megadungeon

Gunderholfen – He died a hero’s death (session 22)

David Skelector Dragonbane, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Gunderholfen, jeux de rôles, megadungeon, OSR, Play reports, Roleplaying Game, RPG

Lightning struck a transfo nearby early in our session and we finished it at candlelight. Not bad for the vibe!

2 hrs session

Gunderholfen by G. Hawkins: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/265629/gunderholfen

Player Characters (PCs) – The Battle Brothers:

  • Aracyne, Elf Hunter, fearless Guild Leader, (Isaac)
  • Jedri, Ratman Thief, he rather enjoys his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
  • Grimoire, Goblin Mage, frail but smart (Isaac)
  • Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
  • Torch, Goblin Knight, not expendable anymore (Edmond)

What the other adventuring guilds are doing at the moment:

  • Green Imps: training in Longfelt
  • The Protectors: Resting in Longfelt, resurrection of Delevan succeed (convalescent)
  • Black Axes: somewhere in Ganfal swamp, lost?
  • The Musers: adventuring, left Longfelt but kept quiet on their objective
  • The Ravens: newly-arrived in town, reputation for being brutal veterans

This session’s main goal: Search the Great Cave, the lair of the defeated orcs

Level 4A

  • After a rest at their Level 4 outpost, the Battle Brothers are ready to pay a visit to the orcs and see if those have accepted their (harsh) terms. They get to the Great Cave without any problems and announce their presence to the orcs. The orcs still have guards in place but the PCs can see that half of them look like barely-trained teenagers.
  • The orc sub-chief arrives to meet them and anoiunces that the tribe accept the terms, paying a tribute of 100 gp immediately. He then proceeds, dejectedly, to show the adventurers around starting with the western part. The PCs look briefly at the food storing area and move on. They arrive at a living area where there’s some training of youngsters going on, not nearly a show of strength. Then they enter a larger living area where’s there some wounded warriors and some female tending to them. The next area has more female orcs and many kids, some crying, all very much terrified by the (bloodthirsty) adventurers.
  • They’re in a loop circuit that joins back the Great Cave from the North-East and have seeminlgy visited it all but then Aracyne asks to see where the dead chief lived. The sub-chied reluctantly brings them back to a living area with an open dormitory and points the chief’s place. There’s a rudimentary chest there and Aracyne opens it and takes the remaining gold (46gp) of the tribe. The orcs now destitute.
  • As his leader is busy stealing from the orcs, Jedri searches the area a bit more and finds a paler spot on the western wall and, pressing it, opens a secret door!
  • It leads to a brick corridor, the air is stale, there’s no sound of anything but they can see a strange statue at the limit of their vision. The PCs coerces the sub-chief into going first. Approaching, they see that this is representation of the Bat-Toad god Tsathoggua. It has topaz for eyes.
  • Just as they decide to ignore the temptation of the precious stones, the statue suddenly animates and sucker punches the orc sub-chief with a powerful backhanded slap, sending him sprawling several meters away.
  • The statue then stomps the ground mightily, sending several of the PCs to the ground as well. Jedri didn’t fell though and he attacks with his two weapons, his sword not doing any damage but his morningstar connecting with a good hit. Forka hasn’t time to attack before the statue slams its head into his face, wounding and dazing him. The dogman knight is disheartened but still manages to attack right after with a mighty blow of his 2-h hammer that does suitably impressive damage. Grimoire then does his part with a very successful (crit) Mental Strike that slams the statue onto the back wall, pieces of it flying all over the place. It still stands though but Jedri the ratman finishes the job with another well-placed morningstar blow.
  • Aracyne picks up the topaz from the broken statue. He then sends back the wounded orc sub-chiefs but asks for another orc to accompany them and the orcs reluctantly sends another.
  • They continue their exploration of the secret area, going west and north, with a slope further north. The new orc, the first in line, suddenly stop and makes an odd gurgling sound. He’s got a spear through his throat, from a trap, and he’s very dead. Congratulating themselves for having put cannon fodder in front of them, the PCs get back to grab another orc for the task, much to the dismay of his fellow tribesmen. « Don’t be sad, he died a hero’s death » says Aracyne to the wide-eyed orcs.
  • The adventurers resume exploration and get past the « heroic » dead orc still on his spear and get into a room with a large stone sarcophagus flanked by two (smaller) statues of Tsathogga. Forka immediately smashes one statue with his large hammer, and the other. They then order the orc to open the sarcophagus but he only manages to move the slab a few inches. Forka helps him and the two together succeed in movind the slab aside. There’s a human skeleton inside, wearing a black chainmail visible through his tattered robes and holding a scepter (of Tsathogga) made of copper and ivory. The adventurers orders the orc to take everything, which he does (with some efforts to take off the chainmail from the corpse). They also take the 4 emeralds that served as the statues’ eyes. Nothing bad happens.
  • Having finished over there, the PCs go south until they reach an impasse. Close inspection reveals another secret door, it leads very close to the stairs going up to Level 3. Aracyne ponders the irony of having a way to attack the orcs so much easier and so near all this time…
  • They get back to the orcs for one final speech by Aracyne: « thank you for your cooperation, thank you for the gold, much appreciated, sad for the dead guy *snickers*, necessary sacrifice and all that… See you soon. Yes… Rest assured, we’ll come back! » *silence (except for crying babies) and horrified glares*
  • Leaving the Great Cave behind, the party still in good shape, Aracyne decides that now’s the time to eliminate another annoying threat in the vicinity: the Giant Cave Lizards nearby. They walk in their lair and sure enough, there’s three of the beasts, one with visible wounds on it. Grimoire is first to do violence, he hurls 3 fireballs at the wounded lizard, wounding him further. Jedri finishes it. Aracyne shoots another with his bow. Forka hits this one too. They’re tough cookies though, they don’t go down easy. One try to bite Forka but don’t get part the armor. The other one charges Jedri but the latter evades and then achieves a killing blow. Two good arrows from Aracyne soften the surviving one. It’s killed soon after. The adventurers search through the bones and excrements afterward and get a surprisingly good haul (gold chalice and gold pieces) for their troubles.
  • The Battle Brothers decide that they should go back to Longfelt. They talk briefly with two ogres fetching water on Level 3, telling them a bit of their recent successes . They make a quick stop at the gnomes’ shop on Level 1 and buy a few consumables, and then leave the dungeon.
  • Trip through Ganfal swamp goes well even if the place seems more menacing by the day.
  • They buy some food to farmers near town.
  • Back in longfelt they go enquire to the Protectors, Bayard’s guild, and find out that Delevan has survived the ritual of resurrection. They also learn that there’s a new adventuring guild in town, the Ravens. Not rookies at all. Experienced and a ruthless bunch if the rumors are true.
  • They sell the Tsathogga scepter to Calmund, a rich collector in town, for 40gp.
  • Forka asks around for maybe the eighth time if there was any magic helm to be bought in town (to go with his excellent new magic chainmail). There was none. But there was a possibility of doing a mission in town, in a wizard’s tower, where something went awry, and gain such an item in the process…

Closing Comments:

  • Very profitable session for the BBs this time, reaping the benefits of having defeated the orcs.
  • Yes, turns out this a game with orc babies, and orcs with emotions. But also, orcs that would have been ruthlesse themselves if the situation have been the other way around. I found my son’s speech to the orcs funny as hell.
  • Level 4A is the more thorouhly explored level of the dungeon to date.
  • The new adventuring guild in town means trouble, I made it obvious, and Edmond wants to fight them as soon they meet them in the dungeon.

Dungeon ecology, gigaxian naturalism is just the beginning

David Skelector Delicious in Dungeon, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, gygaxian naturalism, jeux de rôles, megadungeon, musings, Roleplaying Game, RPG, world-building

That’s a fancy title innit? Gigaxian naturalism refers to a concept developed into this article by James M at Grognardia, something of a fundamental OSR blog post in my opinion. It has to do with the idea that D&D founder Gary Gigax was getting out of his way to include such mundane, unglamorous things like latrines, food storing, detritus piles and also, more generally, the idea that monsters weren’t only waiting for adventurers to come by (and that they had babies) and so on in his dungeon-crafting and world-building methodology, and for the explicit purpose to get closer to some kind of realism in his game.

Now, I’m writing this mostly as a thought experiment & for the fun of it, I wouldn’t myself feel the need to implement most of this in my game. But the experiment is to try to add some biological/ecological layers on top of standard gigaxian naturalism and see how it could possibly be used for an elf game, specifically in a megadungeon environement.

Food Web

Do monsters need to eat? In this approach they do.

Life is all about energy and energy transfer. Autotrophs manage to get energy more or less autonomously, transforming light or chemicals around them for their needs. Decomposers and scavengers eat dead stuff. Heterotrophs eat other creatures and unless, it’s at the top of the food chain, a creature in the dungeon is probably prey to something else.

(Right to Left)- I’d be remiss not to include Dungeon Meshi from Ryoko Kui, the most potent work of dungeon ecology I know of.

If we’re a bit serious about it, it would seem important to determine what’s the trophic base of the dungeon or in other words, what are the first things (that produces energy) to get eaten. A classic I’ve seen in many rpgs is some form of mushrooms. Which is fine, it’s a classic for a reason even if I once argued that it’s a bit unnecessary to have mushroom and mushroom-creatures limited only to the underdark in D&D. The truth is that a dungeon-environment would be a rather poor ecosystem. However, we’re doing fantasy over here and let’s handwave some of the real world in order to create something new.

One could imagine carpets of bioluminescent microorganisms « grazed » by small oozes that are in turn eaten (siphoned?) by stirges, that are eaten by fire bats, that are killed by harpies because they compete for the same ecological niche…

Stable or Disturbed Ecosystem

Most probably, the player characters will first enter a (mega) dungeon and find it as a somewhat stable ecosystem wherein groups of non-sentient creatures as well as factions of sentient ones have more or less defined territories for themselves. These territories can vary, overlap – there can be encroachment or raiding across certainly, but there’s still some kind of equilibrium in place.

There can even be some active agents or driving force that ensure that this equilibrium stays in place. A good example is the sun-scarred knights in Richard Barton’s Arden Vul, a neutral faction that has ambassadors in other factions and (seemingly) strive to keep the balance.

So, stable ecosystem at first but…

Player Characters acting as a Wildfire

PCs are not part of this dungeon ecosystem – they intrude, they bring chaos, they lit the powderkeg or, in keeping with the natural theme, they’re like wildfire. After them, or with enough delves anyway, it’s tabula rasa. But nature abhors vacuum, aka. the Game Master re stock the dungeon. Not with the same creatures that just got obliterated obviously. With something opportunistic that benefits from the demise of the previous inhabitants.

More half-baked ideas:

  • Manatrophs, the trophic base thrives on magic that suffuses the dungeon. Anti-magic zones, devoid of magic, would also be mostly devoid of life: dead zones.
  • Ruderal Species: or pioneer species, what are the most likely creatures to find a dungeon that is empty for some reason?Probably goblins, easy choice. And like real-world ruderal species, they’ll have a hard time once more dominant species come along.
  • Dungeon as a vivarium. A twist on « the wizard did it » trope. The dungeon is not the place where the archmage experiment his magic, it is the experiment.
  • Monsters that goes through metamorphosis. What if an ankheg had a larva phase? Or IS the larva?

Gunderholfen – Counter-Attack! (session 21)

David Skelector Dragonbane, Dungeons and Dragons, Gunderholfen, jeux de rôles, megadungeon, OSR, Play reports, Roleplaying Game, RPG

Another short session, much like the last one, with some planning at the beginning and then one big fight happening.

1h30

Gunderholfen by G. Hawkins: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/265629/gunderholfen

Player Characters (PCs) – The Battle Brothers:

  • Aracyne, Elf Hunter, fearless Guild Leader, (Isaac)
  • Jedri, Ratman Thief, he likes his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
  • Grimoire, Goblin Mage, frail but smart (Isaac)
  • Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
  • Torch, Goblin Knight, not expendable anymore (Edmond)

This session’s main goal: Invade the Dark Creepers’ village

What the other adventuring guilds are doing at the moment:

  • Green Imps: training in Longfelt
  • The Protectors: adventuring in Gunderholfen, joined the Battle Brothers at Level 4’s outpost
  • Black Axes: adventuring, try to find a lost tower in Ganfal swamp
  • The Musers: adventuring, left Longfelt but kept quiet on their objective

Level 4a

  • The Battle Brothers and the Protectors take a meal and talk together at their shared outpost. They evaluate the benefits and risks of adventuring jointly (1) and decide not to do it this time.
  • Aracyne examines his maps and hesitates on what his guild should do next, finally leaning on fighting the Dark Creepers. But before they’re ready to depart MAYHEM suddenly erupts on the outpost: the Orcs (around two dozens) are attacking!
  • Making short work of the main doors with a makeshift battering ram, the Orcs get inside! The adventurers, the two guilds together, with no way to escape, will have to fight for their lives.
  • The adventurers are outnumbered but at least won’t be outflanked in the corridors and they quickly get in position to fend off the attackers. Forka and Bayard, both heavily armored, will be frontline. Torch will be behind Bayard and will attack with his spear, Grimoire will cast spells from between the legs of Forka or something like that.
  • Orc archers (and one crossbowman) shoot at their enemies to start the fight, Forka is wounded by a well-aimed (crit) arrow. Grimoire does a Mental Strike on the crossbow-wielder, hurting and making him fly backward several meters away to crash into his fellow Orcs.
  • But then warriors with falchions or spears swarm inside and get into melee. One orc goes down almost immediately after getting hit by a spear thrust from Torch and a mace blow from Bayard.
  • A moment later, Aracyne, with fellow hunter Adalbert and Delevan the mage, attack from a side-corridor, with 10′ open pit-trap, half-filled with refuses, between them and the Orcs. Letting go of arrows and fireballs, the trio inflicts much pain (two more kills in this second round) on their opponents.
  • But things on the main corridor gets a little hairy as Forka is severely wounded by two consecutive blows. The Dogman manages to kill the Orc in front of him and then he retreats behind the fighting line while Jedri quickly takes his place. Efram, the other Protectors’ mage, begins to heal Forka. (Both Jedri and Efram were put in reserve but were quickly put to good use)
  • Grimoire hurls two fireballs and kills one Orc. Jedri Taunts an Orc into attacking him and then swiftly kills him with his two-weapons attack. Just as things start looking good on this side, the Orc Chieftain jumps over the pit-trap and badly hurt Aracyne (who failed to evade) with a big swing of his bardiche. The two Orcs following him are a bit short on their jumps though and sink thigh-deep into the pit-trap’s refuses and will lose some time getting out. The Orc Chieftain is on the receiving end of several arrows and fireballs but is still in fighting shape.
  • Orc archers support their leader from the entrance and one arrow grievously wounds Delevan the mage and he’s down.
  • Jedri and Bayard kill two more Orcs and Forka, fully healed now from Efram’s efforts, charges between them, killing another one. The few remaining Orcs on this side have had enough (failed morale check) and flee!
  • The Orc Chieftain swings his bardiche… at the proned mage on the ground and finishes him! The killer doesn’t enjoy this success very long though and Adalbert, the mage’s companion, slays him with another arrow. Following this the Orc archers turn tail also and the Orcs that just got out of the pit-trap surrender as they’re now surrounded.
  • This is Victory!
  • The Protectors gather around their fallen comrade and will leave the dungeon soon to bring him back in town and pay for resurrection.
  • Aracyne deals with the two Orc prisoners and tell them his conditions for peace to convey to the surviving sub-chief back at their lair: a tribute of gold and also, free passage inside their territory.

Closing comments:

  • The (randomized) arrival of the Protectors was really fortuitous to save the PCs from the Orcs’ counter-attack I must say. And the NPCs were the ones to pay the price!
  • After the recent events, I had created a quick random table for how the Orcs would be reacting to the PCs multi-sessions aggression. The roll resulted in a counter-attack (instead of leaving the area or being defensive), a further roll told me when it would occur, a good process I think. That’s nothing extraordinary, I know, but I’m still learning how do to this properly.
  • (1) Adventuring with more than 6 characters (6 being the arbitrary number from the Wizardry crpg that I’m taking for my own use) doubles the dice of random encounters, with two 6 rolled meaning a dangerous special encounter. This is due to a larger group being less discreet but also, somewhat abstractly, to the disturbance created by too many adventurers together in the dungeon and it (or its master) reacting to this in some way.

A glimpse of Tower Dungeon 3

David Skelector Books, manga, megadungeon

Not included in my « glimpse »: Book 2 ended with a great cliffhanger, cruel in every possible way, and Book 3 starts with an awesome scene resolving it. Really gruesome stuff, very dark I’ll say without going into spoiler territory. I love it.

Book 1

Book 2

After their ordeal they’re back in the spiral stairway.
There’s people coming the other way. But sometimes people can be worse than monsters, are they dangerous?
Turns out they’re not.
They’re all the way up to Level 59, but now there’s this little problem.
Indeed.
An echo? There’s a vast area ahead.
Looks like a Boss Level…
This winged insect-like monster is this world’s version of a Basilisk. Has the same turn-to-stone gaze as usual and has very good protection with its carapace. Nice monster design.

That’s it for today.

There’s five books published (and translated) to date. It’s an awesome dungeon-exploration manga, I really like it.

A glimpse of Tower Dungeon 2

David Skelector Books, Fantasy, manga, megadungeon

Book 1

Just a glimpse, as advertised and focusing on the dungeon.

The trio of adventurers have to go up all the way to Level 100 of the Dragon Tower, which by the way is still very low on this oversized megadungeon.

They found a way to Level 15 but it’s blocked by two of these dangerous guardians, better seek another way.
Navigating this confusing Level isn’t easy.
But with careful mapping…
That didn’t worked that well.
Fortunately, diplomacy can go a long way with some of the Tower’s denizens.
And with their help they get to a spiral staircase that go all the way to Level 80! That’s a massive find!
But it’s never that easy in dungeon exploration…

Book 3

My son’s dungeon, Dungeon of Kargen part II

David Skelector aventures d'Edmond, Dungeons and Dragons, Homebrew, jeux de rôles, megadungeon, Roleplaying Game, RPG

I gladly accept that the most interesting thing I can put on this blog is being made by my son, so here’s another chunk of what is transpiring within Edmond’s own megadungeon:

Part 1 here.

  • The adventurers (solo played by Isaac as usual) explore a bit more the City of the Imps, fight some Living Armors. They get inside a sumptuous room and fight Greater Imps and kill the King of the Imps who was getting annoyed of all the killing & stealing & stuff made all over his domain. The new king of the imps is more reasonable, this is what regime change is all about, and accept a truce with the adventurers.
  • They go back in the Maze, find several libraries (the Minotaur is an avid reader?), they find a secret door and fight the Minotaur again. This time they manage to kill him, except that they he’s not really dead and changes into an upgraded version, again they kill him and again he gets back but the third time’s a charm – the Minotaur is finally vanquished! The adventurers liberate some prisoners, recruit some of them and loot the place.
  • They explore more of the Mixtature. They flee after a round or two when they encounter an (non-trademarked) Evil Eye and find out that they’re obviously overmatched. In another section they find a golden sarcophagi, opening it they find a set of stairs going down and down…
  • Level 2 has Trolls and Slimy Skeletons as wandering monsters, mostly.
  • They are in the Crystal Grottoes, natural caves with large areas that are flooded. They dive into an underwater passage and get into a cave with several chests filled with gold, and with the walls adorned with valuable crystals. They take everything they can and get into another area with a locked chest that they couldn’t open but they do find a crystal armor. After that they get in front of a large door, locked but there’s instructions nearby explaining how to craft the key (!), which they manage to do, and thus gain access to a new area.
  • While exploring they stumble into a lever that opens up a trapdoor, leading into secret passage and eventually, into a large room that has a desert environment (sand and cactus included) and get into a fight against poisonous snakes. Several characters get poisoned during the fight but fortunately they soon find an antidote when they search a corpse in the room. There’s also an arch, six pillars and six bowls which are there to receive offerings. Through trial and error they discover that placing 6 identical tokens, repeated for the six bowls, opens a magic portal inside the arch.
  • They walk through the portal and get into a new area but they also find out that the portal is one way into Level 3!
  • They arrive at an intersection with four passages, they get into one and find a room with a bassin & fountain with coins into it. Throwing a coin gives healing.
  • Just as good as they get into a big fight against 10 trolls, including a chieftain, but the adventurers are victorious.
  • Another intersection, signs indicate: Firengulph, Agony, Suffer in Suffering. Nothing quite tempting in all that and they finally choose the Suffer in Suffering direction.
  • Apparently this section is full of traps and indeed, there’s really a lot of suffering involved… Notwithstanding all the pain, the adventurers make progess and after more exploration they find another portal room, with a similar arch but this one with only two bowls. One is engraved with a dragon and the other with a knight. They don’t find the solution at the moment so they continue to explore.
  • There’s more flooded areas in this section. They evade a fight against a Crystal Octopus.
  • And then they find a Potion Shop (the enterprising owners have put ads all over the dungeon I’m told, often giving tips (not always accurate) on monsters as a marketing ploy!)!
  • After that, inside another room, they find some scrolls that offer some explanations on the magic portal. One has to offer something associated with good in one bowl and evil into the other. With that knowledge they go back to the portal and open it.
  • This get them back into Level 2, into a new area, but they soon find their way to known territory and get back to town. A few more characters are hired to replace some that are dismissed for their lack of competence (adventuring is a fiercely competitive world!). One newly-hired, Roger, is a skilled craftsman, that will come into play very soon.
  • They go back into Level 2. They find an area that is essentially a dormitory (for whom?). Later on they find a guy who’s doing an ad for the aforementionned Potion Shop and he recruits the adventurers for the ad, earning them one healing potion.
  • They flee from a big fight with many Living Armors and a Colossal Living Armor. Not much later they find a weapon that does great work against these foes.
  • Exploring a new area they fall into a pit trap. Directly into lava. They’re all dead…
  • Unless… No! It was only water with the appearance of lava! There’s an extensive underwater system accessible from this pit trap.
  • The adventurers get back in town and come back to this place with enough materials to craft… a submarine!
a 200 hit points submarine upgraded with a ballista
  • There’s a whole new world down there in the water and they even find an impressive Submerged Castle and surrounding village.

TBC…

Gunderholfen – Repelled by the orcs, again (session 20)

David Skelector Dragonbane, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Gunderholfen, jeux de rôles, megadungeon, OSR, Play reports, Roleplaying Game, RPG

Short session with one big fight taking a big chunk of it. Very dangerous situation that they got themselves into and the PCs had to flee again.

1h30

Gunderholfen by G. Hawkins: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/265629/gunderholfen

Player Characters (PCs) – The Battle Brothers:

  • Aracyne, Elf Hunter, fearless Guild Leader, (Isaac)
  • Jedri, Ratman Thief, he likes his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
  • Grimoire, Goblin Mage, frail but smart (Isaac)
  • Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
  • Torch, Goblin Knight, not expendable anymore (Edmond)

This session’s main goal: finish the orcs

What the other adventuring guilds are doing at the moment:

  • Green Imps: training in Longfelt
  • The Protectors: adventuring, left Longfelt for Gunderholfen
  • Black Axes: adventuring, try to find a tower in Ganfal swamp
  • The Musers: adventuring, left Longfelt but kept quiet on their objective

Gunderholfen – Level 4A – Great Altar Cave

  • The Battle Brothers have just killed the 10 orc archers that were guarding the entrance of the Great Altar Cave but now they hear many more orcs coming from around the corner to the north west. Two orcs with heavy crossbows come first, one shooting at Forka but the crossbow bolt bounces off his armor, and the other misses Torch. Two other crossbowmen run across the nearby rope-bridge in order to have a good shooting angle.
  • Aracyne makes a risky leap to the eastern cliff and manages to climb up to get atop the promontory. He quickly takes his bow and kill one crossbowman with two arrows (twin shot). The other plunges to his death after Grimoire attacks him with a Mental Strike (telekinetic push).
  • But more orcs move to attack the outnumbered adventurers, five brandishing falchions and five with spears attacking from behind, all wearing chainmail. Forka attacked one with his two-hands hammer, killing him with a massive blow but then the spearmen jab him several times and wound him badly. Jedri jumps into action with sword and light flail and kill an orc with two well-aimed blows.
  • Fearing for his life, Forka shove the falchion-wielding orc in front of him, sending him crashing into the back rank, and he gets out of his near-encirclement. Torch takes care to guard Forka’s flank and stab an orc with his spear, hurting him lightly. Jedri manages to dodge several attacks coming his way.
  • Aracyne does an headshot (crit) to an orc spearman, killing him instantly. A crossbowman aims at the goblin mage and hits him, inflicting a severe wound (1 hp remaining!), the other aims at Aracyne but the elf manages to dodge the incoming bolt. Forka kills another falchion-wielder. Grimoire avenges himself with another Mental Strike, pushing the two crossbowmen off the promontory to their deaths.
  • The adventurers have now the upper hand as they manage to kill several other orcs but they can hear yet more orcs coming from the same direction and only Aracyne is unscathed among them. Torch is okayish but Grimoire and Forka are both severely wounded, Jedri only lightly but is exhausted (no more willpower pts, can’t fuel his heroic abilities anymore). Grimoire does a Levitate on Torch to bring him on his side of the cave, at the entrance beyond the cliff. Forka and Jedri jump over there. A bigger group of orcs is now in sight with its bardiche-armed chieftain in the middle. Several orcs throw spears at the retreating adventurers but none hit their targets.
  • The Battle Brothers run to the west to go directly at their outpost. The orcs have no way to follow quickly and press their advantage.
  • En route, Jedri is attacked by a Giant Cave Lizard coming from the south but he slays it efficiently with his two weapons.
  • They reach their outpost and barricade themselves so they can rest safely. Not long after, they can hear some orcs looking for them close by, probably checking. the stairs to Level 3. The orcs still doesn’t seem to know that the PCs have taken over the Ogres’ den (and aren’t eager to inspect the place as they had been enemies).
  • Five hours later they hear a knock on the door, its Bayard’s guild, the Protectors! Aracyne asks if the allied guild would be so kind as to offer healing and Bayard answers that it wouldn’t be free: how about 80 gp, the amount that Aracyne once asked to the at the moment hard-pressed Protectors? No deal. But still, the allies are glad to see each other.

Closing Comments:

  • The PCs had decimated the orc archers with ease the previous session but now it was a very, very close fight, with character death looming just a step away. Aracyne and Grimoire were very efficient with arrows and telekinetic pushes respectively but the three melee fighters were in a perilous situation. Good armor and good evade ability have its limits when against 3:1 numerical superiority with a back rank able to reach.
  • The orcs have once again repelled the adventurers but it’s clearly a pyrrhic victory for them, having lost 21 warriors between the two sessions and 6 more if we count the first assault. They still have a decent fighting force but they’ve been weakened for sure, probably enough to warrant a change on how they defend their territory.

Next session

A glimpse of Tower Dungeon (manga)

David Skelector Fantasy, manga, megadungeon

I briefly mentionned Blade & Bastard in an earlier post and if you’ve been reading my blog a bit you know I’m a big fan of Ryoko Kui’s Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon). Tower Dungeon by Tsutomu Nihei (author of Blame!) would be another one in this rare breed of manga that goes DEEP in the dungeon aspect of fantasy.

Or maybe I should say HIGH, ’cause y’know, it’s a TOWER DUNGEON…

Brought forth from the Heavens by the Big Bad Evil. It’s so colossal that I think oxygen-deprivation should legit be a problem.
The way to access it is via the old decrepit mountain fortress that is conveniently close to its base.
The Tower, Dragon Tower to be more precise, appeared very recently. A makeshift bridge is all there is. Watch you step.
The interior is a proper labyrinth, with nice verticality.
You can bypass some Levels by climbing these rickety stairs outside, which obviously entails its own risk.
The structural integrity of this 18km high, 3 km wide Uber Tower, is far from perfect.
As for its denizens… They’re a close-knit bunch, a bit exclusive of outsiders one might say.
And have seen better days themselves.
What is he saying? Some kind of warning?

I should add that Tower Dungeon is kind of the opposite of something like Blade & Bastard (or most fantasy stuff really) that follows a set of fantasy conventions to a fault. Most things in Tower Dungeon are unique to this original setting as far as I can tell.

Highly recommended!

Gunderholfen – Bad Neighbors (session 19)

David Skelector Dragonbane, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Gunderholfen, jeux de rôles, megadungeon, OSR, Play reports, Roleplaying Game, RPG

Edmond had this idea of acquiring some sort of ballista on wheels and I had to explain the impracticality of it inside a dungeon environment sadly. Could have said yes and he wouldn’t have get past the chasm and rope bridge of Level 1 and crushed his dreams that way…

Short session: 2 hours.

Gunderholfen by G. Hawkins: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/265629/gunderholfen

Player Characters (PCs) – The Battle Brothers:

  • Aracyne, Elf Hunter, fearless Guild Leader, (Isaac)
  • Jedri, Ratman Thief, he likes his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
  • Grimoire, Goblin Mage, frail but smart (Isaac)
  • Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
  • Torch, Goblin Knight, not expendable anymore (Edmond)

This session’s main goal: kill the orcs’ first line of defense

What the other adventuring guilds are doing at the moment:

  • Green Imps: training in Longfelt
  • The Protectors: exploring Longfelt’s underworks
  • Black Axes: adventuring, try to find a tower in Ganfal swamp
  • The Musers: left Longfelt but kept quiet on their objective

Longfelt

  • The Battle Brothers stay the night at the Hare & Hound Inn. They buy some field rations. Jedri pays to repair his morningstar. Torch would like to buy an oversized crossbow but finds it too expensive. Forca pays some rounds in taverns and listens to rumors: « The Wizard Balfour’s tower is rumoured to hold great treasure. » And: « A group of bandits is operating out of Prickly’s End Forest. They have so far been able to evade the Baron’s forces. Their leader, Uthbarth the Pike, is wanted, dead or alive. »

Ganfal Swamp

  • On their way to Gunderholfen they encounter a group of four hostile Ogres and have to fight them. Forca got hit by a powerful blow and barely stands on his feet but Grimoire heals him back to health after the fight. They find suspicious meat, foul-smelling tobacco, smoking pipes and a few coins but not much else.
  • Closer to the dungeon they spot some broken statues of hobgoblins in awkward poses. The elf hunter can see oversized chicken feet tracks all around. The « statues » are the work of a Basilisk it seems, but fortunately it’s nowhere in sight.

Gunderholfen

  • They make a stop at Fryniwyd’s new shop. They chat a little and buy a vial of paralytic poison extracted very recently from a local cave scorpion.
  • They go down via their usual shortcuts, have reached Level 3 and only have a few rooms to go to the stairs leading to Level 4 but… they can see that the series of doors leading south are all open! That means… Yes, there it is, you can see it, can you? The floating sword! The Gelatinous Cube is upon us! Torch the goblin reacts quickly and burns it with his torch and it seems that fire work amazingly well against it. The Cube counters on Torch, firing a big ball of corrosive slime but most of it didn’t touch the goblin (minimum damage). Forka is reluctant to get close to it, Aracyne let go of two arrows, doing very good damage. Grimoire channels maximum mana into a spell to send 3 Fireballs at once into the Gelatinous Cube and slays the big slime monster! The freed sword clanks on the ground. Jedri takes it, remove the scabard and everyone can see a dim purple light emanating from the blade. There’s writing on it, its name is Perseverance.
  • This done, they go directly to their Level 4 outpost. It hasn’t been disturbed in their absence apparently. They add another barrel of dry meat to their emergency food stash.
  • Thence, they go south and east to reach the great cave inhabited by the orcs. Exactly as the previous time there’s 10 orc archers, 5 sentries on each side of the cave entrance, on higher grounds than the invaders. The orcs act first and fire a volley, no questions asked, inflicting a few wounds on the adventurers but nothing too bad. Grimoire casts Levitate on Forka who lands on the western promontory and immediately kill an archer with a massive hammer blow. Aracyne kill two orcs with arrows. Torch wounds another with a thrown spear, finished by a thrown dagger from Jedri. Now five against six, the adventurers continue the onslaught as Jedri joins Forka with another Levitate, and kills an orc with his new magic sword. Aracyne kills another orc but then his bow almost breaks in two and is damaged. Grimoire the goblin mage is the target of a deadly arrow but he is saved by his fellow goblin companion who takes the hit instead on his armored self, with lesser consequences. The adventurers have the upper hand and finish off the orc archers who chose to fight to their bitter but swift end, their calls for reinforcement not yet answered.
  • The PCs can hear a lot of commotion from further north and west. The orcs are far from defeated.
  • TBC…

Closing comments:

  • The past few years I’ve slowly learned to embrace random tables as a Dungeon Master, having « learned » my trade (if we can say that) in the 90s when it wasn’t a popular thing to do at all. Random encounters are simple enough to use or design, and a staple of dungeon-delving and understandably a main component of OSR gaming. But I’m still trying to improve my homebrewed random tables, specifically for the other adventuring parties’ actions. I could easily decide by myself what they’re up to but that’s not the point. Impartiality is the point. Emergent story is even more the point I should say. Anyway, a work in progress it definitely is.
  • For the Gelatinous Cube I’ve used the statblock of the Giant Amoeba from the DB Bestiary, simply added a camouflage ability. It’s a pretty powerful monster in fact with 64 hp and ferocity 2, but takes double damage from fire, which fortunately the players exploited almost immediately.
  • Isaac had the idea of hiring mining folks to dig a tunnel to reach the orcs from a less unfavorable direction, but he changed his mind after I said it would take at least 10 days of digging, maybe a month, with something like 6 gp per day to pay the crew in salary and food. So it had to be a frontal assault instead. Their characters are better equipped and stronger than last time but the orcs are a lot more numerous than the players suspect.

Next session

Gunderholfen – City of the Dead Dwarves (session 18)

David Skelector Dragonbane, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Gunderholfen, jeux de rôles, megadungeon, OSR, Play reports, Roleplaying Game, RPG

Our family just did a no-screens weekend as a kind of mental detox. No computer, no tv, no cellphone, no nothing. And it went so well that the kids would do it again every other weekend!

And guess what doesn’t need any screen? You got it.

3 hours session

Gunderholfen by G. Hawkins: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/265629/gunderholfen

Player Characters (PCs) – The Battle Brothers:

  • Aracyne, Elf Hunter, fearless Guild Leader, (Isaac)
  • Jedri, Ratman Thief, he likes his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
  • Grimoire, Goblin Mage, frail but smart (Isaac)
  • Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
  • Torch, Goblin Knight, not expendable anymore (Edmond)

This session’s main goal: exploring more than half of the « dwarven city »

What the other adventuring guilds are doing at the moment:

  • Green Imps: adventuring but not in Gunderholfen
  • The Protectors: resting/recuperating in Longfelt, Bodil is concussed, Bodil and Efram have infected wounds
  • Black Axes: adventuring in Gunderholfen, Level 2 and 3
  • The Musers: leisure in Longfelt

Level 4A outpost

  • The Battle Brother did not leave the dungeon last time but rather, they’d rested in their Level 4A’s outpost and did so without any disturbance. Rejuvenated they went back directly to the cavern of the flaming bats, the two surviving ones were in no mood to fight.

Level 4B

  • From there a passage leads to a cave with an obelisk in the middle with writings in dwarvish. Nobody can read it but Forka knows (myth & lore check) that this must the entrance to Nharzed, the City of the Masons, a place renowned for its craftsmanship before the War of the Long-Lived.
  • A slight breeze is coming from the south, bringing an awful stench of death to the adventurers’ nostrils.
  • There’s a set of large steps leading up and a high crenated wall a bit further with a broad entrance from which mist furtively enters.
  • The PCs start to climb the steps but then a stocky humanoid gets out of the shadows, a dwarf but with dead flesh crawling with maggots: a Plague Zombie. Its stench is overhwelming and its presence is frightful to behold. Forka cannot will himself to attack it. Aracyne shoots two arrows, hitting the undead square in the chest but with no great effect. Grimoire pushes it with a Mental Strike, sending it tumbling violently backward almost thirty feet. But the undead gets up, and it is fast, and dashes toward the nearest adventurers and get into melee against Forka and Jedri, who both manage not to flee. A Fireball from Grimoire finally seems to do some real damage to the monster. Forka has a hard time with the awful stench that is even worst for his acute sense of smell and he gets wounded by a claw attack. One more Fireball from the goblin mage and then Jedri gets wounded but counters with a mighty hit (crit) to the dead dwarf’s head with his morningstar, splitting its skull open, slaying it to everyone’s relief.
  • Grimoire casts Treat Wound on Forka and Jedri and after that the party enters the City proper:

« Crumbling buildings from a forgotten age and cracked, worned streets stretch away through dim, gloomy mists.The cavern walls soar upwards out of sight, the space ahead vast and foreboding. Fallen walls, piles of rubble and shattered stone line the streets, the air heavy with the stench of fear. »

  • The PCs are exploring the nearest buildings and attract the attention of a group of ten skeletons. Forka, Jedri and Torch gets into melee, trying not to be surrounded, and get to work. They slay the skeletons without too much troubles, Jedri needs healing from Grimoire again but Forka and Torch only have a few scratches.
  • They continue exploring, see another group of undead east through crumbled walls and decide instead to go west and south. They enter an empty building and go to the next but are welcomed again by undead, this time eight Living Dead. At one point in the fight, Forka was forced on the ground and threatened by several hungry Living Dead but his companions helped him back up and the undead were defeated. They find a golden locket and silver lyre among the rubble inside the building.
  • They go east and get near some kind of temple but Forka can tell that the smell of death is even more awful in this place and they decide to go elsewhere.
  • Thence they go directly to a kind of central plaza with large standing stones that they can see further south and east. When they arrive there though all hell break loose as a pack of skeletal animals, 6 ghouls and 6 civic officer-garbed undead get out of several nearby buildings, mostly from the south, and all converge on the PCs. The latter choose to make a tactical retreat and run back to the building they’ve just cleared in order to benefit from the protection of mostly intact walls. Aracyne quickly perch himself up on top of a wall as the building is roofless, and start to rain arrows at the ghouls, wounding two severely, making those flee. Forca and Jedri block the entrance and fight the skeletal animals, with Torch using his spear to attack from behind. Aracyne shoot another ghoul, hurting it badly, and now the ghouls collectively have enough of the whole getting shot at thing (failed morale check) and all flee. The three fighters finish off the swarm of skeletal animals and get into melee against the « civic officers » undead but those don’t prove to be that fearsome and the adventurers have the upper hand ultimately. The fight finished, Grimoire heal the wounded.
  • The PCs decide to clear the northern area of the undead they saw earlier and soon get into a fight against ten more skeletons. Aracyne put his bow aside as it’s not that useful against skeletons, and get to work with his short sword alongside his companions. Grimoire, who was staying back, spots three ghouls (some of the group they saw earlier) that were trying to sneak up on them. He incinerates a ghoul with a big fireball and burns another with a smaller one. The two remaining ghouls flee again. Meanwhile the fight against the skeletons is under control, the adventurers got a few painfuls stabs here and there but they managed to win again.
  • Grimoire uses his last reserve of mana to heal the wounds. All of the adventurers are quite exhausted by the successive fights by now (depleted willpower points) and Aracyne, the guild leader, call it a day. The Battle Brother leave Nharzed behind, and go up, by their usual method of shortcuts, all the way to Level 1 where they make a short stop to talk the newly-installed gnome merchant Frinywid – who tells them that he saw another party of adventurers a bit earlier, the Black Axes. He wasn’t sure if they were going to rob him or worse at the time as they look like a bad batch he says, but they didn’t. They’re probably somewhere in Level 2 by now.
  • The Battle Brothers leave Gunderholfen, the trip through the Ganfal Swamp is fortunately uneventful and they reach Longfelt before the end of the day.

Closing comments:

  • Nothing happening while they rested at their Level 4 outpost between sessions. Rolled at random of course. There’s a countdown going on though (random too, but chances are increasingly higher the more time goes on), as the orcs will understand sooner or later that the ogres aren’t there anymore and they’ll want to look into their former den. The orcs, or maybe someone or something else will.
  • Several big fights in this session, there’s no xp for combat so I’m not sure that it really served the purpose of the players (apart from having fun) not to try evade them. They can certainly be systematic about it and clear one area after another but this will take a lot of time.
  • Level 4B, Nharzed, is a cool place, spooky and all. There is several special locations in the area but the players didn’t explore any of them this time, instead they explored one building after another full of rubbles. I think a random table of stuff to find in abandonned buildings or things happening or whatnot, would be great to make the area even more interesting. I may do just that for the next time they go there, we’ll see.
  • Crossing the Ganfal swamp in their depleted state was a bit risky, another big fight like last time could have doomed them.

Next session