Fifty more 21-word dungeon rooms!

I wrote fifty more short dungeon room descriptions (see the original ten here)!

All 60 rooms in a single PDF!

11. Mush-Room

Cavemen lurk behind row of giant mushrooms that split the room in two areas. Enemies shake fungi to release hallucinogenic spores.

12. Arena of the Phoenix-Spider

Great oval hall, knee-deep layer of ashes. Gold banners from 100’ tall ceiling. Arachnid monstrosity rises to challenge all two-eyed creatures.

13. Oozey Oozeborne’s Bedroom

Small and cluttered, rare alchemic manuals and implements everywhere. Domesticated ooze lives under bed, obeys simple verbal orders (“fetch!”, “engulf!”, “sit!”…).

14. Tidal Chamber

Long, narrow room, floods/empties every 6 hours. Blueprints of experimental submersible vessel engraved into granite walls. Sluice leads to underground sea.

15. Spider Theatre

Contrast between total darkness all around and cone of light projected at smiling mask on pedestal. Giant spiders drop from ceiling.

Ten dungeon rooms, 21 words each

There's a contest in an AD&D group on Facebook, everybody is to write a 21-word description of a dungeon room. It's a pretty fun challenge, so I entered two into the contest (#1-2) and wrote eight more. Could make good minor "Specials" for random dungeon stocking on the fly as well, I guess?

1. Library of Dark Wisdom

Gloomy hall, ceiling 40', labyrinth of 30' tall shelves, extra exits on top. Loud sounds trigger Silence spell. Undead librarians wander.

2. Shrine of the False Serpent God

Columns carved with intertwined snakes. Gigantic statue of god, hollow on the inside (priests fake miracles). Sacrificial dagger on blood-caked altar.

3. Trick Crypt

Eight stone sarcophagi (filled with harmless black sludge), arranged in star-shape. North-east one has false bottom, leads to secret underground passage.

4. Machine Room Orphan

Narrow space, cogs & gears, bursts of hissing steam. Lost child cowers in corner, amulet of the Witch King around neck.

5. Underground Cathedral of the Monster Hunter

Backlit stained-glass windows in alcoves depict famed monsters; if broken, glass shards animate, but can be used to create monster-slaying weapons.

6. Rainbow Room

Seven doors, each painted one color of the rainbow. Illumination cycles through spectrum, only the door with the current color openable.

7. Impractical Garage

Ornate chariot; entrances to narrow for it to pass. Pair of invisible horses neigh. Gilded weapons & tools hung on walls.

8. Draconic Gauntlet

Like a dog agility course, but for young dragons (tunnel, seesaw, hurdles…). Training manuals on shelves. Torn dragon harness on ground.

9. Creepy Anatomical Theatre

Horseshoe-shaped auditorium. Semi-dissected body on slab looks just like player character, but with animal features. Mad teaching assistant armed with scalpels.

10. False Chasm

Rickety rope bridge over chasm. Actual depth only 30’ – masked by illusion of void, tunnel to treasure vault at the bottom.

Solo science fantasy hexcrawl - Session #2

Read previous installment here. This short session is the resolution of the combat that began at the end of the last...

Day 5 – continued [investigation in 1707, plains, favorable weather, random encounter in the afternoon]

Posidonios is ensnared! The wires cut into his flesh – and, alerted by his screams, the inhabitants of the place crawl forward… Four grotesque, goblinish figures, their wrinkly sky parchment dry and spotted. Some are emaciated and skeleton-like, some are potbellied. Dry and twisted, like the plains around them. In fact, they seem to have emerged from the barren ground itself.

Duke Seneb and Eucarpus, who are scavenging nearby, also hear the scream, but don’t come running just yet… They approach cautiously, behind the cover of the wreckage. They split up, Seneb circles to the right, Eucarpus to the left, weapons at ready.

The four creatures move closer to Posidonois. They aren’t in a hurry, and savor the kill. “What do have us here?” one of them whispers in a raspy tone. “We have us here some fresh meat,” the others reply in unison. They bare their pointy teeth. Posidonios screams.

“Get away from him!” shouts Eucarpus and rushes forward, brandishing his scimitar. The creatures are startled, and turn towards the fighting-man. “Well-well-well…” intones their leader. “Say, intruder, if you like our place so much, why don’t you just… stay with us? F o r e v e r . . .” The creature’s yellow eyes light up with an uncanny suggestive force. The mind of Eucarpus bends to the demonic will. “Y-yes, I wish to become one with the dust,” he mumbles.

Duke Seneb jumps out from his cover and mutters a string of syllables in an alien language. A cone of clashing colors erupts from his outstretched left hand. Eucarpus and the four monsters cry out in pain, cover their eyes, and fall to the ground. Duke Seneb runs over to Posidonois and tries to free him, but the wires of the snare are hard to cut. Knowing that the duration of his spell is limited, Seneb instead starts slashing the throats of the unconscious monsters. The ground swallows the black ichor instantly, without a trace.

But one of the creatures regains consciousness and raises up, blood splurting from its neck. It lunges at Seneb, but misses. “Get him,” he gurgles, and, to Seneb’s surprises, Eucarpus, who is by now also conscious and standing, charges Seneb. Seneb deflects the blade at the last minute and starts backing away. Posidonios, although his movements are hindered, tries to throw himself at Eucarpus, but the wires pull him back and he falls. Seneb faces two enemies alone – and one of these enemies used to be his comrade. “Snap out of it! It is me, Seneb,” he shouts as he tries and fails to hit the monster. But the charm is too strong, and Eucarpus cannot overcome it. “Must… kill the intruders… the sacred place must not be polluted,” he mumbles and buries his blade deep into Seneb’s body. Posidonios manages to free one of his legs, and kicks Eucarpus – who loses balance and also drops to the ground. This gives a bit of space for Seneb, and the Duke delivers a final blow to the last remaining monster.

“What happened?” gasps Eucarpus. A terrible hypnotic weight lifts from his mind with the death of the last creature. His two comrades are bleeding or bound. The bodies of the four monsters rapidly desiccate before their very eyes.

Duke Seneb shrugs, and tries to staunch his bleeding. Then together they free Posidonios. “Creatures of dust, the very soil of this wretched land,” Eucarpus verbalizes the weird phrases that still echo in his head. Then he points at a hole in the ground. “This is their burrow…” The underground hole hides a small hoard of 4,000 copper scales and a silvery metal diadem. This last object buzzes slightly when touched, and arcane glyphs light up on its inner surface. None of the adventurers feel up to the task of trying the diadem on… so this artifact will have to be identified at a later time.

For now, they set up camp in the cover of the wreckage and wait for the night to fall…

---------------

Notes: the generator gave me "spotted Dryads" with a Reaction of 2 - Hostile, so this is where I took it. Murderous barren plain dryads.

To be continued!

Solo science fantasy hexcrawl - Session #1

I played a ~2 hour solo hexcrawl session today, set in my weird pulpy science fantasy world. Every detail of the world is generated from a gigantic Inspiration Pad Pro file - it's over ten thousand lines, I've been working on it for a long time, adding new items, expanding word lists, etc. You might recall the settlements I posted before - they were sourced from this generator.

"Red Dward" by JustV23

So today I did a hexcrawl, with four random characters:

Characters:

Duke Seneb, hungry professional drunkard (Magic-User 1)

Sappho, heartbroken merchant (Fighter 3)

Eucarpus, exquisitely dressed archivist's husband (Fighter 2)

Posidonios, hideous servant of jeweler (Fighter 1)

Here's the write-up! Raw output (for comparison) in the comments.

Day 1 [entering hex 1309, plains with settlement, weather is neutral, no random encounter]

The story begins on the red salt-encrusted plains in the middle of nowhere. The village of Apollonia ad Rhyndacum stands here, a stop on the long north-south caravan road. A small community (pop. 170), clustered around a foul-smelling power plant (used to refuel any motored vehicles, but hated by locals) and a reconstructed caravanserai. Most buildings are of concrete. All of them are covered by a bright orange fungal infestation.

The exhausted party heads to the caravanserai’s bar. Their every movement is watched by the scary-looking human-shark hybrid bouncer. “Don’t cause any trouble here, fellas,” warns the barman, “Djed over there bites and is the best shot in town”.

Duke Seneb orders the cheapest, vilest drink, downs it, and orders two more.

The rest of the team consumes more cautiously. Sappho, who is currently unarmed, checks if there are any weapons for sale. The flamethrower on offer is too pricey, so she settles on a simple polearm.

Eucarpus inquires about the local situation. “Ask Pediamun,” says the barman and points towards a person who just entered: an older gentleman with unruly hair and haunted eyes, with a dirty puppet on his left hand. He immediately launches into a long-winded paranoid rant about how the orange mould is an alien organism and must be stopped. The only tool to stop the spreading is located in an ancient tech-orchard, some 30-40 miles to the north-east… and offers 800 silver shekels if the artifact (an occult microscope) is brought to him. Eucarpus agrees in the name of the party, then they drag Duke Seneb away from the bar and tie him to a bed upstairs in a rented room.

Day 2 [travelling from 1309 to 1408, jungle with ruins, unfavorable weather, no random encounter]

The party sets out towards the north-east first thing in the morning. Duke Seneb is hungover, so Eucarpus takes on navigational duties and pushes into the jungle that borders on the plains. The density of the vegetation, coupled with the slightly acidic rain makes the journey a nightmare. They don’t encounter hostile wildlife – or any wildlife, for that matter. An eerie silence sits over the jungle. By dusk, they arrive at some overgrown ruins. A collapsed gatehouse and explosion craters tell the story of a past conflict. The silence is deafening. And in the middle of all this – a pitched tent, intact, recent! Duke Seneb sneaks forward to inspect… after a minute of anticipation, he opens the flap – and finds the tent unoccupied! A large sack filled with stuff lies abandoned in the corner. Seneb rummages through it and finds some assorted adventuring equipment, but also a strange object: a discus, some 10” in diameter, made out of a diamond-like material. Seneb greedily grabs it – the discus flashes once – and Seneb is left with a weird sensation that something now is missing from his mind, or maybe not? He just sees that he is in a tent, which probably doesn’t belong to him, but who are these three people that rush in shouting “Seneb, what happened? What was that flash?”

[Review] A Groats-Worth of Grotesques - a baroque bestiary

Link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/357543/A-Groatsworth-of-Grotesques

Full disclosure: I bought this in PDF when it came out, because it’s a historical bestiary and it looked right up my alley! Then at some point the author got in touch with me and offered me a free copy. I told him I already had the PDF, and he was cool enough to send me a complementary physical book! Thank you, G. Edward Patterson III, good sir.

So, here’s an overview/review of this thing!

A Groats-Worth of Grotesques, by G. Edward Patterson III (2021) sets out to bring the fantastic world of baroque bestiaries to the gaming table.

Overall, it contains some 120 grotesques. Each gets an illustration or two (curated from period sources), a description, and a simple stat block (HD, AC as equivalent to armor type, speed “as human” or “as horse” or something similar, brief description of attacks). The descriptions are in a flavorful, baroque style, whimsical, and often give hints on how to use these creatures in-game. There are notes on the margins (in italics, but, luckily, in “printed font”, none of that unreadable “pseudo-handwriting” nonsense).

There are classics as old as ages (Catoblepas! Leviathan! Wildmen!). There are weird creatures, based on partial descriptions or illustrations, supplemented by the author’s whimsical fantasies. Some are “imported” creatures, for example the Haunted Umbrella (at least I think it is an adaptation of the kasa obake). There are “natural” but exotic beasts (Ostriches, Elephants). The “common” beasts like Cats and Dog are given some little twists, as the author retells superstitions of legends connected to them.

There are also a couple of NPCs: Clerics, Fighters, Magi and Rogues. These entries are great, as each class gets a handful of flavorful “subtypes”. The Fighters also stand in as ruffians, for example the Damned Crew are carousing, rapier-wielding bastards. The Chartumim subtype of Magi are “reasoners or disputers upon difficult points in philosophy who have become enchanters and conjurers”, and often serve as advisors to local nobles. There is a baker’s dozen of Rogues. This is VERY GOOD stuff! Instant story seeds & hooks and great for that historical flavor.

The physical book is softcover print-on-demand, pretty easy to use, especially how each monsters gets a separate spread. My only minor complaint is that the digital version is a 600+ megabyte unoptimized PDF – but at least this way you get good quality images and can delight in every cut of the historical engravings.

Overall, I think this book strikes the perfect balance between being an atmospheric and authentic in-setting text, while maintaining actual gameability and content you can utilize when running your campaign.

If you run Lamentations of the Flame Princess – pick this up. If you need some classic (as in “going back to antiquity”) beasts and some weird, interesting monsters for your OSR game – pick this up. It is a delight and a good source of inspiration.

Link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/357543/A-Groatsworth-of-Grotesques

It's $4.99 for the PDF, so, I guess, that's the exchange rate of a groat? Anyway, these Grotesques are definitely worth a groat.

[Dungeon] Cave of Trials, a prehistoric initiatory adventure!

I put together a stone age Cave of Trials! Survive and become an adult member of your tribe!

13 rooms, one page with the map, another with the key, so you can print it on a single sheet if you like.

Download PDF with map & key!

There is also an unlabeled players' map in the folder. The adventure is pretty much system-agnostic, run it in your favorite OSR or whatever system.

These uncooperative a-holes will NOT survive the Cave of Trials

Have fun!