Classic Dungeon Crawl - Anyone tried it?

[Strom]

You know, with the 4 PC's and the henchmen and clearing out one level at a time until you get to the big nasty at the last level?

I have to say I have not tried this yet with the Conan RPG. We have had wilderness adventures and city adventures, destroyed cults and disrupted rituals but I have yet to do a classic crawl. I guess you would have to import some creatures/monsters from 3.e but I guess it could be done say with most of the creatures/monsters in the core and supplement books.
If you imported, it wouldn't be hard to really justify it as long as it makes sense within the story you are trying to tell as a GM.

Has anyone tried the classic crawl with the Conan RPG?

 

[throrII]

Read 'The Scarlet Citadel' short (long) story by Howard. The Dungeon under Tsotha's tower gives a possible example of a 'Conan' style dungeon crawl.

There are plenty of seeds in that story.

 

[The King]

Somebody already had a try with Gary Gygax's Necropolis (initialy done for the 3.0 rules but adaptable to Conan). It's a 300 pages campaign with many parts of dungeon crawl.

However pure dungeon crawl has no meaning for Conan. He was looking for richess and power and didn't care about clean places from lurking evil.

 

[Strom]

Read 'The Scarlet Citadel' short (long) story by Howard. The Dungeon under Tsotha's tower gives a possible example of a 'Conan' style dungeon crawl.

There are plenty of seeds in that story.

Yes I agree and proof that a dungeon crawl could happen in the Hyborian Age. If the story and setting mesh then a classic crawl can makes as much sense as a frontier Pict adventure. Why do a crawl? For loot yes and experience. In Conan it could involve one more aspect - survival. Then it could work. I think sometimes we forget that the PC's in Conan are adventurers and risk takers and fearless. With that in mind a dungeon crawl - that is presented in a Hyborian light - could make a great adventure.

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried to do this with his or her Conan RPG campaign?

 

[René]

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried to do this with his or her Conan RPG campaign?

I used AK: Mesopotamia which has some dungeon crawl (e.g. the ziggurat). But I reduced the amount of monsters and changed their type to more Hyborian ones (according to website of the author). The scenario was a success and maintained the Hyborian feeling.
Some things seem essential: dungeon crawling should be used rarely and the dungeons shouldn't be too big, but within reasonable dimensions (and not a menagerie of all creatures on the planet).

 

[argo]

I did a one-session dungeon crawl, not a twelve-level extravangaza but a single-adventure dungeon. I worked up the tomb of an ancient and forgotten king and had the PC's get lucky and stumble onto the map. The entire thing worked out as very Radiers of the Lost Ark with traps, secret doors, a few nasty animals that had taken residence and a guardian in the tomb/treasure room. Oh plus a small band of rival adventurers (red herring) and a damsiel in distress who wasn't (the true foil, she had done more research on the tomb and knew its secret pasages, she played coy until the last moment when she traped the PC's in the room with the guardian and made off with as much treasure as she could carry on horseback). I think that the players had a good time and it was a nice change of pace from the wilderness adventures they had been having. Plus it was the first adventure where they ended up rich at the end :lol:

If I may divert for a moment ... I'd like to share one of the best parts of that session. I decided that the tomb/treasure room needed an eternal guardian, something the ancient king's royal sorcorer whipped up for him. I considered undead but decided I liked the idea of a golem better but I wanted a twist. So I looked at the story The Devil in Iron and I decided that in the Hyborian age a golem is what you get when a sorcorer binds the spirit of a demon to a physical statue. Anyway, the PC's are having a hard time with this thing because of its DR: one is already down due to massive damage and another is going toe-to-toe with it and slowly loosing. The party Scholar is hiding in a corner because he is focused on hypnotism and curses, he's trying to come up with a plan but he's got nothing. Finally he asks me if he can make some Knolwedge checks for "inspiration" (I was waiting for him to do this, acutally I expected it sooner in the fight) so I have him roll then suggest to him that he look at the spell "Incantation of Almaric's Witchman". He picks up the book and as he does so he says:
"Yeah, I already considered that one but it says that it only works on ..... "
Oh the look on his face when he realized what he was up against. Made the whole night worthwhile :twisted:


Back to the topic at hand.

The other classic Conan dungeon crawl is the "lost city populated with a degenerate tribe". The story Red Nails is just begging to be turned into a module (are you listening developers?). The PC's could easily spend three or four levels exploring the city of Xutochol and playing the warring tribes against each other.

Likewise, if you wanted to get a little Lovecraftian on your PC's, you could introduce the city of some ancient, non-human race perhaps beuried a mile beneath the surface of the earth or perhaps lost in a jungle or beyond passless mountains. The Lovecraft tales The Shadow out of Time, The Nameless City and The Mound are all dungeon-crawls waiting to happen. I actually toyed with the idea of having an adventure where the race from The Nameless City is alive in the Hyborian age, just at the end of their civilization when they are xenophobic and killing any human who wanders too close. And so of course the PC's wander too close and must escape the city into its underground caverns and find a way to survive and find their way back to the surface. But I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Hope that helps.

 

[The King]

Exactly! I had forgotten what dungeon crawl was all about: Collecting lost and forgotten treasures and magic items.
By extrapolation you can have a glimpse of a big dungeon in the Hour of the Dragon when Conan is in the pyramid in Stygia or even play the thieves who are requested to take the heart of Arihman.

Still I don't believe this to be faithful to Conan. He never had any wealth because he was a wanderer. He craved more for power and in the end he became rich because he was a king of a mighty realm.

 

[argo]

Still I don't believe this to be faithful to Conan. He never had any wealth because he was a wanderer. He craved more for power and in the end he became rich because he was a king of a mighty realm.

Well, that is what the rule of "High Living" is for, right :wink:

Anyway, there is still plenty of room in the Hyborian age for characters focused on the aquisition of wealth, even of Conan himself wasn't espically concerned about it. Consider Belit, or uh, the thief from Tower of the Elephant (forget his name right now). Not every PC has to be Conan.

Later.

 

[throrII]

Again: "Scarlet Citadel"...you have a multi-level dungeon (literally), with wandering monsters, random rooms with monsters, maze-like passages, and pits.

Granted, the monsters are all summoned/trapped demons and aberrations, but it does qualify.....

 

[The King]

Consider Belit, or uh, the thief from Tower of the Elephant (forget his name right now). Not every PC has to be Conan.

Later.

The guy was Taurus the Nemedian.

 

[Strom]

Still I don't believe this to be faithful to Conan. He never had any wealth because he was a wanderer. He craved more for power and in the end he became rich because he was a king of a mighty realm.

That's my point - and argo's great adventure proves it - it's the responsibility of the GM to make it relevant to the PC's in Conan's world. Conan may not have been rich but he always tried to get wealth where he could and a classic dungeon crawl could provide the itch to that wealth's itch for the PC's. Doesn't mean at the next adventure they didn't sqaunder all of their gains and start with little to nothing.

I'm going to try and design a dungeon crawl adventure in the Conan RPG and see how it goes.

throrII
Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 8:21 pm    Post subject:
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Again: "Scarlet Citadel"...you have a multi-level dungeon (literally), with wandering monsters, random rooms with monsters, maze-like passages, and pits.

Granted, the monsters are all summoned/trapped demons and aberrations, but it does qualify.....

I get ya thorII. I'm not really looking for dungeon ideas per se just wondering how a classic dungeon crawl has worked within the Conan ruleset since all of my adventures have taken place in other locations besides a typical dungeon where all my old D & D adventures seemed to take place.

 

[The King]

It shouldn't be difficult but remember it is more difficult to recover from wounds and that sorcerers can't back up with fireballs or powerful spells.

It is true however that many Conan adventures can be extended to provide some dungeon crawling. In the jewels of Gwahlur for instance, when Conan is underground over a river, he prefers to release his (treasure) catch to save the girl. The jewels fall in the river and it can become a goal to retrieve them and explore the caves full of creatures.

However we see there that Conan isn't a fool: if adversity is too important he doesn't stay but he still keeps his honorable way (i.e. to save a girl rather than to strike it rich).

 

[Trodax]

The story Red Nails is just begging to be turned into a module (are you listening developers?). The PC's could easily spend three or four levels exploring the city of Xutochol and playing the warring tribes against each other.

Totally. That story has got "RPG adventure" written all over it.

I think a dungeon crawl for Conan could be really cool if it had this open-ended feel to it; an evocative setting (dungeon, old city, whatever) populated with a couple of warring factions and some supernatural beasties, where the PCs are just set free to romp around as they want.
I personally like this layout much more than the traditional crawl where you start at point A and work your way from room to room (and go from level 1 to 20 without leaving the dungeon!).

I don't have a problem at all with treasure and loot being the motivating force; they seem appropriate enough for the Hyborian Age. (Acquired wealth will be temporary anyway because of high-living...)

As The King pointed out, healing is slower in Conan than D&D (OK, its still pretty fast, but that Mr. Cleric is hard to beat), so make sure to take that into account. I think its probably more appropriate to have fewer, more challenging encounters in Conan than in D&D, so just skip the small pointless encounters that are just there to give a few XP and whittle away a couple of hp.

I'm going to try and design a dungeon crawl adventure in the Conan RPG and see how it goes.

Let us know how it works out!

 

[Thoth Aw C'mon]

I love a good dungeon crawl! There's definitely a place for the ol' crawl in Conan the RPG! Basically, as has been suggested it will probably have to be shorter than the 15 level behemoth ( Ala the D&D modules like Against the Giants or Descent into the Depths of the Earth, etc.)... due to the differences in wound recovery between the systems. Remember the ol' "spike the doors shut and recouperate" deal? Haw haw! Crawls are fun because they are straight-forward: you have rooms and passages filled with creatures and traps that you have to overcome if you are to continue on. Thats it. Now there can be tricks, too, and riddles, etc. But its a series of obstacles to be overcome strung out one after another. As a player you can put yourself into the frame of mind of pinning your ears back and taking out some beasts, solving some riddles and using your gaming experience to deftly avoid some traps. Sound like fun. Mongoose should come out with a supplement with a series of short or shortish (say a night's worth of gaming time to complete) dungeon-type crawls wiht a Hyborian feel. They don't have to be connected in some way in terms of plot, just crawls that can be pulled out in short order for a night's fun.

 

[Bjorn the Barbarian]

I have converted a few small D&D dungeon crawls over to Conan. Mostly using the mini scenarios in the two old "Lair" books. These seem to work fine after a bit of tweaking, a.k.a. changing the monsters and treasures to something not so "fantastic/magical".

I also agree that the dungoen crawl can have a place in REH's world. There are all kinds of forgotten cities, tombs, lairs, etc., that are begging to be explored in Hyboria.

 

[The King]

Right! I'am sure many old (2nd version) ADD adventures could easily be converted:
- Ravenloft
- Al-Qadim
- Birthright
- Lankhmar
- Dark Sun
and some Forgotten Realms modules.
It would be harder for DragonLance setting.

And the Vecna series as a dread Stygian undead, a kind of Xaltotun.

 

[Lando The Archmagi]

My Throne of Blood/Return to the Throne of Blood scenarios have some temple/tomb crawling in them.

Also wandering around in the underground undead city of Larsha.....

Am considering writing them up as a module/ongoing series.

 

[René]

My Throne of Blood/Return to the Throne of Blood scenarios have some temple/tomb crawling in them.

Also wandering around in the underground undead city of Larsha.....

Am considering writing them up as a module/ongoing series.

Do you intend to publish it? At some online store?

 

[Lando The Archmagi]

I don't know, hoped Mongoose Publishing might want to make it into a PDF module or something?

I've got notes/hand drawn graph paper maps and most of it in my head... but would have to take some time to write/type it up and such.

Its got a campaign reaching feel to it since it involves a sorcerer hungry for power...../necromancy/demon god/undead and ancient artifact.......and Larsha...and Zamoria/Shadizar.

I've killed several pcs with it in the first incarnation and the Return scenario I ran this year (picked up where everyone died last year), they actually completed most of it...some tried to destroy/hide the artifact..others brought it back to the sorcerer for all sorts of gold/jewels....

 

[Sven]

I made a dungeon crawl with my group once. The characters had to enter a dungeon inhabitated by the dread mountain ghosts, a local story which had defeated almost an entire platoon of Asshuri warriors.

In reality these ghosts were Mi-Go which where on retreat because they lost the battle and were fleeing from the rest of the Asshure.

The Characters found a battlefield with almost hundred dead Asshuri, but no corpses of the enemy (Mi-Go bodies vanish after they die).

The Character still acted very heroic and entered the dungeon through a cave and found more dead Asshuri.

After a while they began to understand what really happened, had two fights with some of the retreating Mi-Go, and came to the right time to help the last surviving Asshuri against the last Mi-Go. The Mi-Go leader escaped through a strange magic portal. Then the dungeon began shacking and the characters could escape from a cave-in in the last second.

Was very good. They found strange things (a big cube-like mining apparatus which disintegrates normal rocks and living things (they could activate it and were happy not to stand on the wrong side), and they used a elevator to go into the deeper caves (this was only a red heering, there was nothing down there anymore, but they had much fun with this technical thing they could not understand)

One of the heroes has even found a electrical pistol of the Mi-Gos but does not know yet what it is (they loke like metal rocks with strange symbols)