It’s late, it’s time for bed, but my wife has a new laptop that needs setting up. The old one is from 2013 or thereabouts.
I’ve written about finding the adventure idea in 2022-12-04 Planescape is in your head and I wrote about map drawing and random encounter tables on 2022-12-09 Map drawing and monster picking but we still need to do something for the map key.
2022-12-04 Planescape is in your head
2022-12-09 Map drawing and monster picking
We need to know about some special residents and we need to know about treasure. Wandering monsters don’t have treasure, so it’s all about the lairs.
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The last blog post in the series ended with a long list of book titles. This is the Great Library of Thoth. Surely the books are worth something? But how much? My first hunch is 500 gold pieces. How about a random roll: 1W6×100 gold pieces? Perhaps there could be a mini game here, where you can bet on some books being valuable, or intelligence being important when picking the book and charisma being important when selling the book. I just don’t see the entertainment value in that, though. As a player you can just roll dice to determine the value of the book. Rolling more dice doesn’t make it more fun.
How many books can one character carry? How about… 10 per person? So in B/X terms that would be 150 coins weight since the limit of the simplified encumbrance model is 1500 coins. If one coin is 10 g, each book is 1.5 kg. This might work out, I guess. So 15 kg of books and then you’re slowed down. If you’re using 1 significant item per point of strength, you’ll also get to carry 10 books on average. I like it!
Sounds like that’s the default treasure you can find down here. 10d6×100 is going to be about 3500 gold per person. Not bad. I need to think about the librarian and his assistants pursuing the party if they look like obvious book thieves.
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What lairs do we have on the map? Let’s check the map again.
Where the Great Library turns into the swamp, I see some potential lairs. Using the AD&D Random Treasure Generator:
AD&D Random Treasure Generator
The gargantuan collection of jewelry the troglodytes managed to amass makes me think they have been grave robbing for a while!
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For characters I use Robe of Useful Items: AD&D Characters.
Robe of Useful Items: AD&D Characters
Thrinnandi the Mercurial, magic-user 7, neutral evil, 14 hp, AC 9, THAC0: 19 but +1/+2 due to strength; 2pp, 18gp, 1ep, 7sp; robe of protection +1; straw hat; quarter staff; potion of polymorph (self); scroll (lvl 5 magic-user spell, telekinesis); scroll (lvl 1 magic-user spell, enlarge); ring of contrariness* (levitation) [azurite set in silver and gold]; ring of water walking [silver and gold]. Spells: 4/3/2/1 (unseen servant; feather fall; comprehend languages; tenser’s floating disc; find familiar; mirror image; stinking cloud; esp; leomund’s trap; protection from evil 10’ radius; hold person; fire charm); languages: black dragon, common, goblin.
OK, so cool that she’s interested in the black dragon Alforex because she speaks the language. Her lair is full of fake traps. There is an unseen servant around her. She has a familiar: a hawk. In a fight, she’ll use *hold person* and *fire charm*.
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We need to determine where the character end up and where the Ankh of Resurrection is that Teiddwen is searching. If Thoth has it, does that mean that the god has it personally, on his person? Or does it exist in his most central temple, the Great Library? Of course it’s in the library, because that’s more entertaining! But where? It’s small. It’s not in the great hall. There you’ll find a big Ankh.
How about a little in-game riddle? Who would have it? The greatest healer! Where is the greatest healer? In a section about healing that you’ll recognise because it has a bone collection outside. Skeletons of various kinds, the study of anatomy. Further inside, the study of The Great Healer, Thutmose Frondira. There is also a secret door that leads to her secret library of anatomy books. These books are more valuable: 1d10×100 gold.
Now that we know the goal, where do we start? In the summoning room? That would be really close by and ensure that the players have a decent chance of seeing the bone collection. Let’s do that.
What kind of character is Thutmose? She’s not a lich, I think. So she’s an old cleric? Let’s use the character generator again.
Thutmose Frondira, cleric 12, neutral with chaotic tendencies, 45 hp, AC 4 if armed (usually AC 9), 11pp, 61gp, 2ep, 456sp ring mail armor +2; footman flail +1; wooden holy symbol; small silver mirror; potion of speed; scroll (lvl 3 cleric spell, cure blindness); scroll (lvl 4 cleric spell, tongues); scroll (lvl 3 cleric spell, feign death); wand of fear (93 charges); ring of protection +1 [white opal set in silver]; languages: black dragon, common, orc. Spells: 6/5/5/3
Funny that Thutmose Frondira also speaks black dragon. I think they like each other and I switched their random scrolls around.
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This needs more weird characters: wizards and clerics and librarians… but how many are people actually going to encounter? Perhaps two is enough? A small list of other names and jobs might be useful.
I searched for ancient Egyptian names and found some pharaoh names; I looked at the Wikipedia page of Ancient Greek personal names, I looked at my list of gothic names… Really, name lists are important. You can find some of my name lists in my text folder.
#RPG #Prep
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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Be happy players in that place!
– bluetyson 2022-12-22 09:35 UTC
