Rappan Athuk Reloaded - DnD 3.5 - Sword and Sorcery

I may have to take a closer look at these.. After running the Slumbering Tsar, I have my eyes set on running the PF version of Rappan Athuk..

I have updated the FAQ a bit, and also sectioned the Ground Level map so that it doesn't slow down your groups' gameplay. There are reference images so that you and your players are able to move around easily about the sectioned map.

This past week I've been taking the maps I have made and have been implementing the formatted text stories, encounters, and treasures. I must say, I am new to the DM side of Fantasy grounds, so I am having difficulties to do "1d6 Dire Rats" as a random encounter, so I've just been going with half of the maximum possibility. Also I am having a difficult time finding out if FG does the Exp calculation due to the CR of the monsters or not, as I have not had time between college and making these maps/campaign to try it out myself. If anyone knows these answers, just PM me as they are a bit off-topic.

Back to the maps though, My next steps are to section levels 1 and 2, than start work on 3. If my FAQ confused anyone about whether or not I'll be doing wilderness scenerio maps, I will. What I won't be making is the overview of the wilderness, as it is very large and the battle/scenerio maps are "parts" of it.

Also, it took me until just now to realize I sort of made this in the wrong section, as they are just maps, so if an admin moves this thread to the "Maps" subtopic, I'll understand.

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Originally Posted by krag

I must say, I am new to the DM side of Fantasy grounds, so I am having difficulties to do "1d6 Dire Rats" as a random encounter, so I've just been going with half of the maximum possibility. Also I am having a difficult time finding out if FG does the Exp calculation due to the CR of the monsters or not, as I have not had time between college and making these maps/campaign to try it out myself. If anyone knows these answers, just PM me as they are a bit off-topic.

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You can't have a random number of creatures in an encounter entry, it only accepts a single value. Unfortunately there is no easy way to indicate that there are a random number of creatures in the encounter without changing the NPC name (especially if there are more than one NPC type in the encounter). You could have the main encounter title as "1d6 dire rats" as a reminder.

One way that I sometimes use if there is a random encounter table is to make the whole table in the FG tables functionality: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Tables Then, within the random encounter table I'd list "1d6 dire rats" and have a link to an encounter with 1 dire rat. So, you can roll automatically on the random encounter table - the label "1d6 dire rats" will be displayed in the chat window so you know you have to roll 1d6 to see how many of the critters there are, and the link to the encounter will also be shown in the chat window so you can just click on that, change the number of dire rats and then deploy to the combat tracker.

There is no auto calculation of encounter XP or CR based off the total CR of all of the creatures.

Trenloe, thanks for the heads up

Today I put up the section maps for Levels 1 and 2 and editted one of the answers on my FAQ. (not that these questions have been asked frequently, just trying to answer them beforehand. Being Proactive and all.)

I hope that the section maps make things a little easier for you to mask things and send the map information to your players. Some of them a still a little large, but I tried by best to make sure the locations sectioned had meaning and a clear path to the next sectioned area.

I have also included "Section Overviews" for use of the DMs while they are setting up their linked shortcuts between the maps.

I'm implementing the sectioned maps in my campaign I am building, and once I am caught up I will be starting work on Level 3. I have decided that I will be keeping the same mapping technique I have been using, however it doesn't look as great as some of the ones you all have done, my hopes are for usable maps that don't take me forever and a day to make, so that you all can get them as quickly as possible. (Run-on sentence, much?) Rappan Athuk is nothing to scoff at in terms of size, and it's a challenge for me personally on top of my college work and other things. But don't worry, I will persevere.

When I say I would really like your input, I do mean it. If you would like to see something implemented that Rappan Athuk doesn't have naturally (such as a town map or anything like that) let me know. Most likely I plan to make one anyway. I hate how the story naturally starts anyway (you start together in the wilderness).

Thanks again for the support, it means a lot and keeps me going. Hopefully we'll have a huge dungeon crawl that we and our players can all enjoy, soon.

It's not easy to do the maps for that module. Skeleton Key did maps for the graveyard and first level but the levels after that are hard. When I ran that module as an open game I didn't have a lot of time to prep for it so I tried a few different things. Because of time constraints on the deeper maps, I ended up using the mask tracing technique where I put a mask over the DM map and just traced over it using FG's pen tool. While it wasn't pretty, it did work and solved the grids not being aligned to the FG grid as well. :p

I salute you for efforts. I ran the module until the boss encounters took longer than the four hour time slot - which is death to open table games. One thing you might need to think about. Like the "Worlds Largest Dungeon" if you don't do something about the XP granted, your characters are going to level too fast. The 13 and 1/3 encounters to level on average is a problem in this dungeon because is based on an old AD&D dungeon and they really didn't delete many encounters compared to the original dungeon. This was something that wasn't that big a problem in an open table game with a dungeon of that lethality, but in a normal campaign, after they do a few dungeon levels - you are going to notice it.

Updated the first post to include Level 3 plus sections. My classes this month are pretty much killing my motivation to work on this, but I'm grudgingly continuing through it. Next month I only have 1 class so I'm looking forward to getting a few levels finished.

@Griogre thanks for the heads up. I think I'll make sure to see what level I want my players to be at each level, and than divide the experience needed between the existing encounters.