Gygax 75 Challenge: Week 3

I chose to use Kirrataupunki as the dungeon because lava tubes are long, straight, and boring. So I came up with the following concept.

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Kirrataupunki is a ruins of an age long gone, crumbling ruins surrounding walls too tall to see over.

Within its walls, dried out husks are all that remain of it's original inhabitants, all reaching away from the great city's center, where a defunct temple seems to draw all shapes toward itself.

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I went over the word count on the entrance, but I really couldnt help myself.

My notes for this week's project. They're barely legible in this image though.

The first floor is a temple containing damned souls and ways to contact them.

The second level contains the temple's targeting system. Which doubles as a star chart. After all, it is intended to take out angels.

The bottom floor contains the rest of the pieces to the superweapon, as well as the reason this once great city fell. Their blood was used as a final sacrifice to get the weapon operational, which requires massive amounts of blood to power it.

The completed map. With all the room numbers.

Id put all the monsters here too but I didnt have enough time to actually write out stat blocks for them, so there's not really much more I think I can put in this post.

Gygax 75 Challenge: Week 2

Week 2 was rough. I spent the first three days drawing my own hex grid because Im an idiot, which certainly didn't help. But in the end I have a (somewhat intentionally) unfinished result I'm happy with.

Picture is upside down lol.

I decided to save the inking and trees until later eventually, as this challenge doesn't include keying up every single hex, making that something I'd rather save until later.

Regardless, I still have all the required parts penciled in, even if the map itself isnt quite finished yet.

Cities:

Virtääves äärellä - A large river village which subsists itself on trades from the villages upstream.

Tulemiset - A small tribe north of Virtääves äärellä, They work to appease the fiery spirit in the nearby volcanoe.

kurpitsamaa - Home of the Great Gourd and his followers. Situated at the peak of one of the nearby mountains.

Terrain Features

Tulivuori - A fiery volcanoe housing a powerful spirit inside of it. It is currently the only spirit standing in the way of the Great Gourd's control of the entire region. The Great Gourd is therefore seeking to ammend this by ending the spirit's life as it sleeps.

Tuivauh Pyläät - Some say they are the graves of spirits long passed on, others say they are the bodies of those spirits who were forgotten, still more believe it is impossible for spirits to die. Though none know the true nature of these pillars of rock, stretching to the heavens, all know of its signifigance.

Kirrotaupunki

The ruins of an ancient city to the south of Virtääves äärellä, it has only been viewed from afar. A group of explorers once tried to establish their own settlement there, but never returned. It was this occurrence that began to build a mystique around the place, and it has since become taboo to even mention the name of the place.

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Im not certain yet whether Im going to use Kirrotaupunki as the dungeon or try and figure something out with lava tubes and the volcanoe. But that's for a later week.

Also, I'm going to be really tempted to do random encounter tables, but it's already the next week as Im writing this post so I really shouldn't work on week 2 anymore.

Gygax 75 Challenge - Week 1

A number of individuals have decided now is a good time to partake in the ritual many of us turn to in times of boredom, that being the development of a setting.

We are, however, doing it with the Gygax 75 challenge compiled by Ray Otus and Developed by Gary Gygax.

Week 1 asks you to create a series of no more than 7 pitches and sources to draw from when developing your setting.

Pitches

- “Post-apocalyptic” takes place after the fall of a great nation ruled by a true god-emperor. Cities are built on top of ruins of the once great cities that came before.

- There are no gods. Instead there are spirits of varying levels of power. They are just as likely to control you as you are them.

- Heavily Travel Focused Hex-Crawl. Rules light system. Inventories will be tracked.

- There are no currencies. Instead people trade and barter. Fantastical wonders recovered from the ancient civilization are worth their weight in gold (sometimes literally).

- Ancient secrets lie buried deep in the ruins. Far more who enter return mad or not at all than those who grow rich off their spoils.

- Trading posts instead of keeps to replace domain-level play.

Inspiration Sources

The Waterborn by J. Gregory Keyes

This is where the magic item and spirits system is pretty much wholesale taken from, though I guess it’s slightly unique. Basically, spirits act as guardians of their locations and magic items are just trapped spirits. It is possible for a spirit to subdue or eliminate all of the other nearby spirits thus becoming either a ruler or a deity.

Tsingy A National Park in Madagascar, not sure who made it.

I want lots of neat terrain features like this example. A bunch of rock pillars in the sky, In a similar location in Asia, each pillar had its own name and story of being either a person or a spirit. Definitely something else to include.

Some article about people growing giant pumpkins I read years ago.

Oddly enough, what spawned the entire idea of this setting. Giant pumpkins will be an essential part of life somewhere. Of course the Great Gourd will be involved.

The Mesoamericans.

Not any specific sources, but I plan on drawing heavily from that architecture style for dungeons and stuff.

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If you haven't hopped aboard the bandwagon yet, there's never been a better time given the extra free time many of us have. So no excuses!