I've been talking at some length, praising the ingenious nature of Dyson's Delve. At it's core it is a mega-dungeon, but a mini one at that. I know, I know, sounds confusing right? Well, check it out to get an idea of what I'm talking about.
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| Map of Dyson's Delve level 1 - from rpgcharacters.blogspot.com |
For this delve, Dyson mapped out 11 levels levels of pure awesome and then connected and filled the dungeons in a thematic sequence. The delve itself is pretty light on actual story, but the implied story from how the delve is arranged is pretty extravagant.
It's no secret as I've been gushing about it on here and on Twitter that I love this thing. I've been a fan of mega-dungeons for as long as I've been playing D&D and so a chance to explore another? Well yeah, I'll take that opportunity.
Recently I've been working on a conversion of Dyson's Delve from OSR-mechanics to 4e ones. For the most part this has been seamless, but in other aspects I've had to be creative in order for the 4e mechanics to make sense. Basically, instead of 2d6 Goblins I spruced it up with 1d6 Goblin X and 1d6 Goblin Y. I really tried to find a way to embrace monster roles and the old-school nature of the delve. It can be a tough tightrope to balance, but I think I did pretty good.
There are a few parts of my conversion that I am iffy on. I've only completed the first level thus far but really want to embrace the old-school take on diseases. There are a few mentioned in the first section of the dungeon and frankly, 4e is quite weak on them. I'm using diseases currently as they are written in the rules, but when I start work on the second level of the delve I might adapt them slightly. Another issue is the singular magic item in the first level, I adapted it slightly for a 4e flare, but I'm concerned it might be too powerful. Thoughts and critiques, as always, are quite welcomed here.
So, enough babbling, here is the first level of the 4e Dyson's Delve conversion! Enjoy! The delve itself can either be ran straight with vanilla RAW D&D 4e rules of with the Legend4ry Basic Rules. I tried hard to find a balance between the two so the no matter your 4e tastes, it could be useful.
In the conversion itself I just changed monsters and used common abbreviations for the source material for the published monsters. For example, MV is Monster Vault and MM is Monster Manual. In trying to keep the conversion per level down to one page, that is why. Having access to DDI is definitely a boon to this, and I would have posted the monster stats but frankly I didn't want to get yelled at by WotC.
Next time I want to talk talk about some iconic/evil monster conversions to 4e. If you've been following me on twitter you will see that I have been going on and on about Vargouilles and my love for them over the past few days. I find that I enjoy the so-called "evil DM" monsters quite a bit, and want to showcase a few for use in Legend4ry (or any) campaigns. I also have a crazy idea about Dragons and their hordes that I might post as well.
Until next time,
-blob
You can follow me on Twitter @Sorcerer_Blob or via the hash-tag #legend4ry. You can also find my blog and others at the Fourthcore Hub and at the RPG Blog Alliance.
And be sure to check out the newly revised Legend4ry D&D Basic Rules either by looking in the upper right hand corner of the blog or by clicking here!
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