OK, time to give my entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2014 a spin!
The entry grew out of my Recovering from a lame session blog post. You can get the SVG sources from my GitHub account. I’ve used the Noticia Text font by JM Solé (downloaded it from Google Fonts – click *Add “Noticia Text” to your collection*, then click the ⬇ down arrow, and choose to download the zip file). I’ve used Jez Gordon’s DungeonFu to create the three little maps.
Recovering from a lame session
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Right, got my 3d6 and I’m ready to roll.
Inn: *Delikatessen*. Remember the movie? Clearly something fishy is going on in this red-orange inn. Rumors of cannibalism, I say!
Name: *Gorknok*. Sounds like an orc to me. Too obvious? A *redcap* disguised as a gnome. He calls himself “Gorki”, of course.
The faction leaders, traits, goals:
1. Spider Ali, a magic user, careful, has escape planned, defend HQ
2. Silent Sereina, a cleric, funny, friendly (join her faction?), return my book
3. Patra the Good, a fighter, well educated (might help us later?), defend HQ
Looks like an all female cast to me, and all the positive traits. Androgynous Ali in her spider webs, white Sereine, lost in thought, and Patra the Good, the good ... fighter? I’m thinking a strong, bulky woman. No nonsense. Thinking of the magic item with the Set connection, I’m going to say Sereina is a protegé of Set, maybe the campaign can find inspiration from the Legend of the White Snake? I guess Sereina is in love with a man that is currently imprisoned somewhere. A potential lead for where the campaign might go: “My husband has left to study a the Seven Harmonies monastery and not returned...”
The goals are weird. I guess Silent Sereina is the active one. She *really* wants back her book. I guess the two others are on the defensive. The first scene should be agents of Set attacking minions of Spider Ali, at *Delikatessen*, where the party is meeting up.
Who else is there? Rolling for a conspicuous person... Ælvig, a singing huldra looking for a man (HD 3). Another woman! She has a fox tail, but hides it. Of course the party members will spot it. Mentioning it, however, is a grave insult. Remember that a huldra is somehow hollow inside and lined with bark, open at the back. It’s weird, and terrible. If any of the players is interested in the weirdness of faerie love and faerie courtship, this would be an opportunity.
Let’s look at the magic items. I get:
1. elven sword
2. bane cards
3. ring of djinn mastery
Clearly, the book is not amongst the magic items! How about the *The Investigation into the True Names and Habits of the Lords of Air*. The person with the *ring of djinn mastery* – Ali — borrowed the book because it was necessary to learn more about the ring. A close encounter with a djinn resulted in great damage to the book. Spider Ali thinks its disgraceful to return this book and sent ample gold instead. Sereina feels there is more to this and decides to up the ante. So, Spider Ali has the ring.
Patra the fighter owns the *elven sword* and realizes that it might grant access to elven lands. But this would require some elves. Make a not for later. If one of the players is interested in elves, the campaign could go there. We need some elves nearby! The elves of Red Acorn forest are at war with pig men. Will you join them, hoping to win their favor?
That leaves the *bane cards*. They are in the hands of the redcap Gorki. Should the players spend too much time at the inn, the redcap will use the cards on one of the characters when they’re alone and kill them, and prepare a cannibal feast for any who would join him. Uncovering these shape shifting recap is going to be a side quest.
I guess we’re done? Get a monster book and write down some stats? As for maps, I’m not going to use the tower twice.
Spider Ali keeps tamed war spiders instead of animated objects in her tower. Let’s say he has has the spell *charm spider* instead of *charm object*. The spiders’ poison is not lethal. It paralyzes victims for an hour. Oh, and give Ali a *web* spell instead of *read thoughts*.
Silent Sereina is running a little temple and has ten followers and two acolytes (C1) with *light* spells they’ll use to blind foes. Patra the Good has taken up residence in an old bakery and running a little protection racket in order to finance her visit to the Red Acorn forest. You’ll have to bring gifts for the elven lords, right?
The thing took me a bit less than an hour. What do you think? A useful tool? Not efficient enough? It’s probably faster if you don’t spend time googling for images and writing it up as a blog post. 😏
#RPG #Sandbox #1PDC
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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I’m getting a 404 on the Download PDF link.
– Paul Gorman 2014-12-14 16:47 UTC
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Whoops! Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.
– Alex Schroeder 2014-12-14 19:40 UTC