Real Tomb Maps for Your Gaming Enjoyment

Tomb KV08 - Pharoh Merenptah
Copyright American Research Center in Egypt
(ACRE) used with permission under Fair Use

 I came across a wonderful resource for all of you grave robbing murder hobos out there.  The Theban Mapping Project has been creating vertical and horizontal plans as well as 3D images of the tombs in the world's most famous necropolis - Egypt's Valley of the Kings!

If you need a quick tomb to explore or if you are running a Cthulhu Gaslight campaign or anything else you can think of, you can find these wonderful images here.

The Theban Mapping Project Plans

S.S Ethics 4 Once

  So, I got a call last week from an old Navy buddy and gamer, asking if I'd be interested in starting a Traveller campaign with his group.  After unearthing - and repairing - the old GDW Deluxe Edition boxed set with the Spinward Marches and tracking down my "Classic Games" reprint with Snapshot, Azhanti High Lightning and Striker etc (it was down at the eldest's farm); I agreed and whipped up a quick salvage and bug hunt scenario.  By quick, I mean two pages of notes - half of which is a drawing of how the pods on a dispersed structure starship connect, and lot of good intentions and half-way remembrances of how the system works.   

  I picked up two additional resources to add to my Books 1-6.  Book 7, Merchant Prince and, on a recommendation from Eric at Swords and Stitchery, the game Hulks and Horrors for adventure ideas.  The eldest, after I helped him clear brush and get the snowblower attachment on his tractor; joined in and contributed Supplement 7 Citizens of the Imperium along with his presence at the table.

    We had a chaotic time trying to get five people to generate characters at once.  Personally, I'm a fan of having the players generate their characters themselves, not at the table waiting for me to tell them what their die rolls mean.  What should have taken each of them twenty minutes working in parallel took better than three hours in sequence.  Since four of them were complete newbies to Traveller, but experienced in computer RPGs and D&D we ended up with a set of characters both too over powered (all of them had done five terms to max out their skill rolls) and not balanced at all.  They had two scouts with ships; two retired Navy officers (one a Duke and one a Marquis), a retired enlisted Merchant and a retired Diplomat.  No one had better than Computer-1 and only one had any combat skills, no Electronics skills either as I recall.  I'll admit I screwed up on some of the character generation; missed the paragraph on Merchant enlisted advancement, so that character is owed five skills.  Oh well, blew the rust off at least.

    Because of the imbalance I made some quick changes, declared that while they were officially retired, they were actually on a clandestine Imperial diplomatic mission in District 268 and had been issued a Free Trader to use as cover and transportation.  This of course made them want to find some cargo to ship so they could make extra money.  As they were first jumping to Tarsus, an Agricultural, Non-Industrial world they found a broker who could line up a few tons of that specific cargo, along with a number of other cargo loads to carry.  Ignoring that the group has two or three characters with Admin-2 or Liaison-2 and trying to shave the fee; they offered the broker full time employment in exchange for 5 tons of cargo space.  He wasn't interested, but he had a cousin just breaking onto the business who would be.  She negotiated not only the 5 tons cargo, but also retained the 5% fee she would have charged for her Broker -1.  Essentially, they've agreed to carry her around while she hones her skills and make contacts, while paying her full fee and allowing her to trade for herself.

   At this point the Diplomat, who's player tends to run excessively Chaotic characters, got worried that some of the cargo they only carrying in sealed containers might *gasp* be illegal to ship.  This lead to the naming of the ship 'Ethics for Once'.

   With the ship straight from a maintenance availability and refined fuel, there was no chance for a misjump - but they didn't know that.  Coming back into N-space, they found themselves surprised to be close enough to something that they had a radar contact.  (They asked me what it looked like.  Drawing on a dozen years of watching radar screens on ships , I deadpanned "A blip".)  They now realized it would be nice if someone had some sort of skill with shipboard sensors; but eventually one of the Naval officers figured them out and was able to tell it was a ship massing about 800t, built as a Type 7 Dispersed Structure in a series of linked oval pods.  It was also tumbling through space, giving them a pretty broad hint it was in trouble.  The duty pilot rolled box cars and chose not only to match course and speed, but also frequency of rotation to simplify going across in vacc suits.  Another discussion occurred when they determined they had no characters to act a muscle in a potentially hostile situation.

     After one failed attempt, one of the scouts reached a pod they thought might contain small craft, connected a tether between the ships and found an emergency airlock.  They found writing on the hull near the airlock, in form of eight armed asterisks.

   As each arm has three possible value, not present, normal length, double length - this gave up to 512 different meanings for each symbol.  Sending imagery back, they again struggled to figure out how to connect feed the visual input into the ship's computer to identify it.  Someone with say Computer skill would have been useful at this point.

Succeeding eventually, the computer could only tell them that it matched the script used by a minor race near the Solemani Rim - the Ahoggya, who are 1.5 meters tall and broad, with trilaterally symmetrical bodies and a grumpy disposition.  Further information wasn't available.  The Merchant's player did some research and found a nice picture of them (not this one from the original publication).  I reminded them that while every race from from a future with space faring I never said they would all be from Traveller.

Because I have a soft spot for Tekumel

   My inspiration for the Ahoggya star script is the remembrance knots I recall them being described as using in lieu of a written record.

    Entering through the emergency lock, they found a passage painted in muddy greens and loud hooting, screeching and rhythmic stomping coming from the every speaker in the ship.  WHen they asked the compueter what it might mean, it threw up the guess an alien version of WAP by Cardi B.  (I'm given to understand this is a song currently considered to be uplifting music using sexually explicit lyrics to shock old grognards like me.  Never listened to it, haven't listened to much of the music recorded since Reagan.)   They found a couple of small craft, with seats that lookedlike they would be for a trilaterally symmetrical lifeform.  A maintenance bay with all of the tools welded into a sculpture of a double helix and the crushed bones and carapace of a lifeform they assume to be an Ahoggya.

    Moving on they figured out how the ship's door access controls worked, moved to another pod full of cargo and then found a passage into the control section.  They managed to figure out how the controls worked, and even though they were built for three hands the scout managed to stop the tumbling using thrusters, but also determined the main drive was offline.  Another skeleton was present along with a snub pistol (snapped up by the Diplomat; pity he didn't ask if it was loaded.)  All attempts to get information out of the Ahoggya's ship's computer were stymied by their inability to translate the language, even after they found the main menu.  Of course, no one checked if the Ahoggya had a translation program loaded.  They also noticed a floor level vent was lying on the deck and the console around it seemed to have been shot at by the snub pistol.  One of the characters/players figured out at this point they were in a bug hunt scenario, with something in the air system.  (Another place I screwed up, I'd brought Gamma World to use the Artifact Charts for understanding alien technology and forgot to break them out).

    Continuing to the next pod, they found crew quarters, deserted but for a couple more skeletons and they heard a ventilation cover being pushed out behind them.  The character who figured it was a bug hunt, also happened to be the only one with gun combat skills - and had brought his rifle over.  Even though nothing could be seen by the vent cover moving - but not in a direct line from the vent itself - he opened fire and was rewarded with a loud screech, a spurt of purple blood and the sound of something large going back into the vent.

   We broke here, they're discussing venting the Ahoggya ship to space to kill the thing (a wingless Blight from Gamma World) - although they haven't searched half the ship for survivors.

   

Under Pressure: The Unfinished Domain of the Scarlet Prince - Part 7

After a busy summer and early fall, getting back into the swing and continuing the dungeon I started earlier this year.

"Under Pressure"  David Bowie and Queen

 

Under Pressure 

Area 1, Room 4

Area 1 Room 4

Quick Look

The room is a 10x20 hallway, it appears empty.

Detailed Examination

Any player specifically stating they are examining the ceiling may notice that there appears to be a gap between the ceiling and the wall, all the way around.  Dwarves have their normal chances of detecting a trap involving stonework. 

If the trap is triggered, the only way anyone survives after the fourth round is if they are in gaseous form.

Exits

To The Theater of the Crimson Mime, a plain wooden door, opening inwards.  A curtain of moth-eaten linen, undyed, but painted with red swirls is revealed when the door is opened.  A pressure plate on the Theater side of the door will cause the ceiling to grind down over the next four rounds.  Two characters can clear through the doorway each round, but if the character ahead of you has a lower dexterity bonus than your character, you must delay clearing the doorway until the start of the next round - and everyone backs up behind you.  

To Room 7, a plain wooden door, opening inwards.  A pressure plate on the Room 7 side of the door will cause the ceiling to grind down over the next four rounds.  Two characters can clear through the doorway each round, but if the character ahead of you has a lower dexterity bonus than your character, you must delay clearing the doorway until the start of the next round - and everyone backs up behind you.  

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince

Part I - The Entry

Part 2 - The Grating Chasm

Part 3 - Area 1 Layout

Part 4 - Theater of the Crimson Mime

Part 5 - Shadow of the Prop Master

Part 6 - Big, Round and Down

Big, Round and Down: The Unfinished Domain of the Scarlet Prince - Part 6

Big, Round and Down 

Area 1 Room 3 

Quick Look - the walls extend away, curving inward. Your torch light doesn't find the far wall. Your footsteps echo slightly in the large gloomy chamber. You see a wooden well cover lying on the floor. 

Detailed Examination - the room is an 80 foot diameter circle, slightly truncated where other rooms have been built. Under the well cover is a 5 foot shaft leading down. The only other object in the room is a bundle of leather. Examining it determines that it is a crumpled, small leather pouch containing flower bulbs. Lily bulbs if they check. 

Exits 

To Room 1 - Normal Door, although it has an unusual disk carved (standing out from the surface of the door) under the latch.. To open and disarm the trap: Slide the disk down while the door to Room 2 is closed. The door from Room 1 to Room 2 must be closed to open this door. If the disk is lowered, while the door to Room 2 is open, the trap triggers. The trap sprays a slimy gel on the hands of the door opener, making it impossible to grasp objects. Clean off with wine or vinegar. 

To Room 2 - the door posts are carved with flowers. Lilies, if anyone checks. The door itself is a normal door, it shows no unusual damage on this side. There is no trap. 

Shaft - a five foot diameter shaft leading down. There are rungs bolted to the side of it

5 foot squares
Adding details as I generate the rooms

Room size and presence of the shaft created with the DMG tables.  

 Decided that doorway decorations should usually repeat on the other side of the door.

Tome of Adventure Design, Tables 3-27 through 3-29 for the door and latch/trap trigger to Room 1, which only became apparent when I laid the room out on the map.   The trap itself was generated using Tables 3-126 Basic Traps and 3-129 Trap Liquids.  They gave me the inspiration for the effect and remedy.

The pouch and contents were generated from Table 3-144 Dungeon Dressing and 3-159 Herbs.

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince - Part 5

   Doorway behind stage - when I looked at my drawing, I changed it to the rear left corner of the stage - a player's entrance.    ToAD Tables 3-27 through 3-29 - archway is painted in a repeating pattern. The theme of the dungeon gave me the inspiration for the pattern,  Doorway is painted with red and white tragedy/comedy masks.  Door itself is plain.  Room 2 is a 30x40 Rectangle.  I used ToAD Table 3-39, think I'll just use the DMG in the future for room sizes, more variety.  Contains monster only. DMG Table V-F. Undead, incorporeal, semi-intelligent, does not create more monsters.  ToAD Tables 2-1 Monster Type and 2-64 Undead.  I then went through the incorporeal undead from the Monster Manual and settled on Shadow.  This differs from the the ToAD result as Shadows can reproduce by creating other Shadows. 

Area 1 Room 2 

Shadow of the Prop Master  

Room 2 is accessed by the doorway off of the rear left corner of the stage.  The door posts are painted with a pattern crimson masks of comedy and tragedy running down them, the door itself is unadorned. Try as you might you discover no indication of a trap.  The door is not locked, nor is it stuck.

Quick Look - shadows predominate in this room.  Your light striking tables and chairs, rolls of canvas stacked haphazardly and racks of clothing decaying into gossamer spider webs, casts them on the far walls and between piles. The room is about 30 feet across and extends to the right into the gloom past what your light illuminates


Detailed Examination - the room is 30x40 and piled with theater props. Bards will recognize this immediately, as will anyone with any skill or experience in acting. For the others, the clothing looks expensive, but the cloth is cheap. Armor is knitted chain mail and tin plate. The rolls of canvas, if unrolled, are painted scenery. Of more interest, to the pecuniary minded adventurers, are the unlocked chests on the far wall. They will prove to contain wood discs painted gold, obviously fake, and costume jewelry. If the party has determined this is a prop room, give them a +4 on any appraisal check to determine the gems and jewelry are fake. Otherwise they can carry them out and pay to learn they are fake. Under a jumble of canvas rolls is a skeleton.

Monster - the room is haunted by the Shadow of the Property Master. This being will use the shadows to hide and reach out to steal life from random characters. The only way to avoid the shadows would be to push all the props up against the walls. To banish the Prop Master, the skull from the skeleton must be taken on stage and a play performed with the skull playing the lead role.

Shadow (14 HP), AC 7, 3+3 HD, One attack for 1d4+1 Damage + Strength Drain (1 pt/hit). Shadows are 90% undetectable and require a +1 weapon or better to hit. Strength loss returns in 2d4 turns. Characters reduced to 0 Hit Points or Strength are turned into Shadows themselves.

5 foot squares
Updating the layout as I generate the rooms

Getting a sense of how to combine Tome of Adventure Design with the DMG.

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince

Part I - The Entry

Part 2 - The Grating Chasm

Part 3 - Area 1 Layout

Part 4 - Theater of the Crimson Mime

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince - Part 4

    In which I determine what the Tome of Adventure Design isn't and start detailing the rooms in Area 1.

   ToAD is not a dungeon generation system, which isn't obvious at first look, although I had my suspicions by the third look.  Great tables for coming up with creative features, but no guidance on how often such features should crop up.  This isn't an issue for anyone with access to the DMG, it's really a matter of choosing when to move between the two.

   I really like ToAD's area design, so starting with that, as I said in the previous post, I know  Area 1 Room 1 will be of unusual size.  Table 3-40 gives me a room nominally 50x80, with far end a ziggurat like stepped triangle with a 20' point. 

   OK, what about the door into the room from the chasm?  Have to jump around, but Tables 3-27 and 3-28 treat Archways.  ToAD defines an Archway as where ever a tunnel or corridor leads out of the room.  Leading into one is the same thing, so I have a Trap!   We'll leave that for a minute while I get more information.   Table 3-29 Normal Doors; Basic Description of - comes to the rescue saying the door while otherwise normal is painted an unusual color.  Table 3-30 tells me it's painted a red and white checkerboard.

   Traps, there's a whole chapter in ToAD with tables for randomly generating a trap.   And none of my random rolls gave me anything I liked.  Finally I started reading the table entries and after eight pages came across a magical trap effect "Floating image of person, monster or animal."  That, with the door pattern, gave me an idea.

   Other than that, ToAD has lots of random room content tables, but as I said no room content distribution table, so back to the DMG Table V-F Chamber or Room Contents.  If I roll a Special I'll jump back to ToAD.  And I roll an eleven, it's empty.

Area 1 Room 1

Theater of the Crimson Mime.

     Crossing the grating, the ledge on the other side is differs only in minor details.  The wall on the far side contains a gaily painted door in a red and white harlequin pattern.  Successfully detecting traps will find a spring compressed at the top of the door.  The trap may be disabled.  Detect Magic will detect a a strong illusion dweomer.

     Opening the Door- if the trap has been disabled, nothing happens.  If it was not disabled, the crimson figure of human wearing a jesters cap and bells appears to have opened the door, it mimes pulling a stout rope (seemingly connected to the party) towards itself, bows and vanishes.  Behind it, there is darkness as your feeble light doesn't illuminate the far wall.

    Quick Search -  the room is 80 feet long and 50 feet wide, the final fifteen feet decrease to a twenty foot width as shown.  The last twenty feet of the room, including the reduced width, are raised approximately five feet higher than the floor, forming a stage.  There are three doors in the other walls (to be subsequently placed and detailed when I create the rooms.)  

    Detailed Examination - nothing new.

Area 1 Room 1 
5 foot square

(Edit) Exits
The Prop Room is accessed by the doorway off of the rear left corner of the stage. The door posts are painted with a pattern crimson masks of comedy and tragedy running down them, the door itself is unadorned. Try as you might you discover no indication of a trap. The door is not locked, nor is it stuck.

To Room 4   A curtain of moth-eaten linen, undyed, but painted with red swirls is reveals a plain wooden door, opening outwards. when the curtain is moved.  A pressure plate on the Theater side of the door will cause the ceiling to grind down over the next four rounds.  Two characters can clear through the doorway each round, but if the character ahead of you has a lower dexterity bonus than your character, you must delay clearing the doorway until the start of the next round - and everyone backs up behind you.  

And now I know more about the Scarlet Prince, it's the title given to  the Guildmaster of the Community of the Crimson Clowns, a guild of Bards and Jesters.

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince

Part I - The Entry

Part 2 - The Grating Chasm

Part 3 - Area 1 Layout

Creating a Dungeon with the Tome of Adventure Design - Part 2

 Or when to know when to quit rolling dice.

    Having created the entry in Part 1, I decided there should be a transition between there and the first dungeon area.  ToAD has a table for that, which has many possibilities branching from it.

Transitions Between Dungeon Areas (Table 3-23) gave me 'A bridge over a river or chasm' and on the second column of the table a Hazard Trick.

Hazard Tricks (Table 3-92) gave me 'Venting steam, bad air or dangerous gases.  Reasonable hazards for a chasm, so no  river we have a bridge over a pit.  And that gives me the idea that one of the other levels connects back in at the bottom of the chasm.

Wait a minute, I need a description of the actual area where the chasm is bridged.  Back to Corridor, Basic Description of (Table 3-24) which gives me a 10' wide, 10'high natural cavern...with two unusual features!

Corridor, Unusual Features of (Table 3-25) gives me 'Large grates in floor' - must be in the bridge deck.  And a Trap.  Basic Mechanical Traps (Table 3-126) gives me 'Magentism'.  As long as I'm here, I'll roll up the gas from the Hazard Trick on Gases (Table 3-128) which provides the information, 'Removes Oxygen' and 'Lies near floor, lingers'.

    At this point I realized the process had gone off the rails, there were too many features being crammed into a minor corridor - and I hadn't even rolled up a description of the Bridge yet.  But it had given me a number of inspirations to put together.

I decided to strip it down to the basics, a cavern crossed by a loose grating.  Which immediately put in mind of driving over the old Jamestown Bridge to Newport, Rhode Island the first few times I went there for schools in the Navy.  Let me tell you an open metal grating 135 feet over Narragansett Bay, if not terrifying, at least gives the driver an immense sense of relief to have gotten over it.

Corridor

     Leaving the entry through the opening under the frieze of the bridge, the party steps out onto a narrow ledge 5'wide and 10' long.  A grating bridges a chasm.

Quick Search

     The chasm is about 15 feet wide and it's roof is about 10' over the bridge.  Based on what your torch illuminates, it's more than 30 feet deep.  You get the impression that the chasm narrows in both directions, but the light doesn't illuminate the ends. The grating itself isn't fastened to the ledge but rests about halfway across the ledge.  It's made of joined wood, with 2 inch members and 10 inch holes. Any characters moving at greater than half speed need to make a Dexterity (Balance) check or fall.  Potential consequences of the fall range from dropping anything in hand to plummeting into the dark below.

Detailed Examination

    Better illumination will show the chasm is approximately 45 feet deep.  If they drop the light off of the left hand side of the grating, there is a 50% chance they will spot a doorway at the bottom (Perception check).  If they state that they are doing the detailed examination while on or across the grating, they will notice likely handholds in the chasm wall nearest the Entry that can be used to reach the bottom.