Pages

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!

    ReplyDelete
  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...

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

    ReplyDelete
  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!

    ReplyDelete