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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The First Semi-Annual Great Dungeon Crawl

If you've been reading my blog, you know that I've had a blast with my old gaming buddies running AD&D via play-by-post.  We've had an incredible time with it, but as I said, nothing beats the table top.  Twice a year my friends and I gather together for a camping trip at a nice lakeside spot in our hometown.  Not everyone can always make it, but most of us end up going.  We usually go in March and October.  It's a night spent with the drink flowing, great company, and a lot of reminiscing.  The thought occurred to me recently; this year for our trip we should break out the old dice, and have a good old-fashioned, table top dungeon romp.  The idea is, we all create the characters before the trip, first level of course, and then we play a session with those characters.  Every subsequent camping trip, we run those same characters, if they live.  If they don't, the player rolls up a new one and we press on.  No complex and twisting plots, no intrigue, just good old fashioned dungeon crawling.  There will be a minor story there, just to make the dungeon make sense, but that's about it.  I'm talking a mega-dungeon here, of course, with lots of levels and paths, various entrances and exits, etc; a very Jaquayed dungeon.
 

I was excited to finally get a moment to work on the first level of the dungeon last night.  I'm still trying to tweak the story, but essentially the first couple of levels will be part of an ancient tomb that was perhaps once underneath a now ruined, and forgotten city.  Of course, as they delve deeper they'll discover passages leading to the underdark, and more dangerous creatures.  I still need to key the dungeon encounters, lay out the traps, and build a wandering monster table, but I was very happy to get this first part finished.  I plan on posting up the first level tonight once I have a chance to scan it in.  I haven't built my own dungeon in nearly a decade, so it's been great to break out the graph paper and pencil once again.  This camping trip should be one for the ages.

4 comments:

  1. Sounds like a great idea. Professor Pope, Cthulhu's Librarian, and myself did something similar last year in the Prince William forest. I was neat to game in the woods.

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  2. Truth be told, Risus, you and Dyson and the others participating in the geomorphs sort of inspired me to do this.

    I'm really looking forward to it myself. How did your game go? Were there any challenges you didn't really think about beforehand like lighting at the camp site, or anything else logistical, or did it all go fairly smoothly?

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  3. Now that I think about it, it was two years ago. I ran a short D&D 4e while I was still mildly interested in the system. We played outside on a picnic table and thanks to it being summer, we had plenty of natural light. We cooked dinner on a camp stove and lit lanterns to conclude the game. Not much of a logistical challenge, though I wouldn't recommend 4e for this sort of thing. My choice would be for something that involved less paraphernalia. Old School D&D or Risus some other rules-lite game would be best.

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  4. Yes, we're planning on starting this one in mid-afternoon on that Saturday so we'll have light for the first part. We'll have some lanterns and what-not, but I'm hoping we can conclude in the early evening. We are planning on running AD&D 2e with a rules-lite approach. Thanks for the advice!

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