Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
And "empty" rooms are a great place to come back and put in hints about what's to come in later rooms, once you design them. The players don't ever have to know it wasn't planned that way all along.
D&D General #Dungeon23
01.31: The Vault
Access: The vault is accessible through a locked trap door in the floor. The door had been warded in the past but its magic is gone, drained by the eldritch devourer in the collection chamber (01.28).
Description: The vault is exactly what it sounds like -- a storehouse of all the most valuable and most powerful artifacts uncovered by the Alastairn family in the many levels of Mornrax Hill beneath Parenix Manor.
Choose Wisely: A unique and powerful magical ward protects the vault. If anyone takes possession of any item in the vault without first speaking the words of power (now long lost), every other item in the vault is immediately teleported back to its place of origin. Note that items may be examined by both mundane and magical means, including handling them. But if any character should take possession of an item (having it on their person with the intent of keeping it) and leave the room with it, the rest disappear.
Treasure: I WILL ADD A LIST OF ITEMS HERE AS I FINISH THE LEVELS BELOW, IN ORDER TO TIE EACH POWERFUL ITEM TO THE DUNGEON. THE ITEMS WILL ALL BE ARTIFACTS WITH STRANGE AND DANGEROUS POWERS.
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End of Level 1. Whew. I did think I would make it.
Access: The vault is accessible through a locked trap door in the floor. The door had been warded in the past but its magic is gone, drained by the eldritch devourer in the collection chamber (01.28).
Description: The vault is exactly what it sounds like -- a storehouse of all the most valuable and most powerful artifacts uncovered by the Alastairn family in the many levels of Mornrax Hill beneath Parenix Manor.
Choose Wisely: A unique and powerful magical ward protects the vault. If anyone takes possession of any item in the vault without first speaking the words of power (now long lost), every other item in the vault is immediately teleported back to its place of origin. Note that items may be examined by both mundane and magical means, including handling them. But if any character should take possession of an item (having it on their person with the intent of keeping it) and leave the room with it, the rest disappear.
Treasure: I WILL ADD A LIST OF ITEMS HERE AS I FINISH THE LEVELS BELOW, IN ORDER TO TIE EACH POWERFUL ITEM TO THE DUNGEON. THE ITEMS WILL ALL BE ARTIFACTS WITH STRANGE AND DANGEROUS POWERS.
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End of Level 1. Whew. I did think I would make it.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Great room!
But I see what appear to be two conflicting conditions for the ward. The green one seems to indicate that the first item picked up triggers the effect and stays with the character, whereas the red sentence seems to indicate that the first item to be carried out of the room triggers the effect and stays.
I meant "takes possession" to mean something specific, as in the second definition.
Again, this is all first draft discovery writing.
M_Natas
Hero
January is complete! And greetings from my holidays!
Don't forget to collect your badges!
My last 5 rooms from the 27.01 to the 31 of January are a small five room Dungeon:
The 27th:
Entrance to the long forgotten nekropolis. The Bridge is damaged, but the walls seem suspiciously well kept. In the nearby ruin of a cottage some undead dwell. The gate to the necropolis is locked.
The 28th:
The Graveyard of the Necropolis. A Gjost Gardener keeps it tidy. Their is a church or crypt in the centre with no doors. How do we get in?
The 29th:
Got into the crypt. It is the grave of the old wizard we were looking for. He wants us to proof our worth to get the information and artefact we want ... that will exhaust us, but ok ...
The 30th:
We did it, the statue is moving and uncovers a mass grave full of Zombis and Ghouls ... the moving corpses of adventurers who came before us. The test to proof our worth was just a ruse to exhaust our resources!
A magical trap is humming in the center of that room ...
31th:
After defeating the undead and disarming the trap, we finally got to the last room where we found the Key to the lost City of Kyrthar Tahlketh, that's what we were looking for! Now, if we find the lost City, we can actually enter it!
I also wrote a little more indepth preview article with design decisions for my Dungeon23 Project on my blog: Dungeon23 – Level 1 completed – what’s next? – A.B. Funings Blog
My last 5 rooms from the 27.01 to the 31 of January are a small five room Dungeon:
The 27th:
Entrance to the long forgotten nekropolis. The Bridge is damaged, but the walls seem suspiciously well kept. In the nearby ruin of a cottage some undead dwell. The gate to the necropolis is locked.
The 28th:
The Graveyard of the Necropolis. A Gjost Gardener keeps it tidy. Their is a church or crypt in the centre with no doors. How do we get in?
The 29th:
Got into the crypt. It is the grave of the old wizard we were looking for. He wants us to proof our worth to get the information and artefact we want ... that will exhaust us, but ok ...
The 30th:
We did it, the statue is moving and uncovers a mass grave full of Zombis and Ghouls ... the moving corpses of adventurers who came before us. The test to proof our worth was just a ruse to exhaust our resources!
A magical trap is humming in the center of that room ...
31th:
After defeating the undead and disarming the trap, we finally got to the last room where we found the Key to the lost City of Kyrthar Tahlketh, that's what we were looking for! Now, if we find the lost City, we can actually enter it!
I also wrote a little more indepth preview article with design decisions for my Dungeon23 Project on my blog: Dungeon23 – Level 1 completed – what’s next? – A.B. Funings Blog
Room 58 - The Tunnel
This 15'x15' room is entered through an unlocked wooden door. It opens into a stone wall with an oddly shaped 5' to 10' diameter stone tunnel heading forward a few feet until it hits a 10' diameter open cylinder that seems to go infinitely up and down. The sides of the cylinder have patches of bioluminescent fungus that give the entire area dim light. The sides are also full of numerous small holes and caves from a few inches to a few feet in diameter and places with rocks embedded in them and possibly a skeleton of some sort, and what appears to be a large number of in-progress columns and figure carvings (trees? Fae? a dragon?). Finally, there is something directly in the middle of the shaft that is hard to make out - a quivering rope? a continuous pulse of some sort?
The cylinder is actually only 10' high, but anyone going out the top or bottom of it (or the caves in the surrounds) comes in the other way. The small ledges above and below the opening are such that someone just cautiously looking from the tunnel would need to pass at DC 15 passive perception to notice something wasn’t right; someone leaning out a bit or carefully looking would notice with no roll. With a bit of looking, the blur in the middle is a small rock traveling at its terminal velocity (around 70 miles per hour, call it d6 damage for stopping it by blocking it with one’s body). Hjuldohr the Dwarf (in room 55) is excessively proud of having been the first to have achieved this and the fey in the room can't bring themselves to try and stop it and the other two Dwarves haven't managed to.
The carvings on the sides are the work of the half dozen Galtzagorriak that escaped from (room to be named later). They work on the room under the charge of the Pech Fionn Clachair who has a plan for the whole room in the works that should keep the tiny ones busy for decades (and thus out of trouble). He just needs to not spend as much time brewing various alcoholic drinks with Ruadhan Srondearg the Leprechaun. Luckily Ruadhan will often leave the room to pull pranks on others. The Wolpertinger (that the other residents have named Conor) will let the Galtzagorriak pet it, but has no patience for the larger two fae. All except Conor hide and cower if Berghildr (room 57) comes in to exercise. If the Dwarves (from 55) get too annoying, the various fey residents might start throwing things at them or playfully taunting.
Fionn’s cave, with his plans and still, is in the north-west corner of the room and anyone small, but over three feet tall, would need to be prone to enter. Ruadhan’s cave is in the north-east corner of the room and is similarly sized. Both of them have “infinite up and down tunnels” and a secondary bolt hole that is a squeeze for someone their size to get out. Ruadhan’s cauldron has 136 gp and is protected by two traps (a DC 14 to notice, DC 16 to deactivate, and DC 18 to avoid, slide trap heaving a victim into the pit; and a DC 18 to notice and DC 12 to deactivate needle trap that gives the poisoned condition until a DC 16 con save is made). The Galtzagorriak live in the very small tunnels in the South-east corner, and Conor lives in an 18” high cave in the south wall that the back entrance of the Galtzagorriak tunnels connects to.
Terminal velocity for a spread-eagle person is around 120 mph, diving is around 180 mph. Presumably no one is trying to do that and I’m not sure any listed maximum damage is adequate for scraping along the sides to stop falling after hitting full speed. Should someone be pushed or tripped into the hole, they should make a DC 16 Dex save. On a save they catch themselves after falling through the floor back to their original level (possibly somewhere else around the cylinder) for d4 damage. On a failure, roll d6 to determine how many tens of feet they fall before safely stopping, taking d4 damage for each. A d12 could be used to determine which clock facing they managed to latch onto.
The Galtzagorriak (CR ¼, Tiny Fey), Leprechaun (CR 1, Small Fey), Pech (CR 1/2 , Small Fey), and Wolpertinger (CR ¼, Small Monstrosity) are all from Izegrim Creations's "Twilight Fables". See D&D 5E - Twilight Fables Now Publicly Available! or contact @Sacrosanct to get a copy.
Dwarf name courtesy of https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/dwarf-names.php .
The next room created (#57) is in post #465 D&D General - #Dungeon23 .
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Some thoughts after Month 1.
I thought I would mitigate writer's block by randomly describing a room on some random level. I did not do that, and ended up falling behind a couple days because I couldn't quite make the "next" room happen. I will try and do that going forward if I run into trouble.
I like that I have decided to theme each level. I enjoyed the haunted, eldritch manor, but am happy to be moving onto foreboding cultish cellars and catacombs.
I write too much. I did not even finish everything (there are some tables and stuff I have not filled out yet) and I am still at 9500 words for the month. Which is a great amount of work and I love the daily writing bit, but it is an effort.
I am free writing on theme and guided by the map, doing a discovery first draft. this means I HATE IT. But I am forcing myself not to go back and revise until some point later.
I really feel free after dropping all pretense of a system. I can do whatever I want, and explicitly NOT stocking it with D&Disms is pushing me to make up cool random crap.
In general, I was a little wobbly a couple days ago but now I am excited to keep going and hopefully make the whole year.
I thought I would mitigate writer's block by randomly describing a room on some random level. I did not do that, and ended up falling behind a couple days because I couldn't quite make the "next" room happen. I will try and do that going forward if I run into trouble.
I like that I have decided to theme each level. I enjoyed the haunted, eldritch manor, but am happy to be moving onto foreboding cultish cellars and catacombs.
I write too much. I did not even finish everything (there are some tables and stuff I have not filled out yet) and I am still at 9500 words for the month. Which is a great amount of work and I love the daily writing bit, but it is an effort.
I am free writing on theme and guided by the map, doing a discovery first draft. this means I HATE IT. But I am forcing myself not to go back and revise until some point later.
I really feel free after dropping all pretense of a system. I can do whatever I want, and explicitly NOT stocking it with D&Disms is pushing me to make up cool random crap.
In general, I was a little wobbly a couple days ago but now I am excited to keep going and hopefully make the whole year.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
1.31 Trap Room
- 10' deep pit trap.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
And January's work in all its glory:
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