I have quite a few Random Content Generators [RCGs] from Philip Reed Games, even though most of my use of them was before I started posting stuff to this blog [with a few exceptions]. I know he has a Deck of Old-School Wilderness Encounters Kickstarter coming up, right off the back of his recent OSR Dungeon Cards [see at the first link]. Before I backed that one, I figured blend those and some other recent tools by him into some ideas I had to generate a nice sidequest.

The Initial Idea I Want

Gryffin wants a healer to join the party. He does some healing duty, but it's not his primary focus. The next sidequest will be to try and find a healer.

What I was thinking about doing was to use an old Japanese Console RPG style trope. The prince is sick. You need to get a healer. The healer needs a herb. The herb is in a dungeon.

Specifically, the healer has gone off on what was supposed to be a routine trip to gather healing supplies — something that would not violate an eight-character limit, let's say SNOW DEW, a small blue-and-white flower — and has not returned. Track down the healer and save them.

The "dungeon" would be a wilderness area, some place remote, and then an underground bit. The encounters are fight-heavy. There is some mini-boss type encounter near the end. A pretty typical "OSR" type thing, but with a musical score like Romancing Saga 3's "Frozen Lake" [Kenji Ito, LGT Youtube] playing on loop.

Maybe challenging, but also bright. Climbing a cliff near an old school waterfall. Entering into an old dungeon. Fighting palette swapped baddies.

Step One: Deck of Old School Dungeon Lore

The Deck of Old-School Dungeon Lore is a fifty-card deck where forty of the cards has three prompts — Rise, Fall, and Present — that you can either take as a single card or draw multiple cards to mix-and-match. The other ten have "You Are Not Alone" prompts to discuss a foe. For example, #1 looks like this:

I'm a natural mix-and-matcher so I'm going to go to draw three total cards and then pick a Rise, Fall, and Present that roughly enables the idea I'd like to see (for this, I'm just using Google's Random Number Generator and then the PNG versions of all the decks shown).

Cards pulled are: 24, 6, and 45. 45 is a "You Are Not Alone" so I'll draw another, skipping similar cards until I get a full lore card. +49. Combining the three pieces together, with the bonus fourth, we get [text taking directly from the cards]:

[Rise, card 6] A long time ago, this dungeon was a majestic cathedral. The worshipers who built this place followed an ancient goddess of war. Neither she nor her followers have been seen in thousands of years.

[Fall, card 24] The dungeon fell into ruin when a deity grew so furious with its people that he hurled a colossal meteor at it. The impact destroyed the dungeon and killed most of its occupants.

[Present, card 49] Today, the dungeon is inhabited by bizarre creatures. They possess limited intelligence and are quick to battle one another for food.

[Not Alone, card 45] You are not alone. A towering flesh golem made from bits of ogres, trolls, and orcs stands guard over a locked door. This magical servant’s master died long ago, and the golem will fight anyone who tries to get by it. The room it guards is empty.

Combining all those together, we get an ancient cathedral dedicated to a goddess of war. They did something that angered her and she rained destruction down on the island. Only a small portion of the upper cathedral remains, near a large hole where the lake beside it pours over into a waterfall. Now, strange creatures occupy the ruins of what is left while the main structure is destroyed. A few have started to escape after centuries. Somewhere, a twisted flesh golem guards a door. Behind that door is where the healer is trapped.

Step Two: Deck of Old School Encounters

To date, Reed has released four decks of Old School Encounters. This makes a total of 288 cards, each with a short and moderately flavorful encounter on it [Sample Card #15, from the first set]:

None of the encounters should be of any shock to folks who play the baseline games. A few of them might be a tad bit out of place for ShadowDark, but not really. I'll use my judgement.

With the caveat of these entities being altered by the catastrophe, or strangers to the island, I think I will draw eight cards and then pick six to represent the general "encounters" on the island and cathedral complex. Then I can go back and add in others from ShadowDark to help fill in gaps.

Encounter cards are 76, 123, 81, 153, 51, 148, 210, 95. None of those are from Set 4 (#s 217-288). Let's draw two more just from that range: 244 and 249.

In order, that is:

  1. [76] EVIL HAG. Hostile. She attacks with spells and long, jagged claws. Flees if reduced to half HP.
  2. [123] 1D3+2 WIGHTS. Hostile. They attack, fleeing to their tumulus if one of them is defeated.
  3. [81] TROLL. Hostile. Only flees if reduced to 1/4 HP. Attacks casters first.
  4. [153] SLENDER TOWER. Indifferent. 3d4 goblins live in this bizarre tower. They’ve locked themselves away from the outside world to pursue an all-consuming obsession: baking. In their heart of hearts, their only desire is to make bread and cakes for the rest of their days. If the PCs are kind and friendly, the goblins ask the party to help them transport a wagon of baked goods to a nearby city.
  5. [51] 3D3 GIANT LEECHES. Hostile. They use their suckers to latch onto a victim and  ght to the death.
  6. [148] CREEPY DUNGEON ENTRANCE. Hostile. This strange rock, chiseled into the shape of a bizarre head, is a gateway to a subterranean labyrinth of the GM’s choosing.
  7. [210] ANGRY WARRIOR. Hostile. He is controlled by a cursed ring. Can the PCs break the curse?
  8. [95] CENTAUR. Hostile. His son was kidnapped. Can the PCs convince him they didn’t do it?
  9. [244] 1D4 DEMONS. Hostile. These goat-headed fiends attack using evil magic and sharp swords.
  10. [249] 1D4 DWARVES. Hostile. They’re daring a frightened kobold in a tree to come down and face them. The kobold begs the PCs for help.

Looking through those options, the EVIL HAG and WIGHT(s) leap out first. For the hag, maybe a Weald Hag (ShadowDark, page 225). Once was the high priestess, has been changed by the catastrophe. Stalks the underground portions. The wights would be a bit rough to be a regular group, but skeletons [page 251] of the other priestesses, mutated through some process, might be more frequent.

Giant Leeches make perfect sense, especially in more flooded zones. Angry Warrior could be another adventurer who stumbled upon it and found a ring similar to what Boris was struggling with. The troll could be a another Deep Troll [Cursed Scroll #3, page 46]. He guards the ruins of the cathedral. He has been driven up by hag and her priestess warriors. His attempts to get access are what has let out the others.

Creepy Dungeon Entrance could be a secondary entrance in the side of the cliff where the meteorite blasted half the complex into dust. It should have some sort of hazard. We can work on that in a bit.

Finally, demons are a bit broad and I'll include "devils" in that, but other-worldly creatures attracted to the goddess's curse makes sense. Let's roll 1d4 = 1. A singular demon roams the halls, with a lair somewhere. He feasts on the cursed bones of the inflicted. We'll say he's a Barbed Devil [ShadowDark, page 206].

Some other encounters that might match themes of a dank, partially submerged set of tunnels (using just the base book and Cursed Scroll #3, could include:

  • Giant Centipede(s), Page 201.
  • Giant Frog(s), Page 216
  • Gibbering Mouther, Page 220. Singular.
  • Grick, Page 223. Maybe this is what guards the other entrance.
  • Strangler, likely singular. Page 254.
  • Will-O'-Wisp, page 264. Probably a single encounter that tries to lure people towards the hag to feast on their remains once she is done.

And, of course, we have the Flesh Golem [page 222] who is technically protecting the healer. That gives us our boss and mini-boss, essentially. Plus some varying encounters and random encounters.

The skeleton priestesses can be of two types. The regular ones just follow the normal listing. A few special ones, the core group, we'll mutate using the "Make It Weird" table on page 191.

  1. 1, Shapechanger.
  2. 11, Electrified Weapon.
  3. 10, Blood draining bite.

I think #2 is bit unnecessary, but we'll say they will first approach looking like their living selves and then switch to a skeleton appearance when attacking. They have a second attack which is a 1d4 bite that heals them for an equal amount. Their bones are blood stained and the pain of realizing they are dead has driven to insanity.

Blood Bones: AC 13 (chainmail). HP 14. ATK 1 shortsword +2 (1d6) or 1 bite +0 (1d4, drains). MV near. S +1, D +0, C +2, I -2, W +0, Ch +1. AL C. LV 4.

Step Three: Deck of OSR Dungeons

The two decks of OSR Dungeons have 36 cards, each, where one side has a fairly old school looking dungeon portion and the other side has some prompts for dungeon contents through categorized prompts. #47's front and back look like this:

There are some some "Q" cards with each deck that can be used to create a quick list of encounters and an unusual detail. I won't be using those for this but maybe in the future.

The dungeon design is not really the kind of design I would make for my dungeon, but that almost kind of works in this case because it will feel like something new.

I'll draw nine cards to start and see how "complete" I think that feels in a roughly 3x3 pattern: 55, 16, 37, 39, 35, 10, 56, 67, 11.

Doing some various flips and layout shifts, we get something that [in the rough], looks like this.

The "lower" room in the center will be down from the cathedral [ignore the "down" staircase, it's just standing on its head]. The ring-cursed warrior will probably be near here, and the troll comes down. We'll say the warrior fears the troll and hides.

North of that will be the central worship area, the hag's lair to the left/west, and the priestesses' quarters to the right/east. These three upper rooms will be the focus of the various undead though they might show up elsewhere.

South of the priestesses' quarters is the "hall of screams" with strange sounds. The devil is here when not feeding on priestesses.

South of that is where the flesh golem has trapped the healer. In the spiral at the center. The staircase there leads down into a complete cave in.

On the other side of the main entrance is a flood large hallway, likely full of Giant Frogs. South of that is a set of rooms at least waist deep in cold water. Maybe I'll roll to see how deep each room is. The Gibbering Mouther will be here, somewhere. The staircase here will be completely underwater.

Then south again is the area where the cliffside entrance is. The entrance is protected by a Grick. There is likely to be decay and insect type encounters here.

That gives me nine rough areas around "main encounters" with lots of rooms to use ShadowDark's room content generation tables.

Time to Put It ALL Together

This is pretty much the core content for this post. What I need to do is go back to that map and clean it up a bit. Put in a few labels. Set up the "main encounters" while leaving room for me to be surprised by a few features [I have some plans for that].

I need to compile a basic random encounters table.

Generate a small hex map [likely 7 hexes with the map being in the middle], with a few very simple encounters possible there but entirely random.

Then come up some stats/names for the warrior and the healer and other details.

I'll probably make an Intermission 8C for that and just show the final product now that the basic steps are out of the way.

UPDATE: Showing Next Stage of Map

Before the predicted 8C, wanted to show the updated version of the map. I've cleaned up the "fake exits," flipped the staircase, tweaked the grid to be a bit bigger [so the map is slightly smaller], and a few color tweaks. This is the version I'll be using to jam up the key and such.

Credits

All the cards presented are copyright to Philip Reed Games and their respective artists.

"The Tunnel" is based on a photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash.

"The Waterfall" is based on a photo by A.C. via the Unsplash+ license.

"The Cathedral" is based on a photo by Michael D Beckwith on Unsplash.

"The Bones" is based on a photo by Jon Butterworth on Unsplash.