Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Happy SAGE!

Today is a celebration of Gary Gygax' birthday. While I'm normally not t0o big on celebrating anniversaries of any kind, doing it in a way that incorporates sharing with others and forces me to stretch my creative potential is a good deal in my book. Thanks again to Zak for organizing it. See some of the results at his blog here.

The request I received was for a dungeon under a tavern run by an odd man. He asks the party to kill some rats in the cellar and then locks the door behind them. The only real restriction I has was to not, in fact have there be any giant rats. Here is what I came up with. (I'd like to polish it more but if I don't publish it I'll keep tinkering forever).

The Undertavern

John Jentilman owns the Two Moon Tavern, a cheerful if simple establishment. Always an odd sort, he constantly complains about rats in the cella
r of the tavern. After coaxing the party into helping he ushers them through the iron cellar door . . . and locks it behind them.

Trapped in a bare room with a well i
n the center of the floor. They must seek a way out of their predicament. (Well leads to room 1)



Here it is in one-page dungeon format and as a word doc.

Update 7/28: Uggh, sorry for the egregious typos. I'm back in the mountains again and will have to fix those when I get back.

5 comments:

  1. As a player it's great when I'm confronted by something I've never encountered - I like the weird scenes here!

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  2. I ran this a while back and my players had a great time. They lost a couple hirelings on trying to deal with the doll people and trapped people (and nearly lost a few players). Oh, and the players were really unnerved and confused by the blind mice room, thinking it had some ominous importance...

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  3. Sweet. Thanks so much for letting me know.

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  4. FWIW -- I ran this as a last-minute/one shot for some old friends. They were all 1st level, a dwarf (Grumpy), a thief (Sac L'Douche), and an assassin (Bebe de Jesus). Lots of gonzo fun, though I wish I'd read it through ahead of time because I kept thinking there'd be some explanation about 'why the straw rats' etc. I tried to kluge an explanation that the doll people wore the straw rats to elude Gulo and fool John Jentilman, but the full-sized arrows in the straw targets, the rat idols, etc. really didn't add up. Did you have something in mind, or were you just going for the mind-eff/creepiness?
    Either way is was a memorable adventure!
    My only other suggestion would be some helpful hints on how to handle Gulo's "off-screen" movements. I just had him appear when inconvenient, but I wonder if you had your own heuristic?
    Thanks!

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