Level 1, Areas 8 through 10

Our next three rooms form a small set (8 and 9) and the entrance to a larger sub-complex (10). Room 9 is an exit to another (as yet unnumbered) dungeon level, the aerial-themed Broken Spire. Room 8 is a trapped barrier to said exit. The gravity-switching trap should serve to telegraph the nature of the fresh dungeon level beyond (flight is going to be very helpful!) and provide an interesting challenge for thieves attempting to pick the lock standing between them and 1-9. 

Room 10 sets the scene for the chambers beyond, an entryway for the astromancer's guests who wish to study here. The guardian's instructions should be a fine test of whether the PCs' caution outweighs their untrusting natures. 

Level 1, Areas 4 through 7 Revised

I've got the map for the level polished up, so I've adjusted the room numbering to hopefully be easier for Judges to use. Area 1-6 is now an alchemist lab attached to the quarantined cadaver storage room 1-5. It serves as a source of strange treasure, lunar mercury which can be used as a weapon by wily PCs & star metal that can be forged into a magical weapon between delves. Both substances will be detailed more in the introductory section to the level, which I'll post after all the room descriptions.

Level 1, Areas 4 through 7

For the next 4 rooms I've made some formatting changes, dropping monster entries (now banished to their own booklet) in exchange for increasing the number of rooms per page. I think having more rooms at a lance is a big benefit to Judges as players meander through a dungeon. But enough about layout choices, on to the rooms themselves!

Rooms 4 & 5 operate as a pair, related to room 3 before them. While room 3 stored living specimens, room 4 serves as a dissection laboratory, & room 5 as storage for the resulting corpses. The latter also is likely to expose PCs to their first brush with a recurring danger on this level, The Astral Hunger, in the form of Astral Maggots. The significant danger is telegraphed very literally, with a placard.

I'll save monster entries for later, as recurring monsters like these will probably get their entries revised multiple times before I finish the level. This room is also tied to the random encounter table for this level, as the table expands with more horrors as quarantined areas are opened by foolhardy adventurers.

Room 6 is the first instance of  what will be a recurring room, a hallway that's also outer space. These will get their own random encounter table, encouraging PCs to revisit these rooms which may serve as roadblocks or shortcuts depending on what astral denizens are prowling this particular delve.

Finally, room 7 offers a possible reward and a hazard for greedy PCs. Another instance of lunar mercury, this reflecting pool serves as a ritual spell focus for communing with the moon. For the price of an offering of silver, even non-wizards can attempt the Consult Spirit spell (wizards with the spell gain a bonus to casting). Doing so also reveals a trove of silver treasure under the deadly waters.

Level 1, Area 3

A major aspect of this dungeon is that each level is an active workshop for a wizard. This will look different for each apprentice, be that a focus on minions, magical items, etc, but I want each level to be scattered with signs of wizardry at work.

For our astromancer, that's going to be obsessive study of the mysteries of the stars. The primary tool for that is going to be a huge, complex telescope, but I'll save that for deeper into the level. For room 3, which is very easy for the players to access right away, I want his magical research to be a little ominous, and strange; a hall of "specimens" (creatures captured from the astral world and held for further study) on display. Room 4 will then show the players what the astromancer does with these creatures...

The creatures in magical suspended animation, with the spell telegraphed via visible magical sigils under each. Anyone too curious risks danger, as crossing the threshold of the sigil will end the spell holding the creatures in place.

I think three creatures is enough to add variety without making the room a slog, and we'll have our first nod to another level here, an empty alcove with a note the specimen is on loan to another wizard. This will give the players something to look for on that level, a name of an apprentice, and knowledge that the two seem to cooperate to some degree.

Of the three creatures held here two will be hostile and the third more of a curiosity (although dangerous if attacked). Two of these creatures (the lunar eel & the asteroid crabs) introduce some recurring substances on this level, lunar mercury & star metal. I'll include more information on these in an introductory section to this level, but for now I'll just summarize them.

Lunar mercury is a viscous liquid metal that's impossibly cold, temporarily freezing any creatures that touch it. This makes attacking the eels a little tricky! Star metal is a substance infused with astral magics that can be collected and used between adventures to forge weapons that deal extra damage to creatures immune to non-magical damage. In the case of the asteroid crabs, it explains their high AC and provides a nice little treasure for players willing to do extra legwork during downtime.

Level 1, Areas 1 & 2

Page 1 of our room descriptions covers areas 1 & 2. This is where parties entering this level via the teleportation portal in the tower's foyer will arrive. I tried to establish the theme of this level (STARS!), and quickly give the players a glimpse into the tower's extra-dimensional nature with the dome ceiling and night sky above. I also wanted to remind the players why they're ostensibly here, hence the statue of the apprentice himself, holding a depiction of a treasure they can seek out.

I also like to start a dungeon level already giving players things to come back to, a short to medium term goal, the puzzle door. I'm a big believer in telegraphing opportunity as well as danger, so giving them a handout of the star configuration on the door should help clue them in that constellations will be a big part of puzzles on this level.

Hopefully this all works together to get the players thinking (and subsequently moving) looking for more clues as to the purpose of these stars, and what the statue & its fancy lantern could portend.

Behind the puzzle door is a treasure vault, something the players can return to after some exploration for a nice, magical reward. Opening the puzzle-door should feel like an accomplishment, so in addition to treasure, I tried to give the room some gravitas, making it seem important to the astromancer. 

I also tried to make the treasure within the chest make sense in the context of the dungeon, things the astromancer would value. And of course a haughty wizard considers the most likely burglars of his treasure to be his own peers, so he's chosen a guardian best suited to slay magicians.

As for the magic item, I wanted something with frequent utility, but nothing so powerful as to overshadow the spells and abilities of the PCs. And in true DCC fashion, I wanted it to feel a bit swingy, turning off when anyone in the party rolls a fumble (hopefully this generates some good-natured grumbling at the unlucky player who costs their whole party the bonus for the rest of the day).

It's probably worth noting a couple formatting choices I've made. This layout is obviously heavily inspired by OSE's core books, as well as the Shadowdark rulebook, but I've kept some "box text" room descriptions as its one of my regular group's favorite parts of DCC modules. Finally, some may judge me for "modernizing" the monster stat blocks, but I prefer the more stat-block style over the condensed old-school lines for ease of use at a glance mid-game.

The Megadungeon Beckons

There comes a time in every OSR enthusiast's life when the urge to run a megadungeon lodges itself deep within their brain. Despite my best efforts, that time has come for me. And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I want to run one of my own creation. So what kind of megadungeon do I want to build?

My regular group has been rocking Dungeon Crawl Classics for the last year, so I'll be using that as the framework for the dungeon, but but it should be pretty easy to port to any other OSR system. I'd prefer the dungeon to be something easy to run with an open table, naturally feature lots of variation, provide clear objectives for the players, and have an achievable end point. And of course I want to set it in my favorite fantasy conceit, a wizard's tower.

So the dungeon will be the extra-dimensional space within a wizard's tower, home to an Archwizard's students, THE APPRENTICES THIRTEEN. Each apprentice has their own section of the tower to serve as their sanctum and workshop (our dungeon levels), constructed in their own style and populated with their strange servants (variation). The tower has recently been reopened to the outside world at the Archwizard's whims, and as a method to test his students, he invites would-be-adventurers to enter and attempt to slay the apprentices (clear objectives). Successful adventurers will be rewarded with the Archwizard's boons, and the final surviving apprentice will be whisked away and made the Archwizard's sole protege (an end point).

And as for our open table concept, the Archmage wants to test his apprentices' ability to adapt to new threats, so he only leaves the tower open to adventurers each night, teleporting interlopers out at sunrise, and giving the apprentices all day to prepare new defenses for the following night. Is it a bit of a hand-wavy magical bullshit way to handle it? Sure. Does it seem like the weird, esoteric methods of a mad sorcerer? Absolutely. 

This also gives us a fun new constraint for the players; each delve into the dungeon is limited to a single session, and they'll need to figure out how to get further with tight time constraints. So a big part of dungeon delving is going to be finding short-cuts, teleportation methods, and other ways to quickly access deeper levels of the dungeon.

To also make sure groups at an open table don't keep treading the same ground other groups have already cleared I want a novel way to approach multiple dungeon entrances. There will be a single door to the tower, which magically teleports the party to a semi-random section of dungeon (weighted by party level so they don't get too far in over their head, or have a high-level party bored in a shallower level of the dungeon). Keys found throughout the dungeon will allow parties to access known points in the dungeon on subsequent delves, giving them the choice to explore a new, random area or revisit a level. And of course this key system also encourages players to mix up their parties, seeking out players whose characters have keys to areas they want to explore.

My goal is to post at least a page a week, with at least one room description plus any relevant monster and/or magic item entries. We'll see how long it takes to build all thirteen levels (one for each apprentice) and the obligatory sub-levels (extra-planar regions with magical connections to multiple apprentices' levels of the dungeon). As I finish levels I'll post them as pwyw pdf zines on itch.

I have a local OSR con coming up in February here in the PDX, so I'm hoping to have a mini version of level 1 ready as a stand-alone zine to give away there. That's probably a bit optimistic, but a fun goal to work toward nonetheless!

That's enough rambling from me, let's get to the good stuff, THE DUNGEON! First up, Level 1: The Astromancer's Sanctum!