Barrowmaze: 1st ed D&D mega-dungeon

[Spearmint]

I am just adding an update on this thread. It is continually open for new people to join, so I would encourage players interested in a character driven campaign full of mysterious plots, random butchery, wilderness survival, labyrinthine explorations, political intrigue, noble savages, savage nobles and characters being both nobbled and savaged, to check out the Barrowmaze forum in full and post their interest here.

Currently four eclectic groups have broadened their horizons and gone off on great escapades of derring-do and adventure. One has rescued a damsel in distress from the wrath of the law, becoming possible fugitives themselves and seek aid from a renegade druid in his ruined moathouse. A second team pursue giant spiders in the abandoned tunnels of a chalk mine, hoping to milk the silk threads and contribute to the village economy and trade with a gnoll ranger scouting for his tribe.

Wagon wheels rolled west in search of answers to a coronavirus affecting the honey bees, discovering along the way a lycanthropic infection causing the lumberjacks to undergo a serpentine ecdysis and a tribe of humanoids in league with Underworld cults.

Lastly an intrepid band have braved the Barrow Mounds, despatched the necrotic zombie bear and plunged into the maze below whereupon some characters plunged a bit further into Arnaud's pit and the arms of Penelope the ghoulette. From their vantage point they can see the 'jackal heads' go three up against the 'goatsh@&&37s' and are soon to discover that yes, in John Lennon's grave you can find a dead beetle.

[Spearmint]

Recruiting update:

Of 21 initial players, one has become lost whilst another has lost his head. One may have lost the plot entirely and another plots his latest 'get-rich-slow' scheme.

While some expeditions continue, a number of characters have regathered in the taverns to scheme their next adventures. Recruitment is open to new players considering joining an epic campaign into subterranean tomb robbing, placating a wild frontier of barbarian tribes or navigating the settlements as an urban guerilla.

Would you like to show your body parts to a mage? Fancy entering the afterlife as a martyr of faith, wish to gain eternal youth by walking the Moors as undead, become the worst Highwayman that people have heard of.

Turn to stone, get melted, pelted, bitten and chewed, constricted, squished, beheaded, divorced from reality, married to Penelope, vanish into thin air, tricked, trapped, mesmerized and mashed.

Have a song written about you and flagons of ale drunk in your memory.

Seek out the Barrowmaze: mega-dungeon for your future fame and fortune and hope you live long enough to spend it.

[scottjen]

I'd like to join up if it is not too late

[Leitz]

I'd like to join up if it is not too late

Spearmint will probably be along shortly and tell you to start working on a character. I have no idea how he handles so much, but he seems rather unstoppable. Dive in and get going, it will be official shortly.

[Spearmint]

Sure Scottjen. I still have an open recruitment and you would be joining at a great time as several characters mill about in the village deciding on their next adventures or as in the case of Leitz and one or two other Walking Dead, mulling over new character choices.

So read the Campaign Setting and background topics, link a character sheet to the campaign ID and roll those 4d6's.

I will add you to the group profile.

[Paladin]

Hey, amigo. I have the urge to play a fat, middle-aged friar who loves his food and drink. If you still have room, may I join in?

[Spearmint]

Sure. Fat middle aged Friars are currently on the menu .... at the harpies banquet, but don't let that put you off.

I will add you to the group profile so you can create a character and link rolls to the campaign.

Read the Campaign Setting and background topics to gain a flavour and the house rules/Gods & Magic to understand some tweaks and copy me your sheet when done.

You simply post a visual pic in the Tomb Raiders so folk see what your character looks like and then introduce his arrival in the settlement at the tavern (where else?) in the Helix thread.

Welcome to the game.

[Spearmint]

Recruiting new players to adventure within the labyrinthine corridors of the Barrowmaze is just like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.

Well, for those wanting extra sauce on their festive treats look no further than the current fledgling explorers who brave the savage wilderness in search of undeath or glory.

We saw the Law of the Jungle' in action when a cleric went up a creek to pick a paw-paw and a prickly pear. Well next time "beware!" Ironic when a carnivorous plant chews up the vegetarian.

Which can't be said of the zombie horde currently feasting on warm blood drippings and morsels of torso while characters get to taste only their own fears. While the party hit them with maces or continue to flail?

Get spooked by a scarecrow, become intimidated by a mangy undead cat, look a feral warg in the eye and tame it, swim with mermaids, become the village mud wrestling champion. Your dreams and nightmares fused in one exotic anthology. Maybe your head will sprout wings or your shadow seem decidedly unfamiliar. Learn to play poker with the devil and gamble your life for prestige power.

Can you decipher the map on the imbecile's buttocks and locate the sphincter well and back passage? Who will adventure to bring back the petrified dwarven hero? Who just wants a jar of body parts goodies. Have you learned that diamonds are a ghoul's best friend?

All this and more. What can you make with your turkey after the 4d6's give you some proper stuffing?

Interested players always welcome.

[Spearmint]

With a new year comes new challenges. For a few players on the Unseen forum, these are the concerns of health issues, far beyond a bout of seasonal flu. My best regards to those who have such real life healing to procure.

Others take or lose jobs, start up business, another gets married; and so several of my players reluctantly make decisions to withdraw from the campaign.

This does however open up the opportunity for new players who are happy to jump straight into an adventure, right at the grisly end of a kobold's barb, a Mummy's caressing touch, blowing out your Dead Man's Hand to a spectres flush draw or becoming lost without trace in a wilderness where even demons fear to tread.

For those interested I have several characters currently being npc'd which I am opening up for adoption.

Rough and ready ranger with a penchant for a harpy babe, a retarius champion howling at the moon with werewolves, a Valkyrie barbarian mage, a mead loving Templar, a huge slobbering mastiff and his hobbit purlioner of antiquities or the butcher's apprentice, a meatshield half orc of 280lbs.

Alternatively, roll some 4d6's and create your own heroic fantasy.

[Spearmint]

We are approaching our first anniversary of this game and I must congratulate my players for sticking with it throughout the year, going through character trials and tribulations, completing epic expeditions, discovering the many plot-hooks and campaign themes and pushing me, your humble GM to his creative limits.

It has been a joy.

For those who lurk on the forum watching the action from the comforts of armchairs, or even from behind the sofa as the scenes get tense and rivetting, let me give a quick recap.

Our first series of virgin Expeditioners took on a quartet of challenges, spreading themselves to the four winds. A group formed to harvest spider silk from giant orb weaver arachnids living in an abandoned chalk quarry. They encountered a Gnoll ranger with a pack of hyenas and traded 'Billy the Kid', a sacrificial goat for safe passage and some first aid.

The chalk mine offered many unexplored passages, caverns above the waterfall, home to albino apes and dark fetid tunnels, home to God knows what.

Westwards trekked a group seeking to aid the Herne druids with an environmental catastrophe affecting the bees that pollinate the wilderness. They stumble across a logging camp of fevered victims of an insidious attack by snake-men. Victims who morph through their own skin shedding ecdysis into serpentine creatures, slithering off as new born hatchlings to join the veiled dangers of the Barrow Moor. They also take skins of their own. The pelt of a hybrid owl-wolf, a creature created from the mad experiments of xenophobic elves.

The group encounter Bugbears, humanoid converts to a resurgent Set cult, trying to usurp Nergal, the god of death and underworld, of his demonic reign. Journeying into the misty moor to find virus afflicted bees, the group found a diseased Treant and his faithful Gnolem aides. The root cause of the apiary virus is tracked to the defilement of a sacred grove and the disease carrying Treants.

But the group is beset and only by chance saved from a TPK as a vain harpy entices the menfolk to wander into the mist, drawn by her seductive crooning. The fattened friar is served as guest of honour at the harpy banquet, spit roasted with an apple in his mouth and skewed like a hog roast as the mercenaries take up new duties as brood stallions for a new season of harpy chicks.

Eastwards trek an intrepid pair of rogues, already both garnering reputations in town for rash actions and not so sleight of hands. On the trail of lost rangers they get bush whacked by Kermit's kin and retreat to take refuge with a mad druid who houses a gang of renegade lycanthropes in his ruined stronghold. The pair are pressed ganged into hijacking a prison stage coach to free a notorious werewolf from the clutches of the bounty hunting Inquisition.

Trekking as torchbearers alongside the '10'ft pole' Squires are a carrot haired mage and his beefy warrior companion. The expected suicide mission is actually an outstanding success as they slay a zombie grizzly and open a portal into the labyrinthine underworld of the Barrowmaze. The triumphant homecoming sees the squires elevated to knighthood and the characters favoured by the feudal Lord.

After consolidations back in the village, players let off steam to bake meat pies, dress up as scarecrows and wrestle each other in the mud. A greasy pig is chased down and later butchered in celebration after a return trip to the Barrowmaze.

Players are enlisted to spy upon a rogue rancher in league with Hobgoblins wanting to create a Utopian cosmopolitan community, all the while trying to raise his deceased wife from the grave. Secret plotting and strange banging suggest all is not kosher in the crafting barn but the two covert spies are chased from the compound on the back of tamed Wargs before they complete their investigations.

A rescue of the charmed men is undertaken. But a zombie hoard assails the group who make a last man stand (and a last dwarf). The battered group dig their way into a burial mound, an ancient tomb warded by strange incantations on runic stones and an undead Mummy which they bring to life under the administrations of a necromancer they rescue. They escape with their lives, though the tomb collapses around them. This time they have to dig their way out.

The Barrow Mounds are starting to get explored and a group team up with a hirsute priest, possessed by the strange compulsions of a beloved gargoyle skull. They seek to make hallow a ghostly tomb but only irk the ire of an unseen poltergeist. The group collect ancient amphora but the priest enters paradise via the stomach of a giant toad. A return expedition to raid relics brings back another collection of ancient pottery but third time is not lucky as two of the group are infected by Fungicide Myconids and succumb to the disease after palliative care in the village hospice. Turning into undead mushroom-men themselves and later immolated as the hospice burns to the ground.

A new enterprise to re-excavate the Mummy tomb sets off. The team uncover a sacred tomb dedicated to the Green Man. They plunder ancient grafting stalks and preserved Bonsai that might heal the diseased Treants and stem the pestilence from the Impurax cultists. Sensing a divine inspiration, a trio scout the neighbouring mounds but only find trouble in the form of Mongrelmen bandits and ghostly mastiffs sent to hound them after rebuking the advances of the haunt in the woods.

A secret room lies behind the inscription on the wall of the Mummy chamber. The impulsive dwarf takes little heed to warnings and in failing to disable the trap, catches a dose of Mummy Rot.

Inside the group locate the jackal headed statue of the priest of Set, his own bones hidden in the plinth. Jewels and gold are there for the taking before the statue dissolves into a swarm of flesh burrowing scarabs. Only by enlisting the help of the undead guardians of the tomb can the team buy time to escape and collapse their excavated tunnel behind them.

The mazes below the mounds are investigated, not once but twice by a team formed by the young mage. The group familiarise themselves with a portion of abandoned chambers. A wolf becomes familiar with the mage, undead skeletons want to become too familiar with everyone. Strange constructs of reanimated dead, some explode upon death, some throb with jewels of power, other bathe and calcify under the calming influence of baneful mineral waters. An ancient tapestry of a dread black dragon is recovered and later refurbished with enchanted threads. Deals are made with spectral poker players, the Barrow Mere swam, mermaids met, rot grubs charmed. In the Chapel of Nergal, a Wight Priest sparks with necrotic energy. In the cupboard, the stone gargoyle collects severed heads, in the side rooms the Ghasts combine after death into one grotesque abomination. Shadows play on the wall and tricks play in the mind of the characters. Exploring the maze costs portions of the soul and for some, a life less lived. Blood offerings are made to Kali, goddess of death. Bardic songs made to honour the living and the dead.

By the grace of the Gods of Light, the group are released from personal shackles, curses and afflictions lifted. Treasure and trove overflow as do the pools of ale sprouting from the heads of Bacchus. The thirsty drink and receive boon or bane. The whims of the Gods laughing.

A rallying call to raid a lizardman barrow is answered and a stalwart group set off only to return within a few hours as the team cleric gets mauled by a carnivorous plant. Leaving him in hospice care, the group trek the wilderness to find a barrow guarded by bullywugs. They assault it and enter, only to face a giant python and a hideous swamp hag. In darkness and light, they slay the two evils and release an elf maiden. Two of the group commit to accompanying her back across the Barrow Moor to her ancestral home whilst the others press on to raid the Sauron temple.

After an initial encounter goes awry with awakening undead Legionnaires from their mass grave, the group eventually sneak into the ritual hall of the Saurons', killing the priests. They discover the lizardmen restrain an undead knight through their rituals and once that has ended, more undead rise to assault the tomb that they must now defend lest hell itself is unleashed.

The paladin is a final breath from meeting his God, saved at the last critical moment by the mud wrestling champion monk. Returning with their findings, the group report to the Lord who has taken a Sauron Soothsayer into captivity. They mitigate against the execution of the shaman in return for enlisting his help since a new expedition is considered to prevail against the gates of hell and defeat the crypt Knight.

The Citadel is visited. Goods are sold, coins made, reputations enhanced, perhaps fingers may be lost.

Elsewhere, the diseased dwarf seeks a cure for his ailment though he has to locate a druid kidnapped by the Bugbears. A wanna-be barbarian halfling ventures in search of a lost shrine only to slain by Kobolds.

The Cromm faithful seek a lost elder who dedicated an ancient well in the Cajun frontier town of Bogtown. They struggle to locate the priest but find caves of meditating undead, suspicions of a plague cult and the Mother of Toads who augurs their future.

and that is just a brief one year!

What else is in store? Who knows? For the entire campaign is largely player driven so the narrative follows character actions not a linear thread.

If you have read thus far, thank you and if the above provokes your interest then please do consider joining in and making another year of epic expeditions, challenges and fun.

[Bluetongue]

We are approaching our first anniversary of this game and I must congratulate my players for sticking with it throughout the year, going through character trials and tribulations, completing epic expeditions, discovering the many plot-hooks and campaign themes and pushing me, your humble GM to his creative limits.

It has been a joy.

It has been great and a joy to play in too. Really your brief doesn't even tell half the story of intrigues, challenges and adventures.

For those wanting a fun campaign with plot twists and lots of character development, I recommend new players joining in whenever you can.

What can go wrong? As noted on the very first recruiting post in this thread,

You can always come back as walking Undead.

[Stirling]

Happy 1st Year anniversary.

Glad to see so many players survive all the great challenges, critical hits, crazy critters and dangers of our own making.

Here's to another exceptional year of gaming and welcome to any new players considering joining in.

[ravenn4544]

That sounds sweet. I'd be interested in throwing my head hat into the ring if there's room.

[Spearmint]

That sounds sweet. I'd be interested in throwing my head hat into the ring if there's room.

Always room for more. Read through the campaign setting thread and House rules to get a feel of the game. I have created a few boons to balance character classes out and trialing a new way to deal with mages that seems to be working very well.

I will add you to the group profile so you can post in the forum proper. Any questions just ask.

[Ythgar]

I'm also interested in playing when there is room.

[Spearmint]

There is room and welcome back to the forum after several years absence.

[Spearmint]

'Old School' photos like this stir lots of emotion and I trust my Barrowmaze players can empathise with this unfortune.

I noted a few comments regarding this picture, taken from the Dungeon Master's Guide and present it again for your awe and wonder and for forum members, new and old, maybe it will inspire you too!

We have an open recruitment in my Barrowmaze Campaign. This means players can join the sandbox open world at any time. So consider this your invitation to peruse the game and see if it piques your gaming buzz.

If you have an interest in rolling some 4d6's and pitting your wits (as well as your character's sanity and soul) against the perils of the Moor, Maze and other crazy players, then let me know and I can add you to the group profile. As well as creating your own unique character, I do have some ready made characters that could be adopted from a roster of NPC's. Anyway, check the game out and join in if you can.

As a little bonus, any new players joining in can benefit from a +100xp award just to boost you starting character.

Any questions, please ask.

Christmas blessings to all.

[Craigers07]

Is there still room for more players in this game?

[Valdus]

Can I get that 1000 xp in hit points please?

[Leitz]

Is there still room for more players in this game?

Yes, go ahead and read up on the setting and start working on your character. Spearmint is a great DM and has an open enrollment policy.