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.
