Continuation of my series to edit a quick "Friday Night Dungeon" using Dolmenwood.
TOMB of the TWIN-HEADED HAWK (Pg 4)
Link to the Draft Document: Six Doors of the Forgotten Lord
Key Detail: Room 07 is a door, so another roll on the heraldry table yielded "hawk" and for a room type I rolled "weird" so, I went with an animate door- a squawking two-headed baf relief. Its odd, will prompt discussion, and is an alarm obstacle
Initial Treasure Total (silver standard): 120sp with the opportunity to gain a large talking jug.
Three Initial Problems:
- More Description of Important Things: The animated door and describe the jar heads of the barrowbogeys (peak Dolmenwood monster) with a little more flavor
- Empty Crypt (#10 & 11a) Is Too Bland: I should know better since I wrote a post on it. Something needs to go here to punch it up.
- More Treasure: Not enough for sure at 120sp. On average, level 1 treasure is about 600sp (or gp...whatever standard you use). Treasure shouldn't be evenly parcelled because that is boring, but it should still be there.
Three Potential Solutions
- Colorful Descriptions: Let's see...
- Door: The bas relief of a twin-headed hawk strains to grab the green grasshoppers that float past it; occasionally, the heads nip at each other in frustration
- Barrowbogey heads: "...its clay head is a squat double handled jar with a black and white checkered glaze" or "...both heads are rustic wine decanters shaped like crowing roosters..."
- Empty but Not Nothing: Well, let's roll on the table for rooms #10 and #11a...to get... "a clue or password" and an "encounter clue"
- Okay, #10 leads to a weird room where there is a toast to summer, so how about we put a banner hanging from the beaks of two very large taxidermied twin-headed hawks, that says "TO SUMMER".
- For #11a, since the northern passage leads to the crypt with the zombie mermaids, let's put 4 frozen bodies in this room and an unnatural chill. They'll all have gold coins frozen in their eyes. Does it completely make sense? No. But it will make the PCs pause.
- More Treasure: One easy thing to do is to increase the value of the holy symbol in #12 from 100 to 300. And if there is a pile of frozen bodies in #11a well, how about if you move them (2 turns) then it will reveal a bronze, fur-trimmed diadem worth 300. Now our new total treasure is 600 plus the magical jug. Not bad.
Final Thoughts
I've actually started to play this dungeon a little bit and so far I'm happy with it. I think 07-12 set of rooms is one with a strong Dolmenwood flavor because it involves the barrowbogey who I've connected to a rumor of stolen pottery locally. Whimsy that could get you killed!