D&D Adventures on the Moon

[Marimmar]

Hi all!

Last session I DMed an adventure where the PCs found a moonwell that creates a ladder to the moon when the light of the full moon shines down on it. It will take them the whole night of climbing to get there but the adventure left the moon for the DM to create. Well I got lucky and the party turned back after they climbed halfway up since they had other, more urgent matters at hand and didn't want to waste a full month up there. When they finish their current mission though, I'm pretty shure they'll go up to explore the moon and I need an adventure for them.

Campaign Setting: Forgotten Realms
Moon: Selune
Party Level: 9-10 maybe more (the level is actually not that important, I'm rather adept at adjusting modules)

I can get my hands on the Spelljammer Realmspace accessory but what I really would like to have are suggestions where I can find adventures on the moon. Are there any products or dungeon magazine modules out that might help me?

Thanks!
~Marimmar

 

[Frostmarrow]

I can't help you but I can applaud the idea. Trés cool.

 

[Rune]

Check out Nemmerle's winning entry in the latest Iron DM tournament.

 

[Steverooo]

I always have problems with these sorts of things... Tolkien's Essay on Faerie Stories basically says that, Faerie is not just made up out of myth and magic, but also the simple, common things, like bread, wine, cheese, horses and cats, etc.

So, the world is what we know, but with magic added. "So?" you ask?

So, magic doesn't change the Universe. The moon is still a dead, airless world. It still rotates around the Earth in a vacuum. Getting to the moon by climbing would take far more than a day. It would also require magic to overcome both the airless vacuum, and the pressure differential between the 14.7 psi and the nearly-zero of vacuum.

D&D 1e-3.5e has no spells for this.

(I have similar objections to the lack of spells allowing for exploration of the ocean floor.)

So, like I said, I have a problem with such adventures straining my suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. Now some D&D books posit such explanations as atmosphere between the Earth and moon (which, of course, means either that the moon doesn't move, or that it burns up from atmospheric friction). YMMV, but I have to reject these, as well.

The first problem (distance to the moon) is easily enough solved by having the "magic bridge" transport them at incredible speeds. Zap! You're there! Stay for more than a few hours, however, and you're stuck for a month.

Airlessness isn't so much of a problem, as long as the PCs are of high enough level... They will need protection from Heat (sunlit vacuum, on the moon, is about 245 degrees F), Cold (approaching absolute zero, on the dark side), and an Ioun Stone or Necklace of Adaptation to let them adventure without air.

The pressure differential thing is the killer... No version of D&D has ever addressed it. There are no spells to protect you from the crushing pressure of the ocean depths, nor the lung-bursting vacuum of outer space... and then there's that radiation from the solar wind to take into account!

The easiest solution is just to have special Necklaces of Adaptation for everyone which provide not only unlimited air, but also protection from temperature extremes, as well as protection from the pressure differentials (both in space and under the ocean), as well as radiation.

There! Coupled with your fast-moving Moonbeam Bridge, you now have a way to get PCs to and from the moon... Now, what's there?

(Having volunteered to help a guy write a moon module for another RPG, which later fell through, I have given this a great deal of thought). Obviously, any NORMAL critters can't survive... Magical creatures will need special spells and/or abilities. Earth Elemental-types and undead will have no problems (although having dead to make Un will be)! The hardest parts will be making a DEAD world interesting!

I did this by positing a stranded expedition there, many hundreds of years ago, and plotting out how they got there, and survived since. They had their own society, and built moonbases heavily reliant upon magic.

Of course, there were also certain vacuum-dwelling moonbeasts, as well. You could create your own rock-eating, vacuum-proof Selenites, or borrow Lovecraft's Byakhee, or whatever. Fiendish/Celestial creatures might also lair there.

 

[Marimmar@Home]

Thanks for the advice so far, especially nemmerle's IronDM entry was very inspiring. (Thanx Rune!)

I consider making the moon a habitable place with air to breathe and temperatures that are somewhat extreme but survivable. Gravitation will also be ignored since this is really a fantastic adventure opportunity alá Buck Rogers or Flash Gordan.

OTOH a 'Dark Side of the Moon' adventure with Lovecraftian horrors and an ancient abandoned? city lying in eternal darkness is also a very intriguing possibility.

Maybe someone knows of other adventures that happen to take place on a moon.

~Marimmar

 

[Mouseferatu]

I always have problems with these sorts of things... Tolkien's Essay on Faerie Stories basically says that, Faerie is not just made up out of myth and magic, but also the simple, common things, like bread, wine, cheese, horses and cats, etc.

So, the world is what we know, but with magic added. "So?" you ask?

So, magic doesn't change the Universe. The moon is still a dead, airless world. It still rotates around the Earth in a vacuum. Getting to the moon by climbing would take far more than a day. It would also require magic to overcome both the airless vacuum, and the pressure differential between the 14.7 psi and the nearly-zero of vacuum.

I find this sort of thing is really only accurate part of the time. In a lot--one could even argue most--fantasy settings (be they RPGs, books, or what have you), this is accurate. I know that, for most of my own campaign worlds, it's accurate.

But it's hardly the only way to play. If someone wants to run a truly fantastic world, where the laws of physics/science are simply changed, where the world is a disk on the back of four elephants, or is a single endless river, or exists only in dreams, or has ladders that go to a moon which has breathable air--I have no problem with it.

Heck, my current campaign world is shaped roughly like an egg, not a sphere. It has east and west magnetic poles, and rotates north to south. I'm aware that this isn't really feasible, but so what? Heck, in a previous campaign, something happened to isolate the sun god from the world. So the goddess of the moons made the moons shine more brightly during the day, in an attempt to make up for it. Sure, that's impossible in the real world, since moonlight is reflected sunlight. But in the real world, people who worship the sun as a god can't cast fireballs, either.

So long as the players know from the beginning that the world may not be "our world + magic," there's no problem with it at all. Doesn't mean everyone has to enjoy playing that way, of course, but Marimmar's god what I think is a really cool idea going here.

 

[d4]

I always have problems with these sorts of things... Tolkien's Essay on Faerie Stories basically says that, Faerie is not just made up out of myth and magic, but also the simple, common things, like bread, wine, cheese, horses and cats, etc.

So, the world is what we know, but with magic added.

i agree with Mouseferatu. that's one way of doing it. there are other, equally valid ways of creating magical worlds.

 

[Rune]

So, Steverooo, I guess you wouldn't play in a campaign set on a flat world, either?

 

[d4]

So, Steverooo, I guess you wouldn't play in a campaign set on a flat world, either?

the last fantasy campaign world i created was flat.

it was flat for a very different reason though:

i really, really hated having to deal with the spatial distortion one gets going from a spherical world to a flat map.

i decided to make my world flat so that my map would be an *accurate* representation of the world.

 

[grodog]

I would also check out the Greyhawk adventure Return of the Eight (1998 by Roger E. Moore), which has an entire chapter occur on one of Oerth's two moons.