D&D Tower of Druaga

[Heir Raktus]

I'm assuming this might be the forum to post it in... I'm trying to work on a campaign idea based on an anime/video game which were both dungeon crawls in their own respect. The idea is that the players, for some reason, need to climb a tower that reaches past the heavens. The tower would become the parties entire world with so many levels as to carry them from their first adventure at level 1 all the way to level 30 as they progress to the peak of the tower.

Various levels of the tower would be filled with specific events. One might be purely enviornment versus the players, another might be trap laden and others could be monster filled. Some levels are monster sieged outposts of various other climbing parties that decided to settle where they stopped. These towns would trade with lower levels in some small respect and serve as both resupply and rest stops for the party.

The Tower of Druaga - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I was just wondering if anyone might have any map making skills/ideas to help out...

 

[Tharian]

I really enjoyed the anime series, having only discovered it a couple of months ago.

I think with the way you'd want to set up the levels, you'd have to keep in mind if you are basing it on the first season or the second. The first one, though, seems to fit better what you are describing.

My approach to designing the various levels would be to devise a theme for a region (whether it be a floor, multiple floors, parts of a section, etc.) and then trick it based on that idea. Given that you are using ToD as your inspiration, don't forget to have some areas based completely on humorous events.

Someone on the boards here posted a link to a web posting where someone outlined how to create a regio-based map similar to what I think you have in mind. There was mention of Metroidvania in it so use that as a search term and I think you'll find it. Lots of good info there. If I find the link, I'll come back here and provide it.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Troll Slayer]

I've never seen the anime, but I know similar ideas have appeared in video games in one form or another. I have some questions. How much variety can be brought into each floor or set of floors? Are we talking just decorative changes, architectural variation, or is the tower magical enough to include different environmental elements as well?

Can each floor be drastically different from the previous one? If so, then it could be much the same as any planeswalker campaign, but the different planes are all stacked on top of one another in the form of a really tall tower.

Are the floors confined to having content that fits within specific dimensions; being contained within the walls of the tower itself, or can they defy space? What about time itself? Remember that nameless dragon whelp we let live on the first floor? Well all of a sudden he's a much larger, much older, and much angrier dragon on the 8th floor!

There are a lot of cool things you can do here, but I think most importantly you can have vastly different gameplay environments without needing to explain how the party started in the jungle and ended up in the tundra.

Just some thoughts, and sorry if I'm completely missing the point having not seen the source material.

 

[Heir Raktus]

I've never seen the anime, but I know similar ideas have appeared in video games in one form or another. I have some questions. How much variety can be brought into each floor or set of floors? Are we talking just decorative changes, architectural variation, or is the tower magical enough to include different environmental elements as well?

Can each floor be drastically different from the previous one? If so, then it could be much the same as any planeswalker campaign, but the different planes are all stacked on top of one another in the form of a really tall tower.

Are the floors confined to having content that fits within specific dimensions; being contained within the walls of the tower itself, or can they defy space? What about time itself? Remember that nameless dragon whelp we let live on the first floor? Well all of a sudden he's a much larger, much older, and much angrier dragon on the 8th floor!

There are a lot of cool things you can do here, but I think most importantly you can have vastly different gameplay environments without needing to explain how the party started in the jungle and ended up in the tundra.

Just some thoughts, and sorry if I'm completely missing the point having not seen the source material.

Well, using the anime as an example... There was an ice and snow level comprisied of mountains that the groups had to climb to reach the top and progress to the next level. While a few levels below it was a winding catacomb full of bridges with potential deadly drops, with a massive red dragon being engaged by an entire army at the same time. As the post above yours suggests, levels of the tower are massive in scale. Large enough to contain the capital city of an Empire and still have plenty of room around it for exploration and combat. So yeah, one floor could be vastly different to the floor opposite of it.

 

[Heir Raktus]

I really enjoyed the anime series, having only discovered it a couple of months ago.

I think with the way you'd want to set up the levels, you'd have to keep in mind if you are basing it on the first season or the second. The first one, though, seems to fit better what you are describing.

My approach to designing the various levels would be to devise a theme for a region (whether it be a floor, multiple floors, parts of a section, etc.) and then trick it based on that idea. Given that you are using ToD as your inspiration, don't forget to have some areas based completely on humorous events.

Someone on the boards here posted a link to a web posting where someone outlined how to create a regio-based map similar to what I think you have in mind. There was mention of Metroidvania in it so use that as a search term and I think you'll find it. Lots of good info there. If I find the link, I'll come back here and provide it.

Best of luck to you.

Unfortunatly the search function doesn't seem to work for me...

 

[Tharian]

Not to worry. I did some digging via Google and found the thread
Here. It points to the article I was mentioning.

For the others who haven't seen the anime and are curious, you can find out more about season 1 (including watching it) here.

 

[Heir Raktus]

I prefer the dub of it...

JustDubs - Watch The Tower of Druaga English Dubbed!

I have been rewatching the series and recording and information I might have forgotten... like the main tower has 8 levels, their names and how each of the first seven levels have at least three strata. I'm also using D&D Adventure tools to create custom creations for the place. Like Minotaur minions... aka Kucerak.

 

[Heir Raktus]

Did I just get bumped by a bot? lol

 

[fireinthedust]

The different seasons have the same tower, just two parts: one was the physical tower, the other was a planeswalker-style tower that exists kind of in the mind. For that reason, yeah it could have a totally different scale than an ordinary building.

Interesting fact: one episode of season one had the party going through the original 80s videogame. That tower was within the tower in the show, and had them basically playing the first game to solve a problem in the series. It would be like having Mario play Mario Bros. in order to get treasure he could use to defeat, like, someone else. The original game's tower is a physical tower without the weird dimensions: it's a big building with lots of monsters in it, but no fantastic geographies.

Each floor gets progressively weirder and further away from the simple-tower idea. Eventually you get the above-mentioned caverns, and inally an ice level filled with mountains. Then, the second tower goes beyond "the earthy realm" to some really fantastic places (the garden level, eh?).

Remember, there's a scene where the PCs get a series of doors that take them straight to the eventual top of the tower. They skip through a whole range of levels, one of fire, ice, water, whatever. Then into the palace level (i think?) which is the final one.

You can do anything you want in a game, but make sure the players are the ones moving the action along.

Also you'll want each "level" to have an entrance and an exit, just like the series. Get to the next one by finding the door.

You could make up your own cosmology, too: you don't need the "great wheel" or anything else. Rather, you can say "each level of the tower" is one demiplane closer to the true planes where, in the show, Ishtar might live (not that we ever get there, or that it's important).

You could use the Planar Environments for each of the tower levels: gravity, spells being muted or magnified, that sort of thing.

Towns might not be trading with each other so much as facilitating Climbers (early levels) or simply trying to survive in the wildernesses in the "tower" (ie: monsters are so bad they hide behind these walls and eke out a living).

 

[Heir Raktus]

Each floor gets progressively weirder and further away from the simple-tower idea. Eventually you get the above-mentioned caverns, and inally an ice level filled with mountains. Then, the second tower goes beyond "the earthy realm" to some really fantastic places (the garden level, eh?).

Sky Shrine actually... the levels of the tower each have at least three strata (levels based on height above the floor).

Sky Shrine
Diamond Shrine
Gold Shrine
Silver Shrine
Bronze Shrine
Iron Shrine
Lead Shrine
Tin Shrine

Gardens refer to specific sections of the Shrines. As an example Tin Shrine has at least two referenced Gardens in the anime. Both were at least on the second to third strata. They were Tin Garden, as seen as being well above ground level through a hole in the towers side, and Camel Garden which was referenced while looking down at the capital city from what looked like third strata.