While the outside areas have wildlife and thus resources such as potential food and water, what about underground dungeons? Especially those that are sealed off? I'm extending one of the maps with a few map tiles I've got but it is essentially a dead end. And being sealed, nothing could live down there, right? I do have a note scribbled on the index card where I have the 3 square tiles sort of outlined, and in one I'm adding a small underground stream with some fish. Where the stream comes from and where it goes, who knows. But it is not enough to feed anything for long.
However - while I was thinking I was just joking about the gelatinous cube simply because I have a big die that IS such a beast, I read the description in the book to see if it indicated what it ate other than the occasional adventurer:
Deep underground, the party enters a small room, only about a megahex wide by seven megahexes long. The door is completely rotted away – only a few fragments of wood remain stuck to the top hinge. The room is completely bare except for a pool of water a hex in size, at the end away from the doorway. The water is undrinkably acid. Things thrown into the pool vanish into its greenish murk. Before long (sooner, if the party interacted with the pool) the water will begin to overflow, and a greenish pseudopod will emerge and quest about. Then the whole pool hex will be filled with the greenish flesh of a gelatinous cube, slowly emerging. It will take a minute for it to get completely out and move toward the party.
So I can have that cube in there! Probably no other creatures other than maybe rats?
I've also written down two other characters (Dina Goldenfoot and Aigulf Proudfoot) that I may have in the tower when the group gets there. They were part of the January character challenge and while written for OSE I've basically created TFT character cards for them to have. And having Aigul there, as he is a bit of an historian, when I let the players roll for the weapons, he will have a decent chance of knowing about them so the players may have a better idea of exactly what they are getting.
And since I've also recently decided to get some of the scenery and figures off of sprues from Archon, I actually have a couple camp rolls, tents and stuff. I may add that to the center of the tower.
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| camping in a tower with unpainted camping equipment |
But I also thinking traps: I've not been good about adding traps to dungeons. I worry that they can be insta-kills or too easy. Not sure how to balance that really, despite reading a lot on it. But I think I can add at least 1 trap in the adventure. Just need to figure out how to role play it well for the players.
Anyways - thinking of a living dungeon that has its own ecology can be a fun challenge. But a dungeon that is only (let's see, each tile is 7x7 5' squares, so 49x3 = 147 square feet, which includes walls) does not leave space for an ecology honestly. But, what if there was another secret door on one of the rooms, and a much larger dungeon behind that? Maybe I could connect it to the Lost Depths of the Ageless or the Glimmering Crypt of the Ioun King! One of these days I will try to run those as well.
As an aside on living dungeons - that is really what the wandering monster tables are for in various games and adventures. In OSE you roll every 20 minutes to see if something shows up, and that reflects that the dungeon is not a static place with creatures just sitting in a room waiting for someone to show up. I do use the OSE time tracking sheet even for TFT when they are inside as it is really pretty handy. Those torches are not going to last forever!
And while unrelated to TFT, we did have basically a session 0 for Space Gits and everyone has their characters. Character generation went well and even with the random process, they ended up with the characters they envisioned, I think. I'll try & have a post on those characters, but this weekend is running the Fantasy Trip game, then Monday night is session 1 for Space Gits. Not sure I'll handle running two games concurrently well, but the Space Gits game I think will only be 2-3 sessions, and TFT is only monthly. Surely I can handle that! And don't call me Shirley!
