der_kluge
Adventurer
Some of you may know of the "Collaborative Cave". It was a blatant ripoff of CMG's "Cooperative Dungeon". Essentially, I designed a cavernous "lair" of some sort, and people took individual rooms, creating something truly interesting.
The first Collaborative Cave was a Green Dragon's Lair - built under the auspices of the d20 license, and eventually published as a free product on these forums (if you search for it, you should be able to find it). After that, a 2nd cave was attempted, though never completed.
Fast forward 10 years. After a long hiatus from gaming (kids will do that to you), I decided this was the perfect locale for my current campaign. So, I opted to finish it. Except this time I revised it for 5th edition, and also completely ignored the d20 license. That's probably a thing, I don't know, but I'm certain I'm not following it. So, d20 legalities be damned. It's free, anyway.
My current party spent a half of one adventure in here, all of our last game in here, and they have so far bypassed the actual boss, so we'll deal with that during our next session. In my game, the party is here because they're looking for the 2nd piece of the rod of seven parts, and the aboleth here has it. Those of you familiar with the actual module for the Rod of Seven Parts, might know that the 2nd piece in that boxed set is also in the hands of an aboleth. Coincidence, or subtle subconscious influence, I don't know. But this is my version of that module.
I also took quite a few creative liberties with what people had created before, since a lot of the stuff wasn't available in the 5th edition books. So, I tried to keep it simple for myself - rather than creating "Skum" into 5th edition stats, I just went with bullywugs and vegepygmies. It seems work.
Some of the notes from my party's run through of this so far:
Note that my players are total noobs to D&D. They know nothing, Jon Snow. That makes for some interesting situations. But at least I don't have to worry about them metagaming.
My party is a druid, cleric, ranger and rogue. They are 4th level.
I forgot to give the bullywugs here fighter levels, so this was an easy encounter. Stupid me.
They scared away the octopus in area 3 with a well-placed illusion.
Not knowing what a pseudodragon was, they decided the pseudodragon here was a real dragon, and decided to just leave it alone after it attacked them.
The water elemental in room 5 was a really tough fight. They opted for a long rest after that one.
Area 5 was pretty fun, but I think swarms are much less annoying in 5th than they were in 3rd. The party finally got clever and gave the ring of water walking to the druid in bear form, while everyone rode on its back. That made things easier.
In area 6, they fought an ochre jelly. I missed the part about there being a "pair" of them here. Oh well.
In water walking form, on the back of a bear, the party had no trouble here, and the druid ended up taking the path revealing the writing on the wall. .She also read the sylvan writing and completely avoided the whirlpool area. Good call.
Some of you may have seen my other thread "how many vegepygmies is too many vegepygmies?" Turns out 9 is a good number. My party almost thought about fleeing here, but opted to duke it out. It was a hard fight, but they prevailed. I also forgot about the russet mold, which was an opportunity lost. Oh well.
In area 10, they hugged the right-hand wall and ended up in area 11. The ranger decided to get cheeky with the water weird here, and it sucked him underwater, but the rest pulled him out, and they left the weird alone.
Continuing on they ended up in room 12. By happenstance, the party cleric tried to throwing the rock at the door 3 times, and I decided that was good enough to open it.
A CR 3 phase spider is a really tough fight. It hits like a tank.
They took one look at the inscription on the door to room 14, and decided there was no way in hell they were opening that door.
We had quite a bit of fun in room 15, though admittedly lacking any kind of identify they didn't quite discern the purpose of the well here. It might be a good idea to include a bit of graffiti on a wall here to depict the bucket with coins in it, or something like that. I gave the cleric a knowledge check to know that this was a tithing bucket to the elemental plane, but they kept wanting to give it water, holy water, or lake water, or something else that made no sense. I guess in their eyes, giving it water made sense, but I was thinking "why would the elemental plane of water want more water?". In the end, I gave them a number of attempts, but they never pulled anything more interesting than some jewels. But they made out ok, more than doubling their tithes in the end, though mostly due to great coaxing on my part.
Next week, they'll deal with the aboleth. Although I might raise them to 5th before that, so they have a better chance of dealing with it.
Here is a link to the original thread on this dungeon, if you're interested.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ee-1st-post)-Now-doing-room-assignment/page24
The first Collaborative Cave was a Green Dragon's Lair - built under the auspices of the d20 license, and eventually published as a free product on these forums (if you search for it, you should be able to find it). After that, a 2nd cave was attempted, though never completed.
Fast forward 10 years. After a long hiatus from gaming (kids will do that to you), I decided this was the perfect locale for my current campaign. So, I opted to finish it. Except this time I revised it for 5th edition, and also completely ignored the d20 license. That's probably a thing, I don't know, but I'm certain I'm not following it. So, d20 legalities be damned. It's free, anyway.
My current party spent a half of one adventure in here, all of our last game in here, and they have so far bypassed the actual boss, so we'll deal with that during our next session. In my game, the party is here because they're looking for the 2nd piece of the rod of seven parts, and the aboleth here has it. Those of you familiar with the actual module for the Rod of Seven Parts, might know that the 2nd piece in that boxed set is also in the hands of an aboleth. Coincidence, or subtle subconscious influence, I don't know. But this is my version of that module.
I also took quite a few creative liberties with what people had created before, since a lot of the stuff wasn't available in the 5th edition books. So, I tried to keep it simple for myself - rather than creating "Skum" into 5th edition stats, I just went with bullywugs and vegepygmies. It seems work.
Some of the notes from my party's run through of this so far:
Note that my players are total noobs to D&D. They know nothing, Jon Snow. That makes for some interesting situations. But at least I don't have to worry about them metagaming.
My party is a druid, cleric, ranger and rogue. They are 4th level.
I forgot to give the bullywugs here fighter levels, so this was an easy encounter. Stupid me.
They scared away the octopus in area 3 with a well-placed illusion.
Not knowing what a pseudodragon was, they decided the pseudodragon here was a real dragon, and decided to just leave it alone after it attacked them.
The water elemental in room 5 was a really tough fight. They opted for a long rest after that one.
Area 5 was pretty fun, but I think swarms are much less annoying in 5th than they were in 3rd. The party finally got clever and gave the ring of water walking to the druid in bear form, while everyone rode on its back. That made things easier.
In area 6, they fought an ochre jelly. I missed the part about there being a "pair" of them here. Oh well.
In water walking form, on the back of a bear, the party had no trouble here, and the druid ended up taking the path revealing the writing on the wall. .She also read the sylvan writing and completely avoided the whirlpool area. Good call.
Some of you may have seen my other thread "how many vegepygmies is too many vegepygmies?" Turns out 9 is a good number. My party almost thought about fleeing here, but opted to duke it out. It was a hard fight, but they prevailed. I also forgot about the russet mold, which was an opportunity lost. Oh well.
In area 10, they hugged the right-hand wall and ended up in area 11. The ranger decided to get cheeky with the water weird here, and it sucked him underwater, but the rest pulled him out, and they left the weird alone.
Continuing on they ended up in room 12. By happenstance, the party cleric tried to throwing the rock at the door 3 times, and I decided that was good enough to open it.
A CR 3 phase spider is a really tough fight. It hits like a tank.
They took one look at the inscription on the door to room 14, and decided there was no way in hell they were opening that door.
We had quite a bit of fun in room 15, though admittedly lacking any kind of identify they didn't quite discern the purpose of the well here. It might be a good idea to include a bit of graffiti on a wall here to depict the bucket with coins in it, or something like that. I gave the cleric a knowledge check to know that this was a tithing bucket to the elemental plane, but they kept wanting to give it water, holy water, or lake water, or something else that made no sense. I guess in their eyes, giving it water made sense, but I was thinking "why would the elemental plane of water want more water?". In the end, I gave them a number of attempts, but they never pulled anything more interesting than some jewels. But they made out ok, more than doubling their tithes in the end, though mostly due to great coaxing on my part.
Next week, they'll deal with the aboleth. Although I might raise them to 5th before that, so they have a better chance of dealing with it.
Here is a link to the original thread on this dungeon, if you're interested.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ee-1st-post)-Now-doing-room-assignment/page24
Last edited:
