Tetsujin no Llama

6) A group of monsters have collected near the hidden doorway and antechamber leading into the crypt. Roll twice on the wandering monster table. As ugly as this might seem, if adventurers retreat a bit, the pursuing monsters will have to come after them through two separate doorways, making them relatively easy to isolate and overwhelm, and it's still fairly close to the cave shrine, so spellcasters can stay in an area where they can speak, if they need that in order to cast spells. 7) This niche is set off from the corridor by a set of sturdy iron bars. Treat as X-Heavy metalwork ( GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2, p. 18); the bars are permanently fixed in place and cannot be unlocked. The area beyond is blacked out with the Darkness spell. It's also difficult to use magic to pick out what's in the space; it's protected by a variant of the Pentegram spell (cast at level 20, if it becomes important). Breaking the bars breaks that spell. The space contains N/3 Demons From ...

Here's what's in areas 1-5 on the ground floor crypt map: 1) The room is partly filled with a dense grey mist from a few inches above the ground to a height of about three feet. Oddly, does not flow or expand outside of the approximately 12' by 12' room. Anyone peering under the mist sees a wooden chest in the southwest corner of the room. The mist is acidic, doing 1d corrosion damage per turn spent immersed in it. It's possible, though, to crawl under it. Crawling under the mist requires a roll against DX - (2 x SM) per turn (that is, a -2 penalty for SM +1, a +2 bonus for SM -1, and so on). Failing the DX roll incurs a single point of corrosion damage, or a full die for a critical failure. The chest itself weighs 40 lbs. is somehow resistant to the corrosion. It is locked (a straight roll against Lockpicking opens it), but there's a poisoned needle on the mechanism: Detect: Per-based Traps . Disarm: DX-based Traps . Circumvent: The chest can be sma...

The cave shrine is attached to a labyrinth-like crypt where various dead were laid to rest. Some had been noted holy men. Others were common people picked out for reasons lost to the depths of time. And some were very evil, stowed away in the supposedly safe confines of the crypt. But it's not so safe as one might hope. The crypt is full of magical power which has reanimated some of the dead, given an illusion of life to some objects, and let some things slip through the walls between worlds. Some time after the crypt was build and then sealed off by its makers, other monsters from the nearby natural caves broke in through a back entrance. Not long thereafter, they sealed it off again. The crypt can be reached thorough concealed doors to the south through the cave shrine and to the northwest through the ground floor caves. The entire paved area is covered by the Silence spell ( GURPS Magic, p. 171). It has somehow been applied to the entire volume on the crypt rather than on ...

The upper level of the shrine is mostly empty space. The corner towers of the external structure have a single floor at a second level. The stone staircases leading to them are intact, but the walls are crumbled and uneven above about ten feet; there used to be taller towers, but those have fallen into rubble. However, there's a ladder in the southwestern tower. Bandits occasionally use it to climb high enough to see over the ragged wall and keep a lookout for potential threats. The statue of the god in the cave shrine is a little over twenty feet tall, so it extends into the space of the upper level. The face used to have jeweled eyes, which have long since been removed. However, the top of the head has a hollow compartment (anyone who climbs up can roll against Search to see that it can be opened) containing a prayer wheel (see below). The remains of the shrine are occupied by a group of orcish bandits; see GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Adventure 1: Mirror of the Fire Demon for ...

The most obvious entrance to the dungeon (though it's really not obvious at all) is through the shrine. The remains of an earthen wall are still detectable around the precincts of the ancient temple, though it is nowhere more than a foot high and in places isn't there at all. Nevertheless, it delineates a region of high sanctity including the former courtyard, the exterior structure, and the cave, though not the catacombs beyond. The shrine proper consists of a two-story-tall structure built against the hillside which enlarges the enclosed area of the cave beyond. The walls are three foot thick stone (DR 468, DR 135). The floor is made of heavy stone tiles, still in quite good shape after many years. There are no windows and a single door. When it was in use, the shade was pleasantly cool, but the roof is all but gone now, so apart from a few crumbling rafters, there's little shade. However, there are vaults supporting a second floor for four tower-like structures p...

I'll probably change my mind about things once it's far enough along to be really confusing, but I'm starting out with some conventions. The space between level floors is about 15 feet. Floor-to-ceiling distance on any given level, then, is typically in the 8-12 foot range, though see below for exceptions. Most of the dungeon is completely enclosed underground, so it's pitch dark unless delvers bring light with them unless otherwise noted. Some cartographic conventions are represented here: The dark hatching represents the solid interior of the cave. It's rock.  No background indicates a space with no floor at that level, or possibly no floor and no ceiling; see explanatory text for the level for details. This may be a space like a long vertical mine shaft or the upper or middle parts of very large underground chambers. Lightly stippled areas are sandy unfinished floors, which predominate both inside and outside the dungeon. There is rock underneath a hand...

In order to get some more GURPS out there and play with some maps, I started toying with something. I've worked up a large map ("ground level" is below; I may need to poke around with image hosting to keep enough maps at the proper scales) of a dungeon complex. From time to time, I'll post magnified excerpts from the map with details in GURPS terms, with specific reference to Dungeon Fantasy (that is, mostly stocked with things from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables and the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters volumes, but occasional pointers elsewhere). They may prove useful to somebody somewhere under some odd set of circumstances. This dungeon is set in a fairly steep, rocky hill. The natural caves underneath it have long been home to a variety of creatures, natural and otherwise, but pretty much all horrible. There's also a large natural cavern accessible through a very large opening at the top of the hill where the surface caved in. It has been home to a n...