The Warrens of Mystery, Zone B

Continuing with the Warrens of Mystery, with over 200 rooms their is a lot to cover...

Zone A creates a natural bottleneck resulting in two choices - the door to the south and the open passageway to the west. In both my playthroughs players have opted to go west as their first choice (the open passage invites another step where a door is a choice), leaving the south door unopened.

This next zone, Zone B, I refer to as The Junction. At its centre is a crossroad on what my players have referred to as the top corridor. This natural passage on the top of the map allows players to quickly traverse multiple map zones to reach deeper into the warrens.

The theme here is Visitors. A small Visitor group have occupied most of the rooms in this area and seek to hack into the Vault in this region. They have a guard post setup right in the middle of the junction that allows them to control traffic through the top of the map. They can be reasoned with but tend to be hostile to Humans and Endjinns (their hated enemies that caused the worldship to crash).

My first group to play through this area went with open assault, attacking the group at location 1, then the reinforcements from 2 then 6 in a glorious rolling battle. They then advanced through to 4 and eliminated the leader. The second group set an ambush, quickly cleared the main group, and went north before reinforcements could arrive. Both groups had recovered the vault key from Zone A which opens the Vault on this map. I describe the vault entries as a 10ft square raised platform with a pedestal in the middle. Placing the key within opens a hole in the roof and activates this flying platform (as an elevator) that rises rapidly upwards and takes them to the Vault. Zone A and B effectively teach the players about the vaults and gives them an understanding of how finding and opening them works.

The worldship arrives in your world...

I was once asked which ‘world’ my setting was in and to be honest I use my own. But it got me thinking, how would you use it in another world?

For this thought I’m going to assume the ship is and has been in poor repair for an extended period. This allows you to use my map below as is. I only really use one deck of the whole ship as I assume lower decks are buried and upper decks extend beyond the atmosphere of a world.  Your can simply run with it being the only pressurised deck if you don't crash it. Assume the Visitor kingdoms are intact, but the human occupants would be optional to use.

Maybe I will explore an undamaged map in the future with multiple decks. Though if you did this the whole ship would likely follow the rules for the visitor territories I currently use.

So how does it did the ship arrive in your world?

The world scar

Like in my world the ship crashes onto your world. You will need to consider how the crash didn’t destroy your world, be it local magic or technology on the now crashed ship. This could have happened a long time ago or it could be a recent campaign event. Where did it crash? What did it destroy? It is big enough to wipe out all or part of a whole kingdom. In Kanahu this could be directly off the map in the sea to the west or south west or in the unknown lands to the east.

The district nine problem (but bigger)

The ship arrives and is floating a mile above the terrain. It’s still functional gravity systems maintain it in a static position over your world. Or maybe it drifts following some pattern? What happens to the terrain underneath? The worldship is massive and would block out the sun killing all plant life underneath! If this is a recent arrival and kingdom underneath will be rushing to have it moved assuming their people haven’t already fled. If it has been there a long time a dark land underneath will be dead and decayed, maybe becoming a place filled with long dead cities to plunder.

The new moon (it's really a space station)

A more distant arrival, a new moon arrives in the heavens and strange visitors arrive stealing resources and people for purposes unknown. With the aid of an astronomer the moon is identified as a vessel of some kind, do your players explore it? They could use a teleport spell or kidnap a visitor ship to arrive onboard. Do they encounter humans from a distant world or are the Visitor remnants the only survivors?

Combinations (the Sokovia solution) 

Combining world scar with a new moon above. Is a solution to a world ending event in your campaign one where your players or some other force deliberately seeks to crash the ship into a kingdom or location with the intent to destroy it? How would they do this? what are the implcations? 

Maybe the crash is going to occur in a year, the new moon will fall! Can the players stop it? 

My efforts to revise the map

I have been playing with worldographer recently and have made a few icons to differentiate the workshops terrain. They have started doing small updates and the recent changes have improved the user experience for me, though I think more is needed still. Asside from the new icons below I have also added some fungus areas as a forest proxy in the map to give it a bit more texture. For these fungus forests I focused them away from the more inhabited front of the ship. The new hexes are explained below the map.

My current progress is as follows:

The Worldship 6 mile hex revised map

Plaza: plaza hexes are dominated by giant mile high and wide corridors with natural terrain beneath. They are often illuminated with sun lamps and make natural passageways through the vessel. They are similar to the blank machinery areas but are dominated by the plaza terrain types.

Hab-cylinder: these giant cylinders six miles wide and high provide unique terrains from alien worlds within. The map icons show them as fertile or conducive to human life or as zones that are infertile or hostile to life. These were originally detailed in my first map here with the starting city of Avril being in a prominant cylinder.

Hanger bay: these massive open structures have access hangers to the outside world where visitor fleets once berthed. Many opens underneath the vessel and if it has crashed landed will now be filled with dirt and are mainly inaccessible.

The Warrens of Mystery, Zone A

Rather than having dungeon "levels" in the Warrens I use zones. The deeper the players go the harder the zones become. For each zone I create a cheat sheet for play, a one page summary of that area.

The zone below is the main starting area I have used for both my groups, technically there are other potential starting areas but I created this as I went. 

There is no particular theme for this zone, though a large Bog'an nest in the entry themes that area. To make this encounter harder cause a cascade effect as the Bog'ans from other rooms flow through, or release the lizard in room 10 and have the Bog'ans fall back as it does its job. It was mostly randomly generated using the standard tables in ACKS and my monster random table previously covered. The encounter/restock number represents a dungeon level 2 table roll with a modifier of -3 to the d12 roll for the monster encounter level. 

I have no idea if this will work but I think the following code imbeds the PDF. I tend to run with a few key words and detail, so I don't have to read massive amounts of text as I am running the game and this sheet reflects this. I may expand on some of the flavour elements in future posts.

The Warrens of Mystery

For the last... eight months my group switched to video play over discord to keep our gaming fun alive. To keep things simple, I went back to basics and setup a mega-dungeon for play. Here I use Gimp to create a layer over the top of the map that I can erase as they explore to reveal room. It has worked surprisingly well and has been a great play experience over discord.

After eight months both of my groups are near the end, they have opened each about five vaults with wildly different results based on party composition and approach. The fun thing for me the last few months has been seeing how radically different groups get wildly different results from the interactions of monsters and factions in the dungeon. 

The dungeons premise is that there are six hidden vaults that can be opened with keys and have hidden treasures in them. There is also a master vault that can be opened with all six keys (something my players have only recently learned). I revealed this through a session zero and through interactions with factions and groups in the dungeons.

Below is the blank map to this dungeon that I drew in March. I have split it into sections of 15-25 rooms and the deeper you go the harder it gets. Over the next few months, I will post the "one-page" summaries of these zones.

I used a hex grid here mainly because my second play group is my home group and my old battlemap is worn on the square grid side. The hex side though has never been used so I thought I would get some life out of it. It also strangely represents the BCK inspired sci-fi elements of my hybrid game that is set on the worldship very nicely.

The Warrens of Mystery

Near the village of Avril rumours have circulated of a recently located visitor vault being opened in the nearby warrens. Strange people dressed in cloaks have come to the village to trade goods in pristine condition that are rarely seen. These goods are surely from a hidden vault, and where there is one vault there are often more to be found. Scouts of house Avril have traced them to a region inhabited known to be inhabited vagrant bog’ans, barbarians, bugfolk and ogres. The have noted also that recent patrols of visitor’s keen on uncovering the vaults hidden within have been spotted in the region.

Parties of adventures have stared the journey to these warrens in recent times to uncover the keys to these vaults and unlock the treasure withing, but many have never returned. Will you brave the dangers of the warrens to unlock its hidden treasures?

The Warrens of Mystery blank map

Travelling through machinery areas

When I originally described machinery hexes I imagined only the machinery of the ship, but these zones are huge at six miles wide. As such I was trying to imagine how I would describe them as players move through, it can’t just be more pipes. In practice, several features have come to light through play.

Also, there is the factor of lighting. I don’t imagine this as a perpetual "underdark". There is still functional lighting and sun lamps that allow for a natural day night cycle of the normal hex crawl. Well in most cases anyway, some areas may be dark and rundown. In the main, I want these spaces to be large, larger than life, interiors that function as exteriors. Players can always traverse areas more like corridors, but I need large areas that you can fly an airship through. 

I eventually plan to make a 1.5 mile hex generator for each 6 mile hex to flesh them out. You could also roll 4 randomly to describe the travel through a hex in narrative form. So far, I have come up with the following three main areas, though I'm still trying to brainstorm a few others.

Plazas

Most travel is along massive open plazas with mile high ceilings, garden corridors, balconies either side and transport corridors passing through. These areas remain illuminated. They could have once been residential or commercial in nature. Given advanced materials production, industrial areas would be fundamentally different.

Describe it as though the players are walking through a valley. Vast mile-wide plazas. Many of the old terraces and buildings on either side are overgrown with plants and fungi. Overhead old rail lines become bridges crossing the spaces between. Over a mile above sunlamps glow, bringing light to the environment - sometimes through small clouds of vapor. Sometimes pillars dot the landscape with their tops branching out like trees to give the impression of an impossibly tall forest canopy. Some have rivers running through them and lakes, either intended by design or as a result of decay. Creatures roam between, both monstrous and timid, and villages dot the landscape.

Travel by mainline involves traversing the wide open spaces. Travel by subway involves using the bridges and roads on the edges and ramps. Slower corridor travel limits movement to the edge balconies.

Domes

These open spaces are like miniature hab cylinders at a little over a mile wide. They consist of a large open landscape with a huge dome encapsulating it. The landscape can be plains suitable for farming, rolling gardens with a mansion within that was once inhabited by a figure of wealth or land housing test subjects in controlled conditions. Some possess domed illusion roofs that give the impression the area is a part of a larger world, especially where they were designed for recreation or deception of laboratory experiments.

They often have sunlamps above providing natural light suitable to the environment below. Some may contain machinery or conduits above creating a dark open space of unknown purpose that are overgrown with bio-luminant plants and fungi.

Mainline travel through these sub zones involves direct travel through the main area and transitioning hanger doors. Subway travel often extends above or below the main area bypassing the dome in many cases. Walkway travel is often done around the edges of the dome, with occasional windows looking in.

Conduits

Giant pipes and tubes flow and pump through these areas. In many cases, pipes that are hundreds of feet wide now act as corridors or passageways to the inhabitants in much the same way as an abandoned sewer. Where light is present, it is often through smaller crystal panels or bioluminescent fungus that coats damp areas.

While at first glance not conducive to life, many scavengers and Bog’ans often favour these locations as prime sources of water and fungal farms. 

Travel by mainlines is through large pipes that once ferried material through the ship that are no longer in use. Alternatively, a conduit may have been an actual hanger passage to other sections of the ship. In many cases lighting is scarce. Subway travel is often trough old transport tubes or mid-size pipes. Walkway travel is through old maintenance tubes and connecting passages between old machinery zones now dormant and overgrown with fungus.

The Trader Flying Saucer

I have been greatly enjoying the ship designs and deck plans in the recent UFOs Release from Stellagama Publishing. If i wasn't having so much fun with my ACKS setting right now the great releases from Stellagama would have me playing in the TSAO setting (am I sort of doing so anyway? who knows...). In it is a great deck plan for a Trader Suacer that is itching for some BCK conversion. One of my groups playing in the worldship are trying to find a saucer to use as a base and its the perfect design for this.

New monster: Flying Saucer, Trader

A little seen saucer design during the invasion, but none-the-less present on the worldship. These vessels are built to carry materials both across the ship and through the interplanetary void of space. While lacking in the armaments of larger vessels they are capable of defending themselves.

Trader Flying Saucer (colossal machine)

% In Lair: Dungeon Enc: Wilderness Enc: Treasure Type / XP:	None None Convoy (1d3) Special x2 / 2,100
Hit Dice: Armor Class: Save: Special Def.:	8*** 5 F4 Advanced Materials (Immune mundane weapons, artillery/gigantic creatures 1/10 damage, magic/colossal creatures 1/5 damage; damaged by technology sources),  Vulnerable (electricity), Lightning Paralysis, Immune (disease and poison)
Movement: Attacks: Morale: Special Off.:	240' (80') Plasma beam (3+, 3d8) -1 None

The visitor trader is a saucer shaped airship with a command deck above the main disk. Like other saucers they can easily defeat more primitive beings but are primarily designed for commerce and trade. Inside the main deck is a spacious cargo bay with crew quarters surrounding the open space. Above is the command deck and recreation area with the turret pod central above and controlled from the command deck. Like other saucers they are fast and nimble vehicles constructed of a shining, silvery-gold metal. The advanced alien material renders them very difficult to damage. Technological weapons deal full damage to flying saucers, but flying saucers cannot be harmed by other man-sized weapons, nor by fire, by wood-throwing artillery, or by natural attacks from creatures of huge size or smaller. Stone-throwing artillery and gigantic creatures deal only 1/10th damage to flying saucers, while colossal creatures and magic deal only 1/5th damage. However, like other machines, flying saucers are vulnerable to lightning damage and take double damage from any electricity-based attack, such as the various lightning spells. Additionally, any saucer hit by an electricity attack must make a successful save vs. Paralysis or have its computers scrambled, rendering it unable to move except to hover in its current location, and unable to use its weapons and special abilities for the next combat round. Like other saucers they are vulnerable to mind-affecting spells (which actually target their Visitors pilots), but they are still immune to disease and poison as they have environmental seals against these attacks.

The trader saucer may land a party of Visitors using a gravity elevator projected from its bottom. A group of trader merchant marines consists of 2d4 regular Visitors as well as 1d2 scout drones and 1d4 workbots. The saucer carries loot as per the Visitor saucer loot table, p.108.

New item: Trader Saucer

From the cover of UFO's
from Stellagama Publishing.
Art by Gavin Dady.

This mid-sized saucer was less seen during the great war as its design was not for military purposes. As its name suggests the trader is designed for commerce and profit. It has a more tapered shape being flat at the base and ramping up to the middle with a small upper command deck. Being built to carry cargo it can carry 5,120 stone or 36 tons of cargo.

It flies in the air at a speed of up to 240' (80') and requires 15 energy crystals for each day of operation. It has three cylindrical reactors stored in a sub-deck that are of a similar design to those found in abductors, each carries five crystals. The Trader also has space for an additional 90 crystals in its fuel holds.

It requires a crew of three: one pilot (typically an arcane spellcaster); one navigator (must have the Navigation proficiency); and one engineer (must be familiar with Visitor energy sources).

An abductor may carry up to 10 passengers and 6 robots. The trader is fully sealed and contains onboard life support similar to an abductor, following the same rules from environments found on p.102 of BCK.

House Rules: Managing Flying Saucers

So first, I allow visitor saucers to go faster as previously published. The rule is as follows:

Power to engines: All flying saucers have this ability. The flying saucer can double its movement rate by diverting power from its weapon systems to its engines. When this is active, they double their movement but are unable to utilise weapon systems such as plasma weapons, tractor beams or bomb launchers.

Next, I have encountered some difficulty with is mechanical immunities. They are simply too weak! But it's a trick of the words that causes it.

The advanced alien material renders them very difficult to damage. Technological weapons deal full damage to flying saucers, but flying saucers cannot be harmed by other man-sized weapons, nor by fire, by wood-throwing artillery, or by natural attacks from creatures of huge size or smaller. Stone-throwing artillery and gigantic creatures deal only 1/10th damage to flying saucers, while colossal creatures and magic deal only 1/5th damage.

First the paradox: Technological weapons deal full damage to flying saucers, but flying saucers cannot be harmed by other man-sized weapons, nor by fire...

Plasma weapons are fire damage… So first I interpret it as natural environmental damage, eg fire or cold.

Next, a fighter with a plasma rifle on rapid fire can take one out in 2 actions. My average party cuts through these using the words “Technological weapons deal full damage to flying saucers” using personal scale technological weapons. It breaks our immersion.

So, in effect these immunities are supposed to mirror SHP. As such I use the following immunities:

The advanced alien material renders flying saucers very difficult to damage. Primitive personal weapons deal no damage, nor does environmental damage (eg natural fire), wood-thrown artillery or natural attacks from creatures of huge size or smaller. Stone-throwing artillery and gigantic creatures deal only 1/10th damage. Colossal creatures, personal scale technological weapons and magic deal only 1/5th damage. Technological artillery or technological vehicle mounted weapons and spells that do direct SHP damage do full damage. 

Notes: Conversion and Prices

So, according to the source material the Trader is between the Abductor and the smaller scout. But is the ACKS Scout the Scout or is the ACKS Scout the Saucer? Made sense in my mind... 

Key to this analysis is the monster training tables on page 92 of BCK. There are a lot of weird things on this table (the differences between trained and adult cost are stark). So to stabilise this let’s use the Automaton rules from Machinery to the Max. The weight is the critical element and the hit dice is locked in. Let’s convert.

Conversion benchmarks

Element	Scout	Abductor
Hit Dice	5D	10D
Weight (BCK)	8,000 lbs 800 st. 5.6 tons	165,000 lbs 16,500 st. 115.5 tons
Base automaton weight for HD	250 st.	1000 st.
Weight doubling to get close match	twice (x4)	four times (x16)
Mass achieved	1000 st.	16,000 st.

So, the weights between Cepheus and ACKS are very different. But if we divide Cepheus stats by 6 the abductor comes out at 100, roughly matching the ACSs version. If we do the same to the Cepheus Saucer at 30 tons we get close to the ACKs scout, given the description the ACKS scout seems to better match the single deck saucer.

So, that means a 200 ton Trader in Cepheus needs to be mass 33.3 ton in ACKS or 4,757 stone.

As we are halfway between the two example vehicles I’m looking for a hit dice that achieves the target mass with three multipliers to weight. Eight hit dice achieves the closest match with base mass of 640 stone and 5,120 stone or 35.84 tons once multiplied three times.

By adding double capacity we achieve a cargo capacity of 35.8 tons. All things considered that’s a bit smaller than the target Cepheus version's 65 tons but it’s not so far off. It could be doubled again (as shown in the Rotorblade) but I think that a single doubling hits the sweet spot.

So now we have the mass. Let's do the full build.

Trader Flying Saucer:

• 8 hit dice
• Automaton immunities * +8
• Special immunities at *#### +12
• Optional operator- AI
• Protected compartment #### +4
• Passengers 16 ##### +5
• Increased weight x3 #### ## +6
• Double carry capacity #### +4
• Ranged attack #### +4
• Move - 6 increases (240’) * #### ### +15
• Requires fuel -#### -4
• Net +54
• 33,750 abilities + 16,000 hit dice = 49,750.
• Doubled for visitor tech = 99,500
• Round to nearest 5,000 = 100,000

Converting the scout and abductor likewise gives me prices as follows.

Scout Flying Saucer:

• 5 hit dice
• Automaton immunities * +8
• Special immunities at *#### +12
• Optional operator- AI
• Protected compartment #### +4
• Passengers 8 #### +4
• Increased weight x2 #### +4
• Ranged attack #### +4
• 8 increases to move (300’) ** ### +19
• Requires fuel -#### -4
• Net +51
• 31,875 abilities + 10,000 hit dice = 41,875.
• Doubled 83,750
• Round to nearest 5,000 = 85,000

Abductor Flying Saucer:

• 10 hit dice
• Automaton immunities * +8
• Special immunities at *#### +12
• Optional operator- AI
• Protected compartment #### +4
• Passengers 32 #### ## +6
• Increased weight x4 * +8
• Ranged attack #### +4 (38)
• two extra combat powers ** +16
• Five increases to move * #### # +13
• Requires fuel -#### -4
• Net +67
• 41,875 abilities + 20,000 hit dice = 61,875.
• Doubled 123,750
• Round to nearest 5,000 = 125,000

This gives us a full range of market prices for the most common visitors craft as follows:

Visitor saucer market prices

Type	Price
Scout	85,000
Trader	100,000
Abductor	125,000

Worldship encounter tables, Levels 4-6

The key thing for my setting has been to create a new random encounter table that is adjusted to the setting. In a way this table seeks to differentiate the Worldship from a generic fantasy game. A few months ago I posted the first half, now i can post the last half:

Roll	Monster Level 4	Monster Level 5	Monster Level 6
1	Lythancrope, wereboar (1d4; ACKS p.181)	Ogre mutate (1d6; Blog)	Demon Boar (1d4; ACKS p.160)
2	Smiaceans  (2d4; Blog)	Ogre Twin (1+bodyguard; Blog)	Baku (1d3; Blog)
3	Revenant, greater (1d6; Blog)	Shojon, Kagion/Madion (2d4; Blog)	Revenant, superior (1d4; Blog)
4	Keythong (1d4; Blog)	Otyugh (1d2; BCK p.81)	Skittering Maw (1d6; ACKS p.193)
5	Rhagodessa, Giant (1d4; ACKS p.189)	Phase spider (1d4 *; BCK p.87)	Chuul (1d3; BCK p.67)
6	Boar, giant (1d4; ACKS p.157)	Salamander, flame (1d4; ACKS p.191)	Salamander, frost (1d3; ACKS p.191)
7	Balroach (1d3; BCK p.68)	Wasp, giant parasitic (1d6; BCK p.89)	Sorcerous Sphere (1; LE p.178)
8	Ochre Jelly (1d3; ACKS p.186)	Terrorbird (1d3; BCK p.88)	Destrachan (1d3; BCK p.69)
9	Phase tiger (1d4; ACKS p.188)	Fungus, basidirond (1d4; Blog)	Tendriculos (1d4; BCK p.87)
10	Battle Drone (1d8; Blog)	Warbot (1d3; BCK p.81)	Reticuloid combat walker (1d4+1; Blog)
11	Rogue Stevedore (1d4; Blog)	Manticore  (1d3; ACKS p.182)	Rogue Combaticon (1+guard; Blog)
12	NPC Party, Lvl 5 (1d4+2)	NPC Party, Lvl 7 (1d4+2)	NPC Party, Lvl 9 (1d4+2)

I have altered the dungeon encounter for many of the solitary monsters. On researching the origin or comparable monsters they often can be found in small groups. By upping them to a small dice like 1d3 there is still a chance of finding a solitary monster, but you will also find doubles, making the fight a little more interesting and challenging. Ultimately the weakness of a single monster is a well documented and explored concept that I don't want to get into here (simpler just to give the chance of 2-3).

I will get into NPC parties in a later post, but a group of level 14’s wandering around a dungeon always sat a bit weird and I often changed it on the fly. When I crunch the XP values and compare them level 14’s NPC's are way up the chart - being more powerful than a Baku. I rebalanced them all based on the monsters encountered. I have some simple stat blocks I use to assemble disposable groups, based on the slabs in the island of terror, I will post them later.

Breaking it down:

So, one of my goals was to create a better spread of XP across the levels. The final charts look like this:

From a maths perspective the extra encounter numbers are creating the spread at the upper levels I was after.

When compared to the ACKS standard chart (which has served me well in the past) I am avoiding the crater of solitary monsters in the level 6 category (see chart below). While XP from monsters is not the best gauge of difficulty, it is the measure we have. Once the dice start rolling a challenging monster can be easy and an easy monster hard (if it keeps rolling 20). While many later versions of D&D seek to create a balance metric I'm not after this, more just a more smooth transition on the random tables. In the end for me I want the players to sometimes bite off more than they can chew and be forced to make tough calls. That said, at the earlier levels slightly smaller encounters make entry levels a little lighter on. Overall the worldship tables give me the flavour I was after while making the game seem a little more balanced in terms of overall encounters.

 

Worldship monster breakdowns

	Monster Level 1	Monster Level 2	Monster Level 3	Monster Level 4	Monster Level 5	Monster Level 6
Hit Dice	⅕ to 1+2	1 to 2+1	2+1 to 5	4** to 6	5** to 8*	7*** to 12****
AC Avg. (max)	2.9 (5)	3.2 (7)	4.5 (7)	4.5 (8)	5.8 (9)	7.2 (9)

I have been enjoying the release of the UFOs supplement from Stellagama Publishing this week, check it out. I'm sitting on a heap of visitor content so will likely go on a bit of a visitor spree the next month as this release has sparked some ideas. As the core villan/antagonist of my setting they get a lot of love (and hate from players). Also the Almanac was funded so I'm currently exploring that with much happiness.