1p adventure: The Bone Keep

Covered in perpetual mist lies the ruins of a keep, the site of an ancient battle. Who fought, and for what cause, is lost to time, but the ground is thick with broken bones and rusted war-gear that tell of terrible casualties. Reality is thin here, and a sinister presence stalks the ruins. Drawn here by the terror of the ancient massacre, it reaches through from the shadow realm to feed on the souls of the living. To this keep of mist and bone you’ve come, seeking a relic of great power.

Perhaps you can atone for what your own swords have perpetrated, by readying them once again...

The Bone Keep is a small adventure location, heavily inspired by Runehammer. Because of this, the entire keep is designed as a "room" in ICRPG parlance, meaning that it is meant to be played on a board. I've used the D&D adventure grid because I have it and it fits on my table, but you can use whatever. The important thing is just to set up the board so that the characters cannot walk in straight lines between the grove, the central tower and/or the far tower, and that the skull piles are in choke points.

The basic idea of being chased by evil mist while avoiding stepping on undead comes from a room outlined in the Fire & Ice-series. However, unlike in the ice room, the evil mist does not freeze the character but draw them into a mirror world or sorts. The idea is of course to get even more play out of a single board.

Another great Runehammer idea is to provide a location specific but general search table that you roll on no matter if the perception check or referee ruling indicates you "found" something or not. As the entire adventure basically takes place in "combat time" - there is always a threat present - there is a pressure to always perform combat-oriented tasks. By providing a search table you boost the reward for searching, thus gently tilting the risk/reward balance in favor of this non-combat activity in a less arbitrary way than if you were making up rewards on the spot.

You can download the adventure here.

2p adventure: The Barbican Keep

This keep is part of a great wall, and watches over the only (known) passage to the other side. The idea is that the player-characters enter at one side and try to get out at the opposite side without being killed. I've added stuff and removed stuff back and forth to strike a compromise between showcasing different aspects of the setting (the Dryads, the doomed house Gerait, the Sisters of Solace, etc) and presenting the desolate mood I want for the campaign. I still don't know if the balance is perfect, but I think it helps to imagine the keep as vastly oversized.

Anyway, here's the adventure location.

2p adventure: Black Knight Keep

After a delay, here's another keep. True to the idea of patterns (and also laziness) its based on reused components from previous designs. Hopefully, this will give a sense of familiarity and enable the accumulation of knowledge through play. That said, I am already having some issues with this constraint - as seen in the non-intuitive separation between walls and edges. I'll have to think more about that for future adventure sites.

The basic premise for the adventure is that there lives a black knight in a keep, and - as black knights do - he compulsively jousts anyone trespassing on his Lady's domain. The keep is said to hold tremendous wealth from all the ransoms thus produced, including a relic known as the Arm of the Bleeder.

Here's the adventure.

1 page adventure: Gerait Demon Keep

There's a ton of good adventures for D&D and other fantasy games. However, most of them are set underground. This is a problem for me, since I'm easily bored with the dungeon as an environment, and consequently planning a campaign mostly set above ground. But then it occurred to me that perhaps other people feel the same way, or at least feel that dungeon-style adventures set above ground could be a nice complement to the regular dungeons.

Thus, I present Gerait Demon Keep. Like with Luthria convent, the idea is to
keep it short,
include some measure of loot,
hint on a setting; and
provide a clue for further adventures (here, in the form of books and a map that could lead to a new adventure site).

Enjoy.