D&D 1E City of Carse (2nd Edition)

[ilgatto]

Mes amis,


When the players started asking whether there were “any cities in the vicinity?” of the randomly generated old-school dungeon* I’ve been running for some time, I winged it and said that there was one called Carse, which I remembered from when I started playing AD&D way, way back when – but had never read.

And so, with the sessions sort of leading to two PC Thieves hailing from said city and the hour of truth approaching fast, I dug deep to retrieve my copy of said publication (2nd Edition, 1980) to see what was what – to find myself, as I’m sure you’ll understand, utterly miffed** when the various maps in it wouldn’t combine in any way known to man.

Therefore, after about four days of scanning, image-scaling, rotating, cutting, pasting, and re-drawing the whole thing: (attachments)


Salutations,


ilgatto

* Yes, with everything in it (and then some) generated by rolling dice on the tables in the 1E DMG – all fourteen levels and 191 pages of it (belated smug warning). That’s lock-downs for ya.
** Conversely, I was utterly and pleasantly surprised to find the whole thing well thought out, with perhaps the only negatives (other than the maps not fitting) being “The Bazaar” and a decidedly unfortunate undertone. So toned down the first and removed the latter and am currently rather looking forward to introducing the PCs to The Alleys (F2-5, K12-14, K16, K18-19, K21-22, M), The Fields (A3, A6, A9, A13, A17-18, A22, A23, C1-21, C36, D1, D4, D7-8, D10), Bell "The Knife" (AA1), Karze Hara “The Lame” (D15), the Troons (N7, U15), “Rummy” Grace (A20), “Schoolman” Courson (F3), Sheriff N’tara Goulaye (C6), "Fists" (D2), and, of course, “Lovely” Linde Trumm (B9) and Ouazane “The Desert Rose” Hazara Khan (W12).

 

[Voadam]

I was not sure what you were talking about at first, but a little searching turned up Carse from Midkemia Press which was 1980 so it looks like that is it.

Is it available as a PDF for sale anywhere?

 

[ilgatto]

That's the one.

Midkemia has a site with pdfs for sale (midkemia). It's under 'Products'.

 

[AlexOfBarbaria]

Cool maps! For your DMG-generated dungeon, how do you like the frequency of empty rooms? I think if I were to roll up a dungeon using those tables I'd roll twice for each room -- fewer empties and potential for interesting combinations.

 

[ilgatto]

If nothing is done about it, the 'problem' with empty rooms does, indeed, crop up from time tot time, especially since there are entire sections of the dungeon where nothing happens. So I added some tables with non-monstrous, non-treasure contents for each empty room, as per a series of tables I have concocted from various tables in the DMG1. Whenever the PCs enter an empty room, I roll for its contents and presto. You'd be surprised how much time PCs can spend inspecting a firkin in an empty room, especially when its presence is announced with just the right amount of innuendo.

I have also made tables with around 20 additional encounters and even as many unguarded treasures for each level, which I can throw in if I should notice the players getting bored. However, I have not had to use them so far.

What I did do after the party got to the 3rd level (mainly to keep myself entertained) is fabricate yet another table (part in attachment), this one containing some 200 very minor, interesting, and often tongue-in-cheek traps, challenges, items, collectibles, spell components, riddles, alchemical ingredients, tasks, and hints to items or events in the deeper levels. To keep in line with the project, I have taken the vast majority of these from some of the oldest publications on D&D.
I have now spent a day or two rolling dice again for the contents of the empty rooms up to level 7 so some of them now contain items from this table. For example, the PCs have already found two pieces of a chess set, which, when complete, er... no idea yet. Also toying with the notion of spreading playing cards throughout the dungeon - yup, deck of many things when complete - but this would perhaps rather overdo the collectibles thing. Hmm.. a chess set of many things?

 

[francisca]

Thanks for posting this. IMO, those Midkemia supplements were some of the most useful additions to the game, published back in the day.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I know Midkemia did a bunch of Ray Feist stuff too, is this related to that setting or is it there own? I don't know much about Feist's stuff besides the Krondor video games.

 

[francisca]

Carse is part of Midkemia.

Carse

Carse is a barony located at the southern branch of the river Boundary along the Far Coast of the Western Realm. It is a vassal of and the largest city of the Duchy of Crydee. It became a major trading center and the best port in the Far Coast. In Duke Borric's childhood, Carse was besieged by...

midkemia.fandom.com

 

[ilgatto]

Thanks for posting this. IMO, those Midkemia supplements were some of the most useful additions to the game, published back in the day.

True that. Never knew much about them until I needed the city, with ensuing pleasant surprise as mentioned.

I recently learned that Carse is based on a 17th-century map of Caernarfon in Wales, which has all manner of advantages, such as the availability of illustrations from the 18th and 19th century (wikipedia).

re "I got dice older than you": LOL. Gonna use that one.