Reply With QuoteI love this kind of map. It has a story for every room and every level. I totally am going to steal some of the ideas. Particularly the rickety bridge!
Hasty map "Ring-a-ling"
Been a bit - Hi, y'all.
I got asked earlier this week if I'd run a simple game to test the new (to us) rules. Scenario and map came to mind. Both could do with a lot more polish but I need them tomorrow night - and I've not many free hours to do the polishing. Critique, but gently please.
Scenario: A pack of goblins snuck into the castle during court, and in the resulting mayhem made off with jewels, gems, trinkets, priceless thingamajigs, and the Duke's Signet which bears a glowing ruby. Having taken an arrow to the knee (sorry couldn't resist) the duke is unable to pursue, but so desperately needs the ring he announced that anyone who returns it can keep whatever else is found - the gems, jewels, thingamajigs, and all.
What the players learn is that a demonologist has taken over what used to be the Gobsnout tribe's home. The temple is restored to its old role as a sacrificial center. And the ring is perfect for closing the ritual.
Ground floor, a small handful of ghouls. Some lie in ambush, some are in their lair. The party sees that most of the goblin tracks lead to the stairs on the left, but some tracks - and more important spilled gold coins - lead toward the mound at the center. (Mound is the drop point for bodies pushed off the altar.)
First floor, the abandoned home of the goblins. Nothing here now but rats. Rats. Rats. (not nice Mouses.)
Next floor, the goblins prefer not to become another cocooned meal in the spiders' larder. But the bridge is rickety and may give our party some problems if they're the large sort.
The temple's basement, and a well-locked room. What's left of the goblin tribe is sacrificial meat for the demon-summoner. Their leader bargains for rescue and escape. Backs to the wall they'll fight if the party forces it.
Upstairs, the sacrificial altar. The ring's grown to almost portal size, and the small cult is chanting and dancing their ritual. Did the players get there in time? If not the bad guys have a little infernal assistance. (Delay to fight, or search, or discuss, and I'll put another d6 in the Bad Juju bowl. I'll roll all those dice, and each 1 I roll gets me a point on the summoning chart. Everything from "not yet" through imps to, well, nothing too major - this is a fun little run to test the rules, not a party smasher.
I love this kind of map. It has a story for every room and every level. I totally am going to steal some of the ideas. Particularly the rickety bridge!
Thank you.
Thoughts on the map and more details on the little adventure.
If i do this style again, I'll make it a more vertical stack. It does a poor job of implying the overall shape. (What shape? It's based on a large karst hole with a base entrance. In other words, a dome-shaped cavern of 80-90 feet diameter, the top of which becomes a chimney of 20 feet or so leading up to the temple.) I'm open to suggestions of what else I could do, though I'll note I am not (yet I hope) skilled enough to draw the cave itself and cut-away for the map encounters. That's what I'd have really liked to do - this was a fall-back to my skill level.
Fuller back ground. This was a quick run with pre-generated 3d level characters to let us get a feel for D&D 5E - both as players and as GMs (the three of us who'd be doing that at some point). Background story is that the temple's been used for a sacrifices for a long time. As a consequence there's a small pack of ghouls on the first floor. Their main lair is by the pool in the offshoot section from the dome. There's a rough mound in the center from the long time of bodies splatting there, only to be dragged away. For simple temptation there's a trail of gold coins leading from the entrance toward and past the center - a goblin carrying the bag was seized and dragged, and the coins spilled out along the way.
Up the stairs and 2/3 around the curve, the stream that forms the waterfall flows through a recently abandoned goblin "village" (for lack of a better word). The goblins have abandoned the place because most got away from the guy who took over the temple above. All that's left alive in here is a very large pack of giant rats. Oh, and the stream is slippery. Fighting in it has a chance of slipping and riding the stream through the hole and over the falls. 40 feet up, damage reduced because you land in water. But if you didn't take care of the ghouls, it's a bit less fun. If they linger long enough, a flayed and eviscerated goblin body hits the mound. If they wait long enough again (about ten minutes) another splats down.
On around the curve from the abandoned goblin cave is the spider lair - some giant spiders. As they generally prefer full dark they've webbed across the opening outside, but there's enough gap that flying things can come in and make for a nice snack now and then - and it gives them a chance to go hunting outside when things are tough. The main delicacy, however, was goblin. The goblins built a bypass. It'll hold 100 pounds safely. More than that it breaks and anyone on the bridge has a chance of grabbing the bridge to avoid plummeting. They're 'only' about 60 feet up, which would turn to about 40 from the end of the bridge. Not fun for 3d level characters, but there's a chance of survival.
The goblins that were "persuaded" are trapped in the basement room that's a couple of turns up and around the funnel. They had to go raid the nearby city. Take anything they want, but make sure they get the mcguffin - I mean, ring. Unfortunately the deal now is that they're sacrificial meat for what's going on upstairs. The goblins main goal is flight, and they'll beg, plead, bargain, or just flat overrun given the chance. Oh, and the room's full of most of the goodies from the city.
Upstairs was a mechanic. There was the 4th level warlock, a few cultists and fighters (bandit profile), and what the warlock was summoning with glowing ring, incantation, and sacrifice at the altar. the mechanic was that every ten minutes I added a d6 to a bowl. When the players interrupted the summonings, I rolled all the d6's. Each "1" was a successful summon of a dretch (weakest possible demon I could find). I got four for this fight.
I had six players so I beefed quantity a bit for medium encounters all the way before the final fight, and they (barely) succeeded in recovering the ring.
AaronShmidt, feel free to steal, clean, modify as you will. It was a learning experience on a lot of levels for me - game and cartography.
Nice little adventure & map. Depending on your needs & wants, what you've done is really all you need! A visual representation for yourself and some detailed notes on the encounters/story. I may pinch this for myself as well!
Thank you, and feel free.
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