The Tower

Hello and welcome to my world building blog!

In the coming weeks, I'm going to be covering a few resources that I find interesting for world building any campaign.  Many books can be found with different methods to create settings, adventures, plots, and scenarios a GM could take with them anywhere.  They can use these materials to help them create interesting stories for their players, and keep those players entertained for months, if not years.

Today, we're going to be looking inside TSR's Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Master's Rulebook by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, published in 1974, and revised by Frank Mentzer in 1983.  More specifically, the section aptly called Creating Dungeons, because when Gygax and Arneson first created D&D, it was all about the dungeon crawl.  The dungeon crawl is one of the most classic adventures in the game, and the Basic DM's book does it right.

In Creating Dungeons, the book says, "A 'dungeon' is any place where monsters and treasures may be found.  A dungeon is usually a group of rooms, connected by corridors.  It could be a castle (new or ruined), some caves, or anything else you can imagine."

The book gives us a selection of scenarios to choose from, but as most of you already know, I love to use my random generator.  Some of the selections given are Investigating an Enemy Outpost, Recovering Ruins, or Visiting a Lost Shrine.  It also gives us a selection of locations for the scenarios, locations like a Castle, Crypt, or Ancient Temple.  When you put the scenario and location together, you get some interesting ideas.  My generator chose Exploring the Unknown in a Tower.

The book gives us a description of Exploring the Unknown:  "The party is hired to map unknown territory.  The area might once have been familiar but is now overrun or destroyed.  A strange tower might mysteriously appear overnight in a familiar area."

The description above is very vague, but full of meaty morsels for us to chew on.  The party is hired; by whom?  An unknown territory; how far is this territory?  Was this place familiar and now overrun?  Was it destroyed, and by whom... or what?  If it is a strange tower that mysteriously appeared overnight, where did it come from?  Are there clues inside?  What exactly is inside?

Taking it from the beginning, let's start with who hired the party to take on this task.  I kind of like the idea of the tower showing up out of nowhere overnight.  So, maybe the king's scouts spotted this thing in the distance, a spire at the edge of the kingdom that was not there yesterday.  The king put out word for adventures to explore this new tower in his territory.  He's worried that whoever put it up, by using some foul, evil magic, could be looking to take over the area.  Of course, he won't mention this to the adventurers.  The narrative could be something like this:

     "King Rass Sunderly is conscripting adventurers for a task.  Only those brave enough to explore the unknown need apply.  The King will be seeing those interested in the afternoon.  Please, be prompt."  That's the notice on the tavern board that had garnered a small crowd to read today's news.

     In the afternoon, you make your way to the throne room of the castle and see King Sunderly upon his throne.  "As you may have already heard," he begins, "last night, a mysterious tower appeared in the fields of Lashtane Grove.  Only one thing could have been used to erect such an evil spire, and that's fell magic.  You are here because you are a curious adventurer, seeking out the exciting and the unknown.  And this is by far unknown territory.  The kingdom will compensate you for your services, of course, at the hefty wage of 100 gold coins upon return."

From here, if the PCs have questions, you can probably improvise your way through some details and then get them on their way.  Of course, because this is about the dungeon and not the journey, you can move the action from the throne room to the entrance of the tower with no problems.

The Dungeon Master's Rulebook has a sub-section called Random Stocking you could use to stock the rooms of your dungeon.  It has traps, monsters, monster treasure, specials (like magic pools), and hidden room treasure.  Of course, I won't be covering those elements here, and let you discover them on your own.

Next week, we'll take a look at Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition's Adventures and Villains.

I hope you've enjoyed this entry, and until next time, thanks for reading.