Share your settings for TFT

[larsdangly]

All the excitement about TFT has me thinking about fun settings for the system - deadly dungeons, grungy cities, mysterious towers... This has always been a game where most such things are DIY rather than commercial products. So let's get a thread going where we can share some of the favorite items from your old folders!

[ak_aramis]

Almost all my T&T play has been solos - either played totally solitaire, or as one PC going through with the other player playing the opponents.

The exception was in 1987, where I drew an overaland map. and the adventure was to cross hostile terrain to carry diplomatic papers.

[larsdangly]

It will take a bit of writing to dig very deeply into my TFT setting materials, and I don't want to kick off the thread by hogging it with a bunch of 1000 word posts. But this is an overview of the setting I've put the most work into:

A set of five closely related environments:
1: Bok Sehir, a large, shambolic, polyglot city that serves as a crossroads between several surrounding lands. This city started as my take on Zamora for my campaign set in the Hyborian age. I cooked up a thieves' quarter, a couple of temples and a sewer for this, as well as some ruins to be explored in the surrounding desert. I then ported this over to Cidri for a more generic TFT campaign. It is kind of a never ending work in progress and most of the notes are sorts of scraps of paper rather than digital files. But I'm slowly getting it into electronic format whenever I pull it out and add something to it. The feel of the city is sort of 16th century Contantinople meets Zamora meets Lhankmar. The format is an urban sand box like CSIO.

2. Dag Kuhl, the fortress of the city’s mysterious ruler. This is based on the enormous indian fortress of Mehrangarh and looms over the city on a big mesa. It is also where I run Death Test and Death Test II (in this setting these are used as initiation tests to join the 'Cuirassiers' - a kind of elite unit more or less equivalent to Thorz's guard.

3. The Ruins, a literal and metaphorical rat’s nest of sewers, basements, tunnels and still-accessible parts of the city that formerly sat on Bok Sehir’s site but was buried in volcanic ash several hundred years ago

4. The City of Dust, a complex of cyclopean ruins of long-forgotten temples, castles and cities that filled these lands thousands of years past, and now reach layer beneath layer under Bok Sehir and stretch beneath miles of the surrounding dunes and scrub. The concept is based on The Big Rubble for original Runequest (though the maps and stuff are all new).

5. The region surrounding Bok Sehir is detailed, to a distance of approximately 1 week’s travel by foot or horse. It is basically a sandbox with a couple dozen adventure sites or recurring NPC's. The major features are the badlands that sit atop the City of Dust, the surrounding deep desert, and a craggy mountain range that separates Bok Sehir from european-style nations on its borders; the mountains and the marshes at their feet are a teeming miasma of chaos monsters, more or less inspired by Dorastor from Glorantha.

[JLV]

As I've said before, I'm not terribly original in this matter, instead mostly "converting" other folks stuff to TFT for my players. The one I've been working on most recently is Dolmenwood -- which has just the right "feel" for me in terms of setting, and is a nice, small sandbox with a lot going on and a lot of NPCs to interact with.

Posting it here, of course, would be highly illegal (I would think), but you can order a copy (and get parts of it for free) over on OneBookShelf's various rpg pages (go here to look at it). It's nicely thought out and even ties into things like Ed Gillespie's Barrowmaze (they have a place where you could put that, if you wanted to) for those needing a megadungeon to liven up play...

Others that I've done something similar with were Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Forgotten Realms (mostly for the complex setting, not necessarily for the details in the adventures -- the Red Wizards make a wonderful villain group, though), and, to a much lesser extent, the area around Rappan Athuk. (Can you tell that I like sandboxes and megadungeons? ;-) )

Oh, and of course, Keep on the Borderlands!

(Edited to add link for Dolmenwood material...)

[Steve Jackson]

Yes, posting the material here would be a nono, but posting a link to where it can be purchased is a public service. Thanks!

[DeDiceManCometh]

What would be the list of Cidri canon? Or (if this is even a separate question) what would be the list of publications SJG would want to move forward with as canon?

[David L Pulver]

I just found "Beyond the Dragon Lord's Mountain" my first TFT labyrinth...

Man, this was OLD! It dates to 1979 - it predates In the Labyrinth...

It is a 24-room dungeon. I drew Death Test-style individual hex maps of major rooms, but the dungeon itself consists of 24 single hex-sized locations (each representing a melee or wizard-sized map) connected by lengthy lines to represent corridors at a much greater scale.

Shadow curtains like those in Death Test are used in place of doors.

The encounters are:

1. entry hall, with a skeleton who rises up to give a cryptic clue.

2. 4 hob-goblins (basic warriors).

3. cavern with a half ogre named Grendel (ST 22, DX 9, IQ 7) and a hidden door leading to a room with goblin wizards guarding a blood-drinking sword (temporarily drains 1 ST from victims and transfers it).

4. Hall of images with several illusions - wolf, myrmidon, bear, etc. (and one real wolf) and a trap in the room that any wizard making illusions will have them turn against him and attack...

5. Chamber of deep magic with a powerful staff of sorcery item and a 4-hex dragon. Treasure includes some Death Test-influence: gold bars.

6. Room of the Bear with a powerful bear and treasure.

7. Temple of set with a "priest lord" - a powerful mage and some potions and magic items including a crown that can turn into a giant snake and a ring that grants some spells. Obviously I was making up items using Wizard spells.

8. Goblin mines with bubbling fire pits, three goblins and some more goblin wizards, and an item called a live blade that draws itself and, if you defend with it, the attacker rolls 5d to hit hit you.

9. Long "Corridor of doom" with a sloping corridor that penalizes missile attacks down slope and enhances them up slope, and a trio of archers to take advantage of it. Some potions that heal points and a magic spear that does extra damage.

10. Wolf cave with 3 wolves.

11. Tombs of Anubis with several shadow hexes to create some hidden movement and ambushes. Lots of smaller crypts in the area on the battle map:

- 3 wolves (temple guardian jackals, actually) among the shadows

- A "living shadow" creature:
- a "shadow ghast" who appears as a shadow hex as well, but is ST 10, DX 12, IQ 12, only harmed by fire, death spells, magic weapons, or illusions, attacks in HTH and drains 1 ST, DX, and IQ per hit from the victim, adding it to its own stats; victims reduced to 0 turn into shadows-ghasts like it; if not recover in 12 turns.

various magic items including a wand of "chill sleep" (as per freeze spell, wizards only), and shadow ring (create shadow hex around self) and a few other exotic items ("jewels of darkness" t hat when smashed summon a freezing hex of shadow that does fire-like damage, but is actually cold),

12. An encounter with a 6-hex "wyrm" (presumably a wingless dragon) with ST 35, DX 12, IQ 12, move 8/16, damage 3d-2, armor 6.

[larsdangly]

That's the stuff; groovy, baby!

[JLV]

@ David L. Pulver:

Man! I'd LOVE to see that written up and revised by you now, given your extra 38 years of experience and knowledge of the ITL rules! I sincerely hope you do so -- it would be a fantastic "fan" dungeon, even if SJG didn't do anything with something like that. Plus, honestly, since you wrote it that way, you are clearly on the brink of a major solo adventure right there!

Alas, all my original gaming material was lost in a divorce about 12 years ago -- I had stuff for Call of Cthulhu going back to 1981, and TFT going back to 1977 in there... I've been slowly rebuilding the pertinent portions of my game collection (forget the over 1000 war games dating back to 1967; I've got a couple of dozen now), especially my CoC and TFT materials. But all the original work; the dungeons, the wilderness maps (I had a lovely colored-pencil map of an area of five major islands loosely based on a map for a PBM fantasy game I saw in The Space Gamer) drawn on shelf-lining paper), the castles, the haunted houses, the maps of parts of Arkham -- all long gone (and presumably destroyed) by my unlamented ex (more fool her -- the wargames alone were worth a minimum of $5K, had she bothered to sell them). So I will never stumble across a "forgotten dungeon of yore" like you lucky sods keep doing!

[larsdangly]

I'm up to my ears in bits of paper from my decades of notes on my main TFT setting, and focusing first on getting the NPC's into a computer, with standardized formats and removing stuff from my house rules (so its all official TFT-compatible). Here is a couple more goof balls who I rediscovered in my notes on the tangled warrens of Bok Sehir's lower class neighborhoods:

Inago de Salamanca: Possibly the world’s most gifted and dedicated rat catcher, with a lemonade stand as a side business
ST 10 DX 12 (14) IQ 19 MA 10 (12)
Talents: Axe/Mace, Thrown Weapons, Running, Silent Movement, Alertness, Animal Handler, Naturalist, Business Sense, Tracking, Mechanician
Gear: Hammer (really a twisted lead pipe; usually thrown; 1d+1), lamps, torches and small nets
Job: Rat Catcher Residence: Shack behind 'The Glade' [a bar] Haunts: Any city district
Notes: Inago is always accompanied by his brilliant and well-trained terrier, Scrappy Doo (see Beasts, below). Inago’s daily business consists of clearing rats from the basements and walls of wealthy homes and businesses, and selling flagons of the tartest lemonade. But he and Scrappy also find their way into all manner of plots and adventures, as their tremendous skills, and knowledge of and access to the city make them more useful than most expert thieves or spies in many situations.

Scrappy Doo: Brilliant trained terrier of the rat catcher, Inago de Salamanca.
ST 5 DX 16 IQ 7 MA 12 (14)
Talents: Running, Swimming, Detect Traps, Alertness, Acute Hearing, Silent Movement, Spy, Recognize Value, Climbing, Naturalist, Tracking, Thief
Gear: Jaunty collar; Bite attack: 1d-2
Job: Rat Catcher’s assistant Residence: Inago's home Haunts: Always with Inago
Notes: Scrappy Doo has limited intelligence by human standards, but is a gifted genius in his own milieu. His gifts are represented by a list of talents that does not conform to the normal rules governing IQ requirements (noted by showing them in italics). He has effectively perfect knowledge of the city and most sections of the underlying sewers, basements and ruins. He follows Iago’s complex commands on a roll of 4d vs. an IQ sum of 26.