Category: The Dungeon World Tavern: Adventures

New Dungeon World Adventure Starter: Gothic

I’m back to doing my sub-genre fantasy series of dungeon starters, this time it is a starter that is entitled Gothic.

What can I say? I read “Nifft the Lean” by Michael Shea and before you know it a City-State of the Vampire Queen and her saltwater crocodile infested marshes of Blackwater had added themselves to my Dungeon World map:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7cav44145d9TThUbWNSNFljejg/view?usp=sharing

Tanith’s still looking for the Horn of Dagoth: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7cav44145d9a1g2UEdQcmVSUWM/view?usp=sharing

by the bye

I intend this to be a one night or tournamental adventure starter where the players race to shut down the Mad Alchemist’s machine before a lightning powered flesh golem awakens and destroys (or tries to destroy) everyone; my little valentine to Mary Shelley(and James Whale).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7cav44145d9bFZQUnJEUXRET3c/view?usp=sharing

New Dungeon Starter: Black Pearls & Black Water

“The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back to the water. There are things still coming ashore. ” ― Loren Eiseley

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7cav44145d9TThUbWNSNFljejg/view?usp=sharing

Zothique

Clarke Ashton Smith(CAS), along with Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, was one of the founders of american pulp fantasy. He had a profound influence on the development of the fantasy genre and, while Gygax himself was not much affected by CAS, Tom Moldvay wrote the classic Castle Amber as an homage to Smith (much as The Lost City was an homage to Howard). Likewise, Jack Vance might be called his modern heir.

While my favorite writer in this group remains Fritz Leiber, I am fond of CAS, particularly his short stories. I have always felt his material is as inspiring for Sword & Sorcery as for Call of Cthulhu RPG horror. Xenopus in the J.E. Holmes “Blue Box” Sample Dungeon was inspired by CAS stories and that was my very first RPG adventure. I’ve been thinking of doing a CAS inspired Dungeon Starter for some time and while researching the idea came across the superb Eldritch Dark website (http://www.eldritchdark.com/) which had this little rpg gem (http://www.eldritchdark.com/files/articles/criticism/zothique-d20v1.pdf) posted on the site. it is is a d20 supplement describing the CAS Dying World of Zothique, simple to convert to Dungeon World.

Christmas morning!

http://www.eldritchdark.com/files/articles/criticism/zothique-d20v1.pdf

This starter draft was inspired by the Dying Earth stories of Jack Vance, who was a Gygax favorite and inspired D&D’s “Vancian magic system”. The evil lich “Venca” was a tribute to Vance.

The stories Jack Vance’s of the Dying Earth series are set in the distant future, at a point when the sun is almost exhausted and magic has reasserted itself as a dominant force. The Moon has disappeared and the Sun is in danger of burning out at any time, often flickering as if about to go out, before shining again. The various civilizations of Earth have collapsed for the most part into decadence and its inhabitants overcome with a fatalistic outlook. The Earth is mostly barren and cold, and has become infested with various predatory monsters (possibly created by magicians in a former age).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7cav44145d9OUdDYnBKck9fWG8/view?usp=sharing