Tomb of the Immortal Grolk

Tomb of the Immortal Grolk is a one page dungeon I've made for this year's

One Page Dungeon contest. You can download it for free HERE.

I'm reasonably happy with it although I haven't had a chance to play test it yet - I've had plenty of time to sit and draw lately but not much opportunity to get my players together.

I've had the idea of a giant rolling head that fills passages and turns the dungeon into some sort of reverse Pac-Man game for a while. The theme of this contest being 'Never split the party' was a good prompt to flesh it out. 

Hopefully GMs can piece together a flow for the dungeon from what's on the page (that's the point of one pagers right?) but I'm going to be indulgent and lay out a few thoughts on what I'm going for in this blog post. 

Lore: 

I imagine Grolk as an endlessly regenerating, destructive and creative force much like mythological giants such as Ymir or Pangu. I think even Grolk's destructive acts are generative in ways that mirror natural events e.g. volcanic eruptions creating fertile farmland, supernovas generating more complex elements etc.  

The image I have in my head is Grolk splitting the moon with his axe and a dark ocean of nightmares pouring down over 'earth'. 

Such violent, creative events are pretty inconvenient if you're already alive and trying to build a society. I imagine the forces of order or balance did their best to decommission the non-stop novelty machine that was Grolk. 

This sort of epic backstory suggests an enormous scale for Grolk that isn't quite matched by what looks like a 10ft diameter head and a... 9ft? axe - but maybe Grolk's physiology is fairly elastic. Maybe the axe changes size like Sun Wukong's staff. 

Factions: 

Like a dutiful osr/nsr accolyte I want there to be a counterbalance of forces and motivations existing in this dungeon before the party are dropped in it. 

 I see three potential factions here:

1. Grolk -  Dismembered both physically and psychologically and and striving to be whole. Endless apetite, maximum chaos. 

2. The Tomb Builders The Spiders - Since the spiders are activiely subduing Grolk with venom and webs it follows that this is a mission they are dedicated to. All I say on the sheet is that they're telepathic but I actually think they'd be something like a monastic order - dutifullly guarding this ancient threat in an almost ritualised way. They may even hold ceremonies down there. I don't know how you get from the statues in the corridors above to spider monks but it's fun to think about. So they're faction number two - dedicated to keeping Grolk subdued. But they're also spiders - giant hungry spiders that would love some diversity in their diet. 

3. The Fachans - A Fachan is a one eyed, armed and legged scottish monster. In this dungeon they're little and made out of adventurers that've been bisected by Grolk's axe. If I got split into two, wretched, little weirdos I'd want to get back to normal. I don't think that's an option for most fachan's here. Perhaps their other half was eaten by a spider, or has been further split into worms, that were then eaten by other fachans. It'd be a pretty rough situation. They could jump into Grolk's mouth with any another fachan and be reborn as some 'new' person but that might not be the easiest choice to make. So they're here, surviving, burrowed into the walls to stay out of the way of the head and the axe and the spiders. I think their role could be as merchants of a sort. Their tunnels emerge near a 'town' and they've probably horded any equipement dropped in the dungeon. They could barter with the PC's to supply things like rope or light sources. I particularly like the Oubliette for this. Instead of just being trapped a PC could bargain with some fachans, through the hole in the wall, to get something that might help them. I'm not entirely sure if they'd eat a helpless adventurer... 

Why is the party here? 

1. They've been pushed down the hole by townspeople as punishment for crimes they may or may not be guilty of. 
2. They heard their was loot down here (there is). 
3. Grolk's heart's blood can cure curses or diseases.
4. They saw this hole and wanted to check it out. 

Extending this dungeon: 

I have a few ideas for how Grolk's tomb could be expanded. 

1. A Spider Monastery.  Have the elevator open onto a small complex of rooms that establish these wierd spiders and their whole deal: some cucoons, a chapel, some statues or murals showing the transition from human acolytes to spiders. Perhaps they kept little spider hives like regular monks keep bees? 

2. Some catacombs for the heroes depicted in the statues on the top level. Magic weapons, more lore, perhaps some restless/undead heroes. This should maybe be the top level, or perhaps the secrect passage, between the two statues, also heads towards a secret tomb. 

detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Heironymus Bosch

3. A pit of combo-mutants. Give the botomless pit a bottom and have some interesting monstrous folk living on the shores of a blood lake. You can have two headed humans but also spider centaurs or half spiders or spiders with a fachan merged in there so they have a human eye, arm and leg somewhere. This can be a real Bosch-fest. What if a local church pays them to run a, 'hell themed', theme park? Just a thought. 

Ok that's all - If you play this let me know if it hangs together. As soon as I get to play it I'll update this blog with some thoughts.  

A mini, jungle village, point crawl

I've made a small point crawl set around a village on the banks of a jungle river.

 The main hook revolves around travelers getting shaken down by mysterious bandits on their way in and out of town. The village doesn't know where these outlaws are coming from or disappearing to. 

I'd originally wanted it to be a single, (or double sided), page but as I tried to connect the dots, and make the underlying relationships work it became evident that it wouldn't fit in that kind of space. I could go through a 'kill your darlings' phase and refine things down but I'd intended this to be a quick experiment after making Grotto of The Golden Gargoyle. I'm sharing it as is for anyone to play with or pull ideas from. In some ways it currently feels like a bit of a mash up of themes across the first six zines in the perils series - I'm evidently drawn to doppelgangers, swampy environments and 'infection' as concepts... 

Note: I haven't had a chance to play test this material yet. I imagine it as a bit of a sleeper adventure that could slowly emerge alongside something else the party are doing in and around the town. 

 

Also, if you're one of my players don't look at this.

 

OK here it is:

Conspiracy in Lutum  (working title) 

 

 

Grotto of the Golden Gargoyle (Perils issue #7)

Pocket Sized Perils Issue #7 is here! 

It's been a hot minute since I posted here and even longer since I put out an adventure but here it is:

Grotto of The Golden Gargoyle 

 

clicking the pic above will take you to my page on itch.io 

 

This is the 'G' entry in the Pocket Sized Perils series (there's an alternate one hidden in the recesses of my drive that may join it someday).  I've made quite a few changes to the format and general approach this time around... 

1. It's system agnostic (not 5e)
2. It's less pocket sized (a longer PDF or print on demand book, as opposed to a fold'n'cut zine) 

3. It's more heavily OSR inspired than previous entries

Why not 5e? 

Like a lot of people, 5e was my entry point into TTRPG's and I have a lot of affection for it as a system. However since first cracking open the PHB  I've discovered there's a very, VERY, big world of games and gaming styles out there. I've dabbled with a bunch of different systems and in particular find myself gravitating to simple rules that facilitate creative play. That is to say; simple characters doing unique stuff together in the fiction rather than complex characters, (mechanically speaking), doing the same stuff, most of the time, regardless of the fiction.  I'm not dogmatic about it though. Fun is fun and different ways of playing have different strengths. 

 

 Why the longer format? 

 In exploring other modules and writing connected to ttrpgs I've really enjoyed the rich world building and detail some adventures or settings offer. Consequently I wanted to build more environment focused adventures, where parties could explore more and decide how to interact with the world rather than follow something like a three act arc. 

The work of Jennell Jaquays and Justin Alexander's writing about it was a particular inspiration. 

The Grotto was designed with loops (maybe too many), secrets, factions and verticality in mind. It's still a smallish dungeon but all those elements are present in some form.  

This is my 'goblins in a cave' adventure 

 

I just wanted to do it once - 'there are many like it but this one is mine'. Much like my soft spot for 5e I have a soft spot for trad fantasy tropes. I came to table-top games pretty late, so I still have a an itch to play with elements I've seen in fantasy in other media through my childhood. I'll definitely move on to weirder stuff from here but I can't go past G and leave 'Goblins' on the table. 

As a teaser for the adventure itself here is the goblin npc generator included in it: 

A Wizard's Tower

A Wizard's Tower

 

 

 

I recently stumbled upon an image of a wizard's tower from one of my old home games. It was a fun environment for the players to navigate so I thought I'd pop it up here.

I often style my wizards as obsessively nerdy about a particular field. The wizard who built this tower is really into creating animal-human hybrids a la The Island of Dr Moreau. Continuing the Moreau theme I placed the tower on a floating island entirely populated by the wiz's bio engineered monstrosities. Even the plants were designed - as the players walked through the tangled mangroves I described the canopy of leaves turning in unison to catch the wind and steer the island on its mysterious course.

In classic mad scientist fashion the wizard has been eaten by rebellious frog people and their tower is... dormant. This set up left the players relatively free to poke around and put together the situation. 

From bottom to top here's a breakdown of the rooms. 

A Golden Barge

The Golden Barge

    The Golden Barge spools its way along a luminous thread through the humpbacked sky. 

On the prow, under the sheen of a translucent dome, tiny figures are moving…

 

I've been meaning to get into Troika by Daniel Sell for a while. The PDF has been sitting in 

my dropbox  but till now I've only rolled a few characters and enjoyed the art 

by Dirk Detweiler Leichty and Andrew Walter.

 
That changed this weekend when I set sail on a Golden Barge and dipped a toe into the system 

with a few friends. 

 

I'm pathologically unable to run a module in any system and couldn't help home brewing up a

quick one shot. Above is my attempt to map one of the Golden Barges eluded to by the rules 

(more than lightly influenced by Leichty's fantastic illustrations). I had hoped to actually make

 this post a rough outline of that adventure but I'd need to work further on my understanding of the 

system and the bones of the adventure itself for that to be worth your time. Instead, in the spirit of

Troika, I offer you this map as an invitation to your own imaginations. 

 

I'll include these two room descriptions I drafted for the session. 

The Kitchens  

 

A fury of shouts and flames, a spicy assault on the senses - a cadre of inevitable chefs are busy cooking orders. 

They have been recruited from a fanatical culinary sect that will stop at nothing to spike any ticket that comes into the kitchen. An army might march on its stomach but these chefs will  lay waste to entire spheres to serve canapes. Only once a meal is served will they return to their  regenerative cocoons until service hours resume. 

 

The Hangar

It takes a lot to traverse the spheres. The assorted craft here aren’t up to the task - being more suited to 

a quick jaunt or occasional maintenance of the barge itself. The options in each bay are as varied 

as the passengers themselves. 

 

1. A Gossamer pleasure skiff - great for being seen whilst seeing the sights.

2. A large insectoid with mouth parts like a garbage disposal. Its compound eyes seem to shift from you 

to the saddle hanging nearby. 

3. A vapor ski - perfect for enjoying the humpbacked sky at the expense of everyone else.

4. A Scorpedo Rum Runner in jailbreak blue. There is a pistolet in the glove box and a person in the trunk. 

5. A two person, pedal powered, velocipede.

6. A Gronk class sky tug - solid as a bathtub full of concrete and just as maneuverable. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under The Dunes

 

    

 Another month another map and random table - like a serve of fish and chips or cheese and wine or... etc, etc.

There are mushrooms on this map, so here's a dual table to help you establish some fun mycology for players to mess around with. Also I'm aware a mushroom is the reproductive structure not the whole organism - it's just fun to say. 

What happens when you have a mushroom that grows dramatically when wet and an axe wielding murderbot in an adjacent cavern? I dunno - just asking the question.

 

What's That Mushroom Do?

Roll a d6 for an effect and what triggers it. 

This Mushroom...

1. Soothes body and mind.
2. Grants fantastic visions.
3. Explodes violently.
   
4. Induces sleep.
5. Grows exponentially.
   
6. Spreads Virulently.

When...

1. Exposed to fire.
2. Wet.
3. Ingested.
4. Touched.
5. Combined with another fungus. 
6. Subjected to any magic.
   

 100 Strange Forest Encounters

 

 

 

I like random tables. I also enjoy simple, one page, dungeon illustrations that give you some game-able ideas at a glance.

So I'm going to start regularly posting some tiny dungeon images with a thematically linked random table. Once a month might be a good aim but let's see how we go.

The picture above is this month's tiny dungeon. I'm not going to go into detail about what the fruit thing is or the squirrel statue or the well of pure darkness. Does this dungeon involve Fruit Goblins? I don't know. Does it involve a swarm of undead squirrels that try and stuff you full of cursed acorns? Again, I don't know. Does drinking the well water give you a free spell that has a chance of progressively mutating you every time you cast it? Stop asking! But if you have a hollow tree or a hole in the ground in your game you now have this little doodle to go with it. 

 

Now to further explore the world of woodsy weirdness here are 100 things for players to run into when in a forest.