I read this excellent post today about a "Dungeon" adventure that was very influential on me, Theshold of Evil:
How a Real Archmage Fights: Threshold of Evil and D&D’s Most Underrated Wizard
The article is full of spoilers for the adventure, but if you're not going to play this module as part of a very high-level AD&D campaign, you're probably okay reading it.
I learned a lot from that adventure, like:
- archmages don't fight fair.
- archmages sure don't just sit back and wait until you chop your way through low-level minions and single demons and dinky traps and then fight you. Oh no. They watch you from afar as you slog through their best defenses and Wish bad things upon you.
- archmages don't throw their spare magic items into a treasury, they issue them to Simulacrums. And I finally saw what Simulacrum was really good for.
- archmages don't care if you think they are good, or evil. Or to quote one of my favorite all-time quotes from my favorite all-time fantasy author, "Ferocious mad-killer sorcerers do not whine because nobody likes them."
- archmages have henchmen and allies that are worthy of archmages.
- and seriously, archmages don't fight fair.
It's a brutally tough module; it's the brute force equivalent of Tomb of Horrors in a way. Oh sure, you won't have deathtrap rooms with "death with no saving throw," but you get direct enemy action from a powerful, powerful foe who doesn't take his enemies lightly, or use a flyswatter when a hammer is needed.
Fun, brutal stuff. I'm glad to read that someone went through it and ended up as my groups likely would have, had I been able to run that in AD&D.
Showing posts with label dungeon magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dungeon magazine. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Friday, February 3, 2012
Random Thoughts III: Norkers, Map errors, and newer editions
Just some random thoughts.
Stocking the Megadungeon. Man, popular post. I've decided to give the Basic/Expert stocking rolls a go initially. If it's not satisfactory (or maybe even if it is), I'll try the AD&D system for a section or two.
Converting 3.0 / 3.5 / Pathfinder / d20 vs. early games - Both have their own difficulties. If I grab an old AD&D module, I can glance at it and tell you how tough the monsters are, how rich that treasure is, how difficult that save is to make. Then I can let that inform my idea of what I'd like to do in my GURPS game in that circumstance. I'm fluent in the system. On the other hand, they often lack critical details, because for all the talk of "in old school games you can do anything" they didn't really give you rules for everything, and often skimped on details. So rivers show up without discussions of depth or current speed, doors are just doors, bars are just bars that bend normally. It's up to the GM, and if I have to make it up myself using a pre-written adventure isn't saving me a lot of time.
With 3.x and later games, you get a lot more real world detail on the surroundings. This helps because a 12" thick oak door is something that has stats in GURPS, so I can easily see what they were trying to tell me. The downside is that I'm not fluent in 3.x or later, so feats, stats, etc. mean nothing to me. I need to look them up in the SRD and then try to figure out if they are meaningful. It's easier to just look at pictures and read text and get an idea and then just make it up in GURPS from there.
Either way, converting leads to some time wastage as much as it saves time and allows me to re-visit things I'd like to try with a new group. But because of system fluency, and nostalgia, I'm more likely to use older materials. Not to mention I have so much of it just sitting here in my Box O' Adventure Modules.
Norkers and Map Annoyances - I started re-reading WG4 The Lost Temple of Tharizdun.
SPOILERS FOLLOW!
It's a good adventure, with lots of flavor to it. It even uses norkers, one of my favorite humanoids. I've used them before in GURPS, when my 1st edition GURPS buddies went through Grakhirt's Lair (hey, I just noticed John Nephew wrote that, cool). Annoyingly, it's got some map foibles. It has text referring to Maps #1 and #3, but there are no maps #1 and #3. There is an Ariel View map (clearly Map 1), but that's not the one. It's got this annoying inset display map, with highlights that don't match the larger scale map, details that are hard to line up, a different numbering scheme. Man, I never did puzzle that out when I was running AD&D in Elementary School, let me tell you. Maybe that's why I never ran it (not that I recall, anyway.) Other weirdness is in there - you can read about it here if you like.
The coolest thing about it is the battle roster for all the inhabitants of the lair, and details on reactions to followup raids. That and references to the boss monster dungeon raiding for fun and profit. ;)
I don't expect that the inhabitants would be as tough in GURPS 4e DF as they are in AD&D, just from relative damage-dealing ability. But at the same time, they are a bit more dangerous opponents . . . it only takes a good roll or two to drop a PC no matter how good.
Anyway, that's my random notes for now.
Stocking the Megadungeon. Man, popular post. I've decided to give the Basic/Expert stocking rolls a go initially. If it's not satisfactory (or maybe even if it is), I'll try the AD&D system for a section or two.
Converting 3.0 / 3.5 / Pathfinder / d20 vs. early games - Both have their own difficulties. If I grab an old AD&D module, I can glance at it and tell you how tough the monsters are, how rich that treasure is, how difficult that save is to make. Then I can let that inform my idea of what I'd like to do in my GURPS game in that circumstance. I'm fluent in the system. On the other hand, they often lack critical details, because for all the talk of "in old school games you can do anything" they didn't really give you rules for everything, and often skimped on details. So rivers show up without discussions of depth or current speed, doors are just doors, bars are just bars that bend normally. It's up to the GM, and if I have to make it up myself using a pre-written adventure isn't saving me a lot of time.
With 3.x and later games, you get a lot more real world detail on the surroundings. This helps because a 12" thick oak door is something that has stats in GURPS, so I can easily see what they were trying to tell me. The downside is that I'm not fluent in 3.x or later, so feats, stats, etc. mean nothing to me. I need to look them up in the SRD and then try to figure out if they are meaningful. It's easier to just look at pictures and read text and get an idea and then just make it up in GURPS from there.
Either way, converting leads to some time wastage as much as it saves time and allows me to re-visit things I'd like to try with a new group. But because of system fluency, and nostalgia, I'm more likely to use older materials. Not to mention I have so much of it just sitting here in my Box O' Adventure Modules.
Norkers and Map Annoyances - I started re-reading WG4 The Lost Temple of Tharizdun.
SPOILERS FOLLOW!
It's a good adventure, with lots of flavor to it. It even uses norkers, one of my favorite humanoids. I've used them before in GURPS, when my 1st edition GURPS buddies went through Grakhirt's Lair (hey, I just noticed John Nephew wrote that, cool). Annoyingly, it's got some map foibles. It has text referring to Maps #1 and #3, but there are no maps #1 and #3. There is an Ariel View map (clearly Map 1), but that's not the one. It's got this annoying inset display map, with highlights that don't match the larger scale map, details that are hard to line up, a different numbering scheme. Man, I never did puzzle that out when I was running AD&D in Elementary School, let me tell you. Maybe that's why I never ran it (not that I recall, anyway.) Other weirdness is in there - you can read about it here if you like.
The coolest thing about it is the battle roster for all the inhabitants of the lair, and details on reactions to followup raids. That and references to the boss monster dungeon raiding for fun and profit. ;)
I don't expect that the inhabitants would be as tough in GURPS 4e DF as they are in AD&D, just from relative damage-dealing ability. But at the same time, they are a bit more dangerous opponents . . . it only takes a good roll or two to drop a PC no matter how good.
Anyway, that's my random notes for now.
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