumor has it that Zalter made a pact with the Black Sun Cult, and convinced the cultists to get rid of his rival, Ayesha.

Ugazum was still in debt to Zalter, the zombiemancer crime-lord, so the party went over to Zalter’s HQ at the north ziggurat. Only Ugazum and Psamtek were let in (and only because Ugazum said Psamtek is his servant/weapon-bearer). They were led to Zalter’s office to meet the big man himself. And he is big indeed, and not just a man, but also a giant toad thing. Ugazum paid up the 100 sp. Zalter proved to be quite well-informed, and kept asking weirdly pointed questions about Ugazum’s recent exploits, where he is staying in town, and especially whether he works for anybody in particular.

At Zalter’s place, they saw one of Ayesha’s men – turned into a mindless zombie drone…

After leaving, the party suspected that Zalter will surely have them followed.

So, instead of going back to their storage/home, they went to a fancy hotel and got themselves two rooms. On the rooftop terrace, they chatted with incense-trader Ipy of the Purple Sea, who shared some tasty “Turkish delights” and more rumors. He also shared info on the two main caravan routes (the North and the West). When asked about any places with constant thick fog covering a caldera (this had been shown to them in a vision, as the hiding place of the arch-enemy of the god-computer ETERNAL 6000). Ipy ventured that this might be in the dangerous volcanic mountains to the north-west.

Later, to shake off any potential tails, the party used ropes to climb off this rooftop, instead of exiting through the main door.

And they went back to their storage container.

Here, a mysterious figure was waiting for them: Rex, river barge captain, one of Ayesha’s trusted men (see Session 3). Rex told them that most of the gang was captured and imprisoned – they are likely to be sacrificed to the Black Sun during the next great constellation. Ayesha evaded capture and is on the run. Earlier, she had told Rex about an underground tunnel system under the city, and that in case of shit going down, that would be the place for the gang to reconvene.

The party agreed to go and explore these tunnels.

To be continued!

Monster generator spark cards

I made a small 12-card deck monster generator today. Draw two and combine!

The contents as a d12 table:

1.     Ooze	acid, rust, pseudopod, subdividing, natural, lab-grown, medicinal, (a)morphing, mutating
2.     Skeleton	mausoleum, holding shit, bone weapons, femur, teeth, display, pirate, giant, monster, necromancy, skeleton key, grave robbing, tomb
3.     Fungus/Plant	flowers, seeds, pods, tendrils, roots, crawling, stationary, fluorescent, growth, poison, psychoactive
4.     Robot	laser, prosthetic, tracks, lights, hologram, armor, clockwork, steam, replicant, android, mecha, production
5.     Lizard	scales, amphibious, rainbow, reptiloid, swamp gas, thunder, toad, prehistoric, conspiracy, rending claws, running
6.     Ghost	immaterial, haunting, fear, hunger, bound, eerie, screams, want, swamp, chains, murder, fog, treasure
7.     Parasyte	symbiotic, infectious, mind control, autonomous, slow transformation
8.     Octopus	tentacles, floating, sepia, ink cloud, grabbing, reef, alien, weird, unsettling, slimy, suckered, jelly, genius, mastermind
9.     Elemental	air, fire, earth, water, outer planes, transformation, void, harmony, balance, alchemy, philosophy
10. Avian	wing, shriek, egg, flock, claw, migration, dive, beak, nest, sky, plumage, navigation
11. Beast	tail, sentient, cub, mythical, bipedal, fangs, armored, quadraped, uplifted, horns, tribal, magical, camouflage, mutated, hoofs, armed, nocturnal, centaur, cryptid
12. Psychic	mind blast, oracle, clairvoyance, hypnosis, telekinesis, voice, illusion, pyrokinesis, vision

 

Quick examples:

BEAST + ELEMENTAL = a tribe of fire-worshipping pigmen

PSYCHIC + AVIAN = giant bats that navigate using telepathy

OOZE + PARASYTE = jelly that replaces a humanoid’s brain and spinal fluid

FUNGUS/PLANT + OCTOPUS = a tree with lots of grabby roots

GHOST + ROBOT = a malevolent gremlin that possesses machinery

SKELETON + LIZARD = dinosaur on display in museum reanimated

And a drawing by my wife, a PLANT + SKELETON combo which she interpreted as a dried husk of a plant with teeth:

[Actual Play] The World of Tomorrow, Sessions 4 – uh, like, 10?

I’m hopelessly behind on session reports for our science fantasy campaign, The World of Tomorrow! The thing is, we played two more online sessions, then we met up, holed up in our summer house for four days, and PLAYED A LOT OF D&D. A LOT. “Sessions” flowed into each other. So here’s a non-comprehensive re-cap of where the campaign’s at right now.

Session 4 was still online.

The party delved into the Salt-Encrusted Shrine of the Immortal Wave Cult (AKA Dank Cave of the Immoral Weed Gang), a cool little dungeon I wrote. They explored the main hall, caught a glimpse of a red glowing idol, encountered a giant crab, then met with the local cultists, decided NOT to join the cult just yet. They explored the complex, deciphered some reliefs, found the magical Seaweed Orb, then a secret door too, which gave them access to a hidden room. In this chamber, they found the high priest of the cult, dormant in a stasis pod. With a countdown timer set to about 60 years or so. They also gained access to the main temple. And they found a way to lower themselves into the idol chamber: gathered most of the loose treasure, but shied away from grabbing the large crystal from inside the idol. They fled the complex and went back to the city of Cryopolis.

Session 5 was for downtime and city crawling. They managed to hide some of the loot from their boss and divvied up the rest. Then they gathered some rumors. And rented a storage container for their stuff. They went to the Fighting Pits and gambled, winning some money on the gladiator fights. But their main reason to go there was to hire one of the gladiators. So that they have more muscle. They hired Ugazum the Fighter. Then, back at the Atomic Kitten, they got a new quest from their crime boss Ayesha. To go and find a weird dungeon complex in the Thunder Mountains. She assigned a guide and a porter with a pack Stegosaurus to them.

Ultimately, we ended up generating two more player characters: the gladiator and the guide.

So now the party consists of

• Psamtek, the psionic Grey pilot (Halfling 3)
• Keteus, the dark prophet or something (Magic-User 3 with Space Age Sorcery spells)
• Ugazum, the gladiator (Fighter 2)
• Phireus, priest of the Mountain Mother (Cleric 2)

 

Then we had all those long sessions of live play. IT IS SO GOOD TO PLAY D&D FACE-TO-FACE WITH YOUR FRIENDS. Ugh!

 

So, the party of four plus the Stego and the porter went on a big wilderness track through the labyrinthine canyons of Thunder Mountain. There were dangerous pits, undead dragonflies, etc. Then they reached a valley with tour giant crystal eggs.

Cue THE SPIRE OF IRON AND CRYSTAL by Matt Finch.

[Actual Play] The World of Tomorrow, Session 3: Exploring Cryopolis

We continued our science fantasy game. Session 1 was a dungeon crawl, session 2 was a trek through the wilderness, so it is only fair for session 3 to concentrate upon hanging out in the big city!

The characters are:

Psamtek, the psionic Grey pilot (Halfling 3)

Keteus, the dark prophet or something (Magic-User 3 with Space Age Sorcery spells)

Soundtrack: "Nuits de Printemps Avec Abdou El Omari" by Abdou El Omari

At the end of the last session, they reached, via ferry, Cryopolis, the city of the five black ziggurats. Their entry point was at the docks near the southern ziggurat. So instantly they were plunged into the bustling cosmopolitan atmosphere of the harbor quarter. As this was just the beginning of the light phase, there were a lot of dock workers carrying stuff, loading barges, merchants disembarking, etc.

The other passengers of the ferry (the zombies and the school field trip) all headed north towards the center of the city.

Keteus and Psamtek decided to hang out here a bit, find a place to stay, pick up some rumors, maybe find a job to earn money.

The architecture of the area proved to be quite eclectic. The main feature, the black three-tiered ziggurat, had clearly been built during an earlier period and was now covered with newer buildings: shacks, towers… So the levels of the ziggurat became like city streets. The river partially flows under the ziggurat.

Moebius... Why, what did you expect?

They headed towards the local watering hole, the Atomic Kitten tavern. Which is a two-storey metal building: Psamtek identified it as the repurposed habitation module of an ancient generation ship.

The Atomic Kitten at this time was rather underpopulated, as most of its patrons were busy at the docks. So Keteus and Psamtek ordered some drinks (Keteus can drink through his mouth, Psamtek has suckers on their fingers to suck up liquids from a sponge).

They chatted with the bartender and expressed a wish to get some sort of a job. The bartender took them up to the second floor to introduce them to his boss. He knocked at an inconspicuous door.

Psamtek managed to overhear a door opening and closing in that room. However, once in the room, they couldn’t see any other exit, so they surmised that there must be a secret passage here somewhere.

They met AYISHA, an older lady with rust-red hair and creepy fangs. Turns out, she is the boss of the whole harbor area.

[Actual Play] The World of Tomorrow, Session 2

The science fantasy campaign continues! (see the session 1 write-up here)

 

The characters are:

Psamtek, the psionic Grey pilot (Halfling 3)

Keteus, the dark prophet or something (Magic-User 3 with Space Age Sorcery spells)

 

After exiting the sanctuary of ETERNAL-6000, the duo took some time to examine the World around them, using the binoculars pilfered from the stocks of the sanctuary.

Off in the far-far distance, they noted a floating isle, a large chunk of earth with mountains and perhaps ruins on top of it. It seemed to move on its own volition.

They tried to scout out the way down to the city, but that was not easy. They did get a better understanding of the valley below, though: a river flows through it from east to west, empties into the sea. The city stands on the river and is made up of five large ziggurats/step pyramids: one in the middle, four on each corner.

After this reconnaissance, the party started their descent. Pretty soon they got lost between the rocks and in the narrow canyons.

After some time, they reached a larger flat area with an interesting feature: a GIANT SKULL embedded in the cliff-face! Small offerings (flowers, cups, simple pieces of jewelry) had been lain out before the skull on a stone platform.

Psamtek threw up a grappling hook and climbed up to the left eye socket. Beyond, they saw a small grotto with a pool of water inside. They climbed in and noticed many inscriptions carved into the inside of the skull. Keteus joined them and read the inscriptions: most of them were vows and prayers to the MOUNTAIN MOTHER. They didn’t touch any of the offerings and continued the way down the mountain.

They were still quite lost, and couldn’t find a way directly down towards the city. However, this off-the-beaten-path journey led them to another interesting discovery.

They noticed the sounds of metal against rock and soon reached an open-air quarry. The workforce was about 30 people, who chipped away tirelessly at the black basalt. The chunks of stone were then collected by a giant robotic walker and loaded onto a double-tracked vehicle… PULLED BY GIANT QUADREPEDAL LIZARDS! These brontosauri had some sort of mechanisms attached to their heads, probably for control.

Dinotopia!

Psamtek and Keteus descended into the quarry.

The workers didn’t seem to notice them. The robotic vehicle, however, turned towards them, opened its back hatch. A large, tattooed, four-armed person got out from inside.

[Actual Play] The World of Tomorrow, Session 1

I ran a game yesterday for my best friends. Hopefully the start of a casual campaign?

The pitch was dead simple:

“moebius jodorowsky tangerine nightmare oranssi mutant pazuzu heavy metal barsoom carcosa acid police surf”

Moebius, duhh

I asked them in advance to create a 3^rd level LotFP character each: just the stats, class, skills and hp. No name or concept. They rolled up a Magic-User and a Halfling.

At the start of the session, the characters were woken up from a long formless darkness by a distant, glitchy voice. The voice told them that “there has been an accident… but your personality, memories and body will soon be re-integrated… please watch these short promotional videos and signal if you see anything you recognize as your own memory…”

In the memory fragments, the Magic-User saw themselves:

1. Hurriedly grabbing everything from a library with crystal books, storing all the treasure in a vault (and remembering how to open it again!); then emerging to the surface only to see the ideal city swallowed by the ocean
2. Putting on a mask and conducting human sacrifice on top of a black pyramid; only for the gift of the dark gods to be stolen by an interloper
3. Performing elaborate magic tricks on a stage in a 1920s theater, feeding off of the adoration of the audience; getting sawn into two halves, but emerging again from behind the curtains, while the mutilated body was carted off-stage.

The Halfling saw themselves:

1. Riding through an ice age wasteland atop a woolly mammoth, controlling the beast with their mind; then a small flying lizard landed (hunting hawk style) on their outstretched left hand
2. Piloting a spaceship, exiting hyperspace, crashlanding on a blue planet (remembering the place of the crash!); only to be taken captive, probed, interrogated by men in white coats; then blowing up their brains with psionic powers
3. Crawling through underground tunnels, in total darkness, but seeing everything perfectly, breaking through to a large hall of the sewers, and knowing that the dwellers of the depth will rise again and they are to be their leader.

The Magic-User picked the sacrificial priest option and became KETEUS, a mummified sorcerer. With spells from Space Age Sorcery. The Halfling picked the Roswell option and became PSAMTEK, the psionic pilot. With psi powers cobbled together from various sources (Carcosa, LotFP, Realms of Crawling Chaos).

Thus Keteus and Psamtek emerged from their cryo-pods and found themselves in a depressing concrete room. There were old decorations hanging from the ceilings and walls, little festive flags, and a sign that read “WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!!”, with a couple of letters already faded.

One other cyro-pod contained a dead body… And a fourth cryo-pod’s glass top was broken, with clawmarks on the inside of the pod.

Piles of Downloaded Files... #3: more treasures from the Unsorted folder

I’m reviving my old series, Piles of Downloaded Files, in which I delve into the bottomless Unsorted folder of RPG-related PDFs. See the previous installments under this tag. 

 

Micromaiden Spirit Grid by Evlyn Moreau

It is a two-sided pamphlet dungeon, with Evlyn’s trademark art. One side has the map of the dungeon, which is a complex semi-anthropomorphic computer circuit. Each node gets a title and one or two keywords (for function/condition), e.g. Cyber Maintenance Unit [In Use] [Possessed] or Sensation Module [Patched] [Cyber Fauna].

It is evocative, but definitely a toolbox. I feel you need to get into a specific mindset to be able to fit all this together – but then it can provide a super interesting game world. I’d love it if someone made a computer game with the art from this pamphlet. A top-down dungeon crawler of some sorts.

Link: https://evlyn.itch.io/micromaiden-spirit-grid

 

Salo’s Glory by Glynn Owen Barrass

I used to subscribe to the Stygian Fox Patreon. This was one of their monthly adventures, back in 2020. It’s a Call of Cthulhu 7e scenario… IN SPACE! A megacorp sends an exploratory vessel outside the Solar System. The scenario goes for that sci-fi horror vibe that you get in the Alien franchise, like in the comics. Hell, it has stats for power loader exoskeletons! It also comes with quite good floorplans for the space ships and shuttles – definitely a reusable resource for any sci-fi game.

The adventure is written in the usual CoC style: lots of text, not skimming-friendly. But overall, it feels like a solid offering for CoC/Mothership/Alien RPGs.

Link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/309908/salo-s-glory-a-sci-fi-call-of-cthulhu-scenario-set-in-interstellar-space

 

Bonus mystery entry!

“original-colony.pdf” is a single-page file. It’s labeled “Original Drawing of the Ant Colony”. And it has a side-view section map of an ant colony. Pretty good map, I gotta say!

Reverse image search leads to a Something Awful topic I cannot access.

However, next to this file in my folder, I have:

Percent in Lair: Ant, giant by Justine Rogers / Angrymog Games

Turns out, the colony map was made for this project. This is a 10-page-long brainstorm on Giant ant colonies in fantasy adventure games. It contains the aforementioned map. Adventure hooks – why are we delving into an ant colony? And all kinds of Giant ant variants. Weird ecosystems, fungi, psychic ants, gem-encrusted ants… This is actually not bad!

Link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/150281/percent-in-lair-ant-giant