It has taken me most of the year to finish this, but it is now done. Below are two free-to-download PDFs of the Lottery Dungeon adventure and the Maps that go with it. Feel free to use.
I ran this a while back (where the party got killed by ghouls, again), and back then it was designed for Crypts & Things, but I’ve adapted it for the Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS).
If you run it, play it, rip it apart, let me know.
Enjoy.
The Lottery Dungeon Adventure
The Lottery Dungeon Maps
Continuing their exploration of the ziggurat, the party descend the stairs through a hallway with murals of torture, mutilation and executions. They enter a chamber with four hooded statues forming a square, and a large jagged spiral carved into the stone of the room, full of dust. Around the corner can be see a stone sarcophagus; which immediately excites Halisham, who proclaims “There it is!”.
This makes the party suspicious, since until now the scholar has been vague about his reasons for coming here. As he heads over to the sarcophagus, the rest of the party spread out and check that the place is clear; it seems safe, and there are no exits. Zarkov gets Halisham to admit that yes, he is evil, and a follower of the Chained God; but that all he wants is a scroll from inside the tomb, the treasure that lies there is theirs for the taking. All he needs is some help opening the sarcophagus: some blood needs to be let, to neutralise the ‘trap’. He convinces Halmary to help him remove the lid, revealing a skeletal corpse clutching an obsidian scroll-case, lying on a bed of silver coins and trinkets. Halisham grows impatient, when no one is willing to step up and shed some blood (he says he can’t, as he is a follower and it won’t work)… and when no one comes forward, he acts: calling out to his deity he summons glowing purple chains that wrap around Halmary and hold him in place; and the others retaliate.
Corvin shoots an arrow at the evil cleric, but it missed and Halisham manages another spell, but fails to cause fear on the still-sober Ungrid. Idni shoots too, and his arrow scores a hit, embedding itself into the cleric’s leg; and the two dwarves move up close to whack him.
Halisham once again fails to land a spell on Ungrid, and also grabs the scroll-case, which has the effect of wakening the corpse: but never the cleric nor the corpse last long, for Idni stabs the cleric, badly wounding him, allowing Ungrid to finish him off with a decapitating swing of his axe, with a follow-through that cleaves through the undead and sends it crashing to the ground.
They loot the sarcophagus and the cleric, then locate a secret door that leads into a dusty hallway; an iron statue attacks them as they pass it, but it is quickly dispatched with Ungrid once again landing the killing blow. Another secret door leads outside, and they collect their mule and barrel of ale, and head off into the forest.
They travel through the forest for several days, getting lost once, and eventually find the road that cuts through the forest towards Hocholve and Derelion. They follow it for another day, and as they come close to the first lost town, they come across the scene of a massacre: a dozen elves and almost as many goblins litter the ground, looted, all but one dead; an elf, grievously wounded and missing an eye is tended to and brought round. His name is Beren and he tells them that his group was ambushed by goblins from the nearby castle. He also tells them that they were heading to a tomb, wherein is supposed to be a magical sword that is known to be a slayer of giants. The party agree to help him recover it, and they set out north into the Dim Forest and the tomb.
Kills: 1 cleric of the Chained God; 1 Iron Statue.
A follow-up from yesterday’s post, though I would also share how I write up an adventure when using the computer (in this case, google docs):
As you can see, I still use colours to highlight things, but the descriptions are shorter.
Over at Lasgunpacker, which follows on from other blog posts (see the post link and the comments too), there’s talk about keying dungeon entries that’s been quite interesting to follow, and it got me thinking about how I do mine; so I thought I’d share a few images from the notebook I’m currently using for mapping and detailing my adventure for the Take Two version of the City of Bones.
I’ve decided that I really prefer handwriting my adventures, especially now that I can map with the Dyson-styled hash-marks too fill out the stone between the rooms etc. In fact, I love seeing over people’s notes too, especially hand-written ones, maps too; when I was a young lad, I used to love looking at my dad’s adventures and seeing the maps he’d drawn and the notes he’d made.
My notes in the picture above are a paragraph of two of description and notes, colour-coded notes for special rules, monsters, treasure and headings, and I try to write the stuff out in the order the characters would experience the room, but not always.
Anyway. Just thought I’d share.
Here’s something I did today, made a quick random generator for the catacombs under the City of Bones, in case I need something quickly.
Edit: should have added to #7 Stairs: “roll any die, evens means up a level, odds down”, but I guess something like that is obvious, yes?
