A word of warning to my players, this post will reveal the first dungeon of our next campaign.
First up, a big hello to Grognards and other readers coming from the Old School side to check things out. I may talk about D&D 4e a lot, but I do love dungeons a lot!
All right, ready for another installment of my campaign prep for my D&D 4e Megadungeon campaign?
While Yan was busy populating the City Within with factions and organizations, I traveled the Web for ideas and tools to create dungeon maps to actually have places in the Primal Dungeon to adventure in.
Campaign name aside: I’ve been calling it the Primal Within campaign, combining The Primal Dungeon with City Within, I kinda like it. What do you think?
I wasn’t looking for software mapping tools, because the barrier to entry are high (learning the software and possibly pay for it if it’s not Open Source). Furthermore, all the options of such software distract me from actually designing. What’s worse, when the software does not do something that I want, I obsess about it for hours and stay stuck .
No, really, nothing beats a sheet of paper and a sharpened pencil…
That is, until I found out about the work that Chgowiz , Sham and Amitiville Mike did to develop a dungeon design tool.
The One-Page Dungeon Template
It started in a discussion back in 2007 about making Megadungeons. The idea of drawing part of a Megadungeon’s level on a 30X30 map, making it fit on one page and leaving room for some brief notes for Wandering monsters and room key was discussed. From there, Chgowiz, Sham and Mike developed tweaked and used a One Page Dungeon Template (as well as a larger scale 30X30′ map) to create all kinds of cool old-school dungeons (Have a look at their work, it’s great stuff).
I’ve really got to thank these guys for making the idea into a tangible tool. While initially developed to answer their needs of creating dungeons for older editions of D&D and its myriad of retro-clones, I’ve found these tools to be very helpful for my current 4e needs as well.
The templates can be used many different ways. If your are the type to follow the classic “Fill the Map” method, you can print out the empty template and start drawing your dungeon. Once this is done, you can fill in wandering monsters, legends and the room key.
For DMs who like to improvise adventures, doing just this is often enough to create a full gaming session.
Alternatively, if you want to follow the ‘Fill the Map’ method but want a larger map to draw in, you can use this large scale 30X30 map created by Sham. Once done, you scan the sheet at 600 dpi, cut it in your favorite software (I’m fond of The Gimp), import it in the template and fill the rest in your favorite word processor.
If you’re more of the “Map the Fill” type (i.e. you design your encounters then make a map to fit them in), you can open an empty template on your word processor and fill in all the text boxes. Once done, you print out and draw your dungeon or import it image file from your favorite imaging software.
Using the Template for D&D 4e
Anyway, when I looked at the template, I realized that a 30 X 30 grid was the perfect size to create a 10-15 room dungeon at a scale of 10′ per square. This is exactly what I’m looking for in my next campaign. With such a scale, you can get 4e friendly scaled rooms without any problem.
In fact, you can use the same grid at different scales to represent a regional map (1/4 mile per square), a Dungeon level (10′-20′ per square) and a tactical battlemap (5′ per square).
Being of the ‘Fill the Map’ school of dungeon design, I modified the template to suit my needs and used it as a planning tool.
By the way, I’ve brought all files together here (including my adaptation of it) for your convenience. Fell free to download it. They’re released according to the Creative Common-Share Alike license (i.e. do what you want with them, but don’t forget to credit their creators).
I then printed out the template and started drawing a dungeon. I didn’t have any specific idea when I started out. I wanted some sort of abandoned temple complex. Having it dedicated to an aspect of Elemental Chaos establishes the influence of the dungeon’s imprisoned Primordial and goes in the direction of the campaign’s background.
I started by drawing an entrance leading to a pillared hall (I like pillars, they provide cover and can often be toppled on the head of PCs/monsters). From the hall I drew a huge temple room, complete with a raised basin/altar and a large circular pool. (The post’s image is the dungeon I’m describing here)
That made me think that a cult devoted to Primal Water elements would have a lot of water running around. That’s how I made a hidden room filled with water accessible from the Pool only. In that room I put a lone sarcophagus and let the concept simmer at the back of my mind.
(Water Elemental Vampire! Sea-Mist Wraith, Mummified Shauagin Lich Priest… possibilities endless!)
Having a temple and one sarcophagus, I thought about adding the obligatory crypt.
That’s when the main trick of the dungeon came to me. Abandoned Evil Water Cult Temple, water everywhere, crypts…
How about I made the guardians of the Temple be the spirit of enslaved undead humanoids, all ex-enemies of the Cult, forced to serve for eternity?
In my mind’s eye, I could see a room filled with glass coffins in which marine ghouls were forever trying to claw through the transparent walls while their spirits were forced to guard/patrol other areas of the temple as Spectral Guardians.
Ding! I had a winner!
I added another crypt and some guardians and I had my dungeon.
At that point, I was thinking how to work in wandering monsters into the place. I abandoned random encounters when I switched from AD&D 1e to Gurps in the late 80’s. Re-implementing this aspect of Old-School gaming in my adventures wasn’t going to be easy. For it to work for me, I needded a rationale to explain monsters walking around an abandoned temple. I had the temple’s guardians, but I wanted something more… random yet believable within the design space defined by my players’ suspension of disbelief.
That’s when I thought about adding burrowed tunnels around and through the temple structure. Thus, with a dungeon that’s been breached by a burrower that made its lair nearby, I could picture monsters walking around and interrupting PCs during a rest period.
I added more tunnels and caves , including the obligatory collapsed passageway for DMs wanting to expand the dungeon further. I also had the tunnels breach certain areas of the temple.
At that point, I thought about the possible effects that a large burrower could have on the dungeon, so I knocked down pillars, busted door open and even destroyed one of the ghoul’s glass sarcophagus.
As I was doing this, to story of the dungeon was taking shape and I hadn’t even written one room description yet.
The last element that cliched the whole thing was to determine what kind of burrowing creature could have set a lair here. Considering that my players would likely be level 6-7 when they’d be playing it, I searched the online D&D Compedium for all burrowers between level 7-9.
I got the Bulette…
Joy!
Since the Bulette is a level 9 elite Skirmisher it’s a perfect model to create an unofficial “level Boss” monster by upgrading it to a Solo monster with a few more HP and new powers
(the real Boss would, of course, be the one in the hidden Water crypt room).
So I pictured a dungeonbred Bulette, large sized, covered with silvery runes, that escaped from some Mad Wizard’s laboratory that settled in this dungeon.
The concept and maps of the Font of Sorrows was done.
I then described , very briefly, what each room would contain so that when I actually prepped for that game, I’d have all critical elements to build from.
You wanna see the final product?
Click Here.
Of course the dungeon is not playable as is. Unless you’re a great improv DM (which I’m not), more prep needs to be done. I’ll need to stat out all monsters, flesh out interactive terrain elements (falling pillars, acid pools, etc), place treasure Parcel and work out to present each elements like the various implied rituals. Finally, I need to place the exploration of this dungeon in the context of a plot that involves factions of the city, the dungeon or both to get my storytelling players to enjoy it more.
Heck, I’m thinking of adapting the one page template to allow one sheet 4e encounter…
I’ll let you know how that works out!
Thoughts, ideas? Let me know!
Implied rituals….
Liquid in rituals–if you’re a magic-circle kind of person, don’t use chalk or paint. Engrave your magic circles instead, and pour liquids of various sorts (when making undead, I imagine blood is going to be popular) in them.
I’m seeing an altar, its top surface slightly tilted, and the edge adjacent to the downhill side an inclined plane carved with an elaborate and mystically relevant chain of symbols, somewhere about halfway down splitting into two channels that continue to do the mystically relevant thing.
Then take still-living soon-to-be-former enemy of Cult. Strap to altar, head downhill. Slit throat. Blood flows to collection point, which itself has a channel to the symbol-channels on the downhill surface, fills the circle-things, keeps flowing down, each channel itself providing the notation and power for one of the undead-izing rituals (since you’re getting two undead per victim).
Players, coming across this ages later, see the altar, may or may not see bloodstains (still not sure about that; for some reason water-cultists strike me as regular cleaners).
Regarding relevance; who knows what the nice cultists have done to their water? Perhaps our charming bulette’s excavations have allowed some pool thereof (unholy water, water with tendencies to de-shape organic material, water that’s just been in contact with unsanitary undead, who knows?) to start seeping into the water sources your city-people use?
…wow. Why can’t I get this kind of inspiration for my game?
Ravyns last blog post..Ten War Options for the Non-Warlike Character, Part 2
@Ravyn: That’s absolute Fluff gold you just shared here! I’ll totally use this for sure. Thank you!
As for getting inspiration from sources other than your game, I often have similar issues. Maybe it’s because we have an easier time riffing for someone else’s ideas than doing it for ours and face (maybe too) high acceptance standards?
Fluff is something I struggle with. One exercise that I’ve really taken a shine too is to deconstruct movies for plot threads, NPCs, whatever.
@Chatty Wow, hearing that you occassionally have problems with creativity is nice to know.
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Could be. That or it’s the immediacy and collaborative nature of people’s reactions. When you’re responding to someone else’s idea, you’re plotting with someone, getting immediate feedback. (And if you’re like me, you’re enjoying the give and take at least as much as the idea.) But when it’s your own thing (and you’re not planning on immediately blogging about it; all my blogging about game is after the fact), there isn’t potential for immediate feedback. Your gratification is deferred, and depending on how prone your players are to walking outside the lines or not showing up on the day their big event is supposed to take place, it may not ever actually occur.
…and being perfectionists probably only makes the situation worse.
(Hm. I sense a post coming.)
@vulcansteve If fluff’s something you have trouble with, you may want to swing by my blog; I’m not much of a mechanist, but I write about fluff. A lot. It might help.
Ravyns last blog post..Ten War Options for the Non-Warlike Character, Part 2
@Vulcan Stev: Dude, you just caught me on the rebound of my longest ‘dry spell’ period since I started blogging about 20 months ago. I do run dry sometimes… fortunately, it comes back!
@Ravyn: I agree, doing back and forth on ideas is a great way to brainstorm for adventure material. I’ve been doing it over Gtalk for some months and it’s lead to some great ideas!
About the Water cult rituals, you have ideas about how the PCs might know/learn about it. Additionally, you have some suggestions about finding a reason to get the PCs there in the first place? I’m open to options here…
And the question applies to all readers also.
How’d your PCs get there? You’ve got a river right on the map. Maybe a flash flood swept them out of their last area and this where they ended up.
Do any of the PCs have ties to elementals? If there’s a Water elemental affiliation, then the PCs could have some inkling of the “defilement” of the elements. Fire elementals might be happy with what the cultists were doing and the PCs would get the info skewed from that direction
Vulcan Stevs last blog post..Fortune Cookie gaming hooks.
Welcome to the madness. Love the random wandering monster tables – they can be your friend for that bit of improv that you might need to make an encounter or adventure even more memorable.
I am pretty sure that my WinterWar players will not only remember a 4 hour running battle, they’ll remember wandering cows. In a dungeon. Oh yes. 🙂
Look a little closer, Chatty; I had a suggestion. You’ve got your water-cult–presumably the water they’re working with is in some way magically unsanitary. You’ve also got your bulette tunneling through the temple. Now, what happens if the bulette tunnels in just such a way that it results in the temple water leaking into the water table in your city? That’s going to cause problems, and someone’s going to need to investigate it.
Ravyns last blog post..Ten War Options for the Non-Warlike Character, Part 2
Great stuff. I really like how those 1 pagers set out an encounter areas to build off of. It sounds like a great plotting tool and its interesting to see how you used it in your own design work. I’m really digging the Primal Within and look forward to more.
If #11 is a drain, it means the water flow is going towards it. The water is coming from somewhere else, from the east. If you use the idea of Ravyn, the group may want to stop the water from getting drained away in the river to the north west. You could describe the foundation of the drain to be unstable by all those years of erosion, implying that it could be sealed if the player destroy it’s base.
If the players decide to do it, their success could lead to an “Indy” moment. The water could start to rise, slowly for a “Titanic” style finale or fast if you’re at the end of the game session and you want to push the player out. They could have to face the Burrower after sealing the drain. Forcing them to finish the encounter with only X number of rounds before they drown.
You could even drown them with no escape possible (let them believe there is). Once they think they are dying, make them roll fortitude saves. The first one to miss breath water and discover he can breath it. The water is magical, it gets you sick if you drink it, but you can breath it. You could create a whole dungeon level completely submerged.
mmm… that would be a “Abyss” moment!
… you could even decide to give them permanently, has a side effect of the exposure to the water, the ability to breath underwater.
Just an idea.
I know it’s not really the point of the post, but if you use GiMP then you really should take a look at the Cartographer’s Guild. (http://www.cartographersguild.com) I’m a lapsed regular there, and it’s chock full of tutorials and guides on how to use just about any program. GiMP is used for many projects there, and after a couple of tutorials, you’ll be slapping custom made maps on the table.
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Cool, lots of comment love this morning.
@Vulcan Stev: After reading your river suggestion, I pictured that I could see a scenario where players (or a NPC) stumble on the temple by the river… maybe there’s a huge Waterfall a bit downstream and the little “sewer” pipe out of the dunegon could be spotted and used to save the party from falling a few miles deeper.
Good hook there…
As for ties to the elemental, we’ll see. I’m sure that all the rituals in the Water Temple could also serve as minor quests to get the PCs there.
@Chgowiz: Thanks for the template and the link love this morning. I hope to start loving random encounters again. As long as we find a way to make them mean something in the game, I’m sure we’ll enjoy them. I’m happy how the table I made turned up… we’ll see how it applies in game.
@Ravyn: You’re right. I was too sleepy last night to register it. The busted glass sarcophagus and the possibility that the Bulette actually reactivated a whole lot of Elemental Water magic (The Basin/Altar, the pool etc) could definitively cause trouble in the city’s water system.
In fact, maybe everything but the Glass coffins had been dry for centuries and the Bulette’s “exploration” started the water running again.. Unholy, tainted, Chaos Elemental-laced water.
I love this! Thanks!
@Chris: I’m glad you like all this. I’m sure having fun doing it. Stay tuned then!
@DLuck: #11 is indeed a waterfall that goes to the river.
The whole floodding dungeon bit is a great idea… and making the temple’s water poisonous/corrosive yet breathable is the kind of sick crap that I love to pull on players.
Thanks for the idea man!
I once did a whole dungeon crawl adventure in a flooded dungeon with a party without access to magic… we played the whole thing in real time, counting rounds while PCs were holding their breath… it was a great game.
@GlennZilla: With the Gimp, the stupid thing that’s been holding me back is that I can’t for the life of me, figure out how to insert text in images that’s other than the stupid default blocky text you get by clicking on the text box tool.
Think you can piint me out to a good tutorial about that?
OK, i have only begun seriously reading the RPG blogs as in the past most was unfocused ponderings (not that i have anything against pondering but it doesn’t always pull me back) but i LOVE this sort of concrete, useful work. Basically I love people doing work for me that I can make use of 🙂
Thanks! And thanks for the others that started the process.
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@HermitDave: Happy to provide you material and stuff you can use man. As I said before, when you’re in a buisness that doesn’t charge anything, having people use/adopt your ideas is the equivalent of making a sell.
Four things:
1. Acid sharks. Yay!
2. So I’m not the only one who doesn’t get anywhere with the drawing tools (I’ve tried Autorealm myself). I should print out a batch of those sheets and play with them sometime.
3. I like the non-linearity of this dungeon. At least two entrances too, three if the river breaches the surface somewhere.
4. Not starting at level 1? Of course, you didn’t say this was the first level of the dungeon…
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@Anders: I had to put the sharks in there for sure! As for non-linearity, it wasn’t intentional, but I guess the forum thread I read about having a good non-linear map rubbed off while I was drawing.
As for not numbering the dungeon, I don’t plan to design this campaign (at least the one I’ll test with my players’ with multiple levels of the same dungeon. I plan to have a series of smallish dungeons, all found near the City Within and each with a specific reason for the PCs to go into.
smallish dungeons all found near the city…. Sounds like it’d be a good fit for my Stargate Campaign.
Vulcan Stevs last blog post..A Hearty Thank You and Welcome to the Network’s Readers
Ok, you’ve got some baddies, you’ve got some cool traps (I’d like to pitch the “convenient air bubble in the dungeon is filled with chlorine gas” trap), and even a good layout. What about tides? There are some places in the world with tidal changes in excess of 50 feet (no kidding). How will the dungeon be affected by that? Is it even important? Why or why not?
Also, BACON. Because that’s my anti-spam word, and worthy of shouting. BACONBACONBACON. Mmmmmm…
@The Gun Nut: I could definitively play with the dungeon’s water level as a possible hazard or as a result for a botched ritual from the PCs. Imagine walls of force forming on all exits and some near-boiling Primal Water pouring from grates in the ceiling…
That old school enough for ya? 🙂
Sounds like a most exciting campaign. I especially like the slathering ghouls in the glass coffins.
Did you plan on having any water elementals in the dungeon? I was reminded of the 2e module” Sea of Blood,” which contained an imprisoned water elemental who was bound to the task of keeping water boiling hot in a given area. Perhaps such a beastie could be involved in maintaining currents and/or monitoring portals to the Plane of Elemental Water in this dungeon. A fellow like that could be very dangerous; heroes attacking them would be overcome if he wins, and the party may have to deal with a permanently open portal to the elemental planes if he loses.
Thank you for posting this. Very inspiring work.
This is great stuff. I love the ghouls in the caskets, definately a nice horror element there if narrated nicely.
I am very curious about how you’re going to implement this Font of Sorrows into the Primal Dungeon you described. If I were playing it, I would leave some clues (and scooby snacks) about the nature of the dungeon. Perhaps an old scroll that will take a few sessions to decipher. But that’s just an idea, you could also place other indications of the whole of the dungeon in a more subtle way (ancient runes, a blocked passage way, or some nice templates for the elementals that indicate the tampering of a greater evil), or not at all… Anyways, I am very anxious to see the results!
Keep up the great work!
@Alric: I’ve thought about involving water elementals for sure… either in the dungeon or working the dungeon’s backstage.
@Flying: The trapped ghouls is my favorite idea about the whole dungeon for sure. I’m still simmering how I’ll introduce the dungeon into an adventure. I’m sure something devious and appropriate will come up.
Re: getting the rituals.
Although you’ve given the PCs a way to discover the rituals already (the book in the hidden cache), another (slightly more obvious) way would be to have someone make it into (but not out) of the temple before the PCs.
The hidden cache could be open when the PCs arrive with one blood-stained torn page of the ritual book on the floor and a bloody smear on the floor leading back through the pillared hall and into the bullette tunnels.
The rest of the book and some sparse humanoid remains would be in the bullette’s lair. It might or might not be there at the time, depending on how lucky the PCs are.
Using this approach, the PCs would know from the blood-stained page that there IS as book to be found (and you might even give them a clue as to what the ritual does) and would almost certainly have an idea of where to find the rest.
If you go that route, it also provides an easy (although slightly cliched) adventure hook. Whoever the unfortunate explorer was, his companions/family/employer send the PCs after him.
Edit: On further consideration, perhaps the bullette’s victim wasn’t a good guy. Perhaps a water cultist discovered mention of the temple in an ancient library and was seeking to re-start it. And the PCs’ mentor/employer sends them in to stop him.
Thank you for the dungeon template – I’m always writing up ‘mini-dungeons’ for my world to stack between the main adventure fodder, and this is PERFECT for me to create those dungeons!
Your dungeon is great – love the theme and the ghouls bit especially 🙂 I’ve played around with the idea of a sort of ‘water temple’ before. As no coincidence, I’ve always envisioned it being an old school ‘punishment before redemption’ dungeon. That probably has more to do with the water temple in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (easily the most punishing dungeon in the game!) than anything else!
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