The Slumbering Castle Devlog 4: The Dragon and Secrets

The Dragon

Since the "clock" of stamina is tracked by players, there is hopefully a bit of mental bandwidth budget to determine where the dragon is and track it's movement when characters are delving through the castle's cursed lands.  Event rolls happen roughly every 20 minutes in real time or whenever characters move between areas.  Roll a 1D4 and 1D6 at the same time.  

Event Rolls:

1. Characters lose 1 Stamina
2. Characters lose 1D6 Stamina
3. The Dragon flies in a random direction (1-6 Directions)
4. The Dragon flies to a random area (1-6 Areas)

A sketch of the kingdom divided into areas

Behavioral Absolutes: The Dragon never leaves the kingdom.  The Dragon does not retreat from battle.  The Dragon attacks all non-sleeping outsiders, and will attempt to tire them out or kill them.  The Dragon does not kill any Sleepers.  The Dragon avoids destroying any part of the Castle.  The Dragon finds human flesh distasteful and avoids biting or eating unless he is extremely desperate.  

Rough flowchart of Dragon actions

Dragon Behaviors
Tracking - The Dragon begins tracking the character's movements. I'm still tinkering with different ways to have this background function run once it starts.  
Trapping - The Dragon flies around the perimeter of the kingdom looking for signs of entry or any sort of path left by characters.  If he finds this he lies in wait for their return, if not he flies to the Castle and lies in wait there.
Fighting - The Dragon immediately flies into the air where he cannot be hit with melee attacks and most projectiles will be deflected by his beating wings.  The Dragon spams fire if there is no wooden structures nearby.  If characters are out in the open (a field of thorns) he will spend 2 rounds drawing a large ring of flames around them to trap them in.  If a character deals more than 15 damage to the Dragon in a single round, the Dragon will single them out, attempting to grab them and hold them to his mouth while he spits flame.  This does enough damage to instantly kill any mortals.  When fighting a group he knows to be dangerous he may begin the battle by dropping a tree or boulder upon them as a surprise attack.  The Dragon learns the patterns of how groups navigate through the castle the more times they have been and will always adapt to these patterns.  The Dragon can be tricked by refusing to abide by past patterns (leaving a yarn path behind you but leaving through a different way, etc.)

Secrets of the Slumbering Castle

Skip this part if you care at all about spoilers.

The Law Stone - The Law Stone describes the laws of the nameless kingdom including the succession of monarchs.  The heir to a monarch is their eldest child by default but can become anyone who defeats them in combat initiated or agreed to by the heir.  
The Goddess - She is a goddess of sleep, protection, witchery and the home and the former patron of this kingdom.  The locals of nearby villages still worship her, though with great fear of her wrath.  Her name is rarely spoken in these villages.
The Witch-Priest - The King's eldest child was the high priest of the Goddess.  They were challenged to a duel by their younger brother who defeated them, taking the title of heir.  The Princeling then manipulated their aging father to lock them up in the dungeons beneath the Castle.  During the night of a great feast the Witch-Priest escaped the dungeon, quietly killing two guards and under cloak of invisibility made their way to the treasury, taking enough gold to make a large sacrifice to the Goddess.  The enchantments were then made.
The Princeling - The Witch-priest's final curse was placed upon the Princeling and new heir to the kingdom.  The Princeling is the Dragon, cursed by an invocation which targets whoever the current heir is.  Killing the Princeling causes the title of Heir to pass to the slayer.  

The Slumbering Castle Devlogs: 1, 2, 3, 4 

The Slumbering Castle Devlog 3: Brainstorming

Brainstorming Places

The Slumbering Castle will need plenty of hazardous places, and places with treasure to be looted.  In an adventure with basically no NPCs, I also want to have quite a bit of environmental storytelling.  To this end, I went about brainstorming things I want to be included somewhere in the castle and its surrounding kingdom:

In the Castle:

1. Dry moat surrounding the castle with a rotting drawbridge leading across (the drawbridge has iron reinforcement bars beneath the rotting wood which can be walked over somewhat safely) a rope leads down into the moat which is filled now with thorns.
2. Collapsed section of wall with claw marks and scorch marks on the stones.  (Plenty of crushed bones) A large felled tree has been used as a makeshift bridge over the moat here.
3. Magical talking object (Maybe a mirror) hidden in a deep, dangerous location.  
4. Well with a ledge and secret passage leading to the alcove where the offering was made.
5. Castle kitchen where uncooked lobsters sleep alongside the cooks.
6. Undercroft leading to an ancient cave around which the castle was built (A holy site of the Goddess)
7. Castle stables.  A collapsing hayloft hangs just past the entrance.
8. Great Hall (Fallen into sleep during a feast.  Hot spot for dream illusions, one of the most dangerous locations in the Castle)
9. Cellar room with barrels of foul mead.  A guard sleeps here with a keyring and a wooden cup.
10. Dungeon with crumbling tunnels.  The deepest cell is empty with an open door.  Two skeletal guards lay slain before it with blood staining the ground.
11. Treasury (Ceiling is close to falling in)
12. Armory (All sorts of weapons and gear, much of which is rusting)
13. Chancellor's chambers filled with great wealth.  Letters discussing the king's mental decline can be found here as well as letters with the Princeling plotting his rise to power.  
14. Princeling's chambers (love letters from admirers, cool magic sword?)
15. Heir's chambers. (Unicorn's horn, books of magical lore, the sacred text of the Goddess, relics)  The floor is buckling and crumbling.
16. King's chambers filled with tapestries and fine things. 
17. Barracks.
18. Invocation channeling focus for the Dragon's curse.  (I don't know what this is yet.) 

George Henry Boughton

Somewhere in the Kingdom: 

1. Campsite outside the kingdom where a company left much of their supplies before venturing in. 
2. Ditch surrounding the ancient boundaries of the kingdom which marks the edge of the enchantments
3. Guard post and rotting gatehouse at the entrance to the kingdom
4. Yarn path leading out, left by a sleeping party (leads through multiple zones)
5. The Law Stone (A stone whereupon all the laws of the kingdom are recorded, including the specifics of succession to the throne)  The Law Stone was used as an Invocation Focus for the invocation which forever erased the names of the kingdom, its monarch and heir.  All references to the kingdom's name appear scratched out.
6. Numerous sleeping parties and the supplies they brought with them and notes they took
7. Ancient circle of rough stone obelisks.  
8. Runic spell circle.  A wizard sleeps within.  
9. Barrow of ancient kings where the dragon rests and hoards the bones of intruders it has killed.
10. Pond.  (Fisher's cabin)
11. Inn.  (Cellar with a lockbox.  Rotting second story with numerous holes where heavy things have fallen through.)
12. Cobbler.
13. Stables. (Dreams of wide pastures, bright sunlight, apple trees, information can be found about the orchard)
14. Crumbling watchtower.
15. Temple to the local Goddess.
16. Apple orchard.  The trees have grown wildly due to the plant growth spell and produce large apples.
17. Alcove where the offering was made to the Goddess and the enchantments were laid.
18. Burnt corpses with claw marks of the dragon nearby.
19. Shepherd's hut.  A small stone wall pens in sleeping sheep.
20. Barn (Rotting away and at risk of collapsing)
21. Gardens. (Overgrown with flowers and root vegetables)
22. Location of a fight between two adventuring parties.  The winning group fell asleep shortly after.
23. Small Ancient Quarry.
24. Hidden Grotto.
25. Rock Pile. (A good place for hiding)
26. Foxes asleep in a foxhole whose dreams leak outwards.
27. Path of moldy breadcrumbs leading out of the kingdom and to a small hiding place.
28. Map to a location filled with heavy treasure left behind by an adventuring party. 

What I'm Currently Working On

• Building an overloaded event table for time spent in the Castle which models the Dragon's random movement through areas as well as steady stamina loss.  
• Creating a set of universal behaviors for the Dragon as well as a flow chart determining how it acts, how effectively it can find adventurers once it has smelled them or their torches, traps it may set for them, how its behavior changes upon sequential visits, etc.

The Slumbering Castle Devlogs: 1, 2, 3 

Current Inspirations
Cahir Castle - This is a cool place I visited around 2 years ago.  I like having reference images for any environment I'm working on.  I found some reference pictures of it here, here and here.  I want to use fairly realistic proportions for the Slumbering Castle and avoid having grand gothic architecture that veers from the fairy tale-ish vibe. 
Pagans Hill Roman Temple
How Level Design Can Tell a Story by GMTK

The Slumbering Castle Devlog 2: Challenges and Enchantments

Challenges in the Slumbering Castle

There is only 1 enemy to fight in the Slumbering Castle¹.  The place is empty.  Initially I pondered including all kinds of enemies² but these all seemed to dilute the vision I had.  This is a quiet and empty place, a largely peaceful place.  There are no factions or hordes of enemies to overcome.  Despite this, I want the Slumbering Castle to be scary.  I want it to be dangerous and terrifying.  So the somewhat unique challenge is finding ways to create challenge without combat.  This is a problem I'm still working on but here are ideas I have so far:

1. The Death-Sleep (Sleep-Death?): This is a working title for the sleep which overwhelms in this place.  Basically the longer you stay, the closer you come to a sleep that cannot be woken from.
2. The Thorns: Thorns must be actively cut or burned to clear paths and regrow within a few minutes.  Carefully moving through the thorns cuts movement speed by 3/4, and moving at normal speed deals minor damage.
3. The Fog: You can only see clearly within 20ft.  Torches can be seen from 40ft.  Large flames can be seen from 60ft.  The fog also prevents divination magic targeting anything within.
4. Navigational Hazards: Getting lost is the end.  So is getting stuck in a dry moat.  So is a rampart or tunnel entrance collapsing if you are in the wrong place.
5. Dream Illusions: I'm on the fence about this but haven't ruled out the idea that places with large concentrations of sleepers may have distortions where the dreams begin to infect the real world through powerful illusions.  
6. The Dragon: Unlike the Disney version of this fairy tale, the dragon is not an enemy to be slain but one to be avoided and hidden from.  Killing it will not help you.

Wilhelm Jordan

Enchantments in the Slumbering Castle

The Slumbering Castle will be written primarily to be used with Fire Tales RPG, so a secondary goal for this project is to utilize Fire Tales' magic systems³ for the enchantments.  The main enchantments, their current stats, and mechanical effects are as follows:

• Thorns and Fog (Spell - Nature: Shifting; Configuration: Land; Target: All; Duration: Century; Incantations: Mystify (Targets become surrounded by a layer of thick magical mist,
  and cannot be seen or sensed by scrying or detection magic for the duration.), Plant Growth (Plants targeted grow rapidly and regrow constantly for the duration.))
• These effects are part of the same spell and can potentially be dispelled or suppressed with spellcasting.
• Goddess' Curse (Appeal - Offering Magnitude: 10; Appeal Magnitude: 5)
• Mechanically stamina cannot be recovered and is lost over time.  When a character reaches 0 stamina they fall into immediate Death-sleep.
• The Dragon's Curse (Invocation - I want all heavy spoilers and details regarding the Dragon to be in the same post so I'm saving this for now.)

More Inspirations for the Slumbering Castle
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro - This is a very melancholic book with wonderful atmosphere that I was thinking about in relation to the castle recently.  It also has lots of magic fog.
The Eternal Ruins - This is a youtube channel and worldbuilding project with an upcoming RPG I am super excited for.  The artwork for this is excellent and seems to draw from similar sources as The Slumbering Castle but goes in a different direction tonally.

Next Steps
My plan is to start working on the map both for the castle and it's surroundings and brainstorm a large list of locations and points of interest.  I am currently planning to run an early playtest of the castle at a convention next month so I need to have something solid soon.

The Slumbering Castle Devlogs: 1, 2 

¹    The Dragon which I will explore my ideas for in a later devlog
²    thorn monsters, skeletal guardians, animated objects, feral rats, dream spirits
³     Spellcasting in Fire Tales uses targeting similar to Ars Magica with spell effects similar to Cairn and Knave 2E's brief spell descriptions.  Invocations are described in a prior post.  Divine appeals require ritual offerings and have their mechanical effects determined by the Firekeeper (Gamemaster).  

The Portal Fantasy Session 0 Marketplace

Each player has $(3D6 - 1) to purchase items their character happens to have in their pockets when they get spirited off to the magical realm.  Players go in a circle and may purchase as many things as they could reasonably stuff into their pockets or purse.  Once an item is purchased it is crossed off and no one else may purchase it.  Players may pool their money to buy items.

$1 Items
Fast Food Wrapper, Coupon, Old Receipt, Single Piece of Gum, Soda Can (empty), Scratch off lottery ticket

$3 Items
Mood Ring, Pack of Gum (15), Soda Can (full), Pack of Cigarettes (20), Can of Deodorant or Hairspray, Snack Size Doritos, Candy Bar, Glow Stick, Ring Pop

$5 Items
Sunglasses, Can of Spray Paint, Wrist Watch, Vape Pen (full), Lighter, Reusable Water Bottle, Balloons (30 pack), Gym Whistle, Can of instant coffee (30 uses)

$7 Items
Smart phone (no charge), Flashlight (full charge), Pocket Knife, Painkillers (100), Solar-Powered Calculator

$10 Items
First Aid Kit, Compass, Gameboy (cartridge loaded with pokemon blue version, full charge), 1 Handheld Two-Way Radio

$20 items
Smart phone (full charge, no reception/data), Purse filled with any of the $3, $5 or $7 items, Portable hand crank generator

The Slumbering Castle Devlog 1

Half a century ago a king ruled here - The ruler of a very small but ancient domain.  The king had a princeling son, and a court bard, and a retinue of servants and vassals.  He ruled from a castle which had grown out from its ancient foundation.

The castle and the town it stands over is a ruin.  Heavy mists shroud the entire place.  The stones are overgrown with thorn and flower.  And beneath the fog and bramble, resting without end in their stations, are the sleepers.  The names of the castle, its monarch and princeling are all gone - stricken from all record and memory by invocation.  

 

Every so often, usually in the springtime, a group will venture into the castle looking for treasure unguarded by the sleeping sentries, unwanted by the nobles and courtesans in their pleasant dreams.  Most of these folk never return.  

In a nearby town, rules a regent.  Folk from the town don't trust coin taken from the castle.  They will say it's cursed.  But further afield, no one knows or cares of such things.  The layered curses of the castle don't go further than the bramble forest after all.  

So new folk who hear the rumors will come as they have before.

Trina Schart Hyman

This is the Slumbering Castle. This is perhaps my favorite adventure location/dungeon idea I've ever had. Through a series of posts I plan to document my process for completing this adventure and reveal some of its secrets.

Current Inspirations
Sleeping Beauty
The City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky - This is the clearest inspiration for how I want this to run and where I got the ideas from outside of the original fairy tale. In this book there is a place in the city that is quarantined with powerful magical runes to prevent a curse within from spreading to the rest of the world. The cursed district was once the wealthiest ward of the city and is filled with treasures, so foolish individuals sometimes go there looking for magical artifacts and treasure to be sold. The longer you stay, the more pull you feel towards joining in a mythical endless feast, the more urge you feel to dance to imaginary music and eat invisible food. I can't really describe it in a way that does it justice but I'd highly recommend the book.
Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian - I've never had the chance to play any of these games but I love them visually. The emptiness and beauty of ruined places are aspects I want to capture in The Slumbering Castle.

The Dolorous Chapel Bell

John Dickson Batten

An old ruinous chapel, several miles from the nearest civilized folk.  The stone brick walls are covered in moss and ivy.  At midnight the chapel bell tolls of its own accord.  All who hear the bell may only speak in truths for the next day.  Oaths made under the tolling bell are unbreakable.

A graveyard of unmarked graves is surrounded by a low stone wall nearby.  A black dog (2-in-6 chance of being asleep) can be found here at all times and bites any it sees who enter the area.

The wooden door to the chapel is battered open.  Light seeps through ivy covered windows and holes in the roof.  The nave is littered with fallen debris from above.  Hidden beneath a broken pew is a leather tome bookmarked with a wilted rose.  The book is filled with blasphemous notes on summoning, including the true name of a demon.  Behind the altar is a set of chains and manacles staked between stone bricks and a leather bag filled with moldy bread and wolfsbane.  The stones around the altar have heavy long scratches as if the altar has been slid across them many times.

Beneath the altar is a rotting trap door leading 10 feet down to a stone crypt.  The crypt is a long thin passageway lined with grave niches.  The niches are filled with saintly relics and bones.  The floor is covered in ruined things, the nests of rats (1D4 Rat Swarms), and the bone filled armor of a long dead knight¹.  

 

At the far end of the crypt is a large sealed burial chamber.  Within are the bones of a dragon.

¹ the black dog will not stop any from burying the knight in the graveyard.

Running Downtime using Seasonal Phases

 

Warwick Goble

Seasons have 4 Seasonal Actions each representing about 3 weeks.  At the end of each Season, during the Seasonal Phase, you perform Seasonal Actions.  The number of Seasonal Actions taken is reduced for every 3 weeks (rounding up) spent traveling or adventuring.  Seasonal Actions can be anything from training (learning techniques, increasing skills), to research, to spreading rumors to working jobs.  

During the Seasonal Phase characters may also change alignment, and attributes.  When a player wants to increase attributes they must select two attributes and select one to be "reinforced" for each attribute starting with the reinforced one they roll a 1D6, on a roll of 5,6 they increase the attribute by one, on a roll of 3,4 the attribute remains the same, on a roll of 1,2 the attribute decreases by 1.  The reinforced attribute cannot decrease.

During the Winter Seasonal Phase, 5 Seasonal Turns are taken instead of 4.