Abomination Vaults: Reactive Dungeons

Hey folks! Something a little different today - my main game of Strength of Thousands is still going strong (we're in Chapter 2 of Book 3, I may post regarding Chapter 4, or Book 4 Chapter 1, some time in the near ish future), but I also recently finished running a one-on-one game of Abomination Vaults with my partner! I found myself making enough comments on reddit about it that I figured it would be best for me to just make a definitive post chronicling what worked (and here is my final reddit post).

Obviously, this post is absolutely filled with spoilers for Abomination Vaults. Be warned.

First things first, I created Adversity Rosters for each level, to make them easier to run reactively and give me a good at-a-glance reference sheet for what's nearby. I made copies of each of these to update live (and suggest you do the same, to keep track of what monsters/factions are still around - if you're using the Foundry VTT module this might not be necessary, but they can still be useful tools to orient yourself around each level):

• Book 1: The Ruins of Gauntlight (includes a table summary of Otari business/etc.)
• Book 2: Hands of the Devil
• Book 3: Eyes of Empty Death

The rest of this is basically a retrospective on my attempts to make the dungeon/world feel more reactive, going through how I approached things, what worked, and what didn't! Part 1 talks about set up (Proficiency Without Level, several quests at once, building out the town), and each other section talks about my specific efforts in each Book (we're not done with Book 3 yet, but I go through both what we've done so far and what's next!)

Setup: Creating an Open World

Otari
By WillOBrien on DeviantArt

First off, because there's just one of her, we are using Proficiency Without Level, she is dual-classed as a rogue and fighter (which the CRB explicitly calls out as too powerful - excellent for her first time playing RPGs) with a Cleric side-kick, we started with my conversion of The Delian Tomb which meant she had about half a level of Experience going in, and I offered her other quests from Troubles In Otari and the Beginner Box in case she wanted to take a break from the Dungeon.

I probably wouldn't use PwL with a full group in this dungeon, there are too many sweet boss fights that would lose a little of their oomph, but I highly recommend both 1. using XP for this one and 2. offering side quests/etc. to let parties level ahead if they're having difficulty (it's a tough dungeon!). Along similar lines, unless your party is very experienced, I would not adjust anything if there are more than 4 players, but would either allow them to over-level more easily, give them allies/hirelings, or adjust things down for a smaller party.

Town Investment

Because I started with the Delian Tomb, I accidentally had two Blacksmiths - Jago from the Delian Tomb, and Carman from this adventure! Because I knew Carman would be important, I had them be brothers that lived together with Jago's daughter Ylga. To help create a bit more of a reason the party might want to turn Carman over at the end of Book 2, I had Carman be the one that sold out Jago (though the party didn't learn this until much later), as well as later sold out Ylga to the Voidglutton...

More broadly, it's really important with this AP to ground the players in Otari and make them care about it! The main structural way I did this was to make them spend a day training to level up. This made them:

1. Go out and find an NPC to train with (I used the Church/Garrison/etc. tags as guidance)
2. Spend time in the town, giving me more opportunities to make them interact with various NPCs (not just their trainers)

Paired with making them play out their shopping/etc., this meant they built relationships with Brelda at the Rockfish (where they stayed), Jago/Carman for their blacksmithing/rune-transferring needs (they loved Jago, hated Carman), several other shopkeepers including Wrin, Yinyasmera, and Keleeno (who I made the main way to order things from Absalom), and Mayor Menheme and his kids (he checked in on the party a lot, especially in Book 2 but even beforehand).

Hirelings

You might notice in my Otari Breakdown, I include random tables to roll for Hirelings! (Note: this table represents the end of Book 1, at the start I would've probably not offered any chance of the more powerful NPCS). This is a very old school tradition that I am very fond of, and definitely isn't as essential in all games - while this is definitely better in PwL, there's still a pretty decent power disparity between levels. In any AV campaign, however, I think Hirelings can do the following:

1. Provide support for struggling low level parties
2. Tip the balance enough so that the party isn't  instantly screwed if several encounters combine together (as they more than occasionally do with my style of GMing...)
3. Provide fodder for the GM to kill to show how scary things are (and create real emotional stakes for the players as these weaker adventurers die or almost die before them)
4. Help carry gear or fill other gaps in the party (language barriers, detect magic, lockpicking, etc.)
5. Provide NPCs with competing motivations to play off the players
6. Create a sense of progression as old NPCs either grow/develop (read: level up, but also grow emotionally if they start out either chaotic stupid or anxious/nervous) and new NPCs become available in response to the party's exploits drawing their attention!
7. Provide an in-built way for replacement characters to join the party

I recommend keeping hirelings at (at least) 2 levels lower than the party so things don't get too out of balance.

In my game in particular, there were three cool things that happened because we used Hirelings:

1. During the finale of Book 1, our hero rallied the townsfolk and every able bodied individual to fight the cultists who had kidnapped Ylga! That was only possible because I already has this list of people prepped
2. Three of the characters who fought with them became pretty important - one of them (Flash, a burglar who eventually took a sorcery archetype as she levelled) is still with the party, and fills a pretty useful niche! Plus there've been some fun plot things that only happened because she was there
3. The other two (Sylvie, a pretty competent level 1 Bodyguard, and Ken, a pretty useless but arrogant level 0 Torchbearer) formed the basis for an adventurers guild that our hero led, guided, and even took on a little side-adventure to clear out the Fishing Camp from Troubles in Otari

I didn't plan any of that! Just kinda happened from having other adventurers flock to the town due to tales of our hero's heroics!

Active Elements

Dungeons have the potential to become really repetitive and predictable! The best way to counter that is to throw in unexpected events that disrupt the players routines (i.e. "the rogue sneaks ahead, listens in, and the others slowly follow to charge in and fight, after which they spend 10-20 minutes to heal and carry on"). Random encounters are a great option (here is one persons take on them), but not the only one!

I actually did roll for random encounters using the Angry GM's Tension Pool, but (other than on levels 8-9 that do have in-built encounter tables) I either pulled a nearby creature or introduced some other non-combat complication.

I went with pulling more active, external parties from the Abomination Vaults GM Guide created by Rob Lundeen (credited as the Developer of all 3 books, and one of the writers for book 2) - specifically Cultists during Book 1 and Bounty Hunters during Book 2. I did actually return to random encounters for Book 3 since they had built in tables, and it honestly felt like there was enough going on that I didn't need more people for the party to deal with.

Ultimately, though, the most important thing for making the dungeon feel active is having the existing denizens react realistically! For example, as you'll see in the recap below, Urevian on Level 7 devised some devious plans to trick the party...

Another cool resource along these lines that I found is Abomination Vaults: Expanded that has some interesting new or fleshed out sections! I didn't use it for this run, but could see doing so if I run this campaign again. Someone also made NPC Maps as handouts for the players!

Recap - A Reactive Dungeon

The rest of this is just a recap of our campaign! If you're interested, read on! There's probably some ideas in here worth stealing, especially if you want examples for what a more open game looks like. If not, no hard feelings, thanks for getting this far! 

Book 1 Summary - The Ruins of Gauntlight

Level 1: Our heroes delved into the ruins, killed most of the mitflits (other than Boss Skrawng himself), and eventually cleared out the haunts (though much later). Importantly, they made friends with Tangletop (the Spookywisp) and used him as a guide/translator on the 2nd level.

Level 2: After killing the undead and scalathrax, they delved into Level 2, allied with the Morlocks (after skirmishing with them slightly and rescuing the Osprey Club thieves), and killed basically everything else on this level. As they came back up one day, they met their first Cultists, who had begun exploring areas of the 1st level that the party hadn't cleared...

Level 3: They met the Morlock Ghoul Augrael and left on neutral terms. They slowly killed all the ghouls, but Tangletop died and the others came close...Later on, they met and freed Korlok the Devil as well, and they recovered tons of books for Morlibint. They met the ghost of Otari, and briefly snuck downstairs and saw Jaul (but ultimately retreated before fighting anything).

Interlude (Beginner Box): The party took a break from the dungeon after losing Tangletop and took the blacksmith's daughter Ylga, who really wanted to be an adventurer but was too young for anything too scary, below Otari Fishery to deal with the rats/kobolds within! They ended up killing all the kobolds, but didn't go finish off the dragon or other scary creatures.

Level 4: Mostly through luck, they killed Volluk (finishing off the worms with beads of fireball) pretty quickly, rescued Lasda, and retreated to town to gather info on Jaul and the strange creatures they found. When they returned, they killed Jaul, and cleared most of the rest of the level. As they returned to the surface, they noticed even more cultists hanging around, both in town and in the dungeon.

Finale: Things kicked off when, after killing Volluk and rescuing Lasda, the party retreated to town to research the Voidglutton (smart) and level up (remember, I made this take a day of training). I found a line of text in Book 1 D9 that said "These effects return if both Volluk and the voidglutton survive and they are given several days to find and install a new victim. If they do so, this should be an NPC whose kidnapping spurs the heroes into action!" Volluk was certainly dead, but there were all these cultists of Nhimbaloth, desperately hoping to prove themselves...

So, the cultists approached Carman, who they knew had already betrayed Jago by selling him out to the goblins (he's easy to get talking while drunk), and he once again sold out his family, this time allowing them to kidnap sweet little Ylga! Nothing was more perfectly suited to set our heroes on the warpath.

The cultists were numerous, and they had summoned hordes of undead minions, so in order to move quickly the party would need numbers. They sent out the call through their various friends and contacts to rally every blade available to their cause, to charge into the dungeon and save Ylga! At several points those allies broke off, leaving only the party to face the Voidglutton (and Ylga's father Jago to grab her from its clutches while the fight raged on). Eventually, they prevailed.

Book 2 Summary - Devilish Dealings

Setup/Cleanup: With Ylga saved, our heroes turned their vengeance towards Carman, who had not only stolen the very blade they needed to progress but also almost gotten his niece killed for his own selfish reasons. They easily defeated him, and after very nearly executing him they instead turned him over to Captain Longsaddle to hold until he could be brought to trial.

Once he was dealt with, our heroes focused on Ylga - she was, to put it mildly, doing poorly. The trauma of getting kidnapped by her uncle, held in the dark, and almost killed by a light-sucking aberrant horror. Her previous zeal for adventuring was understandably a bit dulled, and she seldom talked. She and Jago ended up moving in with the Menhemes for a time, as Ylga's room was too triggering to be in (since that's where she was taken from). Dorianna ended up taking on a lot of her caretaking while Jago was at work and the party was adventuring, but the party checked in pretty consistently to see how she was doing. (This allowed them a great way to notice Dorianna's slow decline...)

Eventually, the party gathered the rest of the founders items and descended below!

Level 5: The party explored pretty carefully, killing whatever they encountered (not a lot of RP on this level). The toughest fight wwas against the Shanrigol Behemoth, which they accidentally fought early - they all almost died, and Flash started to burn up as her latent Sorcerer powers began to burn through here. They also had to basically kite the Black Pudding all the way back to the center Gauntlight tower which was fun, and blindfolded themselves to fight the basilisks! They left Chafkhem in his room and made their way downstairs (though not before meeting Garggin Lowdelver, a criminal masquerading as law enforcement looking for Cynemi on level 7).

Level 6: The party's first big encounter was the Battle of the Bands with Shadow Malice! It almost turned bad, but they managed to smooth things over at the end with some good RP. They struck off to kill Jafaki, which obviously turned some of the other denizens against them, but orchestrated the duel between Murschen and Vischari to distract both from Jafaki's death and their own liberation of the three prisoners. Along the way they killed everything else south of the elementals, who they tried and failed to ritually return to their home.

Level 7: The party defeated most of the fleshwarps easily, met Szek, and made a beline to for the Denizen of Leng so they could free Dorianna from its curse. On the way back up they clocked a couple places that they'd left alone but Garggin had dealt with...

Interlude (Fishing Camp): With several extremely hurt folks to take care of, and a ton of fledgling adventurers who were having trouble getting their shit together, our heroes decided to solve three problems at once by guiding those adventurers through clearing the Fishing Camp they'd been given for fighting kobolds - this way they could teach them a thing or two while being on hand to step in if things got rough (my partner actually played all these lv1-3 adventurers, but we said the real party could step in and trivialize things at any time), giving them a home base to operate out of, and giving the rescued captives a place to recover from their injuries. It really demonstrated how far our heroes had come!

Level 7 (Again): As they celebrated the new Adventurers Guild Lodge, the town was attacked again, this time by a Spectral Devil! In addition, several graves were overturned, including Tangletops... They found "Tangletop" (really a Memento Devil), who kept an eye on the party and tried to convince them to help Urevian. The party killed most of the devils (other than the Erinyes, who they just didn't have the ranged capabilities to deal with), went back upstairs to kill the Hydra/Sarglagon, and tricked Urevian's wall into 

Finale: As detailed in the book, Urevian made his pitch to the party: "Trade me the soul of Carman Rajani - who you already hate, betrayed his own family, and put people you care about dearly in danger - and I will tell you give you whatever information I can, leave with all my minions, and even clear the stairs down for you so you can approach what lies below stealthily if you wish (rather than using the extremely loud/creaky elevator)." The party already knew that this was the deal from Urevian's other servants, and they had been pretty wishy washy up to this point, with the Cleric fervently arguing against dealing with a devil, Flash the rogue/sorcerer hireling wanting Carman dead, and our hero being much more conflicted.

Unfortunately, they took too long, and Garggin Lowdelver appeared with Carman's 1 HP form in toe. He would trade Carman for their quarry Cynemi and a horde of hellish treasure. The deal went south, however, and soon our heroes were caught in the crossfire! They ducked into a side room, waited out the fight, and then moved in to clean up. Even with all the surviving devils on the level, Urevian was beaten, so he fled, and "Tangletop" turned on the party. There was a confusing chase through the halls that ultimately ended with the party getting distracted by Urevian's minions while he snatched Carman's now unconscious form and fled back to hell. It was an epic fight that left the party feeling pretty rough, even if they ultimately were able to move on.

Cleanup: The party returned to the Warped Brew to check on folks there, but learned that while their attention was elsewhere, Garggin and his brutes had slaughtered everyone still inside! (Other than Kragala, who barely survived). They now had to find a place for her that was different from the lodge (since she was kinda complicit in their capture/torture), and ended up finding her a place with Yinyasmera for a few weeks. They also finally successfully de-summoned the elementals, destroyed the devilish remnants (the forge and summoning circle), and smashed through all the monster cages!

Book 3 Summary - The Underdark

Downtime: Seeing that no one else had used the elevator in some time, the party decided to spend some downtime preparing for the caverns below. Amidst their preparations, however, a dragon attacked! The green dragon who had once been cared for by the Kobolds under the Otari Fishery (in the Beginner Box) had eaten their corpses and grown, both physically and in rage and confusion. As the dragon Rhyvera rained poison on the town (ineffectually, as their paranoia post 2 undead attacks saw them hide inside, and the poison didn't hurt stone), our hero (powered by the cleric's air walk) rose to meet her! Instead of fighting, however, they talked, and with compassion, reason, and multiple solid rolls, she befriended the dragon and persuaded it to reside in the nearby ruins, taking offerings from her horde in exchange for using her instinctive draconic wisdom to advise petitioners.

Level 8: The party was escorting Falxi, Glashdrumdur, Jedzeli, and Kragala from the level above, and thanks to Falxi's guidance headed straight for Yldaris in the south east. They fought off some bog mummies and caligni, but were attacked by Belcorra before they could reach the city! She let off a phantasmal calamity with a scream of rage, killing Falxi and Glash. They were at the back of the train - by the time our heroes reached them, Belcorra's menacing face was slipping back through the wall. Lacking a guide, they did their best to find the city, but ended up triggering the glyph of warding and being captured by the Drow! They were brought to Yldaris, where they made friends, got some useful info, and sent the rest of their wards on their way. They returned to level 8 only twice more, once to find the Crimson Fulcrum and once to (unsuccesfully) try to find a way into the tower.

Level 9: The party started by attacking the Urdefhan. They took out their forward guards, snuck in, saved Calinth, and retreated. The second time, they enacted a full frontal assault, using Clerical AoEs, a chokepoint, and some Drow allies to take on the oncoming horde! It was a close battle, especially when some nearby reaper puffballs attacked, but they ultimately prevailed and claimed the second Fulcrum! They recovered the third after nearly getting squashed between the Dhuthorexes and the Cathooj (they ultimately ran away and got them to attack each other before finishing off the wounded bird), and after a few days rest they explored the Vault, defeated Caliddo, and retrieved the Fulcrum Lattice! 

Level 10: When the party reached the Black Gates, they immediately followed the Lady's Whisper down into the Temple of Nhimbaloth, and though they were mistrustful they underwent the trials. There were several emotional moments, especially in the Paths of Failure/Powerlessness, but ultimately the party bested the challenges one by one, finally defeating Lady's Whisper as well!

Finale: Setup: Our hero and her cleric sidekick were Level 12, though Flash was only Level 10. I gave Belcorra the elite adjustment (effectively extra HP and +1 to stuff, given PwL) to compensate. Flash had the Fulcrum Lattice with 2/3 of the lenses, but our hero had the Crimson Lattice, because she bonded to it early and was unable to allow it to leave her side. I was worried that the fight might be too easy with the party so over-leveled, but it absolutely was not!

To begin with, the lone Dread Wisp fighting alongside Belcorra threw itself at the heroes, hoping to buy its master some time to set up her spells. It mostly worked, with our hero going to duel it as Flash ran in to start focusing the lenses alone! Belcorra had a bevvy of incredible casts, keeping herself safe with a globe of invisibility, hitting Flash with crushing despair, almost taking the party down with multiple AoEs, and finally having our hero critically fail against feeblemind to take her out of the fight for two rounds, almost downing the cleric in her confusion.

Things were looking grim for our heroes. The Cleric was on deaths door, and being bombarded by both Belcorra and the Wisp. Flash was out of spells, and was not doing damage nearly fast enough to take Belcorra down. Our hero was in an animalistic rage, blindly attacking whoever was near, and almost killing her childhood best friend.

The entire campaign came down to a single die roll. The Cleric needed to successfully counteract feeblemind, and had failed the first attempt, meaning that she needed to use a hero point. Thankfully, she succeeded, allowing our hero to focus the final lattice to Draw Her Baleful Gaze to the Ghost Queen.

As the gaze of Nhimbaloth fell upon Belcorra (I described this as the 4 lenses floating into the air from smallest to biggest and radiating with light from a cosmic tear in reality, all focused on Belcorra), the temple began to collapse!! The party had to squeeze through the cracks in the large stone, smash through a door with adamantine weapons, fly/dodge paste the Stone Golem they'd never defeated, and burst through the Black Gates just as the temple collapsed behind them!

Epilogue: The party slowly made their way back up and out, using air walk to emerge form the pit to find Rhyvera looking at them, furious at her tower being destroyed! The party was able to make peace, and with their vast riches they managed to fund a new tower for the Dragon, a new house for Ylga and Jago that wouldn't carry the same traumatic memories, and vast gifts for their friends and family who's supported them along the way. The adventurers guild was thriving, and at last our heroes could lay down their weapons and rest.