Bath Imaginable

The Fading Coast FREE DEMO is now live on itch.io. This free demo includes the entire Fading Coast surrounding my Adventure Location, the Balcony Cliffs.

This is my first time designing a multi-page adventure. One of my goals has been to maintain table-usability. Each spread in the pdf is made to be used like a demented control panel the Conductor can use to react to the players.

The Hazards/Treasure Sites spread was the first one I completed. I’m happy with how it looks, and how it informed the design for the rest of the pdf.

When you commit to scan-ability, you don’t have a lot of room left for detailed descriptions. I tried to be punchy and specific with the treasure sites–hopefully a small side adventure pops into your head as one of the Road Encounters is describing the Lakeside Lodge, or whichever.

Lakeside Lodge
Here’s how I would do it/non-canon answers

There’s fragile crates of wine still hidden in the cellars of the Lakeside Lodge. This seasonal hotel (more like a hostel) used to service divers who would dredge the bottom of the lake looking for oddities. No one knows why they stopped coming back to the place three decades ago, but now it’s used as a corporate retreat in the summer for (insert random industry from your home game).

During the colder months, there’s a winter-caretaker who looks after the place by himself–we should hit it then.

At my table, I would just print a couple of maps like these by Dyson Logos and annotate directly on the map. I won’t go into that level of detail here, but I’ll put a couple of ideas down now so I have a skeleton.

1. Entryway/Stairs. Ornate wooden carvings. Well-maintained garden. Grand lobby, large stairs, vaulted ceilings (lots of natural light).
2. Dining Hall/Kitchen. Rustic (for the staff). Modest wines and open spirits.
3. Study/Library. Lower levels mundane books (Bastion bestsellers, fashion magazines, politics, business, pornography), upper levels contain more obscure books from the lodge’s origin (the occult, the Living Stars, deep-water exploration, engineering manuals for pressurized vessels).
4. Lobby/Conference Room. Large gathering space for networking (centuries old paintings staged with electric lights).
5. Guest Suites. Furs and quilts, polished wooden furniture (ready for guests). Carved into the underside of one of the drawers–“you’re never getting out of this place.”
6. Rooftop Patio. Overlooks the mountains and the lake (someone has left a telescope and a drawing pad out here). In the drawing pad: “EROM GNIRB” over and over again. (It’s written in shaky handwriting).
7. Cellar. Dusty storage (old furniture, old art, lots of lost and found, mundane relics from the Lodge’s past). Old heliotypes of the original club: ALTA DISCOVERY (all of the men sit surrounding one elderly man in a mechanical chair). Downstairs office (lit by single, harsh electric bulb): behind a filing cabinet is a metal (secret) door.
8. Secret Society. Well maintained halls (lit by natural gas lamps). Dark velvet curtains open to reveal a museum of artefacts and oddities recovered from the deep (diving records reveal countless underwater delves up until 26 years ago). An all tile room contains a mulching machine and tools for dismemberment (where intruders are turned to fish food).
9. Altar Pools. The propped up bones of fishmen decay in a wet altar room (covered in barnacles and colourful urchin). The pools at their feet/fins are teeming with diverse life (the shimmer in the dark).
10. Vault. Two boxes of pearls (Bulky) and four crates of fragile wine bottles (Bulky), all of it worth £2,500 at least.

Torrent, the Winter Caretaker 12 HP
Driven to feed the fish in the Altar Pools forever and ever and ever.
Armour 1 (Too Many Sweaters)
STR 12, DEX 8, CHA 8
Axe (d6) and Revolver (d6)
Unstable. His drive can be dulled with alcohol, but he insists on playing dangerous shooting games when drunk.

Fishmen Ghost 6 HP
STR 6, DEX 12, CHA 9
Ghostly Touch -d6 CHA, at 0 CHA paralyzed and caught in an endless loop of Regret (Recovers on REST).

Artefacts and Oddities.

Potion of Water Breathing. 3 uses. Breathe underwater for an entire day. STR Save or keep gills permanently. Fail 2 STR Saves and grow fish eyes and gain Darkvision.

Barnacle Staff. Communicate with fish. CHA Save each use or feel Deprived when you go more than one day without speaking to fish.

Antique Diving Suit. Armour 2 (Heavy Iron). Breathe underwater with up to 100 meters of hose.

*

So, something is starting to take shape up there. We’ve got a Shining-esque hotel with a creepy caretaker. Because of all his past mistakes, he’s addicted to the approval he gets from the fishmen ghosts for feeding the pools in the cellar. The fishmen are the end result of a astral cult of deep-lake divers, and perhaps the life in the pools growing from their bones is what keeps their spirits alive in the lodge. Who knows? The Players will certainly have theories, and I want to be open to what those are, too.

(Another inspirations for this pdf is Cursed Scroll #1 by the Arcane Library. I had a lot of fun in the Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub, but I had more fun with the zine when I read the terse, evocative descriptions of the Gloaming and ran with my own ideas).