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The first full adventure took the players to the ruins of Druidun Castle and the warren of tunnels beneath.
It’s taken a year to cover just a couple days in game time, the reverse of the Narnia effect. Ah, adulthood!
Their goal? To rescue the son of the Baron of Forksbury from the necromancer’s clutches before he's sacrificed on the Blood Moon. All part of Ol' Necro's plans to bring back an undead big bad (Luthius) to the mortal plane.
In hindsight, this is probably an adventure for a higher level group, and I should have kept things smaller, but that ship has long since sailed.
I wanted a megadungeon!
The team (which I've nicknamed Shanghai Knights) consists of:
• A fighter and aspiring knight from a minor noble house. This player has a LOT of experience and plays a level or two above his actual rank, if not higher. He wants to recover a lost family sword that belonged to his great grandfather, Henry Allister, whose tale will be covered later.
• A gnome rogue who's a member of a thieves guild, and is out to avenge her murdered kin. The minions of the black ichor got them; it's a necrotic poison that's infesting the earth, flora and fauna in Pelshire, and Druidun is the centre of the infection. As per the necromancer's plan, it's being jazzed by the dimensional fissure (opened up by the Eldritch Veil wizards) deep beneath the castle.
• A melon growing cleric who hates lizard men (Anti-lizardite?) and likes writing his name in blood in forbidden books of dark magic. Sometimes armed with a +1 ham hock.
• A peripatetic elf wizard who's come from afar and wants to reclaim lost books, chew bubble gum, and basically murder everyone she meets.
The group works well together and has proved highly effective in combat, although they tend not to follow best practice firing projectiles when a comrade is in front of the target, and frequently rolling natural '1's. This has led to unfortunate near deaths from friendly fire, which has been highly amusing.
They started out casting light on a bush on the road into the castle, so they could see who's coming and going. The magic glowing bush put The Night Cart crew (a bunch of acolytes, zombies and skeletons hauling bodies from the local graveyard into the castle) on edge, and when the characters (in heavy armour) tried to skulk closer, their clanking gave them away. I nerfed the convoy a bit as I didn't want to TPK before they even got to the dungeon. Might not have been necessary as I rolled badly and the game isn't as lethal as it used to be.
After butchering the cart convoy, the Shanghai Knights got into the castle through a drainage gate using, appropriately enough, the 'Shanghai Knights' trick; they then set upon the bandit gang in the crumbling castle gatehouse from behind, and the thieves were all dead before I could blink.
After a quick exploration of the grounds, and burning some buildings down because noises, they reached the keep; I hadn’t filled out every room in the first floor of the castle, figuring it should be fine to have a few bare ones, but a player started getting bored after 2 empty rooms. That didn't take long, so I threw some skeletons and armoured zombies at them. Then I stocked up those same rooms with baddies and interest points, which they can encounter on their way out.
Play and learn.
I’ve tried to keep to the ‘Rule of Three’ where there are three items/interactions of interest per room/location, but the scope of the megadungeon made that problematic: the first level has over 100 rooms, the second almost as many, and there are 20-40 locations on each floor of the castle.
Why did I want to make a megadungeon again?
For childhood dreams and the creative challenge, of course, but after dozens and dozens of rooms, my brain started to run bare. The upper castle rooms have the least detail, because I started with the dungeon.
I should have gradually ramped up to a megadungeon. Ah well. More learning.
I figure I can put it up on line here, and bits of it may prove useful for others, either as material to pillage or a guide on what not to do.
We'll see how far I get.
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