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!