Knights of the All Mind

(Abyssal Levels Player Map)

 Dang, I want to develop a "Metropolis of Chaos" scenario as soon as I complete my Advanced Labyrinth Lord conversion of "Underport." I only had the barest completed work of yore, so figured pretty much an almost blank slate to go with. But I forgot about Player Maps...!

My friend J.A.S. ran a paladin in my first home brew campaign, from 1st until about 12th-13th level. It was his pegasus that fell through the prime material gate to the Abyss while the parties, yes there were two, fought Orcus. (Orcus' timestop vs Alancrost magic resist needed to play out each of several melee rounds. Yikes!)

While I would ref on the fly, I did draw maps for the players as they went along, and J.A.S. happened to pull an old box of stuff from his attic that included a bunch of old player maps from my 1980s  Krull campaign. Pretty cool, now I want to incorporate them back into my published Krull stuff. Weeeee!!!

Uruk is on the north coast of a southern land mass that was being threatened by demons or some kind of monsters. That's why the city is surrounded by tents of refugees.

Har, I also forgot that Alancrost the Paladin now lairs in the Eternal Pit beneath Underport, watching over the prime material gate to the Abyss. I should add stats for Alancrost to my Rogues Gallery.

The Coastal city of Uruk

Alancrost's Lair in the Eternal Pit.

I added the color maps that are completed for the new Advanced Labyrinth Lord/OSR compatible Underport: Abyssal Descent - Revisionist Edition to the current DriveThruRPG download of Underport: Abyssal Descent. The old black and white maps are still included, however, the color maps are much more legible.

The two differences between the original maps are an underground fungoid jungle section with an Aboleth on level 1 and a new level 9 which essentially incorporates a cross dimension connection with an alien spaceship. (The rough v.3.5 SRD version alien spaceship is free on Knights of the All Mind blogspot "Free Encounters" page. The new LL/OSR version will be encounter driven rather than these general notes.)

Once the new version of the dungeon is complete I will replace the old files with the new ones so anyone who purchased the v.3.5 SRD version will receive the new version for free.

Whew, this is taking me much longer than I expected...

Last June I had decided to convert my vintage (circa 1978-81) megadungeon "Underport: Abyssal Descent" from our home-ruled v.3.5 to 5e and also improve some of the shortcomings of the original presentation, specifically the long stat blocks and often illegible scanned maps.

The first part of the project was to add color to the maps, which in addition to making them more legible also came out purdy:

Shortly thereupon, however, I participated in an online B/X game with Jeff Rients and had a blast. So much so that I prevailed upon my home gaming group to switch from 5e to Advanced Labyrinth Lord, a B/X & AD&D retro-clone. At the same time I gathered myself to move the revision of Underport from 5e to the more original Advanced Labyrinth Lord.

A problem developed in that the original-original Underport (pictured below) was not a complete dungeon. It was bits and pieces formed over time as adventuring parties delved there. With the home-ruled v.3.5 version I used Tome of Horrors from Necromancer Games (one of my favorite publishers from the 3rd edition days) to fill in critters and encounters. Now with deciding to go back to my roots, I was faced with converting 3rd edition stats to 1st edition. Bleh!

(The "original" original Underport.)

So I am looking through the different iterations for Tome of Horrors Complete that Frog God Games has put out since Necromancer merged with them. Lo and behold, there is a Swords & Wizardry version of the tome!!!

Swords & Wizardry is an OD&D retro-clone harkening back to the "White Box" set of little brown books that started the game way back in 1974. I had considered S&W as one of the option to propose to my home group when I wanted to pitch them going back to an earlier version. The reason I ultimately went with Advanced Labyrinth Lord is that we gamed 1st ed. AD&D from 1978 until 2005 and Advanced Labyrinth Lord adhered close to those rules while cleaning up some unnecessary Gygaxian complexities.

The bottom line is that the conversion is going soooo much smoother with the S&W Tome! Maybe even get this done by next June...

PS My plan is to replace the existing v.3.5 Underport on DriveThruRPG with the new retro-clone version. That means everyone who purchased the first version will get the new version for free, but if for some reason needs to re-download the first version will need to contact me to do that.

(The Silver Road available at DriveThruRPG!)

A little Troika! scenario myself and Random Addison ran at DunDraCon #44 last weekend (February 14th) is now available free on DriveThruRPG and itch.io. Probably the only Troika! scenario I'll do for a bit because I have a couple things to complete for Advanced Labyrinth Lord.

This is a simple and basic elemental planar romp for up to 6 players. Old Addison was super helpful in getting me out of some standard tropes and also inventing ideas for breaking the fourth wall.

Our game at DunDraCon was just about the full 8 hours, but we left off before the end and had an intriguing philosophical tension during the climactic scene.

Please give it a whirl and let us know what you think.

PS: An early release of this scenario used material from Axes & Orcs Compendium: Volume Two: Science-Fantasy Potpourri Backgrounds for Troika! by Ian Woolley ​at https://axesnorcs.blogspot.com/​. Ian does great work for the game and you should check him out.