Tower Of Tremors play report

Last Sunday I decided to run Tower Of Tremors for my girlfriend using The Black Hack rules. You can find Tower Of Tremors and lots of other material in Crypt Of Doom - A Compilation of Patreon Supported 2015 Material available both in pdf and print-on-demand.

This post has spoilers of the adventure, so proceed with your own risk.

My girlfriend rolled four characters.

John Wayne the warrior
Ragget The Wise the thief
Several Snakes the Cleric
Tittie the Conjurer

The band of four traveling adventurers arrived to a remote town, where they found out that tremors have started when a weird ancient metal tower activated one day. They were promised 500 GP if they can find out what is going on at the tower and stop the tremors. To the tower they ventured.

The tower is four storeys high and made of unknown metal. Next to the security door there is a buttoned panel with unknown alien symbols, and above the door is a crystal. Fell careful buttons pushed did nothing, so John Waybe decided to hit the crystal with his two-handed axe. He missed it few times, when Several Snakes jumped in and poked it with his 10 feet pole. "This is how you hit it", he instructed. John Wayne tried again and cracked the crystal into pieces. Nothing happened. Back to inspect the panel, which opens the security door after some button bashing. They enter the tower.

If the Warrior didn't break the crystal already, there would been a 50% change to get blasted by it when entering the tower. The effect would have been damage and system shock which results penalty to dexterity based actions.

The first room has no light except what comes from outside through the opened security door. Some metal panels on the ceiling are loose, and random electric wires spark. The frame of the tower is visible which you can pass. There are also two elevators; one going up, another going down. The Cleric lights a torch and they take the elevator down.

In the basement level there is the mounting of the tower's frame, and on the mounting there is a large crystal size of a pony. On the crystal different kinds of alien symbols scroll. They investigate the crystal ball, but only Tittie can understand, that when the alien symbol values reach the peak, then a tremor occurs, and the values go back down only to continue rising. John Wayne tries to destroy the crystal ball with his two-handed axe, but the crystal ball is too tough and thick so nothing happens. Back up they go and pass the frame to the other side of the room.

After the frame the room is lit with blinking red lights. There are two elevators, down and up. In the middle of the room there is a scorched skeleton and in the corner there is a turret. Tittie understands that the turret is some kind of a "lightning rod" that has shot the unfortunate adventure. At the end is a door. Carefully they pass the skeleton to the door, which is opened by several small bots.

These little bots have different operations in the tower. They say "beel plip bleep", but when attacking, they go "BRLOP BRLEEP BLROP".

Behind the door the corridor splits and they take the right path. In the end of this short corridor is a room furnished with cozy sofas and seats and there are few tables, too. Dim blue light and music are sedative; all save for soothing effects, and Conjurer Tittie fails falling asleep. John Wayne slaps him, but Tittie remains asleep. They leave the room carrying Tittie out. When they get out, Tittie wakes. She wonders why her cheek is aching. They go to the other junction, only to find a storage room.

There are several metal closets illuminated by light blue light. All closets are closed, and there is a button panel with alien symbols on buttons with each of the closets. John Wayne tries random button bashing, but nothing happens. Each of them decide to start to investigate them, and smart Tittie discovers how to open them! Seven closets have random stuff in them (I should have randomly generate these rewards, but didn't as I started to run this scenario without any preparation. I'll use random roleplaying book's treasure generator for these goods, only redressing items as scifi).

After a nice haul of stuff and treasures they go back to the room where a skeleton is and take the elevator down to a basement level, where the other side of the tower's mount is. Twenty small bots operate it, maybe fixing or maintaining. They decide to leave these bots alone and go back up to take the elevator to higher level.

Only alive alien remaining
operating a control panel.

In this room there are four cryogenic freezing pods. Two remain closed and inside are one dead alien in each. Two pods are opened, next to the other lies dead alien and from the second opened pod wet footprints go to the other side of the room bypassing the frame. Thief Ragget The Wise sneaks to take a peek, but alien who operates a control panel notices him! The alien reaches his upper appendices to his forehead and focuses on mentally blasting the Thief! Thief loses temporarily 3 points of Wisdom and 3 points of Intelligence, but aliens suggestive commands don't affect him. Ragget shoots an arrow at the alien wounding him. John Wayne the Warrior plunges to attack the alien and Conjurer Tittie shoots it with magic missile, except he fails the spell. Alien operates his control panel and summons three bots which climb the tower frame from down below. Ragget shoots the alien again, but it doesn't die yet. John Wayne swings his two-handed axe at the little bots trying to hit two of them (Warriors can hit as many opponents per turn as their level, but as a first level character he can attack only one opponent. But the player wanted to hit two, so I let her do it with a disadvantage) bashing them into bits!

Alien, almost dead, uses his control panel to electrocute John Wayne (Youtube example) who falls flat paralyzed. Several Snakes the Cleric smashes alien's head and kills him. Tittie out of her spells smashes the last bot with her staff.

THE END OF PART 1.

My player was too tired to continue, but there is still interesting places left for the next time, like robot room, bot recharge and repairs and of course the top floor...

Actually, I'll generate the random treasure from the storage room right now for the next time. Just a second, I'll fetch a rulesbook.

And back! I decided to use Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, because I have never used it. I have barely read it! Table 84, page 133, gives treasure types letters. There are 17 letters for individual and small lair treasures, so I'll roll 1d20 (ignoring result 18+) to determine which treasure type I use for each closet.

The treasures in these seven closets are:

CLOSET 1:

A scroll containing the following 7 spells: Wish (9), Fly (3), Reverse gravity (7),Forcecage (7), Invisibility, greater (4), Dimension door (4) The spells can be copied on Conjurer's spell book. If the spell is read from the scroll, the scroll burns and all the spells written on the scroll are lost. (This helped a lot determining the random spells)
A map of Carcosa
Curse. When this scroll is read the reader is cursed. He suffers +1 to all Dexterity rolls until the curse is lifted.

CLOSET 2:

40 SP, 1 platinum

CLOSET 3:

400 GP

CLOSET 4:

8 potions: Clairaudience, Unknown (Delusion), Unknown (Poison), Oil of Air elemental invulnerability, Fire resistance, Super heroism (Warrior) x2, Levitation.

CLOSET 5:

3 gems (1000 GP gem, 50 GP semi-precious, 100 GP fancy)
1 art object (10,000 GP)
Magic sword +1 (xp 400)

CLOSET 6:

7 Platinum

CLOSET 7:

Magic ring of Contrariness. Wearer is unable to agree with any idea, statement or action. Wearer's strength is 18.
Robe of eyes. Can see in any direction, also invisible. Advantage to tracking. Light spell can blind the robe.