This has been a drill.
Apparently, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has decided to leave OGL 1.0a well enough alone (for now.) In addition, they are releasing the 5.1 System Reference Document under the Creative Commons license. Details here.
The damage may already been done. Publishers are likely still moving on with their plans to avoid the OGL like the plague (as they probably should.) Still, this is good news overall, so let's take the win.
Time does indeed fly! As I write this, I'm in the process of finishing the first level of the Temple. If you're new to the blog, please start here and catch up!
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| This map is created under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. |
This room has wooden shelves and scattered scrolls, clay tablets, and books, some of which are attached to the shelf by rusted chains.
Two (2) male and three (3) female halflings with stolen weapons and armor have barricaded the entrances/exits with shelves. They are escaped prisoners who are traumatized and paranoid, and may be hostile (-1 to reactions) until they realize the characters aren’t gobb-men or worse. If escorted out of the dungeon and to their village (location TBD) the characters will receive 50 XP and a 150 gp reward from the village’s burgomaster. If the characters escort the halflings to the entrance of the Temple, they only get 50 XP.
Most of these reading materials here are damaged and nearly illegible. However, a fragment of some sort of prayer of the Cult still exists, written in the Common tongue:
The Snake God Watches
From the dark side of His Lunar abode
His Serpents embrace the world
(Note: this is a good place for any replacement player characters, halfling or otherwise.)
This room is lined with 11 large urns – nine (9) along the walls and two (2) in the center of the room. The oblong urns are approximately three feet tall and four feet at their widest point and are painted with fading, serpentine hieroglyphs. Only seven out of the 11 urns are intact. Roll 2d6 for the contents of each intact urn if searched (treasure contents only occur once each; treat as empty otherwise):
2 A cobra
3-4 1d4 vampiric snakes (see Room 2)
5 A gobb-man playing with himself (if PG-13 audience) or picking his nose enthusiastically.
6 A sleeping kobb-man
7 – 8 Empty
9 Human bones
10 A human corpse
11 Coins (117 silver, 92 copper, 28 gold)
12 Coins (468 silver, 366 copper, 111 gold, 3 platinum,) and an emerald necklace worth 125 gold
This was the final reward and resting place of nobles and other wealthy individuals who devoted themselves to the Cult (with financial support, of course.) The walls of this room are lined with upright sarcophagi. The tops of the sarcophagi are decorated with cobra-like hoods where the snake’s “mouth” is an opening showing an embalmed corpse inside. At the far end of the room is a dais with a (secret) stone door carved with a large snake head. The stone door blends as part of the wall.
The western side of the room has tables with crude, alchemical equipment such as ceramic bowls and a mortar and pestle. The opposite end has a living space with scattered straw, furs, and skins (some humanoid) as well as various fetishes hanging from ropes strung along the serpentine columns.
This is the abode of a gobb-man “priest” and his “acolytes” (1d6 present at any time). The columns are hollow and vent air from Level 2 below. The “priest” has heard harpies’ singing (room number TBD) through the vents during his louts-addled trips and has begun worshiping them.
Gobb-man “priest”: AC 6 [13]; ATK 1; DMG 1d4 (dagger) or special; HD 2; HP 8; MV 9; SAVE 17 (mage); SPECIAL lotus sleeping powder (2 uses;) AL C; XP 60.
The Gobb-man priest is a coward and will let his acolyte(s) defend him while he pulls back. If engaged, he will blow lotus powder from a tube (treat as a sleeping spell) then attempt to escape through the southern passage by opening the snake head door with a special hexagonal key on his person (similar, but not he same as the one in Room 7.)
Each sarcophagus has small jewelry, trinkets, and grave goods inside worth 2d10 gold coins.
The stone walls of this room are carved into scenes of grotesque religious rituals that honor, placate, or otherwise sacrifice to chthonic, serpentine creatures. Anyone examining the reliefs must succeed at a saving throw against magic or find themselves transfixed, following seemingly animated scenes of horror towards a large, central being whose form is reminiscent of the Cult’s symbol. Any time spent examining the reliefs while transfixed is doubled (one turn becomes two turns.) Searching the room in any fashion also requires a saving throw to avoid becoming transfixed.
A hexagonal opening in the southeast wall is a lock that opens a secret door. The key is currently held by the gobb-man priest in Room 17. The stairway beyond leads to Level Two.
The room was either a feasting or worsip hall of some sort, with a dais at the end and enclosed areas along the walls.
About 27 gobb-men live in this chamber, with 1d4+10 present at one time. Their "king" is a corpulent hobb-man (9 HP) sent from below to keep the gobb-men as a first line of defense against the oor-men. The hobb-man "king" has taken to his posting rather well and is usually found resting on the dais with (at the GM's discretion) 2d10 human and demihuman servants feeding and massaging him.
On a positive reaction, the "king" will pay 15 silver per oor-man head brought to him. He will also pay 50 silver for the return of his five, missing halfling captives (see Room 15.)
The gobb-man treasure is hidden in secret vault in the northeastern part of the room: 19 platinum, 149 gold, 1200 silver, and 460 copper coins; a piece of rough quartz worth 2 gold, a bloodstone worth 33gp, and a silver orb with a central gem eye surrounded by golden snakes worth 420gp. The treasure is guarded by eight (8) glowing fire beetles that are accustomed to gobb and hobb-man musk. The "king" has a key on his person.
This chamber and hallways once formed a barracks for the Cult’s guards. Rotting wooden bunks and weapon racks with one or two rusted weapons still exist along some of the walls and alcoves (-1 to damage, breaking or rendered useless on a 1 in 20 attack roll.)
The steep, eastern stairs leading up to this chamber are trapped. A pressure plate halfway up the stairs causes them to collapse into a slide that drops victims into a grated, 10 ft. wide pit below. The stairs and pit reset after one turn. The trap can be activated/deactivated by a torch sconce on the wall at the top of the stairs.
The door to the chamber next to Room 19 is locked. The hobb-man “king” (Room 19) has the key.
The hallway opposite of the stairs and pit trap has a stairway that goes down to Level 2.
This was previously the chambers of the Cult’s captain of the guard. It is now the "brand new" offices of Selonius and Co. Trading Coster, a group of seven (7) traders who have fallen on hard times after a “grave misunderstanding” in the city, and are currently “exploring new ventures” with the creatures of the Temple. They have been mildly successful, judging by the fact that they’re still alive. The Company is not above smuggling and some mild banditry when necessary. Their roster is as follows:
Selonius (6 hp, Neutrality): a corpulent man, whose gregarious and somewhat sassy demeanor conceals a greedy and cunning mind; armed with a sword and wears leather and a buckler (AC 6 [13])
The brothers Varus (8 HP, Law,) who is tough and ruthless, and Garus (7 HP, Law,) who is rough but toothless. They are the muscle of the company and armed with a battleaxe and a pole arm respectively. They wear furs (AC 7 [14].)
Anexa (4 HP, Chaos): a shrewd, dark-haired woman with piercing blue eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor; she keeps the books. She is armed with a sword, leather, and small shield (AC 6 [13].)
Old Stephan (3 HP, Neutrality): who might be the heart and soul of the Company, if not for his love of strong drink. He is armed with a hammer and shield (AC 6 [13])
Oyunn (4 HP, Chaos): a quiet, long-haired man of the Steppe; armed with a short bow and short sword and wearing buckskins (AC 7 [12].)
Siobhan (5 HP, Neutrality): the short, girlish, and freckled “face” of the Company, complete with a fiery temper. She has a crossbow and dagger and is wearing studded leathers (AC 7[12].)
The Company has some serviceable arms, equipment, and other goods to sell (GMs discretion as to specific items,) but prices are marked up 2d10+10%. They do not have much capacity to purchase items from characters, as they only have 150 copper and 83 silver coins to their name.
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Pictured: A typical day of dungeon writing at the Lair |
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| This map is created under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. |
Welcome back to the Lair! If you’re new here, be sure to check out my first post. Before I get to the meat of this post, I have something I’d like to address.
Unless you’re living under a rock, you probably know that a new version of the OGL (v1.1) has been leaked. It seems the new version of the license will negatively affect companies, content creators, and alas, both veteran and fledgling OSR bloggers (such as yours truly,) who depend on the OGL to produce content compatible with the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game (and I’m probably understating it.) What does that mean for this blog? Honestly, I don’t know yet, but for now I will stay the course patiently on the Dungeon23 project until conditions on the ground change.
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Keep calm and
carry a lightsaber |
And now, back to the program.
Long ago, a perverse Cult spread like a malignancy across the land. It promised its adherents a way to carnal power and Paradise in the afterlife in exchange for allegiance to an inscrutable Snake God. The cult spread slowly at first, gaining influence among the youth and aristocracy who forever seek rebellion and decadent diversion respectively. Eventually, they raised their twisted, serpentine temples in all the major cities of Man, gaining riches and power enough to challenge kings.
One such king, a sellsword turned conqueror, sought to stand against them after they had seduced his children into thralldom. Alas, he was unaware the Cult had infiltrated even his inner circle and barely escaped an attempt with his life. Forced into hiding, the King formed a band of adventurers and brothers-in-arms from his mercenary days. Together, they assaulted the Cult’s mother Temple, in a redoubt deep within the ghost-haunted hills.
In the dark of night, the King and his company infiltrated the Temple and fought their way through guards, acolytes, and unnameable horrors the Temple spawned. They eventually reached the Inner Sanctum of the Cult where a furious battle against the High Priest and his Champions ensued. That night, the steel and iron resolve proved mightier than demonic sorcery and fleshly influence alike as the Cult was brought low. Its High Priest slaughtered before his demoralized fanatics.
Following their defeat, the Cult’s temples were looted and razed. Their rhetoric was forbidden across the land on pain of death. The Temple in the hills, however, was never looted, as the King cared not for the Cult’s cursed and snake-tainted riches. Long after both King and Cult passed from memory and into legend, the intrepid and foolhardy have sought the Temple’s haunted treasures, but none have returned alive.
Note: shout out to the Bat in the Attic blog, whose invaluable Inkscape mapping tutorials made this map possible. This map is created under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
The entrance to the Temple consists of a set of marble stairs that climb to the foot of a single, small mountain. Separate stairs on either side lead to a balcony above. Under the balcony ahead is a set of bronze-covered double doors stained with verdigris. The left door is ajar and the right has been ripped from its hinges and rests on the floor.
The balcony above is littered with debris consisting of broken columns and the burnt remains of what was once and ornate wooden roof. Under the debris to the left of the stairs is a secret trap door which if opened, rouses nine (9) stirges that fly out of the trap door like a swarm of bats. They are hungry.
The hallway leads to a double chamber with rounded alcoves (1a). The alcove on the right has a statue of a jackal-headed man and the statue on the left is a large, sinuous snake with an open mouth. In the mouth of the snake statue is a handle that opens the secret door to the left of the entrance passageway. If the stirges in the Entrance area haven’t been encountered, they are roosting in this hallway.
The room has four exits plus a doorway ahead that leads to a vaulted chamber (1b) decorated with faded frescoes on the walls depicting serpentine arabesques. The two doors ahead are decorated with a sun (left) and one with a moon (right). Between the doors is a fresco depicting an eye surrounded by snakes (the Cult’s symbol). When someone steps 10 feet into the room, the fresco Eye glows an eerie blue. A deep voice enunciates the following: “INFIDEL DEFILERS BEWARE! THOSE WHO SEEK TO VIOLATE THIS TEMPLE WILL DROWN IN LAKES OF BLOOD!” the Eye then stops glowing, leaving the room silent. The message resets after one hour and is reactivated in the same manner.
There is a humanoid skeleton on the floor in front of the Moon door to the right. The skeleton is devoid of valuables other than five rusted darts embedded its tattered clothes and rib cage. The opposite wall has five holes in the wall disguised as the eyes of various snakes. The dart trap used to activate when someone opens the Moon door, but is now inactive. The Sun door is not trapped.
This room is has the rotted remains of wooden cots cabinets and bench tables. The table has earthenware plates, bowls and old, wooden eating utensils. One intact cabinet has a false back which conceals a secret door. However, the cabinet is a nest for a vampiric snake, a long, pale, and segmented creature with a bulbous head that is in truth neither snake nor worm, but an aberrant creature. If roused, its head expands into a winged hood, revealing a slit-like mouth covered in small teeth. A successful strike causes it to latch on to the victim and drain blood for 1d4 damage every round. Three (3) more vampiric snakes crawl out from nearby cots as they are alerted to a potential meal.
Snake, vampiric: AC 7 (14), ATK 1 bite, DMG 1d3 + drain blood (1d4/round), HD 1 (+1), MV 40 ft., SV 17 (warrior), AL Neutral, 15 XP
Room 3
This hexagonal chamber has multiple small and large barrels lined up on the walls. The ones to the north wall have staples like rice, flour (now spoiled) as well as preserved vegetables (still surprisingly edible.) The large barrels on the south wall however are very tightly sealed, requiring force or tools to open. The inside is filled with slabs and cuts of what appear to be preserved meat in brine. A closer examination, such as dumping the barrels’ contents on the floor, reveals them to be human body parts.
This chamber has a small altar on the south side in front of an enclosed area with a tightly-latticed iron fence. The fence’s gate is unlocked and ajar. The wall beyond has a pair of manacles and is painted with serpentine designs as well as three Cult symbols.
The small altar has two carved snakes facing each other. The left one is a lever that causes three (3) cobras to slither out of holes on the wall within the painted Cult symbols. There is also a secret panel in the altar that houses the cobras when the lever is not in use. Inside are also various small, snake-themed religious items made of silver, worth 40 gold coins in total.
The door to this room seems to have been taken from its hinges. In the center of the room is a statue of sorts made from random wooden parts (including the smashed door and furniture from this room.) It is roughly in the shape of a winged woman with bird-like legs (a harpy) covered in dried blood and wearing a necklace made of rotted fingers and ears. At its base is a ceramic bowl with dried blood, unidentifiable flesh matter, dried flowers, and herbs with two unlit but half melted candles by its sides. In its eye sockets are a pair of real (albeit rotted) humanoid eyes. Anyone paying attention notices the grotesque eyes move slowly to follow any living creature’s movement in the room. (Note: I have yet to determine who, if anyone is watching through those eyes.)
Rusted torch sconces on the northeastern and northwestern walls open secret doors on the east and west sides respectively.
This room is a garden open to the outside, with a fountain in the center and galleries 10 feet above. The garden is overgrown with lotus blooms of various colors. Three (3) gobb-men – pale, squat, and misshapen humanoids with asymmetrical features, are looking for and consuming lotus blooms. Two remain alert, but the third is in a drugged stupor. Four (4) additional gobb-men skulk in the gallery above. All the gobb-men are armed with spears.
Note: as you can probably guess, the gobb-men are goblins reskinned for a more swords & sorcery flavor. They are the remnants of the Cult’s sorcerous breeding programs . I’m similarly reskinning other common fantasy humanoids as follows:
If combat ensues, there is a 1 in 6 chance hitting a lotus bloom on a missed attack and spreading a puff of pollen. Roll 1d6 for type and effect below. Breathing the pollen requires a save against poison to avoid the effects. The effects last 1d10 rounds. The gobb-men are immune to the pollen.
The fountain's brackish water is full of various coins worth 20 gold coins in total (they weigh as much as 50 coins.) A repaired area of the garden’s wooden floor to the northwest of the fountain has a small sack inside with coins and small temple trinkets worth 100 gold coins total.
The lotus blooms are also valuable. Anyone searching has a 1 in 6 chance of finding one viable, intact sample (rolled randomly as above.) Handling a lotus bloom requires a save against poison to avoid its effects (a failed save ruins the sample.) A viable sample is worth 20 gold coins to an alchemist.
The western exit can only be reached from the gallery above.
The ground in the northern center of the room has been dug up and glyph-carved standing stones with lengths of chain have been placed on the bare ground opposite of each other. There are claw marks on the wall and on the edges of the makeshift pit. The ground is muddy and contains pottery shards with unidentifiable, dried spices, nonhuman teeth, and dung next to a broken dagger.
In the center of the room is a pedestal in the shape of a serpent, with its open mouth facing up. Inside the mouth is a hexagonal slot. The slot’s crystal “key” is buried in the mud (and dung.) When the crystal is placed in the slot and turned to the right, the northeast wall revolves to the right reveals a doorway but blocking the hallway to Room 2. If turned left, it revolves the opposite way and opens the east wall but closes the north one. It can be returned to a neutral position, closing both doorways.
A wooden armoire on the south wall is empty, but has a secret panel door leads to a kind of storeroom (7b.) It is mostly empty save for an old pair of leather boots, a full-length mirror, and a bottle of scented oil. The boots are near useless, but the mirror and oil are serviceable, and may be valuable at the GM’s discretion.
Thanks for reading! If you like this stuff so far, be sure to share and follow for the next part of the Temple of The Snake Cult.
Welcome to my blog! I’ve wanted to write this for a long time as I was bitten and infected (natch) by the bug of the Old School Renaissance (OSR,) but always found an excuse to avoid it. Fast forward over a decade and a new year and I find myself with both the time and a neat project, the Dungeon23 challenge, to spur regular writing. Furthermore, the hobbysphere finds itself in a similar situation to a decade ago, with a void between popular and (possibly) unpopular editions of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) where people may be hungry for content outside of the mainstream game, so perhaps this is just the right time for this blog.
My original idea for a first post was going to be a biographic manifesto of my gaming history and Old School chops (or lack thereof,) but I’d rather leave that screed for a future time. You’re likely here for something of substance, so let’s just roll right on with this year’s project de jour: Dungeon23. But first, some preliminaries:
Like other OSR blogs, my writings will be focused on older editions of D&D, their retroclones and inspired games, as well as Old School structures of play, so even if you play the current edition of the game, but you appreciate Old School style play, you may still find something of value in this blog.
The idea is to get one good post per week. For this year, it will be compilations of the week’s Dungeon23 work. Depending on my appetite for further writing, expect posts on new, gameable material, as well tips and (opinionated) insights I’ve learned from 32 years of RPG gaming and a decade of exposure to the OSR hobbysphere. Lastly, some obligatory nostalgic posts from the perspective of a late Gen X, 80s kid who got into RPGs in the early 90s – too late to be truly Old School, but too early to be New School. This may include occasional posts about other popular RPGs of the late 80s and 90s.
Now, without further ado...
For those that don’t know (and really, how did you find this blog, then?) Dungeon23 is a writing challenge where you write one room of a dungeon every day, creating one level of the dungeon every month. At the end, you should have a 12-level megadungeon with 365 rooms total. Other OSR bloggers and vloggers have expanded the concept to creating one bit of RPG material every day such as a detailed hexes in a mapped sandbox, encounters, new monsters, NPCs, magical items, etc. Some are melding the Dungeon23 project with the Gygax75 challenge, which is another worthy project.
For my Dungeon23, I would like to write a campaign following the assumed timeline in the Moldvay/Cook (and later Mentzer) Basic/Expert (BX/BECMI) versions of D&D. I will begin with the first three levels of a dungeon, followed by a detailed home base with keyed locations, and finally a wilderness sandbox for 4th-level and higher player characters to adventure in and potentially build future strongholds. A rough outline of the project’s timeline is as follows:
January: Dungeon Level 1
February: Dungeon Level 2
March: Dungeon Level 3
April: The Home Base
May: The Wilderness around the Home Base with hexes of interest
June-December: Additional Dungeon levels and/or detailed locations in the Wilderness
I feel this is a pretty good timeline to stick to. So what is the theme of my dungeon? Well, being a child of the 80s, my impressionable little brain was filled with tons of fantasy and sci-fi media. Some of my favorite films were those of the swords and sorcery variety.
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Pictured: the Holy Trinity of 80s Swords & Sorcery cinema |
1982’s Conan the Barbarian has a location that is perfect for a campaign’s tent-pole dungeon: Thulsa Doom’s Mountain of Power
Ol Weregrog says: if your classic megadungeon isn’t set under castle (with a color and a noun in the name, of course) then put it in a mountain!
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11 out of 18 dwarves recommend mountain dungeons |
This place has it all: an iconic location, a grand entrance-way,
and multiple points of entry in the form of a secret stair to the balcony, a fountain garden exposed to the
outside (with a sub-level above,) and a gorge full of caves leading to the inside of the complex. I plan to shamelessly rip off this location
and file down the serial numbers just enough where one may not be absolutely sure
that this is *The* Mountain of
Power, but you know what’s going on (*wink*.) I'm looking for gameability rather than originality here.
And that's the plan. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the first section of Dungeon Level 1 in the Temple of the Snake Cult!
Building Bash (Lost? Rewind to Part 1 ) Image from cyberpunk.fandom.com It was about two days days after the incident in Northside before...
