Megadungeon IV - Nodal Dungeon Tourist Map

Every Megadungeon needs a novelty tourist map.  Here's an attempt at one for Keith's "Nodal Megadungeon" which I've spoken about recently.  I'm not sure the map is helpful, but it took a while to doodle and while it lacks useful information it gives some feel and a sense of location at least - not that Keith's flowcharts didn't do an equally good or better job, but this has a doodles involved.  It's the least I can do to support Keith's great project.

Ultimately it ended up a tourist map like the ones you get for major cities which at best give a vague idea of where neighborhoods are located. I'm tempted to do one for the Apollyon and ASE...

Pahvelorn - Tragedy and Plunder

“If it lives underground in an undead infested catacomb and can see in the dark – doesn’t matter how human it looks, it’s evil, and it’s going to try to eat you.”  - The Wisdom of Beni Profane

Ginny Bo - maniac torchbearer

Beni Profane, the rat catcher, archer, killer and would be smuggler from Zorphath has grown in skill and power since his first tentative steps down the path of delving into ancient a haunted ruins.  He's grown in wealth to but it just doesn't stick to his fingers.

After having departed Zorphath and the Pits of Pahvelorn due to a string of companion deaths, close calls and returning bruised and shaken without plunder, he and his band, the self-styled "Order of Gavin" headed North to the white fortress city of Illum Zugot, home of the purportedly wise and undoubtedly arrogant "Priest King".  It's unclear how effective the Priest King is as a ruler, his hatred of the Necromancer lord to the South and his piety apparently overwhelming his common sense at either clearing the undead filled barrows which pock his domain or the addressing the battalion of demonic infantry now infesting the tombs of the patriarchs he holds dear.

Wampus County - Bumming about Frogport

Wampus County Expedition to Frogport - Week 1

"I am a voice in this wilderness, I must shout the good news, even if I have long known to whisper, because the world is always listening.  Someone needs to help people, and that's my calling, that is why death has overlooked me, so that I will not overlook death ..." - Millicent Cobweb, preaching in Frogport's central market.

With companions Abel Killejoy, journalist/bar promoter/rainbow magician, and the sycophantic dabbling mesmerizer that had been lurking about the Rat House running for beer, cleaning floors and begging coins in a most unseemly manner, Millicent Cobweb, and her new protegee Rebbecca (recently rescued from the tomb of a wagering mummy) decided to depart from the dusty street of Thistlemarch for the bustling river town of Frogport.  Cobweb's saddle bags were packed with a bundle of newly printed religious tracks (along with a letter of credit written to Chauncy) and her heart with a desire to share the mysteries of her Necronaut based splinter religion.  Yes, the plan, at least as far as the party's main combatant was concerned, was to sink the roots of another irksome death cult, one specializing in assassinations hire and laying to rest the ghost of a certain ex-boyfriend (literally, Cobweb used to "date" a ghostly cult leader - it was awkward) into the muddy soil of Frogport.

Cartoonish Doodle of Cobweb Preaching

Dirge of Man

"Here, organic towers, tall shapeless masses of tissue cultured from the plasm of ancient mammals, trumpeted and moaned across the abandoned wastes of another continent, their huge cynical voices modulating on the wind, now immensely distant, now close at hand. Natural philosophy, they maintained (holding him to be in heresy), is a betrayal of invention. It is an edifice of clay. It was always night there. . . ."

Harrison, M. John (2007-12-18). Viriconium

Treasure Table - Sample - Hobo Treasures

HOBOS' TREASURES

Partially in response to my previous post, below is a random treasure list useful for generating "Hobo Treasures" for a gonzo hobo themed dungeon node.  It's not as detailed as I would like for a large node as it's not split between large and small packets or magical and mundane treasure.  I'd use this one as an adjunct to personal treasure of the hobogoblins, or whatever denizens of the node carried around in their bindles.  The table might also be useful determining rewards or boons granted to PC's for service to the Hobo King of the Great Northern Jungle.  So feel free to use it in your gonzo D&D, Wampus County or Weird Adventures games.  It's stated up for B/X D&D but pretty system agnostic.

"Hobo and Dog" - 1924

Also includes so wondrous "Deck of Several Things" to torment your players.

Streamling the Node based Megadungeon

I was having a conversation the other night with Keith of "In my Campaign" about mega-dungeons and publication. Keith is the author and sometime GM of his "Node based Megadungeon" which is a great little project he did streamlining a megadungeon and constructing it via general areas and interrelation rather than classic module style room by room description.  This is a novel approach to a megadungeon, and one that while it may ask a bit more from someone running a megadungeon it has the advantage of allowing a much larger dungeon, a complete mega-dungeon to be produced in far fewer pages, and likely with a greater sense of continuity because the nodes focus on interrelationship between the areas and factions of the dungeon rather than cataloging every empty room. 

There is problem with this approach as it relies on the GM for everything: maps, encounters, traps, tricks and atmosphere without giving anything more than vague clues.  It seems that a useful megadungeon overview would contain that following for each area of "level".  Below are more specific thoughts on how to handle each major component of a dungeon Node.

Ogre Replacement - Enfant Terribles

Brutes steeped in madness and violence

ENFANTS TERRIBLES
(Large Monster)

No. App. 1-2 (2-12)
HD: 4
AC: 2
ATK: 1(Armored Fists) 1D8 or by Weapon
Move: 30'
Save: F2
Morale: 10

The Enfant Terribles, also known as a Suckling Homunculus, is neither a child nor a homunculus.  Their origin is unclear, but their appearance suggests they are either the product of outsider entities from one of the less pleasant spheres (Pandemonium most likely) or the result of ancient science perverted by sorcerers.

An Enfant Terribles appears as a bulky suit of encasing plate armor, most often of crude iron, speckled with rust, grim with ichor, old blood, and spittle.  The armor stands seven to nine feet tall and is proportioned to a bulky warrior, except for the helmet (when it is not lacking entirely) which is tiny, often reset between the shoulders or pushed upwards like a thin stalk above the mass of reeking metal.

ASE - Thursday Night Campaign round up

My drop in G+ game of ASE has been going well.

The party (a diverse lot with a few stalwarts) has lost two PCs, several henchman and a pack of pit bulls.  They've also fully entered the Anomalous Subsurface Complex and are beginning to wonder why it exists.

Here's a short recap of what's happened since my last play report.

Elves - they're creepy.

Pahvelorn - New PC's and Henchmen

Pahvelorn, the Pits of waste and despair...

The session before last (A lovely romp through hill, dale, and cliffhanging barrow) another PC was lost. Ogam the reluctant magic-user plummeted to his death trying to leap over the corner of a spiked pit.  Ogam is the 3rd of a line of magic users replaced by their hench-people to meet his fate within the maze of Phavelorn.  Margo died to the fists of a disgruntled skeleton in the Necromancer's villa.  His henchman Higgans (a man of a truly evil aspect, but solidly competent) died from a swarm of skeletal rats in the the Cursed Shrine outside the pit, and now Ogam, who was originally hired to carry a lantern and was just coming into his own as a caster, plummeted to his death fleeing giant ceramic ant automatons in the forgotten crypt of an imprisoned sorcerer.

Ogam was replaced by the most dubious mage yet, a twelve year old sorceress who was "rescued" from an evil and insane wizard who's main hobby was transforming men into shaggy beast monsters. Eraria is a former street urchin, with some magical facility who quickly and without hesitation switched sides when her master was killed.   It is not in doubt that she is a black-hearted occultist, but she knows a good amount of magic and currently has the libraries of the four other dead wizards that have been part of the party as well as a wealth of scrolls and codex's recovered from the ruins.

Eraria, evil tween sorceress

Eraria is perhaps judged too harshly above, as it's not as if she's ever had a chance to be good, or seen anything positive come out of it.  One can only hope that the exposure to the party will change her for the better.  Even the rat worshiping mercenary attitude of Beni Profane would be an improvement on the insane demon pacting philosophies of Louvritar the Bleak Eyed, Eraria's former master.  Such change seems unlikely though, as Eraria is perhaps the most intelligent of the party and seems set in her ways already, having taken on an orphan named Genk as an apprentice to lead down the path of dark sorcery.

Another recent addition to the Phavelorn party is "Donkeyteeth" an orphan recruited by Beni to act as his "apprentice" in the honorable trade of rat catching, the dubious trade of tomb vandalism and the unwholesome trade of putting poison arrows through the eyes of anything questionable, human, beast or entity.

Drunk in Denethix - ASE Carousing Table

Oh the hijinx you'll have!

Memories are blurry

Below is the carousing table I'll be using for Denethix.  Rules are standard, pay your gold and roll a save vs. poison.  If you succeed you gain XP equal to the GP spent and roll on the table below for consequences with a +1 bonus for every point you made your save by.  If you fail just roll on the table and don't ask about XP.