His Majesty The Worm - Pile of Blades Masterpost

Pile of Blades is a city and undercity I wrote for His Majesty The Worm. I played through it in seven sessions, about one for each realm of the Undercity.

 

The City is ruled by the Temple of Swords, a Crusader State created by the rebels, religious fanatics and mercenaries who toppled the God Kings. The Temple and the City gradually fall under the thrall of a mysterious psychic presence in the Cave of Squids, which sends nightmares and tempts them to do its evil bidding.

• Folder with all maps and keys
• City
• Dungeons
• Beneath Hangman's Hill
  
• Cave of Squids
• Crypt of the Vampire Voivode 
• Demon Ruins 
• Fire Giant Forge
• Stone Garden 
• Thingstead of the Giant Conclave
• Pregens and Reference Documents
• Restocking
  
• Playtests
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven 

Dark Creeper, Umber Hulk, The Fairy Knight, The Triplets, The Scalphunters

THE MAKING OF

I created this system of dungeons to use the miniatures I painted over the last year. All the encounters are stocked based on what I had lying around, with more added over the course of the campaign. Having miniatures, cards and the physical book is what persuaded me to run the game in the first place, after playing a two session game of the starter dungeon at the back of the book. 

 

It took me about two weeks to make each realm, which is how long I had between sessions. Dungeon creation follows a power law like everything else, where the first 90 percent comes together in a couple days but the last few key entries and monster descriptions take the remaining time. The first area I created was Crypt of the Vampire Voivode, and I made the pregens to play with that. Now that all the realms are finished, I think Beneath Hangman's Hill would be a better tutorial dungeon.

The dungeon doesn't have any books in the treasure piles because I didn't like the Bookworm talent or give it to any of my pregens. I also ignored the languages rule. If your players want to take the Bookworm or Loremaster starting talents on their Cups characters you should either warn them that the dungeon doesn't have a ton of hooks that interact with those powers, or add languages and books back in yourself.
 

One change I would make if I did the whole thing over is add more shortcuts back to the ossuary. You could add these connections to existing nodes by inserting weak walls at map edges, which can be broken through to open shortcuts through the ossuary and to the surface.

My full review of the game can be found here. I focused on the experience of running and playing rather than going page by page and explaining every mechanic.

The Guild