The idea would be a custom fantasy world, starting with continental outlines and working my way inwards to focus regions.

And I would use QGIS.

Yeah, if I were to do this, I would use QGIS.

Pathfinder 2E has a very similar power curve as D&D 5E. In fact, it might even be worse for Brancalonia as characters basically get their level as a flat bonis on everything.

Sounds like a fun game!

I am personally not overly enarmored of OSR rule systems, but I’m a sucker for good worldbuilding and worldbuilding tools - I buy Sine Nomine Publishing stuff unseen, for instance. Maybe I should give this a closer look.

Ouch! That sounded rough. But I’m glad you learned some valuable lessons from it.

Darauf antworte ich mit Art. 14 (2) des Grundgesetzes:

“Eigentum verpflichtet. Sein Gebrauch soll zugleich dem Wohle der Allgemeinheit dienen.”

Also, wie halten wir es denn mit der Vermögenssteuer?

They were fascinated by the fork.

Or possibly disgusted. Either way is good. 😁

There were some naturally-occurring caves, but also the following:

• Some eldritch horrors sleeping in the deepest caverns beneath the city who act as a “lodestone” for evil creatures, compelling them to come here.
• An ancient cleric once attempted to build a massive vault here as a safe depository for evil artifacts. He became corrupted by them, and turned into the first Evil Overlord.
• Much later on, a second Evil Overlord appeared who wanted the secrets of the first Evil Overlord. He expanded the caves and turned them into his military headquarters for his conquering horde of monsters.
• There was also a major dwarf hold here at some point before they abandoned it.
• There is an entire drow city deep beneath the surface.
• Assorted other groups of monsters keep showing up and making themselves at home.
• Oh, and the current incarnation of the city has been built on top of this, which includes a massive sewer system that is gradually breaking down from lack of maintenance.

The whole dungeon system has developed over the course of more than 8,000 years. The general inclination of the citizens above is to wall off any entrances they find, and otherwise let adventurers deal with it. (This is another unique aspect about this city - it’s the only one on the continent which has a professional class of adventurers.)

As for the Thieves’ Guild, they tend to grease a lot of palms in the city watch, so they don’t have to worry much from law enforcement unless they do something too blatant. However, there is a new criminal organization which is giving them a lot of trouble, and there are a lot of adventurers around, so they do have reasons to take their security seriously.

The guild have mages in their employ who could help with magical security, but none of them is present in this safe house.

The main headquarters are elsewhere, but the guild maintains lesser safehouses in most districts of the city.

But you are right, I haven’t put much thought into whether this is a hub for activities or a place to lay low. I’d say it’s primarily the former.

The city of Ptolus has a long and convoluted backstory, and is known across much of the continent as “that weird city with all the dungeons and adventurers”. Suffice to say, there are reasons why the region attracts all kinds of supernatural creatures, and there were many, many different groups of people and creatures who expanded these dungeons.

If you like the whole concept of “dungeon delving mixed with city adventures”, I can highly recommend Ptolus. Few do it better, or more exhaustively.

The closest I can think of is the “Earn Income” downtime activity, but that’s not exactly the same as what you pay NPCs.

Here is a neat bit of ancient technology: A qanat.

A common problem in arid regions is how to get enough water for your irrigation needs. Digging wells is one possibility, of course, but the water table might be far beneath the surface.

However, the neat thing about the water table is that it runs parallel to the surface - so if the terrain rises up and forms a mountain, the water table will rise up beneath the mountain as well. Thus, you can tap the water within the mountain simply by digging a tunnel into the flank of the mountain.

Which isn’t exactly a trivial undertaking, of course. Still, some qanats in the Middle East have been in use for several thousands of years.

And for #TTRPG , such qanats represent a good entrance to the “Underdark”, or whatever the local “Realms Below” are called - or vice versa, and monsters might emerge from them. And what happens if a qanat suddenly ceases to bring water? Naturally, some daring adventurers have to go in there and solve the problem, or else an entire community might starve!

Pathfinder 1E or 2E?

I don’t have much practical experience with the latter, but it did move away from the notion that NPCs must be created with the same system as PCs.

Yeah, GURPS character creation can take quite a lot of time, but once the character is done it flows very smoothly, so that doesn’t bother me. But GMs need to create NPCs all the time, and the speed of character creation is very, very important.

I particularly like the monastery - we need more places like this as adventure locations!

Another candidate: The Centralia Mine Fire, an underground coal seam fire that has been going for sixty years, and which could continue to burn for 250 further years!

I wonder how dwarves or other subterranean civilizations would deal with something like this?

Another one: The “Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe” in Kassel, Germany.

This is a masterpiece of Baroque landscape architecture, and the Hessian landgrave at the time was only able to afford it because his father sold of Hessian subjects to the British so that they could put a stop to those pesky rebels in the North American colonies. The park is built across a hill slope (and covers an elevation change of more than 250 meters). Its highlights are the “Wasserspiele” (“Water Plays”). On every Sunday and Wednesday during the warmer seasons, water is released from a vast cistern at the top, located beneath a giant bronze statue of Hercules. Over the course of 75 minutes, this water flows down a series of artificial waterfalls and channels until it powers a giant fountain close to the bottom of the park.

Beyond that, the park has all sorts of other attractions - a fake ruined castle, a fake ruined Roman aqueduct, and a series of miniature temples to assorted Roman gods. This park makes a perfect setting for all sorts of cinematic adventures and/or occult weirdness!

I took it from Wikipedia, which says that it is from the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica.

Truly, a scenario to warm the shriveled heart of any veteran GM.

From what I gather, there were actually fewer accidents under this system than with the ladders.

There’s even one still in operation, at Sankt Andreasberg where it’s used for maintenance at the local hydroelectric power plant installed in the former mine shaft.