So after encountering the man smelling of rats they follow him to the Hall of Many Pillars before loosing him. It is as if he just mysteriously disappeared... So from there they decide to go to the north. They interestingly pretty much follow the same steps as the party in the fourth session, the main difference is that they avoid contact with the goblins and encounter some skeletons. They encounter the Hall of Heroes and the Bone Throne, but make no real interactions with them.
They finally encounter the leader of the goblins who tells them that his room in off limits. They do manage to get him to answer a couple of questions, not that the answers are all that useful. They then encounter the main goblin group and decide to vamoose, which is about where we left off.
I honestly thought that the one player who had played in the previous session to mention something about how they were retracing his steps, but nothing.
So I have been giving more thought to my Post-Apocalyptic Alfheim campaign and my megadungeon now has a name- The Halls of Knowledge. Or possibly Halls of Divine Knowledge. Also, I have decided that I will be saving the creation of this adventure for later and for now will be focusing on a simpler scenario to start the game. Here is some of the background I have been developing
The campaign will start off in the Azure Havens, a series of elven nations along the eastern coast of the continent. Specifically, one of their cities has been greatly expanded to accommodate traffic from the continent to the east, one more similar to medieval Europe. This is where many of the elves emigrated long, long ago due to a second, less destructive schism with those who wanted to follow the leader of the Great War as their Overking and those that did not. Essentially those that followed the Overking were high elves and those that did not are wood elves, though I am uncertain as to whether I will have a mechanical difference between the two.
This city is a mix between the old elven city and newer, largely human architecture. There are large sections devoted to the armies coming from the lands of men. Much of this is devoted to kinds of entertainment that the elves would eschew... Not far from this city is a citadel that has been destroyed by the goblinoid horde and has yet to be reclaimed... partly because the ruins have been occupied by fell creatures, including some remaining goblinoids. To clear out this citadel will be an early goal of the campaign. I am considering even having a portal to the Halls of Knowledge in the ruins of the citadel.
I have given some thought to the other races. The dwarves are also generally split into hill and mountain dwarves... with "hill dwarves" being those on the outskirts of the dwarven hegemonies (there are seven, one for each of the dwarven forefathers, though some are more centralized/intact than others) and the "mountain dwarves" are those in the metropolitan heartland, including the subterranean homelands, each centralized aground a great "manor," that may or may not be still inhabited by its original denizens. Except on the elven continent are the duergar, who dug too greedily and too deep and disturbed eldritch beings which altered them. Part of the drow have been corrupted by these same eldritch creatures after being driven into the depths of the world by their goblinoid former servants (though some remain under the drow's aegis).
Well while I do want to continue that campaign, my Fate of the Realms campaign is facing difficulties. Therefore I have given some thought into future campaigns I would like to run. In particular, one I call "Post-Apocalyptic Alfheim" seems most promising. Basically its a setting that is many, many years after the war between the elves and drow, except in this world it took on apocalyptic levels due to the presence of advanced technology.
The advanced technology the elves had came directly from their gods,
which is kind of meant to have taught them and other gods not to do
that sort of thing. Possibly even having led them to curtail the
advancements of other settings. Now the goblins and orcs have used leftover advanced technology to conquer much of the elven continent, leading to the elves importing adventurers and mercenaries from other lands to defeat the goblinoid hordes.
I am giving some thought to a megadungeon to go with the setting, but am considering delaying that due to the sheer scale of building a megadungeon along with the complications added by the atypical setting. One idea I had was an elven arcology. Another was a large science facility like Half-Life's Black Mesa or Fallout's Big MT. One complication with this is a difficulty in deciding where to begin with this project. So I am considering starting off with some smaller adventures. I still could use some help with deciding what that smaller adventure should be like.
Okay, this video doesn't directly relate to the topic of this post, however, recent events in my recent session of Monster Hill reminded me of this song.
You see I placed a portal on the second level of my dungeon. The party may soon discover said portal. In fact assuming the probabilities of them taking each route available to them are equal, they have a 25% chance of discovering it. The portal leads to the city of Sigil, from the Planescape Campaign Setting.
The session started off where the last one ended. However, the party now consists of two PCs, played by the same person, to help compensate for the low party size. I glossed over exactly how the new character, a barbarian, joined the party. I wish the last (and this) session hadn't ended in the dungeon for precisely this reason. Since a new party is supposed to form every new session, each session should end with the party back in town. However, since I only have the one player right now, it's less of a concern. I wouldn't normally allow the same player to control multiple characters at once either, though I do allow and even encourage multiple characters per player. I may allow this from now on though, provided there are less than three players at a particular session.
So the party descended the stairway to the second level, the "Upper Temples". The first room they found had a broken statue of Orcus, who in my campaign is presently dead. However that doesn't mean that he might not play a role in the campaign, especially with such a large chance that they might end up in Sigil. Neither the player nor his characters have any idea who Orcus is, but I hope this serves as good foreshadowing for his potential appearance in the campaign. Perhaps a certain petitioner might have a job for them that brings them to Automata just in time for them to see the start of the off-schedule Great Modron March...
There were five exits to the room and wouldn't you know it they pick the one with the teleporter at the end of it. So they find themselves in a room on the other side of the level. Unfortunately, that's when we had to end it. I am pretty anxious to know whether the party finds the portal. On the one hand, I am excited to potentially introduce Planescape elements which I was hoping to have an opportunity to do. On the other hand, I'm not sure that such a drastic change to the status quo of my campaign will be a good thing and I am concerned that this will complicate reintroducing the rogue character that my other player played in the first session, but hasn't been able to play since.
There is something else I'd like to talk about, but am not ready quite yet. It is exciting news and I hope everything goes well, however things haven't progressed far enough that I feel comfortable talking about it. Also I encourage feedback on the Soldier base class I posted earlier.
I have recently started a Play-by-Post campaign in my megadungeon, Monster Hill. As per the concept of Monster Hill, anything these players do will carryover to every time I play. So if I'm still running Monster Hill ten or twenty years in the future, I might offhandedly remark "Hey, that's the corpse of one of the first Player Characters that delved into this dungeon!"
A few interesting PCs include Zaggle'Bo, the goblin cave druid and Onnam the Guide wood elf cleric of Hades (I have decided to use real world deities for the humans in this campaign). They seem to be developing goals that might just have a strong impact on the course of the campaign. This is, to remove the corruption of Monster Hill. Ironically, this corruption comes largely from portals to Hell, Hades and the Abyss. Hades of course, lives on the plane of Hades, albeit on Pluton not Oinos to which the portal leads.
They are soon due to encounter some bandits. They have already encountered an orcish slave of the bandits in a cave which serves as a stable for the bandits. The pool in this cave is sometimes inhabited by faeries with powers of healing, a reference to the Legend of Zelda series.
Well, I'm going to be running my Monster Hill campaign at Play the Game Read the Story in Syracuse, NY. I'd invite you guys, but I don't think any of you would be able to make it, though I don't know where any of you live, so I might be surprised, I suppose ;). I'm really excited. I've been preparing for a while, though since I have been writing parts, I've only gotten the first level and part of the second and third levels done. I would've liked to have them all completely detailed by now, but I don't think they will be going lower than the first, so it's not that big of a deal.
Tomorrow, if all goes well, I will begin running Monster Hill. I've got the first level all stocked, however I am thinking of a few tweaks. For one I'm reducing the size of the giant spiders in an area close to the main entrance and adding one more. Then I'll place giant spiders of medium size elsewhere on the first level. I like giant spiders. I'm also snatching a creature from the Legend of Zelda games- Aquamentus the boss monster in the first dungeon of the first game, and putting it in the dungeon, placing the cloaker I randomly rolled elsewhere. There probably won't be a report of the adventure for a while, since pbp games take a while.
I have been working on a new megadungeon, Monster Hill. It is the name given by locals to a hill of ill reputation that spews out terrible monsters and is a haven for goblins and bandits and other neer-do-wells. It has in the past been know as a home to demon worshipers, who are supposed to have constructed the complex long ago. Rumors state that there are portals to the infernal realms in the depths.
I'm running this so that many groups can enter and leave they're mark on the complex. Theoretically I could play it for years for many different groups, and any changes the PCs make would remain. Also I'm going to be going with an approach similar to what James Maliszewski, at Grognardia is using for his Dwimmermount campaign, not creating too much of the setting at any one time, instead creating it through play.
If you're interested I will be starting a play-by-post game on this site.
Well you may remember from earlier posts my players in my previous campaign having explored a dungeon called "Valarn's Vault". Well I've decided to revisit this dungeon, applying the lessons I've learned about dungeon creation since then. So I'll rewrite the dungeon, pretty much from scratch. I will be using Pathfinder and am thinking of setting it in some undetailed part of Oerth outside the Flanaess, or a world of my own creation.
The Vault is a fortress that belongs to a powerful necromancer on an island not far of shore from a small fishing village in the tropics. The upper works contain a large garrison of various kinds of undead, however there is a back entrance to the far less dangerous storage area. The upper works are basically a "lair"-type environment, so aren't really suitable for low-level adventurers, but the storage area and lower levels are a more normal dungeon environment, so adventures here are not going to bring the wrath of every creature in the area on they're heads. Below the storage area is a series of catacombs that contain many undead of various kinds. I'll have fun utilizing all the various obscure kinds of undead in my monster manuals populating this area. The third level I'm thinking will probably be a series of laboratories, filled with all kinds of weird monsters, including templated monsters of various kinds. However, I'm thinking I might want to save that theme for a lower level, since I'd want to include more dangerous creatures like golems. The lair of Valarn himself will either be on the twelfth or lower level or a sub-level attached to it. Perhaps his lair will be a demiplane connected to the dungeon by portal. As for other levels, at the moment I'm focusing on the first three as Gary Gygax suggests in Volume 3 of OD&D, "The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures".
As for difficulty I am not going to be adhering strictly to the rules in Pathfinder. Like in old school games it will be somewhat challenging. It would in fact be likely to encounter ten goblins in a single encounter on the first level of the dungeon. However the PCs would be well equipped to handle such encounters, as Pathfinder characters are fairly powerful and it will be assumed that they will bring along non-player character hirelings to help them, including warriors.
I am currently planning a campaign, or, rather two campaigns. The one I'm discussing in this post, however is intended to be an experiment in old school styles of play. It will be a sandbox campaign in structure, focusing on a megadungeon, "Castle Acheron", but also including the area surrounding that edifice.
Castle Acheron was the domain of a powerful necromancer, known by the title of "Gravelord". The Gravelord seized control of the castle due to it's presence at a convergence of laylines. He then proceeded to command his dwarven servants to create a series of catacombs, which served as not only a place for his dark laboratories where he experimented with bridging the gap between this life and the next, storage places for his powerful magical treasures, and housing for his minions and undead creations, but also he sought to use the construction to in fact weaken the barriers between the material world and the dread realm of Hades. This is why I chose the name "Castle Acheron" after the river that serves as the border of the land of the dead. In fact, it's likely that the players will visit the realm of the dead, by finding a portal to Hades in one of the lower layers.
As for the upper layers I'm pretty sure that dwarves will be a common threat. My dwarves are quite different then other dwarves, which I will elaborate on in my next post. Common dungeon threats such as goblins and kobold may not appear, which again I will address in my next post. Undead of various types are likely to be spread throughout the entire dungeon, in varying degrees depending on the layer of course. There will certainly be various kinds of vermin. Traps and tricks of various kinds will be a major feature. The lair of a powerful necromancer is a dangerous place. As you go lower, the influence of the land of the dead will get stronger. The idea that the region beneath the surface of the world is closer to the realm of the dead is true everywhere, in fact my world's equivalent to the Underdark is called the Underworld like the land of the dead it's self because of this fact. Castle Acheron is built to take advantage of this.
