TY, I have many samples on flickr if ya would like to see
Hi all, I apologize that there was no game post yesterday. My wife and both of my kids are sick, so I was caught playing superdad yesterday. I had no spare time, and went to bed early. Anyway, it looks like I should have time to update the IC thread later today.
Hi all, I apologize that there was no game post yesterday. My wife and both of my kids are sick, so I was caught playing superdad yesterday. I had no spare time, and went to bed early. Anyway, it looks like I should have time to update the IC thread later today.
Cool, can't wait. Hope they feel better.
I grudgingly accept your apology for your family's illness. Please ensure that they do not get sick in the future, however.
;-)
I grudgingly accept your apology for your family's illness. Please ensure that they do not get sick in the future, however.
;-)
Hey, believe me, if I have any say in the matter, they won't! It crimps my style... :)
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It looks like I have someone in the recruitment thread who is offering to take over Fredrick's character rather than bringing in a new character.
My original thought had been to either let Karth and Fredrick die if there is a good dramatic moment for it before you return to town, or perhaps let them decide they have cold feet for this whole dungeon delving thing if you went back to town first. What are your thoughts on letting a person take over one of their roles?
Dungeon-A-Day has great opportunities for bringing in new characters, so its always easy to fill out our ranks as needed to keep things moving smoothly.
It looks like I have someone in the recruitment thread who is offering to take over Fredrick's character rather than bringing in a new character.
My original thought had been to either let Karth and Fredrick die if there is a good dramatic moment for it before you return to town, or perhaps let them decide they have cold feet for this whole dungeon delving thing if you went back to town first. What are your thoughts on letting a person take over one of their roles?
Dungeon-A-Day has great opportunities for bringing in new characters, so its always easy to fill out our ranks as needed to keep things moving smoothly.
Tarlane,
Yes, I would not mind taking over him, he has a good BG, and this sounds like a fun dungeon crawl. But as always, that is your character so I will understand if you decide to 'retire' him. I do enjoy playing different character types and I think it help me become a better role player.
Thank you for your consideration.
I am still here, didn't know the game yet lived
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Eric, I'm going to bring you in for Fredrick as it looks like you have read up on the character and have a good handle on what is going on.
Have you seen the game thread? You can feel free to make an alias for Fredrick and post yourself in at any point you are ready.
Also, don't be afraid to make some adjustments to Fredrick to make him your own. Its good to be able to keep the character going so as not to break the flow of play, but he is your's now so feel free to make him your character.
Eric, I'm going to bring you in for Fredrick as it looks like you have read up on the character and have a good handle on what is going on.
Have you seen the game thread? You can feel free to make an alias for Fredrick and post yourself in at any point you are ready.
Also, don't be afraid to make some adjustments to Fredrick to make him your own. Its good to be able to keep the character going so as not to break the flow of play, but he is your's now so feel free to make him your character.
Thanks, I will work on the alias and post soon.
Thanks, I will work on the alias and post soon.Eric, I'm going to bring you in for Fredrick as it looks like you have read up on the character and have a good handle on what is going on.
Have you seen the game thread? You can feel free to make an alias for Fredrick and post yourself in at any point you are ready.
Also, don't be afraid to make some adjustments to Fredrick to make him your own. Its good to be able to keep the character going so as not to break the flow of play, but he is your's now so feel free to make him your character.
Edited, Posted and ready to go.
Any objection to Wolf-Sark using the masterwork longsword for now?
Nope
It looks like the Oracle has been upgraded a little bit. I'll make the necessary changes to Wolf-Sark tonight.
The only change I can see that applies to Wolf-Sark is that CLW is now a free spell for him. So I'll add Bless to his known spells.
Sure the more info, the better, he he.
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Player Introduction
A vast underground dungeon of labyrinths and catacombs, built perhaps by dwarves or perhaps by wizards--or maybe even dragons--Dragon's Delve is infamous among treasure-hunters and monster-slayers. Filled with deadly danger and ancient treasures, the dungeon offers both risk and reward in equal amounts, each growing more intense the deeper one goes. How much peril is worth risking for how much return? It's all up to those brave enough to try.
The tales of Dragon's Delve teem with contradictions and unbelievable anecdotes of impossible encounters and bizarre monstrosities. And yet, some of it all must be true. Do demonic cultists really use Dragon's Delve as a secret base? Is there truly some kind of ambient magic seeping up through the place? Did wizards of old hoard away powerful artifacts in the dungeon's vaults? Do gateways to remote lands and even other planes of existence really lie somewhere in Dragon's Delve? Does the prince of all dragonkind really hold court in the deepest reaches of the subterranean stronghold? No one knows for certain, but those that could find the answers to even some of these questions, or learn even a few of the dungeon's other secrets, might earn for themselves notoriety and wealth beyond imagining.
If they survive.
Dragon's Delve lies in a remote corner of a long-forsaken wilderness that people once called the Duchy of Chordille. Yet a hundred years ago or so, the folk of the surrounding lands took up arms against Chordille. They razed the keep and slew the duke. It's hard now to find someone who knows the real reason why this happened. A few speak of evil intent on the part of the duke, who had plans for conquest. Others, however, say that the duke's actions were always benevolent, and that the conflict arose from misunderstanding, or perhaps deception on the part of some mysterious third party.
All that is known for certain is that folks call that remote realm the Fallen Duchy. It boasts no ruler and little population. Wilderness reclaimed Chordille, and it is now a land of dangers.
People in Brindenford, a small town just two miles to the north, claim that murderous humanoid creatures prowl those ruins. Goblins? Orcs? Worse? No one seems to know for sure, and eyewitness accounts are few, and always contradictory. They also claim that the place is both haunted and cursed.
So many questions. So many secrets.
If you dare to brave this ancient dungeon, go well equipped. Be ready for anything. Keep your eyes open, and search everywhere. Any passage or door you find could lead to wealth enough for you to retire. Or it could lead to certain doom.
But that's what being an adventurer is all about, right? This isn't an undertaking that you'll finish in one foray or even a dozen. This is the challenge of a lifetime. As someone thrilled at the prospect of exploring the unknown, incredible challenges, and the promise of gold and magic, Dragon's Delve is exactly where you've always wanted to go.
Surrounding Environment
At the center of the Fallen Duchy lie the ruins of Chordille Keep (which itself provides entrance to Dragon's Delve). This ruin offers no intact structures--only vine-grasped piles of stones, overgrown outlines of foundations, and the furtive hint of walls and arches. The entrance to the dungeon itself is little more than a twenty-foot wide open pit with an exposed stone stair that descends into darkness. Various explorers and treasure seekers have left the entrance well-cleared. Likewise, the observant adventurer may notice the remnants of cooking fires and other signs that previous delvers have made camp near this pit.
Chordille Keep rests atop a long, gentle hill known as Bryson's Look. The area grows thick with silver maples, boxelders, and the occasional firethorn. Somewhere south of the keep lies a mysterious, abandoned structure some call Terregaunt's Tower. At the north end of Bryson's Look, near the mighty River Turant, lies Brindenford. This small town offers a few amenities to those looking to risk the dangers of Dragon's Delve thanks to its minor importance in trade. Brindenford rests at a major crossing of the Turant for the Queen's Road, upon which travel caravans laden with the spices and salt traveling to the west and those bearing wool and iron goods to the east. Likewise, loggers from the north use the Turant to send wood down to the mills to the south, and Brindenford offers a landing for this process as well.
Currently, the town remains independent, as no authority higher than its lord mayor claims the wilderness in which it carefully nestles. Technically, the entire region falls under the rule of High King Rudik in faraway Kelmanosh, but even his vaunted tax collectors do not venture this far west. With trade once again increasing, however, this may change in the near future.
Brindenford lies approximately two miles from the ruins of Chordille Keep. Most folk of the town know better than to go there, fearing the very real tales of orcs and goblins lurking there, and the more fanciful (but still possibly true) tales of evil spirits and curses that haunt that sad place. Still, one can't spend an evening in the taproom of the Lost Shepherd Inn, chat with the locals in the hiring hall, or sit with the fishermen on the dock as they complain about the loggers without hearing a rumor or legend about the mysteries that lie within Dragon's Delve.
Gods of the Realm
Belestros: A god of strength, stone, and all things tangible. Belestros' followers are practical and usually live off of some natural resource, such as farmers, herders, or miners. Belestros is Lawful Neutral. His domains are Law, Strength, and Earth. His favored weapon is the mace or cudgel.
Glarias, the Moon Goddess: A minor goddess worshipped in the lands surrounding the Fallen Duchy and revered there in its heyday. Glarias presides over the moon, so while she is not an evil goddess, she uses shadow (and even darkness) as well as light as both tools and raiment. Glarias is Chaotic Good. Her domains are Good, Knowledge, and Luck. Her favored weapon is a mace.
Vune: A goddess of light, purity, and charity. Most, but not all of Vune's clerics are female. Those that are not belong to a sub-sect called the Brothers of Charity and focus on aiding the poor, the sick, and orphans in the name of their goddess. The rest of the clergy is interested in spreading Vune's teachings of helping others before helping oneself. Vune's worship is widespread and extremely popular. Her clerics are often treated as a special, highly respected social class. Vune is Lawful Good. Her domains are Good, Healing, and Sun. Her favored weapon is a mace.
Monty Cooks 10 Tenets of Dungeon Design
3rd Edition created a system that used Challenge Ratings to match relatively appropriate encounters to a given group of player characters (the key word being "relatively"). Matching monster toughness with PC toughness has always been in the game in one form or another, of course. But in dungeon design, this isn't that important, because the dungeon level dictates (or at least suggests) the difficulty of the encounters. Things too easy? Go down. Things getting pretty dicey? Go back up. Of course, finding the way up or down isn't always easy, but that's what makes it fun.
2. Treasure and other rewards are based on challenges overcome, not PC level. Again, 3rd Edition created a gauge to determine appropriate wealth for PCs of a given level. But if the challenge determines the rewards (either based on how hard it was to get to the treasure, or the guardians that must be defeated to obtain it), then this should take care of itself. It does mean that skillful--or perhaps lucky--player characters will be able to get more treasure than average ones, but that's a good thing, if you ask me.
Let's look at points 1 and 2 together for a moment. Basically, the assumption here is that players will need to manage risk versus reward. In a standard campaign, the DM controls the level of challenge for the players. But in a dungeon like this, the players can choose to seek encounters that might be too challenging for them in order to get bigger rewards, or stay and face easy challenges for low rewards. This is sometimes referred to as a "sandbox dungeon," because the DM just presents a sandbox in which the PCs to do whatever they want, and go wherever they want.
3. There's a happy medium that embraces both realism and fun. When discussing dungeons with people, you hear all kinds of things:
"Dungeons aren't realistic. I don't like them."
"Dungeons can be made to be realistic, but then they aren't much fun."
"Dungeons are terribly unrealistic, and we love that about them!"
Somewhere between the people who want realism (or at least, believability) and those who want wa-hoo fun, there is a broad middle ground where most people can find something to enjoy. That means neither a careful and detailed study of the dungeon's ecological balance nor a 30 foot long dragon in a 20-foot by 20-foot room with no way for it to exit. The dungeon's got to avoid obvious, glaring challenges to a player's suspension of disbelief while not bogging the text down in details that no one will pay any attention to anyway. You can expect to read more from me on this topic in blog entries as we go along.
4. The dungeon is dynamic and huge--there's no clearing out the dungeon. This gets to the heart of the difference between what I call a megadungeon and a regular dungeon. (Some might call the former a dungeon and the latter a lair.) The point here is that regular dungeons are small--5, 10, even 30 rooms--and megadungeons are vast, with hundreds of rooms. The megadungeon is an environment, not just a locale. In many ways, it's like many joined dungeons, connected lairs, and so on. Kill a monster and another might wander in and take its place. The dungeon detailed here--called Dragon's Delve--is a megadungeon.
There's another point to be made here: the megadungeon may be more than just an underground complex. The megadungeon adventure might include a side trip to a wilderness locale, a gate to another plane, a teleporter to a mystical forest far away, and so on. It's all a part of the megadungeon, even when it's not entirely underground.
5. The player characters are not the first adventurers to explore this place, and they won't be the last. As they explore, your PCs will find the remains of previous adventurers. They will hear about other parties coming to the dungeon to test their own mettle. They may even encounter them while delving into the depths themselves. This contributes to the dynamism of the dungeon environment.
6. Although there are many entrances, and many ways to get from level to level, this dungeon is being presented so that the PCs are unlikely to get ahead of the design. This doesn't mean things are linear (because linear dungeons are bad dungeons). It just means that sometimes access to certain areas will be temporarily blocked. For example, there's a pit on Level 1, at the bottom of which is a secret one-way door that allows creatures to go from Level 2 to Level 1. But because of its nature, it doesn't allow creatures to go from Level 1 to Level 2 (at least, not until someone gets to it on Level 2 and spikes it open. The DM can choose to get rid of these "safeguards" if he doesn't need them.
7. The rules exist to facilitate the dungeon, not the other way around. Basically, what this means is, if I have a cool idea for an encounter and present it in a way that forces me to bend the rules, I'll do it. If a monster needs an extra feat in order to fulfill its role, I'll just give it the feat.
I know that the rules were designed the way they were for good reasons. (I mean, c'mon. Consider my design credits.) One of those reasons, of course, is consistency. So I'm not going to throw the rulebook out. But I also know that the rules can't be expected to work in every situation. Rather than resign myself to accepting the occasional Encounter Level based on the formula that doesn't feel quite right, the value of a treasure that seems inappropriate to the specific situation, or the monster whose stats don't allow him to do what he needs to do in a given encounter, I'm going to change them. The key here is that the design needs to fit the specific situation, and the rules were written with general situations in mind. In this dungeon, DCs will fit the situation, even if they don't match the book 100% every time. Encounters will be designed to work the way they need to work for the most fun for all. This is why an actual human being serves as a game designer (or a DM) rather than a computer.
8. Magic gets stronger the deeper you go. This is related to point #1, but it's worth mentioning again. The farther you get from the surface, the more mysterious and strange things become. This means that magical tricks and traps get more powerful, encounter areas get weirder and wilder, ancient treasures are better preserved, and sorcerous and otherworldly creatures are more at home. Basically, the deeper you go, the less the place seems like the undercroft of some quasi-medieval keep and more like a unique, subterranean fantasy environment all its own. And the best part? This doesn't just fit with dungeon design philosophy, but also with the backstory behind Dragon's Delve. There's a reason why there are weird and challenging magical phenomena in the dungeon, and why they occur in greater numbers the farther down you delve.
9. Food is fairly abundant in the dungeon. If you don't mind the taste of rat. The point here is that the dungeon's full of life--rats, bats, insects, and so on. Just because it's not given stats and isn't a threat to the PCs doesn't mean it's not there. And so all the carnivores in the dungeon have enough to get by. Not that they wouldn't mind a tasty treat in the form of an adventurer or two.
10. Every level or sublevel has its own unique character. This is another old school trope and, I must admit, one that I love. The level's character might be expressed in similar inhabitants, a related purpose for the chambers, or a theme of some kind. The prison level. The submerged level. The demon lord's level. I'll be making good use of this aspect of dungeon design. In the months ahead, we'll explore the Aberrant Laboratory, the Domain of the Venom Cult, the Petrified Congregation, the Halls of Hunger, the Secret City (which isn't a city at all), and more.
NPCs
Juddelo Green - A halfling cook at The Lost Shepherd Inn in Brindenford. Although a skilled cook, he would rather sit and talk to customers than do any real work. Well-liked in the tavern and around town, Juddelo is 55 years old, and of an average height and build for a halfling. His black hair has only just started to gray, and he sports a gold tooth in his wide smile.
Taran Manias - A maid and server at the Lost Shepherd Inn in Brindenford. Pleasant and kind, she doesn’t flirt with customers or dress provocatively as do some servers in other taverns in town to help them with their “other source of income.” Taran is young and just on the pretty side of plain, interested in books, knowledge, and news of the outside world. She wears her long brown hair in a ponytail and a clean white apron over the simple dress while she works.
Maps
Rumors
Wolf-Sark
The Bestial Host serve the Beast God, a savage and terrible deity that demands blood and violence. The host has a strange fascination with Dragon's Delve.
Dresiro
Portions of Dragon's Delve intersect with a mystical matrix called the wendways that allow one to slip between the spaces between spaces--but at a spiritual cost.
Fredrick
The artifacts known as Sao's Bones lies in a vault somewhere within Dragon's Delve. Supposedly, these dice control some aspect of cause and effect on a fundamental level.
Karth
A temple to the demon goddess of medusas lies in Dragon's Delve, which includes egress to the terrible plane upon which the goddess herself can be found.
Osric
Deep within Dragon's Delve lies a training dojo built by Master Mui Yan in his exile from his own far off homeland. Anyone finding it can still, to this day, learn otherwise forbidden fighting styles.
Rurik
In some of the deepest reaches of Dragon's Delve lies the Secret City, a place so ancient that Queen Ryssa's dwarves found it when they originally dug down to find the mystic stone that fell from the sky... and so bizarre that they fled when they discovered it.
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As you can tell with the above post there is already a great deal of information that is somewhat being juggled. At the moment I am considering building a wiki for us to make use of to keep track of all of this. It also would have the advantage of giving us a place where you could add your own notes about locations and NPCs and such.
If any of you have suggestions, encouragement or simply think that such a venture would be a waste of time just let me know. This sort of thing only works with you guys after all.
By the way, may I just say that you're doing an awesome job of stepping in as DM, Tarlane? I particularly like the way you've been diligently keeping the map up to date and the action moving along!
Kudos!!
By the way, may I just say that you're doing an awesome job of stepping in as DM, Tarlane? I particularly like the way you've been diligently keeping the map up to date and the action moving along!
Kudos!!
+1
Like, hogarth said, thanks for taking over. It looks like Rurik might actually be in a game that lasts for once.
As for the wiki, they seem to be more useful as a handy place to put in-game knowledge/character sheets, and if I've learned one thing from my other games that used wikis, player involvement isn't really needed. So, go ahead, it'd be nice to have the info collected somewhere.
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I certainly appreciate the support, guys. I'm enjoying the campaign and having good players really makes it a lot easier to advance the storyline. You all have done a great job of helping me advance things and building some interaction between characters and that adds just so much for me, both in terms of it just being fun and building a lot of encouragement to keep things going and add more to it.
As always, please feel free to chime in with any suggestions or critiques you may have. This really is all of our game and I want us all to be happy about it.
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I wanted to apologize for my own silence this weekend. I had a kind of unexpected net outage at home and with the holiday yesterday I wasn't in at work. Hopefully things will be working smoothly again within a couple days, but since I can post from work things shouldn't be further affected.
Going to be posting now as I catch up on all my PbPs.
Sorry everyone, I have been out of town and starting a new job. I am going to try and get back on regular posting now. Again, sorry for the silence.
I'll be on vacation from Feb 27-Mar 6. Hopefully the game will be kicked back into high gear when I get back!