Click here to download “The Hidden Tomb of Slaggoth the Necromancer,” by Adrian Stone and LS
So, I wrote a small dungeon adventure module.
It started early this year when I stumbled on to the website of fellow D&D blogger, Stonewerks. Stonewerks primarily makes maps, and his work has heavily influenced the way I’ve drawn the Deadly Dungeons maps over the last few months. At the time, his newest post was “The Hidden Tomb of Slaggoth the Necromancer,” a map which caught my eye, both for its lovely design, and compelling description:
“The long lost Tomb of the evil necromancer Slaggoth, is buried deep with in a cavern complex. The caves have become the home of a trio of ogres and their band of goblin henchmen. The goblins guard the entrance by watching through a small crack in the rock above the entrance, alerting the other goblins when anyone approaches the entrance. The goblins will then unleash a small pack of wolves that they have chained in the front caves against the intruders. If the wolves are not enough to repel the intruders, the goblins will send a runner across the wooden rope bridge to the ogre lair to warn their masters and will use ambush and retreat tactics to slow down the intruders. In the ogre cave is a massive steel door that leads to the hidden tome of the evil Necromancer Slaggoth. They have never been able to breach the door, so the tomb has remained untouched. Rumors of a key to the steel door is hidden somewhere in the caves, but has yet to be found. What horrers lie within Slaggoth’s tomb? Who is brave enough or foolhardy enough to find out?” -Stonewerks
Stonewerks and I got to talking in the comments, and then via email. What started as me filling a lazy evening by keying an empty dungeon turned into a full-fledged attempt to write my first module based on Stonewerks’ seed idea. I dragged several people through playtests and proof readings, and even got cbMorrie and Jacob Rain (both of whom have been featured on P&P before) to provide some free art for it.
The module proper has actually been done for several months now. The work of getting everything written, tested, re-written, and edited only took a few weeks. The art took a few weeks more than that. The hard part, as it turns out, was making a PDF. It’s not something I’d done before, and I found it a frustrating process to start with. One which I procrastinated over and over again. I’ve got a pretty fair handle on how to do it now, though, so hopefully future attempts won’t take quite so ridiculously long!
So please, download it! Let me know what you like or what you hate. Run it for your group if you are so inclined, and if you do, let me know how it goes! This is an experiment for me. One which will hopefully pave the way to future products.
Reviews:
“a real nice 1st effort that is far better than my first couple years of adventure writing for sure.” -The Frugal GM
Kharl tried sliding the lid off the sarcophagus. This caused the six stone skeleton golems to animate, just as Slaughto fears. The golems all toppled over due to the ropes.” – A full play report from Buttmonkey on the Troll Lord Games forums.
“I’ve run Slaggoth’s a few times for people as an intro to OSR. I put it up there (with minor alterations) with Finch’s Tomb of the Iron God and Raggi’s Tower of the Star Gazer as awesome starting adventures.” -LBriar of Reddit, sent to me in a private message.
Yay! Good work, glad you saw this through to the end!
Thanks for the credit! I really enjoyed the dungeon. Great work!
I am so proud of what you created here with this, I look foward to seeing more greatness from you. Awesome Job Nick!!!
Thanks, Adrian! It was a lot of fun working with your map. It got me motivated to do something I’m really proud of.
If I can adapt this to my game I’ll use it in a few weeks and I’ll tell you how it went 😀
I’d love to hear about that if you ever get around to it. Thanks!
On Page 5 of the PDF the last sentence of section 6 “Mourning Chamber” abruptly ends without listing the gold value of the brass lighter. You do provide the value in the table directly below the sentence, but I thought this might be something you’d want to change.
I love the module! It’s concise and leaves wiggle room for DMs to make it their own. I want to see more. Is there a followup in the works?
Robert,
Thank you very kindly for pointing out that error! I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I’ve fixed it now.
I have some ideas for a follow up module. I’ve actually got dozens of ideas. Unfortunately none of them are in the works right now, because I’m working on a different pdf. But a follow-up to hidden tomb of slaggoth might come after that. And let me tell you: slaggoth’s tower is CRAZY!
Thanks for enjoying my module.
Hey Nick! Great adventure. Thanks for writing up. I especially love the little details that add so much color to the scenario. Everything from tactical advice, cause and effect suggestions, axe-blades broken off in spider skulls . . . all stokes my imagination. Cheers!
When is the next one coming out? 🙂
Thanks for saying so, Jon! I wanted to write a module with the GM tools that I always wish I had, and with a lot of help from my contributors, I think we did a pretty decent job of it. The axe blade in the spider’s head was a particular favorite of mine!
There’s a bit of a wait for the next one, I’m afraid. After completing this project I decided to tackle something a little larger. Right now, I’m working on putting together a full sized monster book with ~300 entries. It’s a project which has filled up a lot of game design time.
However, I do have a lot of ideas for “STN2: The Sideways Tower” (or something to that effect). It’s a project I hope to work on once the monster book is done.
Your adventure inspired me to create a map for Slagoth’s sideways tower/fortress. I may just do it up as an entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest (2014), but it was your stuff that got me rolling. You and A.J. at Stoneworks.
If I enter it in the OPD2014, I will not use “Slagoth” or any reference to that character. I’ll likely run my players through both of your adventures in the series, and Slagoth will feature large. 🙂
Cheers,
Jon
Bryce Lynch reviewed the module. You can check out his review at :
http://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=2384
Thank you for letting me know!
Just finished running my players through the Lost Tomb using Castles & Crusades. We took 3 play sessions to finish the module. You can read about my players’ exploits at my campaign journal here: http://dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=61127
The May 31, 2014 entry is the first entry covering the Lost Tomb.