Five Miles West update 9

 

This next area is mostly empty rooms. The four square pits have warmer air flowing up from them with a mildly foul odor. These lead to the various feeding rooms of the Coilers below. The round pit off of Room 67 has cooler air flowing from it, and leads down to Level 4. 

MiterHunk can expand his roots down the round pit to make a ladder for the party, if he decides to be helpful, and if they think to ask him. If they missed MiterHunk on the first level this may be the first encounter with him.

Between Scalded Bob's raiding party and his Ogre henchman in Room 64, adventurers could get pinched in this area, or they may be able to use it as a harbor if they can manage the pits. 

FMW update 8

 

The tombstone revenant at 58 was created by the Mange Witch. She is rather weak physically but the ability of the charm spell makes her troublesome for smaller parties. Played as an NPC she could be bargained with to make more revenants. The secret room in 58 may be updated to hold a soul jar for the Mange Witch. 

At Scalded Bob's base (64) an encounter with the ogre in conjunction with the Hell Pumpkin detainees, and prisoners could lead to quite an unpredictable situation!. Nice treasure in the room with a Ring of Serpent control which should be very handy if they meet up with Coilers on the way to Dire Fangs lair.

Room 61 and 63 are considered empty, but may be added to as I perform edits ( which I'm trying to keep at a minimum.)

FMW update 7

 

  At 52 the hallway ceiling is arched, and marked "King". There is a similar arch at the west end of the hallway (off the map). This is the start of the second level. Moving west down the hallway is another arch to the north marked "Light" which enters the 3rd level. Alert players may begin to notice the correspondence between dungeon level designations, and the poem at the beginning of the adventure. 

   Room 54 drops down by 10' from the main hallway and is a large graveyard with small crypts and graves and the larger mound in the middle. There is no floor per se so so the ground is not level and line of sight is broken. Although there is a Wight guarding his mound in the middle, more than one encounter can happen in this area including wandering monsters. 

FMW update 6

 

This is an old crypt area on the second level. It is down the stairs from Room 40,42 and past an Archway marked "King". The steps at 43 lead up into the crypt area. The area is also accessible from First level Room 9 down steps to secret door.  

The hinged floor grates in the crypt area, and the portcullis in Room 50 are all connected to the double link chain in Room 42. Pulling the chain to open the portcullis in Room 50 to get to the good stuff, will also open the three floor grates covering the tunnels that are teeming with ghouls and ghasts!

The portcullis in Room 50 is blocking the alcove, but the players can see the double link chain that will raise it. They can also see Grim Pearl and a satchel of goodies behind it!

Will the party backtrack together to 42 to use the chain, or split the party to get the portcullis open? Are they actually able to take on the ghouls, once the floor grates are open? They could just bypass this challenge, but Grim Pearl is quite a find and will be useful as they make their way farther into Level 2.

Vaults of Vaarn

   I ordered this a few weeks back based on a review by Questing Beast. I've had time for a quick thumb thru, and looks to be a well rounded world set up, with lots of possibilities. It definitely generated a few new ideas for my for my Dungeon 23 project. 

FMW update 5

 Two weeks worth of dungeon in this update. 

The old Foundry area was used by Fell Helm to produce plague manacles to help spread the disease during the first Plague outbreak. The manacles are outlawed in the civilized world and possession or use of them is punishable by death.

Slowly gaining information on the plague, but nothing yet on the "Q" dice.

The automaton at 35 is wheeled and only patrols the upper level that it is on. It will not move down to the lower level by itself. It's job is to knock anything off the upper level it patrols. 

The holes in 36 and 37 are used by Coilers to move in and out of the dungeon although they rarely do so. Have to finish out level 3 before knowing how deep they are.

 The chains in 42 are important as they activate items in different areas of the dungeon. That is the reason they are distinguishable by 2 or 3 links. Players should be able to know that if they pulled the 3 link chain and see it later on in the dungeon they will realize the affect of the chain.

Book of War

I have a pdf print of Book of War that I made a couple of years ago when I started watching the game play videos on youtube, but always nice to have a printed copy of a rule book. This came in the mail a couple of days ago from Lulu press.

An excellent rule set to bridge the gap between unit size wargaming and D&D. Book of War is more streamlined than Swords and Spells, and there is a lot of resources for this games play at oedgames.com.

The author, Dan Collins,  has four seasons worth of playtesting on youtube (links at OED games and Wandering DMs youtube channel) which can be helpful to get some insight on the rules and play results.  

 

 

FMW update 4

Week 4 brings an important NPC encounter in room 22. MiterHunk will appear throughout the dungeon in different areas, so even if adventurers don't interact with him in 22, they are likely to meet his roots again. 

Treasure and tools include some spider costumes with some illusionary capabilities that may help the party, and more luck dice. Players should by now be questioning "Who is "Q" and why luck dice made of finger bone?".

Room 28 has some gold but the carts and supplies should be considered as treasure. These supplies and the block and tackle in room 2 can help with encumbrance issues, as well as provide provisions for repair or even setting up a small base in the 1st level. Gotta kill the spiders first! 

FMW update 3

 

Moving thru the Hell Pumpkins cave complex and to crypts that lead up to another entry/exit located within a small temple that has collapsed.

 This cave has been used as an HP outpost for awhile and bands of the tribe come and go continuously, bringing prisoners and treasure. Another band should arrive within a day.

The spill way in the pond will lead to level 5 but is unplanned right now. It will likely have various physical hazards/ obstacles and probably be best used by flight or levitation. The main treasure of this Hell Pumpkin band is in Room 15 with a decent gem haul, a silver mace, and a leather bag marked "Q" with some luck dice inside, just like in the room 7 ratpile. Coincidence? hmmmm...

FMW 2

Moving West into the Hell Pumpkin goblin lair. Mostly goblins, and their centipede pets so far, but the workroom contains a nice find that the goblins either don't know about, or care about. 

 Through out the lair are small hidey holes made by the goblins to hide "shineys" they don't want to keep with them. Usually small gems, and the like, that are shoved in holes along with a snap trap or a poison barb, to keep other goblins from nicking them. This detail could be used by GM to increase the treasure amount if needed. 

I put an isometric view of #12. The gate and floor are on a pivot point. If the gate is pulled back against the wall, the flooring swings out to cover most of the pit. If the gate is pushed out across the hallway the floor will also move, swinging back into the wall, exposing the pit, so adventurers have both a pit, and a gate to deal with.

 

Offalore

Another addition to the Dungeon 23 bestiary.

 

Knave character sheets for gameplay

 Made up some character sheets for Knave solo game play. These sheets cover the basics needed to operate in the dungeon, but are not complete character sheets. I wasn't too concerned about getting all the character info into the spaces, ie characteristics, backstory, etc. since many won't make it to 2nd Level. 

 I left some of the space available untitled so it can be used for different things, and I will see how I use the overall sheet which will help me to make adjustments. I think there may be more space available for all the info, depending on how big I write. 

2 characters per 8.5x11" sheet

These were good practice exercise for me as I don't have much artistic talent, so it's a matter of developing skill.

Five Miles West Bestiary

 This post is to begin the Bestiary for Five Miles West Dungeon 23 project. Hopefully, I can get at least one new monster per level of the dungeon. I may list the specifics of these entries if it is important to the dungeon play, otherwise I will probably skip the granular details. 

TBD = to be drawn. Some pics will take time and I expect a backlog. It's never been a problem for me to make my saving throw vs Artistic ability. LOL. 

Five Miles West update 1

Start of the first level includes some encounters with goblin scouts from the Hell Pumpkin tribe, an NPC that foreshadows trouble ahead, giant rats with a bit of treasure, and more goblins to the West.

 Key treasure is a small iron box marked "Q" containing dice made of finger bones. Players can collect these, and roll them once, to add to any roll except a natural 1. The rolled dice then turns to dust. 

Had to restart a couple of times, due to space limitations, but made some adjustments that helped. I anticipate more changes in format as the project progresses. 

 

More RP's for the collection

 

A few new arrivals of early Ral Parthas -  Assassin, Vampire, and Mummy. 

The Assassin code is ES 13 and the date under the base should be 1976 but can't verify the last number because of a small gouge. 

The Vampire (Count Dracula) miniature code is ES 14 with a date of 1976.

The Mummy code is ES 20 from 1976. 

I have another assassin that is packed away some where, but havent been able to locate it for a few years, even though I've searched thru old boxes numerous times. It's hiding somewhere, but then that's what assassins are supposed to do. 

These minis have been primered and pre- shaded.

Realm of the Free King map / Rule sets arrived

I went in to Inkarnate and added to the main map for Realm of the Free King. It's not all complete, but I can update it as various projects progress. I don't do much in the way of hex crawls in conjunction with game play, but it's nice to have an overall visual of where things are. 

The plan is to run quick dungeons using the new rule sets I have, to see how they work out. Each one has mechanics that I like, so I anticipate ending up with at least a couple of rule sets that I will keep as the main framework and add or subtract features I glean from the others to make a compilation that works for my solo play. I think Mork Borg may be a standalone in consideration of the Calendar feature, but the other sets will need to cover low fantasy D&D, and some kind of Gothic Horror crawl for my Slayers set of minis. 

The last of the books I ordered arrived last week; Solo Game Master Guide and Index Card RPG Master Edition, along with a deck of index cards. After a quick browse it looks like both of these have some great resource material for solo play, and I'm interested in the ICRPG Ghost Mountain section as a good base for some Gothic/Desert gaming.