I'm looking for published material that can give me ideas, inspiration and maybe monsters and other challenges to put inside.
What I'm looking for is roughly like Mines of Moria in LOTR, but I really don't want it to feel like a big steal from the book, just the overall atmosphere and theme.
I don't care what book it is, as long as it talks about dwarven kingdoms and strongholds, IT CAN BE FROM EVERY EDITION YOU WANT.
Thank you!
I actually thought that the best resource for you would be Moria from LotR. You can tweek it just enough that there really would be no similarity between Moria and your stronghold at all. When you really look at it, the only "unique" thing about Moria was the presense of the Balrog. Just leave out the Balrog and maybe change the "standard" monster from goblin/orc to whatever else you want and you got a great thing going.
If you don't have a copy of Moria, I recommend it as it is just chocked FULL of inspiration and ideas. Another decent resource is "Kingdom of the Dwarves" by Robb Walsh. You can also get some cool ideas from the Dwarf Army Book for the Warhammer Game. Warhammer has some very unique ideas for their Dwarves not always included in D&D.
For example, dwarves don't use real "magic" per se but rather are experts in the magic of runes. Their wizards are called "Runesmiths" and it is in carving the various runes that bestow magic into an item. Therefore, instead of casting spells, the dwarves have a ton of weapons, armor, objects that are enchanted with numerous runes giving them powers such as the Rune of Protection, the Rune of Invulnerability, the Rune of Cleaving, the Rune of Might, the Rune of Fire, etc.
Dwarves, being expert miners and craftsmen, are also naturally skilled at engineering technques. Therefore they may protect their strongholds will all manner of clever traps of a mechanical nature such as pits and sliding doors. In Warhammer, they even formed an Engineers Guild that would maintain the powerful weapons of war unique to the dwarves such as Flame Cannons, Organ Guns, Gyrocopters and hand guns. Wouldn't it be interesting for a team of players to stumble across an abandoned engieering project and try to get it to work again?
Going back to Moria, the world of Khazad-dum (The Mansion of the Dwarves) was a tremendous feat of architecture including secret entrances, long endless passages, chambers, chasms, bridges, stairways, inclines, traps, drinking halls and of course the mines. The whole city was centered around the a great central hall which was similar to a town square and used for meetings and marketplaces. All manner of stores and shops opened off of this enormous hall.
Repitition would be the key as many rooms and chambers throughout the stronghold would serve similar functions in case one has overcome by enemies or damaged in some manner. There would possibly be countless numbers of Armories, Ceremonial Chambers, Crypts, Dwarf-lodgings, Dungeons, Gathering Halls, Guard-Chambers and Treasuries. The palace for the "king" or local lord would be quite prominent as well.
The dwarves could have abandoned their stronghold for any number of reasons:
- the mines were emptied of ore
- a plague/war wiped out the main population and the survivors could no longer support a stronghold of this size
- the dwarves were betrayed from within by one of their own kind and they simply adandoned the place
- one of the dwarven engineering projects may have gone haywire forcing the dwarves to leave (like nuclear fallout or something)
Sections of the stronghold can now be overrun by any type of monster you want. The place could also be haunted by evil spirits (one of my favorite themes). Maybe a powerful dragon now takes residence in the lower deeps? Do I hear a new city of the drow? Maybe illithids or aboleths have created a new slave city with the former dwarven inhabitants now serving as labotimized mindless slaves?
Hope this helps. Good luck!
I've run several adventures similar to this and have always had fun doing it. The nice thing is that you can make the stronghold as small or as large as you wish.
I actually thought that the best resource for you would be Moria from LotR. You can tweek it just enough that there really would be no similarity between Moria and your stronghold at all. When you really look at it, the only "unique" thing about Moria was the presense of the Balrog. Just leave out the Balrog and maybe change the "standard" monster from goblin/orc to whatever else you want and you got a great thing going.
If you don't have a copy of Moria, I recommend it as it is just chocked FULL of inspiration and ideas. Another decent resource is "Kingdom of the Dwarves" by Robb Walsh. You can also get some cool ideas from the Dwarf Army Book for the Warhammer Game. Warhammer has some very unique ideas for their Dwarves not always included in D&D.
For example, dwarves don't use real "magic" per se but rather are experts in the magic of runes. Their wizards are called "Runesmiths" and it is in carving the various runes that bestow magic into an item. Therefore, instead of casting spells, the dwarves have a ton of weapons, armor, objects that are enchanted with numerous runes giving them powers such as the Rune of Protection, the Rune of Invulnerability, the Rune of Cleaving, the Rune of Might, the Rune of Fire, etc.
Dwarves, being expert miners and craftsmen, are also naturally skilled at engineering technques. Therefore they may protect their strongholds will all manner of clever traps of a mechanical nature such as pits and sliding doors. In Warhammer, they even formed an Engineers Guild that would maintain the powerful weapons of war unique to the dwarves such as Flame Cannons, Organ Guns, Gyrocopters and hand guns. Wouldn't it be interesting for a team of players to stumble across an abandoned engieering project and try to get it to work again?
Going back to Moria, the world of Khazad-dum (The Mansion of the Dwarves) was a tremendous feat of architecture including secret entrances, long endless passages, chambers, chasms, bridges, stairways, inclines, traps, drinking halls and of course the mines. The whole city was centered around the a great central hall which was similar to a town square and used for meetings and marketplaces. All manner of stores and shops opened off of this enormous hall.
Repitition would be the key as many rooms and chambers throughout the stronghold would serve similar functions in case one has overcome by enemies or damaged in some manner. There would possibly be countless numbers of Armories, Ceremonial Chambers, Crypts, Dwarf-lodgings, Dungeons, Gathering Halls, Guard-Chambers and Treasuries. The palace for the "king" or local lord would be quite prominent as well.
The dwarves could have abandoned their stronghold for any number of reasons:
- the mines were emptied of ore
- a plague/war wiped out the main population and the survivors could no longer support a stronghold of this size
- the dwarves were betrayed from within by one of their own kind and they simply adandoned the place
- one of the dwarven engineering projects may have gone haywire forcing the dwarves to leave (like nuclear fallout or something)
Sections of the stronghold can now be overrun by any type of monster you want. The place could also be haunted by evil spirits (one of my favorite themes). Maybe a powerful dragon now takes residence in the lower deeps? Do I hear a new city of the drow? Maybe illithids or aboleths have created a new slave city with the former dwarven inhabitants now serving as labotimized mindless slaves?
Hope this helps. Good luck!
Thank you, that was extremely helpful!
a few questions:
when you say "a copy of Moria", do you mean, there's a book about the mines, or the actual chapters in The Fellowship of The Ring? (I'm sorry about my ignorance)
is Kingdom of the Dwarves" by Robb Walsh a D&D book, a fiction novel, or other fantasy RPG system supplement?
If I actually use repitition as you say, wouldn't that be boring for the PC's? I mean, why would I intentionally try and build a great big city of Dwarves that my players won't actually explore, and if they do, they'll do it just because they think they should, and not because it really draws them in. I think that it's smarter to actually leave the endless corridors and passages to fiction fantasy than to RPG, since it can be very tiring to go through dozens of identical rooms in an actual game.
What do you think?
"Kingdom of the Dwarves" is simply a short book of fiction from 1980. Also long since out of print but you can probably find a copy on occasion from eBay as well. Another GREAT resource online is www.abebooks.com which deals with TONS of out-of-print works available through independent booksellers.
"Repetition" does not necessarily have to be a bad thing. Obviously you don't want to reveal this to the players "Oh, you stumble across yet ANOTHER storeroom." That indeed would be boring. Rather, this helps explain in a more "realistic" manner why the dwarves would have had so many rooms, etc. Most players will never explore them all. That would be quite an enormous task. However, this is entirely up to the players and you. How detailed do you want to go?
More likely, unless there is some uber-powerful central authority (like a Balrog
) to unite all of the various factions in the stronghold, certain sections of the dwarven complex would be taken over by a number of opposing forces. In this corner we have the dark elves. In this corner we have the troglodytes. In this corner we have the hobgoblins. Etc. Each race of monster would take over the various dwarven rooms and adapt them to their own purposes. They would of course defend their territories with a passion otherwise they would be extinct too. Perhaps occasional border skirmishes occur in the frontier portions of the mines and tunnels between two or more opposing monster clans.It was a blast.
For those of youu who have never played dwarf fortress, I apologize for not making any sense.