Elemental Ziggurat map
Thanks for being patient. Behind the cut is the map for the Elemental Ziggurat adventure I ran with my Descent Team the other day. Walkthrough included below image.
Instead of having one HUGE dungeon, I broke it up into a handful of smaller rooms. The Entry Hall is the top of the ziggurat that offers access to the pocket elemental planes of Fire, Earth, Water, and Air. Only 2 heroes could enter any plane at one time and after they beat the plane they return to the Entry Hall to tackle another area. Finally, after finishing all rooms, access to the planes becomes sealed off, and the team surrounds the large glyph in the Entry Hall to gain access to the Altar Rooms. There they must contend with strong mosters, an invincible Golem, and deal with the green altars at the far sides of this floor. After interacting with each altar for 2 rounds, the Golem becomes a killable enemy and after its death the players can escape.
The Entry Hall worked out as I had planned. The floor around the stairs to the elemental planes is Corrupted, meaning that certain actions will give me (the Overlord) bonus resources. It was a great spawn point for monsters while the players were in the planes, and served as a good fallback point to move on to the final leg of the adventure.
Before the game began I removed the following cards from the players random skill cards: Earth Pact, Fire Pact, Water Pact, and Air Pact. When one player finds the key item in each map (an elemental crystal), they gain the appropriate Pact and each one offers unique abilities. Furthermore, only one player can have a Pact, so each player would wind up with a bonus skill by the end of the game.
Fire was a hair shorter than I'd planned. The enemies were taken out quickly, and exploration was fairly brief. I could have moved the stairwell into the area into one of the chambers, but I wanted the players to be mobbed in short order. Ah, well.
Earth was pretty straightforward too. The path was linear, but slow due to the mud. My rolling boulder trap only activated after both piles of coins near the entrance were collected (to give players the chance to spread out a bit), but since mahannie57 had gained some ferret companions, no one was killed by the trap. It worked about as well as I'd hoped; sometimes you just need to slow the players down instead of killing them outright.
Water was an issue as it was the biggest area. Filled with ice obstacles which could end a players turn prematurely if they rolled poorly, the level was a bit of a forced march. However, since G had Acrobatics, he simply ignored the inhibiting effects of the ice and basically ran through the level. The monsters were there as mere annoyances and the boss dragon was slain far too quickly. (To be fair, I did increase the number of treasures available to balance the game as the team had to be split in half, so I rather asked for that.) I could have reduced the size of the area, but both Air and Water were designed to be the toughest maps to deal with.
Speaking of which, I'm sure you noticed what I did with Air. Between pits and fog, I controlled how fast the players moved, how much they saw at one time, and what actions were available to them. G entered this area, again sporting his Acrobatics, so he completely ignored all pits that I placed here. Sure, the fog blocked his vision, forcing him to spend more movement to get around, but he sped through this area far too quickly. His complaints were that a player without Acrobatics wouldn't succeed, and I countered that two players working in tandem would have made it since one would open up the field of vision for the other, and by taking turns with movement, they could have handled the map fairly well. (Again, G entered this area *alone*, not waiting for anyone else. I felt that he was getting impatient with the game, compounded by his unnaturally horrid luck with the dice that night.) Air was the toughest of the four, but it was rather nerfed by G's fortuitious ability.
Upon entering the bottom level, they find that the Golem has been activated. One player must spend 2 rounds at an altar to remove their Pact and purge the elemental powers from both the Ziggurat and the Golem. Only after all players had been drained of their pact could the Golem be killed.
Originally, I had blocked off access from the central room in the Altar Rooms to the east and west, forcing the players to take the north/south paths and then circle around to reach the altars. However, my *little* oversight was that the Golem took up too much room, entirely blocking the halls, and would pin and kill my players. D'oh!! On the fly I had to adjust his speed/attacks/etc and restructure the walls for more passages to avoid the monstrosity. The Golem proved to be too slow to catch up to the players, forcing me to rely on spawn tactics to harm them.
As you can see, there was a lot of ground to cover, even if it was broken up into smaller maps. I was able to slow them down enough to win through attrition, mostly in part due to the Power I received early on which let me go through my Overlord deck twice as fast. ($myspeed*2)+($theirspeed*.5)=$myvictory. Yes, lots of it was luck (bad for them, good for me), but that's rather how Descent works.
Instead of having one HUGE dungeon, I broke it up into a handful of smaller rooms. The Entry Hall is the top of the ziggurat that offers access to the pocket elemental planes of Fire, Earth, Water, and Air. Only 2 heroes could enter any plane at one time and after they beat the plane they return to the Entry Hall to tackle another area. Finally, after finishing all rooms, access to the planes becomes sealed off, and the team surrounds the large glyph in the Entry Hall to gain access to the Altar Rooms. There they must contend with strong mosters, an invincible Golem, and deal with the green altars at the far sides of this floor. After interacting with each altar for 2 rounds, the Golem becomes a killable enemy and after its death the players can escape.
The Entry Hall worked out as I had planned. The floor around the stairs to the elemental planes is Corrupted, meaning that certain actions will give me (the Overlord) bonus resources. It was a great spawn point for monsters while the players were in the planes, and served as a good fallback point to move on to the final leg of the adventure.
Before the game began I removed the following cards from the players random skill cards: Earth Pact, Fire Pact, Water Pact, and Air Pact. When one player finds the key item in each map (an elemental crystal), they gain the appropriate Pact and each one offers unique abilities. Furthermore, only one player can have a Pact, so each player would wind up with a bonus skill by the end of the game.
Fire was a hair shorter than I'd planned. The enemies were taken out quickly, and exploration was fairly brief. I could have moved the stairwell into the area into one of the chambers, but I wanted the players to be mobbed in short order. Ah, well.
Earth was pretty straightforward too. The path was linear, but slow due to the mud. My rolling boulder trap only activated after both piles of coins near the entrance were collected (to give players the chance to spread out a bit), but since mahannie57 had gained some ferret companions, no one was killed by the trap. It worked about as well as I'd hoped; sometimes you just need to slow the players down instead of killing them outright.
Water was an issue as it was the biggest area. Filled with ice obstacles which could end a players turn prematurely if they rolled poorly, the level was a bit of a forced march. However, since G had Acrobatics, he simply ignored the inhibiting effects of the ice and basically ran through the level. The monsters were there as mere annoyances and the boss dragon was slain far too quickly. (To be fair, I did increase the number of treasures available to balance the game as the team had to be split in half, so I rather asked for that.) I could have reduced the size of the area, but both Air and Water were designed to be the toughest maps to deal with.
Speaking of which, I'm sure you noticed what I did with Air. Between pits and fog, I controlled how fast the players moved, how much they saw at one time, and what actions were available to them. G entered this area, again sporting his Acrobatics, so he completely ignored all pits that I placed here. Sure, the fog blocked his vision, forcing him to spend more movement to get around, but he sped through this area far too quickly. His complaints were that a player without Acrobatics wouldn't succeed, and I countered that two players working in tandem would have made it since one would open up the field of vision for the other, and by taking turns with movement, they could have handled the map fairly well. (Again, G entered this area *alone*, not waiting for anyone else. I felt that he was getting impatient with the game, compounded by his unnaturally horrid luck with the dice that night.) Air was the toughest of the four, but it was rather nerfed by G's fortuitious ability.
Upon entering the bottom level, they find that the Golem has been activated. One player must spend 2 rounds at an altar to remove their Pact and purge the elemental powers from both the Ziggurat and the Golem. Only after all players had been drained of their pact could the Golem be killed.
Originally, I had blocked off access from the central room in the Altar Rooms to the east and west, forcing the players to take the north/south paths and then circle around to reach the altars. However, my *little* oversight was that the Golem took up too much room, entirely blocking the halls, and would pin and kill my players. D'oh!! On the fly I had to adjust his speed/attacks/etc and restructure the walls for more passages to avoid the monstrosity. The Golem proved to be too slow to catch up to the players, forcing me to rely on spawn tactics to harm them.
As you can see, there was a lot of ground to cover, even if it was broken up into smaller maps. I was able to slow them down enough to win through attrition, mostly in part due to the Power I received early on which let me go through my Overlord deck twice as fast. ($myspeed*2)+($theirspeed*.5)=$myvictory. Yes, lots of it was luck (bad for them, good for me), but that's rather how Descent works.