What's your favorite haunted castle map?

[aco175]

I was looking at the castle plans in the link and see some listed as 4 storeys tall. For American reference, 4 storeys is actually 5 floors since the British count using the ground floor and then the first floor is the next one up and in America we count the ground floor as the first floor and the next one up as the second?

 

[Morrus]

I was looking at the castle plans in the link and see some listed as 4 storeys tall. For American reference, 4 storeys is actually 5 floors since the British count using the ground floor and then the first floor is the next one up and in America we count the ground floor as the first floor and the next one up as the second?

No, a 4 storey building has 4 floors (ground, 1, 2, 3).

 

[Mannahnin]

Just spotted this thread, and I know it's a Necro, but hopefully a timely one, as we enter Autumn.

I'm thinking of assembling a very quick and dirty vampire castle adventure for Shadowdark this October (since I'll theoretically be prepping for my first serious NaNoWriMo and should not go too deep down the rabbit hole of building a very large Halloween adventure).

My plan at the moment is to do it in Shadowdark, with good bespoke wandering monster tables for each section of the castle and a few set locations, like the vampire's lair, the room with the obligatory pipe organ, and a few others, and wing the rest with a book/PDF of color to pull from. (Raging Swan Press obviously makes multiple products that would work for this.)

But this approach requires a good castle for the player characters to get stuck at, presumably when their carriages get swamped in flash floods during a horrendous late-season thunderstorm and are forced to seek shelter in the nearby castle.

So what map would you recommend? 0one Games, whom I relied on for years pre-Dyson Logos, has several good vampire castle maps. I suspect @Dyson Logos has a bunch of good maps as well.

What I don't want to do is wrestle with Curse of Strahd if I'm going to be ignoring everything but the map.

Any suggestions on maps? And if you've run an adventure like this in the past, how did it work out?

I did a Halloween "two shot" a couple of years ago using BigFella Games' The Creepy Crawl, available PDF or POD (I have both) on DrivethruRPG. This is an awesome little sandbox adventure for Labyrinth Lord, set in a haunted mountain pass and designed to be humorous and creepy.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

It has several different locations themed around different classic horror concepts. A cemetery full of graves to dig up and a couple of crypt mini-dungeons. A small spooky lake with lights beneath it and a bell at the pier to ring and summon an underwater temple from the depths. A decrepit manor inhabited by a mad scientist with multiple monstrous creations and creepily hospitable goon henchmen. A hunting lodge with werewolves. A warren of wererats beneath the area and connecting multiple of the prior locations. Several evocative random encounters including an ax murderer and a spider monster. And a several-story vampire's castle at the other end of the pass where a grand ball full of undead is in progress and the PCs can disguise themselves as undead and join the party.

I highly recommend this one, either as-is or just stealing the vampire's castle portion for a shorter session.

It's also a mini campaign sourcebook, with three bespoke character classes for Labyrinth Lord or B/X replacing Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings with more thematic alternatives. The Humanculous (Frankenstein's monster, tough character replacing Dwarves) class, Dhampire (half vampire, magical, replaces elves) and the Grimling (creepy little night stalker and grave robber, replaces Halflings).

Tegel Manor. The module itself is, like a lot of JG stuff, kind of crap - but the map (also like a lot of JG maps) is great. I gather that there was a reprint of the module for 5e, but I have no experience with that. Another good map/bad module affair is The Palace of the Vampire Queen originally by Wee Warriors (link is to the reprint by Precis Intermedia).

Tegel Manor is a genuine classic, but it sounds like Whizbang is looking for something a little smaller. I've played Palace of the Vampire Queen and my recollection is that the maps are classic OD&D-style warrens, not all that thematic of a haunted mansion, and quite large as well.

I just yesterday got OAR 5, Castle Amber, so that's fresh in my mind. Pretty over the top fun house, but the architecture isn't too kooky, and has old manor house grandeur.

I do love Castle Amber. I think it's a bit different of a vibe than a spooky vampire's castle, but it's a lot of fun.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No, a 4 storey building has 4 floors (ground, 1, 2, 3).

Wait what!? Is this a British vs American English thing?

4 flours is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Sometimes the 1st floor is called something else, but even then the 2nd floor is still the second floor…

 

[Morrus]

4 flours is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Sometimes the 1st floor is called something else, but even then the 2nd floor is still the second floor…

Yes, I am aware of the American system.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, I am aware of the American system.

I wasn’t trying to inform you, actually. American system are ubiquitous in popular media. I was asking if what you said is a British thing, or something else.

 

[gamerprinter]

Well, technically (as always) I'm choosing my own maps. These are two maps of the same location, the castle/abbey above the ground and the cellar/dungeons below the ground, created as content for two different map contents. The dungeon level I created for the 2008 One Page Dungeon Contest, and the other created 6 months later for a Cartographers' Guild Map Challenge doing speed mapping. I decided when doing the latter one, it should be the abbey above the dungeon I previously created. These were done in my hand-drawn style, and are among my earliest maps as I began my freelance cartography career, and I've always wanted to publish these as part of an adventure they certainly belong, just never got to doing that. I imagined Lhessadrak as a clerical lich, once a powerful force of good, but when his wife, a paladin was killed in a battle against an undead army, he fell from grace, eventually leading him on the dark path to lichdom. He converted to the Church of Orcus and eventually became it's pontiff, at which point the abbey was constructed for his unholy rites. The dungeon is my favorite of this pair of maps, but both are necessary for an adventure location. I imagined Lhessadrak discovering the existence of and access to the Plane of Blood... enjoy!

View attachment temple-lhessadrak.jpg

 

[Mannahnin]

I wasn’t trying to inform you, actually. American system are ubiquitous in popular media. I was asking if what you said is a British thing, or something else.

Yes, Morrus is talking about the standard British convention for naming and talking about floors of a building. The ground level is the ground floor. The first one about that (which we would call the second floor here in the US) is the first floor, and so on.

 

[Parmandur]

I wasn’t trying to inform you, actually. American system are ubiquitous in popular media. I was asking if what you said is a British thing, or something else.

Can confirm from Escape to the Country, the British call the second floor the first floor and so on. Guess it means "first (above the ground) floor"?

 

[Parmandur]

I do love Castle Amber. I think it's a bit different of a vibe than a spooky vampire's castle, but it's a lot of fun.

Mostly just speaking in architectural terms: the actual key is pretty off the wall different. Although, you could switch the Amber's into a clan of vampires and their behavior would not necessarily change appreciably.