THE LINKS BELOW DIED OF OLD AGE AND GOOGLE'S INTERNAL POLITICS
A simple character sheet
A cartoon style character sheet with friendly Zardoz
Prison of the Hated Pretender - (0-1 Level Adventure) Available now in an annotated, updated edition. Lawful spirits of revenge, pitiable ghouls and a world creating astrological item - designed as an intro adventure. "The mind races to find excuses to use this adventure. That’s a good supplement." - Bryce at tenfootpole.org
Dread Machine- (2-6 Level Long Adventure) In the distant dust of the Yellowlands fragments of the Pretender's Empire linger and promise the power over life and death to those who can find and unravel them. Quasi-Sequel to Prison of the Hated Pretender. "The entire place feels coherent, alive. The farmers in the surrounding barren yellow plains make sense. The caves around the Dread Machine fit in with the farmers and the machine. The rooms of the machine are tied back with theming that’s obvious and not buried." - Bryce at tenfootpole.org (also finding it too verbose)
Hel's Crow's Final Rest - (1-3 Level OPD Adventure) Viking Themed one page adventure of moral ambiguity, undead reavers and shrine plundering. Originally for Great Khan's viking contest.
Brittlestone Parapets - (2-4 Level OPD Adventure) A one page dungeon contest, abandoned wizard battlefield with owlbear infestation. Winner of the 2013 "Best Wizard Duel" award for the One Page Dungeon Contest. "Everything in this contributes to the vibe of a magic-littered WW1 trench warfare feel. Highly Recommended." - Bryce at tenfootpole.org
Thunderhead Manse - (1-5 Level OPD Adventure) A an abandoned cloud mansion now held by flying monkey bandits. Was a finalist in the 2014 One Page Dungeon Contest.
Gravesand Beach - (OPD Dungeon Adventure) Seagulls really are horrible. One Page Dungeon Submission for 2017
Kugelberg Flood - (1-2 Level Short Adventure) A four page smash and grab expedition along the sea floor to plunder the drowned ruins of a tyrant's pleasure dome before the tide returns, drowning everything again.
Adrift on the Sea of Love - (1-3 Level Adventure) Pirates, treasure maps, tropical islands and ancient temples. It's all cliches but isn't anything with a pirate theme all cliches? Perhaps I should have gone with a tedious adventure focused on mediating conflict between Ching Shih and the Imperial Navy with an emphasis on the anarchic laws of pirate polities.
FALLEN EMPIRE LOCALES
Lone Colossus of the Akolouthos Sink (1-5 Level Adventure) An eleven location lair adventure within the slagged guts of an Imperial war machine. Magical radiation, shadow curses, traps and those pesky verminous owlbears.
Stone Ships - (1-4 Level Short Adventure) A two page random generation experiment for adventuring in the superstructures of arcane battleships, scuttled and abandoned in a pestilential mangrove. Blood drinking monkeys included.
Along the Road of Tombs - (2-6 Level Long Adventure) A highway flanked by ancient tombs provides the best smuggler's route into the capital, but lately the shipments aren't getting through. Investigate a tomb complex filled with cultists, a bandits' oracle and a slumbering war god.
"Reading the module, I found myself with a keen appetite for cooking up a long and narrow hex crawl following the Road of Tombs and its environs for 100 miles or so outside the Capital." - Ben L of Mazirian's Garden.
"The content of this adventure is good. It has strong imagery and imaginative encounters without the usual set-piece nonsense that modern adventures resort to. The one-pager about the road and the culture around it is great. The set ups are great … and probably a challenge for the party. I really like what’s going on. Its presentation, to the DM, is the major issue." - Bryce at tenfootpole.org
The Fallen Throne - (2-8 Level OPD Adventure) A fallen Throne of Heaven is not to be taken lightly. more a lair then anything - written for the 2015 One Page Dungeon Contest. Angels/Celestials are just as bad as demons, but prettier.
Comes the Mountain - (3-8 Level Short Adventure) The doom of cities out of strange Vheissu comes. Encrusted with the dolmens and temples of dead cities, with thunderous cracking and crash its coming drives civilization before it. Once the most feared punishment of those who defied the Flame Magi, now forgotten and loosed upon the world by indifference. The Mountain’s coming is slow but in a few weeks it will reach the capital to crush with its stone talons and burn with gouts of magma from within. 2015 One Page Dungeon Contest reject.
LAND OF 1,000 TOWERS (ASE) ADVENTURE LOCALES.
The Red Demon - (2-4 Level Adventure) A adventure locale from my ASE campaign, Science Fantasy, Frog Monsters, unstable munitions! "This is a nice little lair dungeon with a fair share of ancient death awaiting visitors." - Bryce at tenfootpole.org
The Wreck of the Anubis - (2-3 Level Adventure) A small lair adventure set in the Livid Fens and involving a paddle steamer wreck, an insane plant sorcerer and giant ticks. Best as a random encounter.
Obelisk of Forgotten Memories - (1-2 Level Long Adventure) A outdoor encounter area and small dungeon complex designed as a supplement for low level ASE exploration and with a focus on the Orbital Gods. Bryce at tenfootpole says:"This is the full on gonzo gross guys that fit in well with the whole Korgoth/ASE1 vibe."
Tempus Gelidium - (3-5 Level Adventure) A small indoor lair of a powerful monster and its minions, designed for insertion into mid-level (3-5) ASE wilderness adventure. Bryce at tenfootpole says: "pretty much a perfect example of the content that should go in to a good lair encounter."
You do great work! Thank you for sharing this very creative material!
ReplyDeleteI second that. My players have enjoyed your work immensely!
ReplyDeleteWell thanks fellas - if you ever run any of it I would love to read a play report (On forums, on a blog, whatever).
ReplyDeleteMy campaign journal over at DF has the Red Deom thus far, with the Obelisk coming.
ReplyDeleteI have follwed it with glee, I like the changes you've been making to fleah out ASE's world. Any thoughts on improving Obelisk or Red Demon would be greeted with glee.
DeleteI've just started my S&W campaign and have downloaded your encounters for my wanderlust group. I'll keep you posted on the results. Thanks for posting such great work!
ReplyDeleteThe modules, supplements, and dungeons you create are fantastic. I'd love to contribute or help to pay you back some for all of the awesomeness you've got here.
ReplyDeleteJust play them and enjoy them, I don't want to start thinking of any of this hobby stuff as a job. If I ever do put anything out POD or on RPGnow I'll surely let the world know though.
DeleteI can't seem to open The Fallen Throne, it just comes up blank for me. None of your other PDF's have that problem though.
Deletethank you.
ReplyDeleteWhat is "ASE"?
ReplyDeleteAnomalous Subsurface Environment - the only megadungeon project worth buying and using. See below for details.
Deletehttp://henchmanabuse.blogspot.com/
MOOOOORE Adventure locales.
ReplyDeleteKugelburg Flood was brilliant. Thank you for your hard work!
I love these. I'm going to run Kugelburg Flood next week as a transition module from a truncated 5e mod version of The Lost City I came up with. I was wondering, do you have a template for Kugelberg Flood you would share?
ReplyDeleteA template? I mean there's a map in there, not sure what you mean by template.
DeleteDude. Those ASE modules... I'm drooling. Way-to-go.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteWhich one of these epics is your favourite, Gus?
ReplyDeleteNot sure, of the three that are larger I have fondness for all of them. Road of Tombs is an evocative Fallen Empire thing where I think I balanced evocative setting fluff well with content, but the map is cranped and it's a bit rough at places. Obelisk is pure ASE but a first effort despite its good faction balance. Dread Machine might be my favorite, but the main keyed location is a trap dungeon.
DeleteHey, what's wrong with trap dungeons?
DeleteSome excellent stuff here btw... this can't be just an on-the-side hobby, can it? How much time are you investing in these and why aren't we paying for them???
Well my HMS Apollyon players really hated the "Sigil Maze" which was almost all trap dungeon. I think players tend to find them aggravating.
DeleteI have invested some time in the above, but hey it's my time and I think selling hobby items is a bit gauche unless one needs to pay for artists and editors. I obviously don't...not saying I shouldn't.
Fair enough.
DeleteI think players find traps annoying because they have little to no player choice with them... It's either they see the trap or they don't, and that has everything to do with numbers on their character sheets and nothing to do with player ingenuity, so they feel cheated when they happen to not see the trap and it goes off, possibly insta-killing one of them. I was reading an article on The Angry GM's blog that sums up these feelings very well and gives some possible solutions to the trap problem: http://theangrygm.com/traps-suck/
Well that's not really how I run traps or what I mean by trap dungeon. I don't run 3,4 or 5E so there's no perception checks and whatnot to make them a purely character skill activity. Traps are puzzles, and they go off (sometimes lethally) when players fail to notice clues or fail to take precautions.
DeleteGood traps:
A) Are obvious or if in-obvious provide clues to their existence that the GM should include in description. This does not mean they are obviously traps, but obvious unknown things that can be dangerous.
B) Good traps have a clear mechanism - mechanical or logically magical that can be determined by examination.
C) Good traps present multiple options for a solution.
D) Obviousness and clarity in how a trap works should increase the more instantly lethal a trap is.
Now one can also have traditional instant traps (poison needles in door handles, pits or in the case of my games grenades tied to tripwires) and I don't feel bad about these unless I include them in areas where there's no prior indication that there are likely to be traps. Most of these should have a save associated with them however.
That's my trap philosophy - I think Dread Machine provides a decent example.
Very cool philosophy: I agree with it wholeheartedly. It rewards players for paying attention and makes them feel smart.
DeleteI'm actually going to be running Dread Machine for my players at some point, I printed it out a while ago. I'm just trying to find a good way to bridge it with Hated Pretender... the only good hook for Dread Machine seems to be the untimely death of a character, which can't exactly be scripted.
When I do run it, I'll type up some play reports if you're interested?
I'd love to hear about it! I really enjoy knowing how people's games go with the stuff I've hacked up.
DeleteDread Machine and Prison aren't linearly connected - though I've been tempted to do another in the same setting (I think the corpse of the Beaked God, crashed into a distant jungle near its moribund holy city after being slain by the Pretender's cadres) - but the idea isn't so much to have linearity but linked items in the game world that will be visted by the players at a later date so they can have the "Ah Ha - that creep - again!" feeling.
I like that Prison introduces (and likely kills off)the villainous ancient evil himself in a 0-level funnel and the idea of unraveling the remnants of this Empire of Misrule at a later date feels like a fun campaign element. Not the whole campaign though, just a background set of points on a big map.
Hi Gus,
DeleteI’m going to be starting that campaign soon - all my players are in.
“Dread Machine is an adventure for a party of 3-8 characters of levels 3-6”… does this mean that the player characters are supposed to enter exactly when they’re at level three, and the XP gained will take them all the way to level six? This seems unreasonable… It’s saying that the player characters can enter at any time between levels 3 and 6, right? Just checkin’.
Also, I’m running the campaign with LotFP Weird Roleplaying rules - what’s your experience with that system? I’ve heard that LotFP rules aren’t great for long-running campaigns and only good for one-shots, because of the player mortality rate and such… I guess I’ll just have to see.
I’m going to kick it off with Prison of the Hated Pretender, I think. I’ll fill the map with locations from Tower of the Stargazer, Death Frost Doom, Deep Carbon Observatory, a lot of your free stuff, and other modules I like (re-skinning them to fit the world I’m envisioning). I’ll also scatter the campaign with fragments of the Pretender’s failed culture and history: Like abandoned temples dedicated to some sort of avian demon/god/entity, ancient concentration-camp-like backdrops left by a laughing dictator who worked an entire race to death, perhaps even re-skinning Death Frost Doom so the death-cultists were instead Paladins of the Beaked God; stuff like that.
I’m excited to start and share how my players blunder through your great pdfs with you.
Let's see, where to start. LOTFP is basically the Moldvay Basic Expert rules with some good simplification changes (ascending AC and such), and a few potent rules changes - especially the attack bonus ones. It's not more deadly then B/X (less so as it has death rules beyond death at 0HP), but it has that rep because of the sorts of adventures that are often published by the company - which can be very deadly.
DeleteLOTFP would be fine for that system, but you'd want more magic items (I think there are plenty of weapon immune foes in Dread Machine for example). It's not really designed with level in mind though the monsters in it have about 4-5 HD on average and some special abilities. I'd think a mid-sized party of Level 3 PCs could handle it but it'd be tricky a party of level 6 characters might have an easier time. I have no idea how much XP it provides either. I don't think there's too much treasure.
Except more magic items (especially just +1/+2 weapons with no personality) go against the LotFP philosophy. A magic item should typically be "powerful" (it can't just be another old treasure), should be powerfully cursed (the drawbacks often have to be more significant than the benefits), and often a magic item will be hard to transport/not exactly useful for adventuring purposes (not just combat boosters)... and I mean, they shouldn't be everywhere, right? They should be very rare and mysterious and unpredictable. So, it's not like I can just force a few of those into the game so the players will have a fighting chance in the future adventures... Which is why +whatever weapons ruin things (as well as being unbearably boring): Raggi has said before that a well-equipped level 0 NPC should not be instantly killed by a high level character (well, that can be POSSIBLE, but it shouldn't be automatically assured), that would completely skew the way the game is played. The players would become Gods, and you'd have to keep coming up with more powerful enemies for them to fight, and the common man with a sharp dagger and a steady hand becomes a mere ant.
DeleteOf course, the players COULD just invest in silver weapons (;
I am also no fan of +1 swords - but I would expect that a party taking on the Dread Machine (the monsters in that adventure are primarily re-skinned ghasts, wraiths and mummies)would have a means of dealing with weapon immune foes. It's not an adventure set in the LOTFP world - not gritty 16th century with a bit of magic peeking in - so the setting assumptions are somewhat different.
DeleteThe way I tend to deal with magic and weapon immunities is to have three classes of weapons - silver/blessed (good vs. incorporeal undead and werewolves), hexed (good against outsider entities) and magic/ensorcelled (good against everything - like a magic missile). The first two kinds are fairly common, the swords of famous crusaders, laying across their tombs or an ancestral war axe chanted over by 10 generations of shamans. Magic weapons though are rare - and most have powers. Very few weapons have bonuses - with an OD&D based system bonuses are even more powerful.
Just wanted to comment on the excellence of Brittlestone Parapets. There is a good reason for the weird and wonderful magical effects/items. There are factions to potentially exploit. I like the random encounters, they could spark interesting play.
DeleteI remain unconvinced about the one page format in general. Yes, all the information is on view, but it seems to encourage very small fonts, and maps that could do with more space.
Thanks, I've heard it runs well also.
DeleteI don't disagree with the idea that One Page design is very limiting and disfavors evocative setting design ... but as an exercise in design it's interesting, certainly the opposite (which I tend towards) of over-design and loose florid writing is not ideal either and trying to one page something can be quite helpful as a way to decide what matters and what doesn't.
I know i'm late to the party, but I'd like to tell you how much your work has being a source of inspiration for me lately.
ReplyDeleteAmong some other blog authors, you inspired me to cobble my own LBB-hack and guide my players through venues of fantasy that aren't just some Tolkien-country pastiche.
(I'm still waiting to see the rest of your OD&D-ish house rules someday!)
Seems some content is no longer available for download (Red Demon, Obelisk). Any chance it may reappear?
ReplyDeleteSeems unlikely - I'm sure they can be found if you really want them and of course Prison of the Hated Pretender is just waiting for the Hydra stamp of approval for publication.
Delete