Sunday 27 January 2013

Dungeon Zones & Alternate surface missions

Finn Family Moomintroll - Tove Jansson 

Long Stair Mission Zones

1d12 dungeon zones
1 - Gothic Zone - the haunted castle crypt
2 - Redbrick Zone - the deathtrap dungeon
3 - Goblin Mine Zone - the pits of chaos
4 - Amber Manour Zone - the mansion of
madness
5  - Fortress Zone - the elder giant ruins
6 - Alcheringa Zone - the ancient haunted land
7 - Cyclopean Zone - the lost world of sorcery & science
8 - Lost Temple Zone - the ancient desert temple and tomb
9 - Forbidden City Zone - the sunken jungle city ruins
10 - Glacial Rift Zone - the frozen prehistoric ice caverns
11 - Under Land Cavern Zone - the foreboding stone labyrinth
12 - Sunken Land Zone - the drowned kingdom

If I do more zones they will be higher level and more akin to outer and elemental planes. Increasingly more hellish like the so called devils boiler room or slaughter house zone. Treasure scanter or more attuned to outer and elemental planes and more likely to be aligned.
Elemental worlds would connect to some of the basic 12 fairly obviously. Possibly some planes to visit for hex-crawls rather than dungeons in different "surface" dimensions.

Slaughterer House Zone - the
devils boiler room
Riveted metal lined, hot and damp and stinking of dried blood. Horrible often mechanical traps. Populated by savage humanoids, many savage mutilated specimens worshiping evil. Also many devils and demons and what appears to be torture and slaughter equipment designed for medium sized animals. Some are mutated and clearly insane. Mechanical automaton horrors and traps aplenty.
Some sort of drain or sewer world

House of the Dead Zone - the underworld realm
A grim land of the dead, with cold grey light, ruins, tombs and even a great city of the dead. Many inhabitants starving while some are imprisoned and even being tortured by outer plane beings.

Space Rock Zone - the strange cosm

A void of stars with scattered rocks, planetoids and even huge creatures. Strange local gravity conditions make local travelers use technological and magic and mental powered vessels. Strange races battle for supremacy and exotic needs.


The Gamma Zone - the ultra tech apocalypse world
Straight up gamma world. Perhaps planet Volturus or the top secret spytown intro module or boot hill. My Marvel MSH party once considered staying in a traveller 2300 type universe once but thought too vulnerable to death in spaceship explosions.

Missions on surface viable also. Alternate surfaces and time travel even viable.
 

But here are some ideas for surface events calling on Dungeon expertise.

Surface Missions 1d20
 

1 Gangsters using magic item or being to commit crimes
2 Wizard on loose infiltrating finance or government or tech institution
3 Sorcerer on loose indulging in party and attracting a cult
4 Bard on loose mixing with celebrities

5 Orc killer loose hitting targets for gangsters with special forces weapons

6 Cults communing with dungeon and possibly opening temporary gates
7 Carrion crawlers or other species loose in sewer

8 Devil swine or creature menacing rural town
9 Vampire loose! Code Ultraviolet!
10 Priest recruiting cult to alien or long forgotten god
11 Priest or necromancer experimenting on rural necropolis
12 Unaturally skilled thief or assassin at work using xenomethodology
13 Dungeon species inhabiting abandoned tunnels or tunnels
14 Lab containment breach - dungeon species or tech loose
15 Black market using dungeon tech to smuggle goods
16 Prisonbreak from dungeon operations, squealing ex agent or xenospecies loose
17 Infiltrate the mob dungeon smuggling operations
18 Dungeon species planning to expose dungeon species
19 MIA trooper seen in rural town - re bag and return to base20 Ex personnel on surface become dungeon species

Many missions include just cleaning up evidence but sometimes this leads to finding other dungeon stuff


Basically wanna design 9 geomorphs for each type and some sf ones. But for now ill finish redbrick as its one of the most popular ones. Some sets could be swappable. Can add ones from web on sides too. A FASA traveller module i had from 80-ish had space ship geomorphs for a asteroid colony. Why no metamorphosis alpha ones?

So far have done the following redbrick geomorphs:
Barracks - sleeping barracks, latrines, kitchens, laundry, building supplies, offices
Vaults - heavily built and trapped store rooms, workshops and treasure

Great Temple - temple complex for sealed secret rituals and offices
Throne - court of local leader with admin, noble housing and secret escapes
Prison - a plan for prisoners, monster breeding and slaughter for feeding troops


Need the following
Labyrinthine - tiny rooms, winding passages, dead ends, tight fits, minotaurs

K
obold run - kobold warren and trap making workshops, monster pens, labs
Construction Site - semi built, unstable, dead end warren, scaffolding
Factory Floor - huge workshop of fiery furnaces, store rooms and cells


Easier to cut and paste old maps and build bigger map keys.

Now i have a latrine symbol will add everywhere. Or monster dung and giant dungeon scarabs will abound.

5 comments:

  1. I have no idea if you are a professional writer or not, but have you considered collecting all of this great stuff in one volume?
    If not, I have much copying and pasting to do.

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  2. This is evil genius work. Thank you for the inspiration.

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  3. well yes i will post in several volumes - i wanna print some as old school zines too - i have worked in art (fine art, community art, graffiti, teaching and comic fields) and am enjoying writing something for fun.

    Last few collab art books comics i did didn't feel like me so im hoping ill do something gamer-ish they way i like.

    Basicly EMO basic book with Island campaign
    Second emo book with weird stuff, science, more classes
    Thinking of generic dungeon zone books and i could compile them together. Play testing is nice too.

    Cheers for feedback.

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  4. I find it easier to edit and update from here rather than any one computer. Been more productive way to write.

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  5. I just wanted to post I think your random tables and maps are just wonderful reading. thank you for sharing such great stuff. I look forward to using them in my dungeon crawls. - Alan (2or3d6.blogspot.com)

    ReplyDelete

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Good feedback and suggestions inspire me to write more