Ebonbenter Tor

[Solomoriah]

Recently, a friend passed away due to cancer. He and his wife became friends with my wife and I years ago when we met by chance at an event, introduced by a mutual friend who knew my wife had surplus perennial flowers and his wife wanted some. He mentioned that he was a photographer, of the artistic rather than professional variety, and bemoaned the lack of any camera club in our area. He had been a member of one in Florida, from whence he had come, and he missed it.

My wife, you see, is also a photographer, and so she was one of the first recruits into the camera club he founded. I eventually got roped in as well, and a good time was had by all.

I found out he had been a D&D player "back in the day" and I invited him to my game; he came a couple of times, but real life intervened and he was unable to make it a regular event. When he passed away we were there for his wife; my wife helped her set up her first yard sale to sell some of the items he had stored, and as they were planning what to do I remembered he had some game materials. I asked what she was going to do with them, and when she said "throw them away" I asked if I could take them off her hands. What I don't keep from his small but nice collection of materials will be sold at the Quincon charity auction... if I don't keep it all, that is.

1E AD&D PHB, MM, and DMG; BX Basic and Expert books; 1E DM Screens; modules L1 and B4; and the classic Rogue's Gallery, which I had never had a chance to look at yet. And some other things Bob had created, character sheets and the like... and then I found it.

A dungeon adventure, on glorious notebook paper, yellowed with age. 25 lettered rooms but just 20 (more or less) room descriptions, in the abbreviated form a DM uses when he or she is creating an adventure for personal use, and a hand-drawn map.

My friend Bob was an engineer in real life, and his amazingly neat handwriting and plain but very clearly drawn map show that clearly. I flipped the pages, just enjoying the feeling of my friend being near one more time, when I realized I needed to publish it, if his widow agreed.

She did. I'm attaching the original scan I just made, which will remain here permanently. I will personally transcribe the key, converting the information to our standard format but retaining as much of his style as I can; I'm not sure whether I'll retain his map or have it redrawn, but I'm leaning toward lightly retouching it and using it otherwise as is. I don't really know yet. I'm also not sure what to do about the 5 unkeyed areas.

And of course, it needs a name. Bob didn't put a title on it; the cover sheet is distressingly blank.

It's my hope that this adventure can be fitted into AA4 when it is collected.

EDIT:

Art thread is here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4471

[Solomoriah]

I've begun working on transforming this into standard format, and as I'm reading it I can see that it's kind of brilliant. Room S is the last room he was working on, and it's unfinished, so I'm having to make up his "Wizard of Sorcery" from scratch; I'm calling him the Uncanny Sorcerer, a 5th level Magic-User who has been cursed in such a way that he's mostly invisible when naked, but unable to extend that invisibility to clothing, equipment, etc. This accounts for his, well, uncanny appearance without making him unduly powerful. I'm thinking 3 to 6 characters of levels 1 to 3.

The monsters presented seem nerfed, at least regarding those that are greater than 1 hit die. The books I received include the 1981 BX set, along with character sheets for his daughters' characters that seem to be BX sheets. However, there was also a box for the Holmes edition, though sadly the materials aren't in it; I wonder if that was what he was looking at when he created this.

Room T is detailed out of order, but it's the last letter detailed. Rooms U, V, W, X, and Y are not detailed at all. For all but room W I'm thinking I'll just roll them randomly using the rules from the old Basic book, but W presents a special case. I wish I knew what he had planned for those five long narrow rooms.

[Solomoriah]

... and I just found room Z.

[SmootRK]

A worthy endeavor. Perhaps we collaboratively get this to print status (if even in somewhat raw state), place name prominently on cover and get a finished copy to his widow. A very nice gesture.

Perhaps see if you can get one or more of his photographs (converted to b&w BFRPG stylizing) to include somehow.

I have not read this yet, so input is limited for now, but I will look again later.

[Solomoriah]

His widow has indicated that she doesn't really want a print copy.

As far as photos go, I don't know. I'll consider it... I have access to a few of his pics right now and I don't think his style of photography works very well for this.

[daryen]

For the areas with no description, just make them up while keeping in the spirit of the overall dungeon. You can't know what he was thinking, so you just have to make it all consistent. As long as you keep a note at the end describing what is original and what was added, I think you are honoring his efforts while still making it playable.

As for the long skinny rooms, the primary purpose would seem to be making finding the secret door less obvious. As a result, they don't even really need to contain anything. I.e. they don't need monsters or anything if you don't want to. I haven't read the descriptions yet to see what fits thematically. But the point is they don't need to be overly complicated. Just enough to make the secret door less obvious.

[Solomoriah]

Room S contains an alcove, 10' x 20', hidden behind a tapestry which the sorcerer points to while saying "Demon!" to the adventurers. There is obviously a monster there, guarding the sorcerer's actual treasure (it's not in the chests scattered around the room, Bob wouldn't have been that obvious). I don't think a demon is appropriate to this level of party, but that leaves the question... what's hiding in there?

[Solomoriah]

I've added an improved map with gridlines.

[Solomoriah]

... and now I've uploaded my R1 transformation. It's not nearly complete, but the rooms I've detailed should give an idea of how I'm approaching this. Keeping his words and expressions while filling in the blanks is hard; I don't think I can avoid adding a bit of me to it in the process. But this one is interesting and old school enough that I feel like even if I rewrote every word but kept the map and monsters and set dressing the same, it would still feel like it was his rather than mine. I'm looking forward to the playtest!

[Solomoriah]

I wish I knew some of his character names. Though I do have one of his PCs somewhere in my folders... I'll have to look tonight.