Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Yeah, UK1 is super talky. Never ran or played it (that I know of, I'm always surprised to hear what my DMs adapted back in the day), but I hope to run it some day for the right players.
Let's talk about Barrowmaze
- Thread starter The1True
- Start date
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
In which case, maybe check out "The Stygian Library" as well? Both of them are easy to drop into anything, but maybe a little too procedural. More interludes than destinations?
If you're happy with your campaign world then Planescape is right out, since that's an entirely different millieu, but you can run "The Final Boundary" without committing to a million boxes and paraphernalia if you want to give it the old one-shot try some day. I think you'll like it since the setting is more about the colourful NPC's (that are really easy for the DM to step into the PC's to interact with) and far-out imagery than trap-finding and tactical set-pieces.
If B3 is too gonzo, then so is DCO (plus it's desperately bleak). One hell of a good read though.
It got slapped down by this site's erstwhile host (much to my disappointment), possibly due to it being a 3e product, but "Vault of Larin Karr" had lots of slice o' life wilderness adventure to drop into a campaign as well.
And yeah, Castle Xyntillan is an absolute gem!
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
It's got that Romeo and Juliet story running through it. My only complaint was Timothy Truman (big fan of his comic work) drew this towering, fantasmagoric palace at the end that is WAY cooler (and obviously way bigger) than the comparitively boring Palace of Spires map.
This deserved fleshing out!
Howard Andrew Jones
*eyeroll*
Ah, many thanks for all the suggestions. I picked up Stygian Library a few years back as well.
Definitely want to avoid bleak -- my wife gets bleak in the day job all the time -- works with a lot of traumatized kids.
Vault of Larrin Karr! Ran that some years back via Castles & Crusades and had a pretty good time with it. Liked it well enough I picked up Barakus too, but I've been subsisting on a lot of stuff I found here for years now. For instance, I expanded Tower of the Scarlet Wizard and made it the center point of a campaign by dropping it into the middle of one of Stater's hex crawls, supplemented with Best of and No Regerts modules pulled from Bryce's recommendations. That lasted years.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
If only we knew someone who loves making big three-dimensional maps, and enjoyed the source material, who could give this the attention it deserves.It's got that Romeo and Juliet story running through it. My only complaint was Timothy Truman (big fan of his comic work) drew this towering, fantasmagoric palace at the end that is WAY cooler (and obviously way bigger) than the comparitively boring Palace of Spires map.
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This deserved fleshing out!
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
sweet jesus nooooo
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
If you want to avoid bleak, my picks would be Castle Xyntillan, Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom, Demonspore, or Many Gates of Gann.
Howard Andrew Jones
*eyeroll*
Got 'em all! Some day I'll slip Pod Caverns and Demonspore into some kind of Underground campaign, though I still don't have a unifying theme except all the best levels from Fight on and other places. Something will come to me eventually.
Have suggested that the wife DM me through Xyntillan, so I haven't read it in depth. Would be fun to be a player for once...
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
I thought these adventures were connected. There was discussion about it in the comments, here: https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=645
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
Thanks for finding that!
Boy, haven't seen hide nor hair of Guy anywhere since COVID.
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
A lot of creators seem to have burned out, which is sad. Also, blogging kind of died (although, I'm assured it's going strong, I just have to find new bloggers?) I spend an irregular Saturday tea break disconsolately cycling through moribund OSR blogs every few weeks. It's depressing.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
At least we're having a posting renaissance here. All is not lost.
grodog
Should be playing D&D instead
Guy’s definitely around, just focused on life priorities rather than gaming priorities these days. I keep hoping we’ll get him back at GaryCon or NTX sometime soon.
Allan.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
Glad to hear it. I would like to chat with him at one of those.
Blakely
A FreshHell to Contend With
I finished reading BM. I really want to run it. Feels like the map is such quality that you really have to run it to appreciate the mechanics of it. One thing I don't get is that it seems like Ossithrax isn't essential to the adventure. He is there if you happen to go that direction. But you can destroy the tablet if you beat the keeper, and then it sends you back to #232 I think, which is nowhere near the dragon. Would it make more sense to teleport the party to the top NE part of the map so will confront Oss? Or am I missing something with the structure?
The1True
8, 8, I forget what is for
You're talking as if there's a point to the adventure other than to gain gold, experience, and fame. My completionist players will eventually hit the dragon out of a burning need to clear the fog of war from the entire map. They have ignored almost every written story hook thrown their way. I'm not sure they see the cults of Set and Orcus and Nerul(?) as an overarching plot leading to a final showdown. I guess if your players are driven by story goals (to be fair, mine usually are), the dracolich is entirely secondary to that central plot, and a bonus extra for completionist delvers.
DangerousPuhson
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Yeah, it's a site to be cleared, and my gut says it was initially designed piecemeal as several tiny cairn dungeons and then bound together to make a larger product. Inevitably, you'll lose some cohesion when not designing with linkages at the forefront. Like, you aren't "clearing the Barrowmaze"; you're plundering numerous graves that all happened to be lumped within close proximity with one another, often times bleeding over into neighboring graves but rarely synergizing. It's not really a megadungeon in the typical sense of the word, so it would follow that it lacks the typical navigational flow of a megadungeon.
DangerousPuhson
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
If it helps, I personally define a "megadungeon" to consist of one singular connected structure; Barrowmaze, conversely, is a series of tiny structures connected only by proximity to one another, so I view it more as a very large adventure "site", almost like a bigger version of the Caves of Chaos.
The distinction is really only semantic and not very important, though. Ultimately, my point is about cohesion, which is more apparent in (my version of) megadungeons vs. (my version of) an adventure site. All the cairns differ from one another, which is basically what you want to see in a site like this, but ideally not what you'd want in a "proper" megadungeon (at least one that isn't supposed to be a funhouse or monster zoo). It means that overarching connections get muddled and often overlooked.