My youngest son's football team had a "bye" this weekend so I had some extra time Saturday and put together a few maps for our Horror on the Hill Shadowdark game. ("Horror on the Hill" refers to the old TSR-era adventure module B5 The Horror on the Hill).
First up is Guido's Fort - a frontier stockade sitting across the river from the ominous "Horror on the Hill". I put a small frontier settlement outside the fort, some fisherman, hunters, and loggers, along with a trading post, the Lion's Den Inn, and a stable master who supports also supports the fort. I have some character sketches for them; since the stable master is a retired sailor (pirate), he could be a source for the rumor that leads a party to hunt for the Isle of Dread. I'm thinking if this campaign sticks a little while, a classic Karameikan adventure like The Isle of Dread or Night's Dark Terror could be a nice follow-up to Horror on the Hill.
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| Guido's Fort for B5 Horror on the Hill |
Here's the original wilderness map for Horror on the Hill - it might be one of my least favorite maps in the early B-series canon. It needed something different.
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| Blech |
At least for now, I've gone with a fun style reminiscent of a theme park map. Maybe I'll do a Keep on the Borderlands map in this style at some point too. I've lost some of the cliffs and elevation, so I may take another go but this made me chuckle and I had fun with it.
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| Horror on the Hill - theme-park style! |
Here's the path the players have taken the first couple of games. They cleared out a nest of killer bees (1), avoided a steamy geothermal cave (2), scouted an encampment of hobgoblins and avoided them (3), fought some ghouls in the graveyard (4), and then began exploring the ruined evil monastery on the top of the hill (5).
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| The trip to the top |
We're enjoying Shadowdark so far - it feels like an OSR system, with a heavy focus on exploration, XP for treasure, and survival horror. Player characters are very soft at level 1 and damage is flat, so the risk of TPK is ever-present. Fighters are good, magic is powerful but unpredictable, and people drop to zero hit points a lot. The "downed rules" do give the party a round or so to revive a dying character, which is both a little forgiving but creates a logistical challenge for the other players, so I'm enjoying the effects.
More to come on Shadowdark, but first I'll show how we wrapped our Death Frost Doom campaign. Salut!
