Dungeon Crawl

[bazookajoe]

Here are a few more pictures from the second "level" of my undead adventure.  There were also encounters with a mimic and and anhkeg.  The "boss" of the undead horde was not found... maybe next time.

[beefcake]

Very nice looking setup there. Love it all.

[bazookajoe]

On the third "level" of the "Tomb of the Living Dead," the party finally found the lair of the necromancer who was behind the undead infestation.  Initially, the adventurers had to fight through a room with 5 ghouls before entering the chamber of the necromancer who was protected by a horde of skeletons and zombies.  The barbarian cut through the undead mob and confronted the necromancer but was incapacitated by one of the latter's many spells.  Making a hard decision, the half-orc war priest turned away from the unconscious barbarian to intercept the necromancer just as he was about to escape.  The priest, his hammer guided by divine inspiration, crushed the necromancer's skull but it was too late for the fatally wounded barbarian.

[Caldor]

Really nice paintjobs! Well done!

[phreedh]

I really like your models, but I'm extra fond of your lo-fi 3d-dungeon. Doable, no-nonsense and very inspirational. Top marks! =)

[bazookajoe]

Thanks.  One thing that surprises me with this project is how much I like acquiring and painting little dungeon decor items (tables, bookcases, treasure, coffins etc).  I am turning into a dungeon Martha Stewart.

[DS615]

Thanks.  One thing that surprises me with this project is how much I like acquiring and painting little dungeon decor items (tables, bookcases, treasure, coffins etc).  I am turning into a dungeon Martha Stewart.

I gotta say, I am jealous of that.
I want a lot of those things, and I do them, but I don't really enjoy it.

[bazookajoe]

Here are a few pictures from the latest "test" game.  I am putting together a module based on a suggestion made here to make the "goal" different from just killing the dungeon "boss."  The basic concept is that the party was engaged by a down-on-their luck clan of dwarves to recover an ancient enchanted hammer from their old underground complex now inhabited by orcs and other baddies.  The party first encountered some orc guards near the entrance and then easily cut their way through a room inhabited by three huge ogres.  It was all going well until they wandered into the orc war chief's room ... the adventurers were never heard from again.

[petercooman123]

For goals in quest, the d&d adventure system actually is really handy. You get a bunch of generic tiles and some named tiles. In the different adventures, one specific named tile usually triggers an 'end of adventure' situation, sometimes with a boss , sometimes with just some monsters and an item that must be retrieved/destroyed/activated.

I just made a list that paired the named tiles with the adventures. Had a stack of generic tiles and a stack of named tiles. I took, for example, 10 generic tiles, drew a face-down named tile, and shuffled it togheter with the bottom 5 generic tiles.(bottom 5 because I don't want the named tile too early)

When progressing in the dungeon, i would at some point explore the named tile and just look at the reference list and play that 'end of adventure' That way i never know the goa!

[bazookajoe]

I had not heard of the D&D adventure system before so I googled it.  It looks like there is some stuff in there that I can mine for my project.  Before this, I had not played actual pen and paper D&D since the early 1980s when I was growing up.   While I later played some of the D&D computer games like "Balder's Gate," I mostly played tabletop miniature wargames like Warhammer fantasy or various historical ones for the past 20 years or so.  I suppose that is why I wanted my "self-DMed" dungeon to be more like a miniature wargame than a card or board game.   At the same time, I wanted detailed character advancement which is there in the D&D 5e rules.

[petercooman123]

The d&d adventure system games include all types of neat stuff that you can 'scavenge'.

Various tokens, encounter,monster and treasure cards, that you can use to make your own 'event' decks, miniatures that scale well with other manufacturers ( i use mine togheter with reaper bones and warhammer stuff) and dungeon tiles, although the latter is probably not of use to you  

Naturally, the advetures in the book are usefull as well (you get 12-13 in each box) and can be used as a campaign.

Just be carefull about using the stats on the cards ( attack modifiers on magic weapon cards for example) as they are made with 4th edition d&d, so do not scale that well with 5th. A +7 or +9 attack modifier would make a game of 5th a breeze  

In al honesty though, i have all 5 of them + the dungeon command expansions, so i have a lot of stuff to mix. If you just get one, it will get old much faster!

The last two (temple of elemental evil and tomb of annihilation) also suffer from a change of manufacturer, the minis being noticeably smaller and less detailed.

If i where to choose only a few, component wise i would get castle ravenloft and wrath of ashardalon. Best minis for use with d&d, and a treasure of stuff to use in your games. Gameplay wise tomb of annihilation is best though, with an integrated campaign system.

If you don't plan to play the game itself though, ravenloft and ashardalon can be bought quite cheap second hand or new at a high discount (it was made around 2010 i think)

[bazookajoe]

A new party started the goblin lair adventure.  Given all the 4 character parties that died in the first few attempts at this module, I tried this one with a group of 5 that was heavy on healing.  It was a tough run but they all survived.  The dwarf fighter with the great axe went to zero hp and was revived about 4 or 5 times.  The first encounter involved a room where a goblin shaman was conducting some strange ritual, the second was the worg lair which was the hardest fight of the adventure and the last was with two wandering bugbears.  The "boss" room was not found so the fun will continue with another level. I plan to introduce a potential "plot twist" mechanism when the "boss" room is eventually found; one of the party members could betray his comrades, the party may have to choose between the death of one of their members or the escape of the "boss," they may discover that the town mayor who hired them is secretly in league with the goblins which will lead to an eventual battle with him, etc etc.