Roman Polanski, the Sample Dungeon and the Cult of Cuthbert

Ever heard of the Polanski flick Cul de Sac?  I didn't think I had either when the DVD showed up at my house the other day.  But there it was so I must have requested it, right?  Not knowing what possessed me to request this movie, I plunked it in the DVD player and gave it a whirl.  I fell asleep about 20 minutes into it--it had been a long long day; I should not have started a movie at midnight--but I did manage to see enough to figure out why it had made it to my queue: it was filmed on location at Lindisfarne, England--home to a monastery that has two claims to fame of interest to the likes of you and me:

• Back in 793 AD, it was the site of the first recorded Viking raiding activity on the British Isles, and 
• It was named after its former abbot, an Anglo-Saxon monk-turned-saint named Cuthbert.

The movie reminded me of another bit of information relevant to the Hommlet-Sample Dungeon milieu; the real world Monastery of St. Cuthbert, which was pillaged by ferocious raiders from across the water, is on the island of Lindisfarne which is accessible from the mainland via a causeway.  The monastery in the Sample Dungeon--likewise pillaged by raiders of unknown origins sometime in the past--was built on an island of sorts in a swamp which was accessible via a friggin' causeway.  Gygax was no doubt well aware of the history of the real St. Cuthbert and his monastery; could it be that the sample dungeon was intended to be a visit to St. Cuthbert's former earthly abode?

As for the flick, despite its name it has nothing to do with suburban street layout.  And despite its setting, it has nothing to do with monasteries or vikings.  Released in 1967, it's an arty flick about a gangster on the lam after a botched heist who forces a mismatched married couple who live alone on an island to keep him company while he waits for Godot. Hilarity ensues.

Crayfish and Abbots: More Fodder in the case of the Sample Dungeon vs. Hommlet

Back when I did my big DMG Sample Dungeon vs. T1 comparison last winter, I did not look very closely at the Giant Crayfish encounter in room 13 of the Dungeon level of the Moathouse.  Perhaps because I considered the crayfish encounter to be a monster encounter, I never made a connection between it and the water room in the Sample Dungeon, even though both feature... water.  But on closer inspection, there does seem to be something of note going on.  Not with monsters, obviously, as there is no evidence of a giant crustacean loitering around the abbot's old bones, [EDIT: Actually, there are crayfish hanging out near the abbot's bones, check this out from the description of the pool: "There are a score or so of small, white blind fish in it, and under the rocks are some cave crayfish, similarly blind and white.  Thanks to my fact checker over at Zenopus Archives for catching this one.] but check out the treasure description for each encounter:

Monastery:

"The limed-over skeleton of the abbot is in the pool of water... If the remains are disturbed in any way, a cylindrical object will be noticed, the thing being dislodged from where it lay by the skeleton, and the current of the stream carrying it south at 6" speed.  To retrieve it, a character must be in the stream and score "to hit" as if it were AC 4 in order to catch it. It is a watertight ivory tube with a bone map of the whole level inside."

 Moathouse: 

"in the water on a ledge is a platinum pin set with a ruby (2,000 g.p. value) and a bone tube. The pin is under a skull (human) and the the tube under some bones.  Unless searchers use their hands, their is a 50% chance that either or both treasures will slip off the ledge and be lost below.  The tube is water-tight and contains a scroll of magic user spells (push, stinking cloud, fly)"

Sure, one's an MU scroll and one's  a map, but c'mon, two watertight scroll tubes hidden amidst bones with a chance of dislodging and losing said item to the PC's eternal dismay?!  It should be noted that in monastery, the moving scroll tube has only about 10-20' of stream to go before it flows through the outlet tunnel at the south end of the room and is lost forever.

Also of note: the ruby pin under the human skull, though much more valuable, is somewhat reminiscent of the garnet in the goblin skull in room 1 of the Sample Dungeon.  Red gemstones hidden in skulls; what would Freud say about that? 

To be sure, this is not jaw-dropping evidence that these two dungeons are derived from a similar progenitor.  But, given the vast amount of other forensic evidence, it certainly enhances the argument.

B2-T1 Keep of Hommlet: a self-diagnosed T1 obsessor goes off his meds again

Keep THIS!

As mentioned in yesterday's teaser, today we're exploring B2 Keep on the Borderlands and its potential as a link in the Hommlet series.  No, B2 is not based on T1 or the Sample Dungeon or any of that nonsense.  Don't be ridiculous.  But there are some similarities nonetheless.

For some background, a few months ago I posted a deal about some of the more remarkable similarities between T1 Village of Hommlet and the Sample Dungeon in the Dungeon Masters Guide wherein I made the claim that the Sample Dungeon was probably the original dungeon upon which T1 was based.  And though I'd accept that they both were separately crafted from the roots of the same prototype, my money still says that the Sample Dungeon is closer to the original Hommlet campaign than is the published version of T1.

This all started when I was looking around for a sequel to T1 for my current AD&D campaign.  I started eyeballing the Sample Dungeon as a potential source for a T2 Temple of Elemental Evil of my own semi-design.  I liked it initially only for the dungeon's inherent Gygaxian flavor, but as I started reading into it more closely, well, you know the story.

Something similar happened the other night when I started checking out B2 as a potential sequel--T3 if you will--to my semi-homebrewed T2.  Inspired by the stand of tamaracks--a tree unique for being both coniferous and deciduous, and, thus, particularly well suited to cold climates--on the wilderness map of B2.  Obsessive weirdos like me will recall that tamaracks are also present in the vicinities of the moathouse and the Sample Dungeon--indeed, I have it on good authority that the "T "in T1 initially stood for Tamarack. So I thought here's evidence that they're all set in a similar climate, that's a good starting point.  Plus: again with the Gygaxian flavor.

So I'm giving B2 a thorough read-through for probably the first time ever.  In contrast to The V. of H., EGG seems to be going for maximum genericness with the KEEP. NPCs are bereft of names, ability scores, and background of any meaningful sort; these are things that you, the introductory DM, are supposed to come up with on your own.

There is one exception, however: the jovial priest in apartment 7b of the KEEP.  Though he is nameless and statless like the other denizens of the Borderlands, he does have an agenda spelled out.  As you may recall, he is described as being a genial mo' fo', and, along with his two acolytes, would love to help the party on there quest for glory in the ol' Caves.  But don;t turn your back on him for too long because he'll club you senseless at the worst possible moment He's actually "chaotic and evil" and is "in the KEEP to spy and defeat those seeking to gain experience by challenging the monsters in the Caves of Chaos."

So just as in T1 we have evil agents in town who are only too interested in getting in on the party's expedition.  But in contrast to the malevolent traders in Hommlet who project an off-putting aura of d-baggery--only the most desperate of adventuring parties would ever do business with them, much less accept their company into a dungeon--the cleric in the KEEP has a better grasp of tradecraft; he actually has the sense to make himself likeable. Also of note: the dude who hires himself out as a guide in the Sample Dungeon is also up to no good; he's just hoping to steal the Fire Opal with the assistance of the party.

Over at the Caves Of Kaos, there is an imprisoned merchant awaiting his fate--just like the poor merchants in the ogre's pantry in T1--though this time he's to be the entree at a hobgoblin banquet. And just like his compatriots in the moathouse, he too offers a reward for his release, though he's a much more generous chap than the cheap bastards in Lubash's pantry who could only spare meager wad of silver pieces for their saviours. 

Also, there are a couple of fire beetles in adjacent-ish rooms in the minotaur caves, but that's a similarity to the Sample Dungeon, not T1.

And then there's Cave K: The Shrine of Evil Chaos; a cloister of evil clerics and their malevolent little underground chapel in red and black that bears some resemblance to Lareth's malicious little cult. And possibly to the cleric and hobgoblins in the Sample Dungeon as well. Plus, try to convince me that "Shrine of Evil Chaos" is not the Basic-ified version of the phrase "Temple of Elemental Evil"--they're one and the same. 

And again there's the long tunnel to a location off the map near the cleric's quarters, just as in T1--and possibly the Sample Dungeon--though this one is blocked with fallen rubble and is obviously not their personal means of egress.  Though the head cleric's quarters are described as lavishly decorated, much as Lareth's joint is in T1, there are no flaming eyeballs or fire opals or other physical evidence to link this cult to those that inhabited T1 or the Sample Dungeon.  But the place still has the feel of something ominous hiding just barely beneath the surface, awaiting its chance to break out and corrupt and oppress all of humanity.  I wonder what Gygax was reading back in the late 70s that inspired all this cultiness.

Into the Ruined Monastery of Evil Chaos on the Borderlands of Hommlet... Near a Keep

That is the working title for a campaign I am cobbling together using T1 The V. of H., the Sample Dungeon of the DMG, and now... B2 Keep on the Borderlands.  Yes, I've found adequate linkages between B2 and T1/Sample Dungeon to enlist it into the fold.  I won't go so far as to say that B2 is based on the same source material as the other two dungeons, but there is enough evidence to suggest that Gygax was not done scratching his evil cult conspiracy itch when he penned B2.  More on this tomorrow.

Sample Dungeon Showdown: Battle of the Basics

All right all you Mentzerites and Moldvanians, I get it.  Your Basic D&D was way more accessible than the dense text blocks of Holmesian Basic.  Your rules were generally more concise, systematic, and clearly stated, and, of course, there were affordable options for expansion ($12 for Expert D&D set, vs. $39 for the 3 AD&D books) that allowed you to move beyond 3rd level without resorting to prostitution.  And as a result, you felt no qualms about playing-on with your red books which, admittedly, offered a somewhat sleeker version of D&D than the oft-byzantine rules of Gary & Gygax that awaited.

But I still pity you.

Sure, we Holmesters viewed our dice-deficient Basic Rules as nothing more than a set of training wheels to be cast aside as soon as we could save up enough money from our paper routes (remember those?) to buy those hard-covered, bad-assed tomes that would teach us the ways of Advanced D&D.  But what we did have on our side was a small labyrinth of tunnels underneath the ruined tower of Zenopus.

Zenopus: There's a tower in here somewhere

You see, whilst the red-clad tomes from which you learned your D&D included either the uninspired Haunted Keep or the nearly-as-bland Group Adventure/Castle Mistamere/Ruins of Gygar* we Holmesters had as our maiden voyage into D&D the dungeon now generally--though misleadingly--known as the Tower of Zenopus.**  Amongst the highlights of this subterranean fun house were catacombs littered with sarcophagi (each one its own adventure), a magic sundial, an underground river, pirates harboring a comely damsel in distress, a maze of rat tunnels, and those niches inhabited by skeletons that became a staple of my dungeon-making for years to come.  And all this crammed into 4-1/2 pages.
*seriously, what's the preferred name for the Mentzer sample dungeon? 
**There is a tower associated with the dungeon (see room S), but it belongs to an unnamed thaumaturgist. The actual tower of Zenopus was pulverized with a catapult some 50 years back.

Mentzer: Group Adventure

Moldvay: Haunted Sleep

Meanwhile, in the Red Book sample dungeons you got to pillage compact little forts manned by populations of goblins (Haunted Keep) or kobolds (Group Adventure).  But I'm sure you had fun.  Right?

Maps

As you can see from the map above, Zenopus was an amateurish hand drawn affair, it looks like something my kid could draw... in a few years.  Which is good, 'cuz if you want to show someone how to make a dungeon of their own, is it better to impress them with the drafting capabilities of your professional staff of illustrators or would it be more helpful to offer new players an example that looks like something they could actually make themselves? 

Furthermore, Zenopus uses the underground setting to its greatest advantage: unhindered by things like a building footprint or notions of structural integrity, its long corridors, enormous chambers and raging underground rivers meander improbably all over the graph paper in such a fashion that one has no idea what might be beyond the next door or around the next corner. This is fantasy.

By comparison, Haunted Keep's more professional-looking map was clearly drawn using drafting equipment that few gamers were likely to have access to.  Presentation aside, the author chose to confine the adventuring space within a rather obtuse looking tower--15' thick walls!?  Not only did this adventure fail to take advantage of the freedom of movement that underground settings provide, it also cut off a lot of above-ground options--climbing over walls, sneaking through windows--by sealing all the action into a confined space with but a single means of egress.  Room 8 does have that cool looking pit with a bed in it; that's pretty intriguing. 

And Group Adventure's even slicker looking castle looks like it was produced by a cyborg with a ProtoCad chip jacked into its cortex.  Only the above-ground portion of the dungeon is described in the text; the underground level--room after identical-looking room laid out in a monotonously rhythmic fashion--is unfinished.  The general feeling is one of ennui, not adventure.  I'd be surprised if even hardcore Red Box fans would disagree that these maps are unappealing.   

Would you like a glass of lemonade or a packet of yellow, water-soluble powder?
Zenopus is a complete adventure.  A brand new, never-played-D&D-before kid can pick it up and run it to the best of his understanding right out of the box.  I think that's pretty important for an introductory rules set.  Extremely important even.  Once the DM has run an actual adventure, he or she will have an  idea of how dungeons flow and how to set up an encounter, or at least a burgeoning desire to learn more.

Meanwhile, the two Red Book sample dungeons provide merely an appetizer to some further adventure that the aspiring DM is expected to come up with on his or her own.  Fine in theory, but it's as if M&M were saying "Here's this cool game that you can play... as soon as you finish your homework."  Screw that!  This is an introductory adventure, give me something short, complete, and fun so that we can jump right in and see the potential for ourselves before we set out to make our own dungeons.

Other
To be fair, the Haunted Keep is really a step-by-step demonstration of how to use the dungeon stocking method provided in the Moldvanian rules.  For this I suppose it deserves a break, though I would also argue that, flavorless as it is, it doesn't provide a very flattering endorsement of said method.   

Group Adventure, meanwhile, is presented almost as a choose-your-own adventure book.  Several of the keyed encounters are not actually distinct encounters but different outcomes or actions that might occur depending on whether your players cast a sleep spell on the carrion crawler or fire arrows at the kobolds or what have you.  What results is a verbiage-laden adventure with deceptively less action than the amount of text might otherwise indicate.  This much hand-holding seems more than a bit patronizing.

I'm not saying that Tower of Zenopus is a flawless example of dungeon design--even though it is--but I am saying that compared to the two other options presented in the later versions of Basic D&D it clearly shines.  It presents a wide range of encounter types in a classic underground dungeon format, what more could you want in a dungeon primer?  Haunted Keep and Group Adventure, on the other hand, are snooze-inducing exercises in pedantry.  My guess is that many a Red Booker skipped their respective sample dungeon entirely and ran Keep on the Borderland or whatever module came with the set.

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 4: Cult of the Fiery Eye or Palimpsest of Hommlet

After much delay--my dissertation committee asked for some additional graphics before I put it out for publication--I'm finally getting to the conclusion of my analysis of the Sample Dungeon of the Dungeon Masters Guide.  Today we're speculating what to make of the unfinished portions of the dungeon based on the clues provided in the few room descriptions, background, and the wandering monster tables. Without further ado...

Sample dungeon site analysis.

The author provided wandering monster encounters for the two distinct areas of the Dungeon, the Non-crypt Area and the Crypt Area which conveniently included the room numbers of the wandering monster's lairs, a Gygax standard that I failed to appreciate for too long.  Non-crypt area wandering monsters include bandits, goblins, giant rats, and fire beetles--the fire beetles emit a fiery red glow which illuminates a 10' radius; that's kinda' cool.  But are there any running themes here?  The only one that comes to mind is that these critters are all just looking for a quiet place to lay low, somewhere with a roof overhead where no one will ask any questions.  So the non-crypt area is going to be filled with "volunteer" monsters; whatever manages to crawl, slither or hop down here from the swamp above.  Giant snakes, lizards, ticks, maybe a pack of voracious giant frogs even.  And lots of the rooms will just be empty old store rooms littered with moldy crap and the occasional fungus or slime.

Now let's see what the crypt area has going on in terms of wandering monsters: more rats, ghouls, skeletons--your standard crypt fare; one could expand on this a bit.  But then there's the evil cleric with the hobgoblins in tow from areas 35-37.  An evil cult in league with humanoids occupying several rooms; that's got potential.  Let's say they're beholden to some demon lord and let's riff on  Nunya's notion (from the comments section of Part 1 of this series) and say that the fire opal the monks were hiding was the prized jewel and symbol of power stolen from the temple of this demon lord and turned over to the monks for safe keeping.  The enormous, smouldering opal represents the demon lord's baleful, fiery glare. Indeed, reflecting the significance of this symbol of power, the hobgoblins have an emblem of a fiery eye painted on their shields while the cleric has the same stitched into his robes.

My eye!

So these cultists of the Fiery Eye have set up quarters here in the crypt area, perhaps because they're still looking for that damn fire opal.  And since, as Zenopus points out, using the secret door to area 3 is not a very convenient means of egress--it being 10 feet above ground--they use the stairs up at area 39 which leads, as Zenopus further suggests, to a long tunnel eventually daylighting at a narrow opening amidst rocks and thick briars and brambles over at the stand of brush and tamaracks beyond the monastery.  The cult uses this tunnel for occasional sorties to pillage passing caravans for supplies, treasure, and prisoners which they use for either ransom, slaves, or food.  So a few of the other rooms are occupied by their humanoid allies, some gnolls, bugbears, and maybe an ogre who's got a few human or demi-human prisoners in his pantry.  And perhaps the cult has contacts in the nearby village, other cult members who might feign to provide assistance to the PCs but whose real intent is to obfuscate and assassinate them...

Wait, what's that?  This sounds exactly like the premise of Dungeon Module T1 The Village of Hommlet you say?  Good!  Now we can get to the real thesis of this post which is that the Sample Dungeon in the Dungeon Masters Guide was the original dungeon associated with Gary Gygax's Hommlet campaign back in the 1970s.  For real.*


Monastery vs. Moathouse: One and the Same

Introduction
First, here's a little historical background for those unfamiliar or who've forgotten the details.  In Gary Gygax's 1979 dungeon module T1 The Village of Hommlet, he included the following bit of background on the origin of the module:

"The area here was developed to smoothly integrate players with and without experience in the Greyhawk Campaign into a scenario related to the old timers only by relative proximity...  and many of the NPCs in the module are the characters and henchmen developed through play... the situation and surroundings have been altered because of the actual experiences of these participants." (Gygax, Village of Hommlet, pg. 3)

Also in 1979, Gygax published the Dungeon Masters Guide which included an unfinished Sample Dungeon composed of a map of a single dungeon level underneath a ruined monastery, descriptions of 3 of the encounter areas, and some background info about the dungeon including a description of the adjacent terrain and a legend that there was an enormous fire opal of exorbitant value hidden within.  I contend that the Sample Dungeon is the original dungeon that those "smoothly integrated players" of Hommlet went through.  Check it out:

"After two miles of distance, the land begins to sink and become boggy... and tall marsh plants grow thickly where cattails and tamaracks do not... A side path, banked high to crossover the wetland to either side, juts north to the entrance of the ruined place."

"[A]fter about a two mile trek along a seldom used road, they come to the edge of a fen... with little to relieve the view save a few clumps of brush and tamarack sprouting here and there.  A narrow causeway leads out to a low mound upon which stand the walls and buildings of the deserted mo*******. "

Pretty similar, right?  A "side path banked high to crossover the wetland" sounds a lot like a causeway through a fen, no? And those ubiquitous tamaracks.  If you haven't already reached for your DMG, the first one is the description for the approach to the Moathouse in T1, the second is from the Monastery in the Sample Dungeon.

Design concept
Each adventure is distinctly divided roughly in half between areas that are easily accessible from the obvious entrance to the edifice and those areas that are accessible only if you find a secret door.  Thus, an uninspired or very unlucky party could easily wander through half the dungeon and think their work was done.  Also, between the accessible portion of the adventure--we'll call it the Outer Dungeon--and the secret Inner Dungeon, there is a pronounced shift in the mood of the encounter milieu.   In the Moathouse, it is the upper levels--those that are part of the moathouse proper, including the cellars directly directly beneath--that form the Outer Dungeons while in the Monastery it's the "non-crypt areas" on the north side of the map.  In both cases, the Outer Dungeon is inhabited by whatever random outlaws and freeloaders moved into this subterranean tenement seeking shelter from the elements--bandits, giant lizards, goblins, fire beetles...  it's your classic dungeon crawl.  The Inner dungeon, however, is inhabited by those with a reason for being there; those who belong.  In both cases there is a crypt area inhabited by the undead; both also are inhabited by an Evil Cult, the evil cleric and his hobber bodyguards in the monastery; in the Moathouse the cult includes Lareth and his gang of flaming stormtroopers, but also the various humanoids mercenaries--the ogre, gnolls, and bugbears--as well.

Clues to the Beyond
But Gygax was not willing to leave things purely to chance; in both adventures he supplies a hint that there is more to this place than a casual exploration might divulge.  In the monastery, this clue comes in the form of the the map and key found amidst the abbot's skeletal remains in room 2.   In the moathouse, this hint is the locked cache of food, weapons, and Flaming Eyeball sweatshirts in the storerooms (rooms 2 and 3, dungeon level).  Also, to make it clear that this crap doesn't belong to the bandits above, he placed the green slime trap on the stairs up to their lair to indicate that they don't bother coming down here too often.

The Secret Door
In both the moathouse and the monastery the secret door to the hidden, Inner Dungeon is located in a room dedicated to death--the funerary room of the monastery where the passage from the world of the living was celebrated, and the torture room in the Moathouse where the same passage was celebrated in a much more pro-active fashion. More importantly, neither door is located in a typical fashion, each is positioned in such a way that a specific effort by the players will be needed to find it; nine feet above the floor in the Sample Dungeon or hidden in the column in T1.  By strategically locating these secret doors, a generic, "we search for secret doors" is clearly not going to be good enough, no matter how well the dice work in your favor.

However, there are clues to be found that will lead the observant PC to the location of said secret doors--the wall sockets in the Sample Dungeon and the faint trail of blood to the pillar in T1.  And on the other side of that secret door in T1 you will find the same 4 ghouls who ate the gnome in the Sample Dungeon.  


First encounter
Monastery:  Room 1 contains a large Spider lurking on the ceiling over a  "a central litter of husks, skin, bones, and its own castings" patiently awaiting its prey.  In the heap can be found a treasure of 19 sp and a garnet worth 50 gp.

Moathouse:  Area 4 is likely to be the first encounter inside the moathouse (we can only assume that there was a gang of hungry frogs waiting in ambush along the causeway to the  monastery) and it contains a huge spider lurking over "a scattering of husks and a few bones on the floor" and a small treasure trove of 38 sp, 71 cp and an ivory box worth 50 gp.

The descriptions are similar though not exact.  "Husks" and "bones" are constant but the spider in the moathouse has been ratcheted up a notch and the treasure slightly increased: the silver has been exactly doubled and a few coppers have been thrown in for good measure, but the main treasure remains set at 50 gp in value, though its manifestation has altered from a garnet to an ivory box. On its own, this encounter doesn't carry much weight, but as the evidence mounts, the similarities are certainly worth noting.

Flaming Eye/Fire Opal

Figure 3. Flaming Eye meet Fire Opal

If you were a member of a cult whose emblem was a flaming eyeball, wouldn't the fire opal be the front runner as your candidate for sacred gemstone?  (see comparison, Fig. 1.a.) Whether the cultists in The Monastery wore a flaming eye or not is impossible to say, but I think I made a pretty fair case back in paragraph 3 about how one might easily extrapolate such.

What is more, and this is the clue that sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place, in T1 Lareth's prized possession and the single most valuable treasure in the entire Moathouse is a string of matched fire opals.

Even Scully should be coming around by now but the best is yet to come.

Hall of Zombies
Check out these two maps, and read the description below as it might apply to area 4 on the left map and area 10 on the right:  

CORRIDOR LINED WITH CELLS: Anyone entering this area will be attacked by the monsters lurking in pairs in these cubicles: 12 ZOMBIES (H.P.: 15, 14, 13, 12, 3x10, 9, 8, 6, 5, 4)

If you had to choose one of these two as the map for the encounter area described wouldn't you choose the map on the right?  It looks like a standard AD&D corridor--10' wide, leads to a room at the end--and it's lined with 3 cubicles on each side of the hall which provides exactly enough room for 12 zombies hiding in groups of two in each cell.   Area 4 on the left looks more like a chamber than a corridor--what with its 20'-wideness, pillars down the center, and lack of a portal at the end--plus it's only "lined" with cubicles on one side.  But most importantly of all, it has only five cubicles which leaves two of the zombies homeless!

The encounter description is from T1 area 4 of the dungeon level of the moathouse, the map on the left, while the map on the right is from the Sample Dungeon.**  By now it has to be pretty clear that this description was originally written for area 10 of what became the sample dungeon of the DMG and was then transcribed word-for-word into T1--including hit points for all 12 zombies even though most people who ran T1 back in the day, lacking accommodations for the 6th pair, only threw 10 zombies at their players.***

Exit Strategy
Adjacent to Lareth's den under the moathouse was a long tunnel leading up to a concealed opening at the surface that allowed his cronies to come and go without disrupting the ecosystem of the moathouse above.  The hobbers and cleric in the monastery presumably cannot live off of mold and ghoul-droppings and, as already mentioned, it's unlikely that they use the secret door in the ceremonial chamber, so it seems rather likely that they have a separate way out of the crypt area.

While it's not obvious that such an exit exists in the Sample Dungeon, several clues do allude to such an egress.  As Zenopus Archives pointed out, there is mention of a "secret entrance/exit  from the place" indicated in the background material for the Sample Dungeon.  I had always, assumed that this referred to the stairs down to area 1, but since this area is not indicated to be "secret" it opens up the possibility that indeed, there is a separate, secret portal to the dungeon.  And the conspicuously noted "fairly dense cluster of [brush and tamarack] approximately a half mile beyond the abandoned place" provides the most obvious location for such an emergency exit.  Add to that the presence of a stairway leading up not far from the chambers occupied by the Cleric and his band of hobbers, you have some evidence that the Sample Dungeon had a similar escape tunnel.

And so forth
In light of  this evidence, some things about T1 Village of Hommlet start to make a bit more sense.  For instance, it always struck me as odd that Lareth--who we know has been going to great effort to throw off interest in his location by staging his caravan raids far away in disparate locations--would allow another gang of brigands to operate out of the same location.  Possibly the Great Hope of Chaotic Evil isn't aware of the bandits in the moathouse above, but more likely these are the same bandits transposed from the areas 4 & 5 of the Monastery. Like the extra pair of zombies, they're a relic that doesn't quite fit into the New Order of Hommlet.

This might also explain why T1 was named the Village of Hommlet rather than the Moathouse of the Flaming Eye or some-such.  When EGG decided to modulize the endeavor, he may have wanted to showcase the village as a setting, but also needed some sort of adventure to go along with it.  By the standards of the time, a module with the entire monastery adventure would have been too large for a single module.  Remember, the only other modules around at the time were the G and D series which were originally published as separate, emaciated adventures of only ~16 pages.****  So he took the first level of the monastery dungeon, re-worked it as the moathouse in T1 and used the affair as an outpost of the greater dungeon, which would eventually be the Temple of Elemental Evil which, by the way, had turned from a monastery sacked long ago by forces of evil to a temple sacked long ago by forces of good. 

So if you've ever wondered what the original "Hommlet" dungeon Gygax mentions in the intro to T1 may have looked like before it was infiltrated with PCs, sullied by Lolth and/or Zuggtmoy, and afflicted with battles over at Emridy Meadows, the answer may have been right in front of you all along.  This humble, seemingly unfinished dungeon hidden under a monastery is actually a vestige of the campaign that spawned one of the great modules of the AD&D era.  The dungeon from which The Moathouse, Lareth, the Cult of Elemental Evil and its affiliated Temple all sprang from this unassuming labyrinth on page 95 of the Dungeon Masters Guide.  Sadly, this connection to the very roots of the game was one of the things we lost as Gygax's creative impact at TSR diminished.


*Well, as "for real" as you can get without confirmation from anyone who actually knows the score.

**In T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil the zombie:cubicle disparity was resolved by hiding the two extra zombies--who presumably had just lost a game of musical chambers--behind one of the pillars in area 21, nee area 4.  

***Case in point: in the used copy of T1 I now own (acquired at a used book sale a few years ago), the previous owner left pencil markings recording the dwindling hit points and ultimate demise of the first 10 zombies while the last two zombies  are unsullied by graphite.  Perhaps the players suffered a TPK at the hands of Wimpy and Gimpy, or, perhaps, lacking a sixth cell to release them from, the DM never put them into action.

****This is based entirely on my recollection of how slender those modules were; I don't have the modules on hand and thus don't know the exact page count.

*******This wasn't intended to be a footnote but since you're here, it just so happens that monastery and moathouse have the same amount of letters.  I am unaware of Gygax's stance on numerology or alphabetology or whatever, but I'm going to write this one off as coincidence and nothing more.

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 3: Room 3 and the Portal of the Jerk

"You come into the the northern portion of a 50' x 50' chamber.  It is bare and empty.  There are no exits apparent.  It seems to be a dead end place."  Gary Gygax, DMG p. 99

No exits are apparent.  It seems to be a dead end place.  If this isn't enough to make you search for secret doors, then maybe you're not playing the right game.

So you've just entered the nexus of the land of the living and the dead, wherein the deceased brethren of the monastery make their secret voyage to the under world.  We know that the dead were lain in repose here on an elevated stage and, after some amount of time, they were taken through a secret door and lain to rest in a sarcophagus somewhere in a long, wide corridor in the crypt area to the south.  It is telling that the entry to the netherworld is via a secret door rather than some grand, awe-inspiring edifice or even a modest  tunnel.  It is reinforcing an aura of mystery regarding the afterlife that most undoubtedly is of significance to their religious beliefs.

DM: "You might be in for a nasty surprise, so I'll let you roll a six sider for me to see your status."  

This is the equivalent of Javier Bardem showing up at your house with a compressed air canister in his hand and asking you to flip a coin.

Ghouls?  What ghouls?

For some reason which we will never understand, the Sample DM in the campaign narrative which accompanies the Sample Dungeon has chosen this moment to reveal that he is a complete dickhead.  We learn that, on finding the secret door, "the gnome" of the party is immediately surprised and devoured by a party of 4 ghouls waiting behind the portal.  Now look at the map of the crypt area beyond the door, there is not a labelled encounter within 120' of the secret door; obviously the author of the sample dungeon did not intend for there to be ghouls loitering there.  Maybe they're wandering monsters--except that we the readers have always been informed when the Sample DM has rolled for wandering monsters in the past, yet no roll was made at this juncture.  Further, the wandering monster table for the crypt area indicates "1-2 ghouls" might be encountered, not 4.  We must conclude that the Sample DM ad libbed 4 ghouls waiting at the secret door to attack the party when they're in a very precarious situation--propped up in a human pyramid!   Now tell me this guy is not a dick!

And more dickishness: the secret portal is described as being only 8-1/2' wide in the room description yet the DM tells the party that it's 10' wide!  You might ask: "Uh, now who's being a dick, Dice-chucker?"  Too-shay, my friend.

As all y'all who've ever held the DMG in your hands knows, room 3 is where the description of the sample dungeon--and the accompanying narrative--ended, the rest was up to the reader to fill in if they so chose.  I might be one of the rare old schoolers who never did fill in that dungeon, mostly because drawing maps was my favorite part of making a dungeon back in the day. And, like the Sample Dungeon, the descriptive text of my dungeons usually trailed off by somewhere around room 3.  Now I've come to the complete opposite end; I much prefer taking other author's maps and descriptions, over-analizing their words to find meanings that probably shouldn't be there, and layering my own interpretation on top of their work.  So that is what we'll do in Part 4 of the Series: What Lies Beyond Room 3.

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 2: Down the Stairs

Continuing where we left off last week, today we'll be looking at rooms 1 & 2 of the Sample Dungeon provided in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.


The Dungeon
Room 1.  Spider webs including a large spider at 1A, some moldy sacks, a garnet in a goblin skull over in the corner (B); it all sets the tone of rot and refuse that permeates the place.  That goblin may have been a member of the raiding army that took down the Monastery--or he could have wandered in at any time since.  How the garnet got in his head is a curious mystery to consider.  Also, please mind the yellow mold (25%).


One other thing of note is the oak door over at  1.C: Moaning can be heard behind it and, if opened, a gust of wind will extinguish all torches.  Where did the wind come from?  Sure, there's a subterranean stream running through the adjacent room--typically a great venue for creating air movement in a cavern, except that the stream "fills entirely" the tunnel through which it both enters and exits the room.  Which is to say, there's no room for any air movement, much less wind forcible enough to extinguish all torches.

Those brave enough to enter the dark, windy cavern will find:


Room 2. WATER ROOM: Although the room is described as holding only "8 rotting barrels" (over at location A) from the hoard of casks and barrels which were once stored there, several of the barrels in the room "hold water" as they were "new and being soaked to make them tight" at the time of the downfall. This might give a sense of the passage of time to those familiar with the decay rate of wooden barrels.  

2.B:  The limed-over skeleton of the Abbot lies at the bottom of the stream that passes through the chamber.  His corpse has undergone a "sea change," a reference, as the ensuing narrative example of play points out, to Shakespeare's Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange. 

Amidst the remains of the abbot the attentive adventurer will find a scroll tube and a key.  Acquiring these items is not a sure thing as Characters who dislodge the scroll tube have to make a successful "to hit" roll as if hitting AC 4 in order to successfully grab the scroll before the current of the stream takes it down stream beyond return.  Is this a nascent action resolution system using "to hit" as a means of determining success at non-combat actions?  Sort of a proto-SIEGE engine for you C&C fans?

Inside the scroll tube is a map of the underground portion of the monastery, but it is almost entirely smudged beyond use; showing only the two areas that the PCs will already have seen by the time they find this map along with an 80' section of hall in the "crypt area" to the south with "miniature sarcophagi" depicted in it.  Not super helpful, but it will definitely aid parties in finding the crypt area which is accessible only via the elevated secret door in room 3.  (Or the stairs at are 39).

The key in the abbots calcified hand allows the secret door in room 28 to open toward the "treasure room" (29) rather than to the stairs (30) down to the caverns, which is, presumably, the default.  Is this where the fabled fire opal can be found?

Of significance here is that the abbot's body is a) located where it would easily be found if it were still encased in flesh, and b) still in possession of the ring and scroll case.  Presumably anyone who had reason to seek the Abbot out--such as would be the case if the besiegers were either politically motivated or looking for the fire opal in his possession--would have searched every corpse to find him; either to make an example of him by trying him posthumously and impaling his corpse on a stake for all to see, or searching his carcass for the gem or some clue as to its whereabouts--like, say, a key or a map.  That his body is lying in what would have been plain sight at the time of the siege and yet retains these two possessions indicates that the marauders were probably neither aware of the fire opal nor concerned with the political significance the abbot's corpse.  Rather, the raiders who took down the monastery were more likely foreigners looking for obvious treasure; much like the first Vikings who raided the Monastery of St. Cuthbert* at Lindisfarne in 8th century Britain.  Whoever these dudes were, they were in it for a quick score; snatching gaudy, jewel-encrusted religious implements, potential slaves, and casks of wine and beer would have been their prime interest.  Rifling the pockets of an ascetic monk probably didn't rank too high on their to-do list. 


*Yes, I did intentionally reference the real St. Cuthbert as a not-so-subtle nod to T1 Village of Hommlet and its sequel T2 Temple of Elemental Evil.  This place is a religious edifice sacked by an army years ago, now an unholy ground inhabited by lowlifes, critters, and the undead; doesn't it maybe seem like it might have been an early version of the Temple of Elemental Evil? Sure, pretty much every dungeon had a background that sounded a lot like that back in the day, but considering that the DMG was published around the same time as T1... maybe this is what T2 might have looked like before it spent the next 6 years simmering on the back burner.

Next up: Room 3 and the Wandering Monster Tables

DMG Sample Dungeon Part 1: Background

It should be no secret by now that I like to analyze the crap out of esoteric stuff that only a few members of our species care about (see The Restenford Project as further evidence), but that's kind of what the OSR blogosphere is all about, right? No, you say? My mistake.

Class, please turn to page 95 of your Dungeon Masters Guide.

Anyway, the latest object of my obsession is, if you haven't guessed already, the sample dungeon provided in "The Campaign" section of EGG's DMG beginning on page 94.  As you're probably aware the sample dungeon included a map of a single "dungeon" level and a write up detailing the first few rooms along with a smattering of background information that indicates that the dungeon is beneath the ruins of an abandoned abbey.

To describe the sample dungeon as "unfinished" would be an understatement; on appearances, this thing was barely even started.  But even in the tiny amount of material provided there is a wealth of detail that will help the obsessive DM to extrapolate an entire adventure out of this tiny fosselized finger bone of a dungeon.  In today's edition, I intend to dig into the background information found primarily in the first three paragraphs of the "The First Dungeon Adventure" section on page 96.

Background:
Rumor has it that "something strange and terrible lurks in the abandoned monastery" located in a fen outside of town.  The monastery was sacked sometime in the past and now lies in ruin, but we know not the identity or the incentive of either the monks who lived there or the marauders.  Was the abbey a warren of  heretics besieged by their own papal leader--a monastery gone wicked?  Or were they the last true believers brought to ruin to erase the shame of the fallen majority?  Or was it something entirely different?

There is another rumor circulating, though somewhat less well known--that there is treasure to be had as well:

"A huge fire opal which the abbot of the place is said to have hidden when the monastery was under siege... the fellow died, according to legend, before revealing it to anyone, so somewhere within the ruins lies a fortune."  

Always good to know.  But this could be more than just a potentially apocryphal tale to induce adventurers to explore the region; this could be evidence that avarice had overtaken the monks and they had deviated from their monastic cause. 

Environs:
A "two mile trek along a seldom used road" brings the party to the edge of the fen.  There is a  causeway to a low mound on which lie the ruins of the monastery--sounds reminiscent of the approach to the moat house in T1.  A few tamaracks grow sporadically on hillocks that barely rise above the mire of the swamp.  There is also a "fairly dense cluster" of tamaracks and "brush" about "a half mile beyond the abandoned place" indicating another area of high ground nearby.  There is no hint as to the significance of this "cluster" in the abbreviated text of the dungeon, but it seems unlikely that such a detail would have been included without some significance given to the matter. Perhaps it was once linked via underground tunnels to the monastery grounds? Just something to consider if you're re-creating this dungeon for your own use.

Also: It may be worth noting that tamaracks are unique among coniferous trees in that they lose their needles in the winter; an adaptation that makes them the most cold-hardy of trees.  Which is to say we're probably talking about a boreal climate here. If you want to move this thing to a warmer clime you might want to change the trees to mangroves or cypress.

 ...
That's all for today but pack your gear folks cuz tomorrow--I use that term loosely--we'll be searching the ruins. Kind of feels like a real adventure, right?

References:
Gygax, G. Dungeon Masters Guide.  Lake Geneva, WI: TSR Games, 1979