Making a dungeon in 5 minutes?! (Enter the House of Metal...)

I saw a title today - "5-Minute Dungeon (and some D&D reflections)", it's an interesting post about a boardgame with that title, go and read it!

But of course my mind went in a different direction before actually reading the post. "So, is this a dungeon you can play in 5 minutes? Or a dungeon made in 5 minutes? Can you prep a dungeon in 5 minutes?"

So I tried to make a dungeon in 5 minutes. As you might imagine, it didn't work out too well, but it wasn't a complete disaster either.

As my timer, I picked a track that's exactly 5 minutes long: "House of Metal" by Chelsea Wolfe, turned it up, took its title as the dungeon's name, and sketched a castle and wrote down everything that came to my head.

Transcription:

HOUSE OF METAL
Gigantic blue metal castle
Wandering monsters:
1. Blue metal golems
2. Sneaky goblins
3. Lost scientist, disoriented
1. Hall with iron guard dogs
2. Lever opens door to #3
3. Giant magnet attracts all metal except blue special metal
4.
5. 1000 sp
6. 
7. 
8. Courtyard
9.
10. Tower of floating coins.

You be the judge... 

I think on a better day, when I'm not so overworked, I could do something better and more focused. But it was a fun little challenge nonetheless. Thanks, Chelsea!

PARALLEL DUNGEONS - a dimension-shifting OSR adventure

I wrote a new adventure! It is a gimmicky one, but also playable & fun. Imagine that there are three dungeons that occupy the same physical space, and the player characters can shift between these three parallel dimensions by using a device. The three dungeons are quite different:

1. Cave of the Demon Corsairs = hide-out of brutal pirates in pact with dark forces
2. Mining Tunnels of Q-3296 = abandoned asteroid mining operation
3. Tranquility & Transcendence = monastery of meditating monks

The area descriptions are presented in three parallel columns, so whenever the party shifts to a different dimension, you can just look to the next column and find the area's description in the parallel dungeon.

I ran a playtest in Esoteric Enterprises, the players were the commando unit of an occult secret agency. They were taken to an island to explore the weird caves. The pirate and asteroid parts proved quite deadly... but the dimension shifting device saved the party's asses a couple of times, and they also used it to circumvent hazards.

Get in on itch.io! (free/PWYW)

ALCHEMY! A system for weird experiments

An alchemy system, written for this month's RPG Blog Carnival!

The following tables present a subsystem for alchemy in OSR games, taking LotFP as the base (so, all prices are in silver standard – if your game uses gold standard, just replace “sp” with “gp”). For Laboratories, see LotFP: Rules & Magic, p. 82-83.

The system is intentionally convoluted and baroque. Like any good old alchemy, it is untested, volatile, and unpredictable! Use it as written, or just steal ideas from it, as usual! Have fun!

Download a formatted & bookmarked PDF!

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Download a properly formatted 4-page PDF!
created by killerklown

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