The Goblin Cave…A study in over design

It was almost a year ago, well maybe more like 10 months ago, I had this idea for creating a lead in dungeon for my 2009 Golarion Campaign. I wanted to begin in the middle of things, and basically be able to tell the players to start rolling initiatives because they are under attack, and then fill in the details afterwards. I was leaning towards using Paizo’s upcoming Council of Thieves (CoT) as the basis for my campaign. It was going to be the first AP specifically written for the Pathfinder rule set, and I was excited to use the new rule set with the new adventure that was written for it. No problem..right?

I started out with an idea of creating a small two level dungeon, which would just serve as an entry point to the larger Adventure Path. As I was designing it well ahead of time, I could run my son and his friends through it and get some feedback on it. The idea was to keep it fairly generic, in order to maximize its use as both a small stand alone dungeon, and a lead into to the larger adventure path.

As I was getting more and more into the creation phase, I realized I wanted to add a mega dungeon into AP, as I wanted to have both an AP and a sandbox, just to give the players more choices. With this in mind, I started thinking about linking the dungeon to other dungeons. All of a sudden two levels did not seem like enough. Two levels became three, but I was not fully happy with the way they ran together.

The more I read about Council of Thieves, the more I decided that I did not want to run a strictly urban adventure. I wanted a bit more diversity than just an urban adventure. In general, I like a good mix dungeon and wilderness adventures with a little bit of urban thrown in. Now I have not seen the final AP, so I could be totally off base.

I have just recently decided to go with Legacy of Fire (LoF), which of course required a bit of a re-write to align it to LoF and to give it an Arabian and Egyptian feel. Ten Thousand words has quickly become sixteen thousand, with more being added every day. Now just this past week, I am leaning towards adding potentially two more areas, which would mean at least another four thousand words, and I am not finished will all the hand outs. I have some rough sketches that I am still playing around with, so we shall see how it all plays out.

As I am not slated to start until August, this means I have another 2 months to think about this. As I am fleshing out this out, I am finding myself going back and adding new stuff to the older levels. For example, I really like the idea of the Harrow Deck, so I just added that as one of the magic items that could be found. I have a really cool idea on how to add this in, which I am rather excited about.

Of course I suspect that once I get back to the US, and start looking through my other books, I will add even more stuff. And this hits on the theme of the blog. I think that things tend to grow as you have more time to just think about them. With a year to think about a dungeon, it takes a life of its own. A couple of months ago, I thought I was basically finished except for the handouts, which I knew would be the last things I would be finishing. I have a tendency to just keep adding more and more stuff right up until the last minute. I am wondering if I am not alone in this?

What once started out as a small simple dungeon is now turning into its own mini mega dungeon. I suspect that my players may not get much past level 2, but that does not appear to be stopping the construction project that has become The Goblin Cave.

2009 Golarion Campaign – The Forgotten Gods

I have a working outline for my campaign which will formally kickoff after GenCon. I will be using the new Pathfinder rule set and I will also have a set of house rules. Once I have the new rules in my hands, I will be finalizing the house rules. There is a certain feel that I am looking for. As I have stated in my earlier blogs, I want an “Indiana Jones” feel to the campaign. By this I mean that the characters are explorers rather than heroes, each with his/her own reason for wanting to explore. I will be using guilds, and the two that I am thinking of introducing right away are the Pathfinder Guild and the Delver’s Guild (from Ptolus). I like the concept behind them. The Pathfinder Guild is about exploring to gain knowledge, particularly lost knowledge, while the Delver’s guild is more about exploring in general. It’s this gritty hands on passion for lost treasure and artifacts that I want to be the player’s focus.

I finally decided on a name for the campaign, “The Forgotten Gods,” which I think sums up the overall plot arc very well. I like to have background plot arc that helps to give the campaign a bit of flavor. My last campaign was called, Rise of the Chaos Lords, in which a number of Chaos Lords from the abyss where making a power play that was spilling into the material world. While the adventure was centered inside the city of Ptolus, there were a number of chaos factions both inside the city and outside the city that ultimately had an impact on what was going on inside Ptolus. In essence, Ptolus became a smaller version of the larger conflict. It was this larger conflict that gave context to smaller things that were going on. I thought this worked out very well, and it was very interesting listening to them try to put the pieces together.

For this campaign, the overall plot arc will take the characters through Legacy of Fire (LoF) and on to Necropolis, with a stop in the City of Brass. This will campaign will definitely have an Arabian Nights/Egyptian feel to it, which will a first for me. In the past, I have run European style campaigns, so this is definitely new territory, which I think is good. One of the strengths of D&D is that one can pick from any number of settings, and each has a different feel to them. At some point, I want to run a Viking style adventure, but that will probably be a few years out.

The campaign will start out in media res, meaning that I will start them right in the middle of the action. One of them will have acquired a “treasure” map that leads to a lost artifact called the Rod of Rahotep, which has lead them to northern Katapesh and the Brazen Peaks. The actual starting point will be in front of small hidden cave that leads to a multi-level dungeon that has the working title of “The Goblin Cave.”

The Goblin Cave started out as a 3 level dungeon, but I have expanded upon it quite a bit. Now that I have decided on an overall campaign arc, it is undergoing a face lift to give it the appropriate feel of dungeon in northern Katapesh, as well as tie it in to the overall campaign. At the moment it is 15,000 words, and growing.

From here, the characters will meet up with merchant princess Almah and that will formally start the Legacy of Fire AP. Now I want to play the AP very loosely, meaning that if they want to deviate from the plot line, I am going to let them. There are a number of breaks in the AP, and I have plans to fill them with smaller quests and adventuring possibilities. Through all of this, I want to keep to the theme of Indiana Jones style adventuring. Without giving away too much, I can say that there are a couple of artifacts that play a major role in LoF, which I think will work out well with the feel that I am trying to capture.

Once LoF has played out, it is off to Osirion and the providence of Khemit, which will host the mega-dungeon of Necropolis. Necropolis is a very challenging dungeon in terms of play for both the players and the GM. After Necropolis, I have a couple of ideas kicking around, but I probably have a year or so to think about that. My thought is that after Necropolis, the characters would be 20th level, and it would be time for some epic adventuring.

One of the things I want to be very careful with is the LoF AP. While I want the players to go through it, I do not want to create a rail road that handcuffs them. With this in mind, I have a couple of ideas. The first part of LoF is actually rather loose, with plenty of options available to the players. With this in mind, I want to create meaty side treks that they can explore as much or as little as they want. I am also thinking about creating a completely different alternate adventure option that is more of a sandbox just in case they just really want to do their own thing. In other words, their participation in LoF is really up to them.

We shall see how it all works out. I have another two months to bring it all together.

General update and other stuff

Another light blog day for me. This week is a holiday week, and I am trying to spend time with the family, so my blog is not getting the attention that I would like to give it. Next week should be back to normal posting.

In other news, my Ruined Stockade adventure is completely completely mapped out, and it came in at 115 encounters. I have just started to add the text details, but I have a long way to go. My own personal technique for dungeon creation is as follows:

1) Draw out the maps in pencil
2) Write up short text on everything
3) Add the flavor text
4) Add the cross reference details, room links, and add the plot details
5) Write up the appendix with special monsters, magic items & NPC's
6) Write up the monster stat blocks as appropriate (I try to get away with as little as possible, but sometimes I can not)
7) Redraw the maps in pen
8) Finished - time to start on the next project.

I am going to take my son through to play test, and then I will use it later in the year with my old group, and I might take this beast to GenCon. This one is designed to be a mini-sandbox adventure with lots of different areas to explore along with 6 dungeon areas.

For this weekend's review, I am going to tackle Pathfinder #1 Burnt Offerings, and that should go up tomorrow. This will be the first in a six part series reviewing the first AP in the Pathfinder series.

Quote of the Day:

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." (The Tower of the Elephant. Robert E. Howard)

Somewhere in there is a lesson on feedback.

Golarion Campaign 2009

It seems that every blog I read recently, the mega dungeon theme is circling around like a tornado that seems to have sucked up the blog writers in its mighty vortex. In this area, it seems that my own writing is vulnerable as well, and I am being drawn to this siren’s call, and to be honest, I go willingly into these dark depths of dungeon design. The horror, the horror!

Initially, I had decided that I was going to run a straight adventure path from Paizo. I like the mood and theme of their world Golarion. It has a bit of everything, and it comes with a shiny new cover. I am not shy to admit that I am susceptible to the lure that is the aura of the new campaign world, especially when it promises to be of quality work. I have a lot of respect for (and I would say that they have some of the best talent around) the Paizo team. However, I can not shake the idea of adding a mega-dungeon to my campaign.

One of the areas that I really like in Golarion is the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. This is basically the Viking area. Paizo has not done much with this area, which gives me free reign to do what ever I want. With this in mind, I have some ideas.

The concept that I am kicking around is the idea of mega dungeon that is actually a combination of wilderness and dungeon, where the characters have to think about the environment (in this case the cold of the north) as well as the dungeon. The wilderness actually becomes an extension of the dungeon itself. The deeper one moves into the forest, the more dangerous it becomes.

The adventure centers around a town called Wolvenstadt in the northern part of Lands of the Linnorm Kings, and just to the north of the town is the Hammersfeld Forest. The woods are loaded with magic beasts, ancient ruins, and other nasty critters including dragons and linnorms. My mega-dungeon would be the combination of the forest, ruins and a true mega-dungeon that lies at the base of the mountains on the far side of the forest. There is the remains of a wall that serves as a magical barrier that prevents most of the creatures from descending on the town. This is a very similar idea to GRRM’s Song of Ice and Fire. However, this case, Vikings use the forest as a rite of passage. Those that can journey into the forest, find a linnorm or a dragon, kill the beast and come back alive are destined for greatness. This is something of a fool’s errand, as the chances of actually finding one of these mythical beasts is rare, and the probabilities of surviving such an encounter are even slimmer.

As a result, every year a number of expeditions start out, lead by a young questing knight in search of these creatures. The expedition would include the questing knight, several rangers, a number of men at arms and mercenaries and would venture past the wall. Since these expeditions are rather expensive, only the upper class families can afford them. The night before the hunt, and grand party is held at the Last Drake Tavern in true Viking fashion. With the dawn of the next day, the questing knight leads his troop north into the great forest. Now, the question of how long the expedition stays north of the wall is a completely different story.

Some quests only stay in the forest for only a day or two and come right back. Some quests never come back. Of course, there are the legendary few that actually succeed and return with the head of a linnorm, and a mountain of gold. This is the classic risk and reward equation, where the possibility of immortality through legend, is weighed against the threat of failure, which would be the mortality of life.

This would be the initial backdrop of the campaign. The characters are being paid to join in one of these hunts, and the action picks up four days out from the wall. With this introduction, I wanted to jump right into the action. I have probably over used the meeting in the tavern intro, and I wanted the players rolling for combat right away.

As I started this blog with, I am going to keep the adventure path in the campaign, and I am curious to see whether the players follow the adventure path, stick with exploration of the mega dungeon, or possibly would they do a bit of both.

C&C with the Kids

Last night, my son had a bunch of his friends over, and I GM'ed a game of C&C. For the most part, the two systems I am playing are C&C and Pathfinder. C&C works well for my son and his friends as it is simple and there are plenty of class options available.

As I have noted in my earlier blogs, for my Golarion 2009 campaign, I am going to start the characters off at the entrance to "The Goblin Cave." The basic premise is that they are searching for a minor artifact which they believe is located somewhere in the cave complex. Initially I planned for this to be a small warm up dungeon, and it has grown quite a bit, and I probably will be adding another level to it. I have no plans to make it a mega-dungeon, but it has clearly grown quite a bit. Currently it is clocking in at 12,157 words, and I suspect that it may hit 15K words before all is said and done. In my last campaign, I had put together several small dungeons that weighed in at ~4K words each, so this is quite a bit longer.

In order to get ready for my 2009 campaign, I am using my son and his friends as the play test group for the dungeon. While I am not expecting my group to play quite like the kids, it is interesting watching to see how they approach the various challenges that the dungeon has for them. After watching them for a couple of sessions, I have a couple of observations:

1. To them, it is a fun game. Yes they play video games, but there is still an attraction to pen and paper games with a group around a table.

2. They have not mastered the finer points of the encounters. To them, its about collecting stuff. In their enthusiasm to finding treasure, they sometimes miss the big picture.

3. They continually try crazy things. There is something special about this.

4. They are not rules lawyers. I find this very refreshing. They just go with the flow.

5. They are always telling each other stories about the different monsters that they have faced. The gelatinous cube holds a special place in their folk lore, as it ate up two of their characters in an earlier adventure. When faced with a fight or run situation with a G-Cube bearing down on them, they choose to fight, which was not the smartest thing for them to do, as it just swept them up as it continued sliding along.

One of the things that I do want to share with my son is the history of the game itself, as I think that is what really makes the game special. The game has gone through several iterations, and I think each one adds something to the game. There is a history there, that I can say I have been a part off. This is not Monopoly or Scrabble, but this is something entirely different, and I think it falls into the category of respecting the game. I think that the players (& DM's/GM's) that respect the game, have a better appreciation of it. It gives it more depth than your average game.

All in all, it was a good time, and I think they all had fun, which is really the most important thing anyway.