The rooms to the north of the main hall were the dwarven rooms for dignitaries and such. The rooms to the south of the main hall were for visitors to the dwarven realm. The main hall could be used for diplomatic ceremonies, but most of the time it served as a market for surface dwellers and the dwarves to set up stalls and sell stuff to one another. While it was constantly inhabited, the population rotated pretty frequently.
What about the main hall? A big nasty thing? Or empty? I'm leaning toward empty, or at least devoid of monstrous threats, especially as the vault sub-level will have some tough encounters. Well, as I'm going for a semi-oldschool feel, lets roll for it. Using the tricks charts from OSRIC (pg 155-156) I came up with an antimagic alter. That kind of makes sense actually. You wouldn't want magic used during diplomatic negotiations! Lets go with that.
Working out a brief history would absolutely help you in discovering what might be lurking in the darkness. Often when I do the background of a dungeon I am surprised what I find.
ReplyDeleteBut, if its not something you want to spend too much time in then have fun with it and let the dice roll up some interesting things.
Do you planning on posting it when you are done?
Rolling through your back posts...
ReplyDeleteI really like this map - mostly mundane, with just a few cool elements (why is there one "natural" cavern - the rest are worked, for example, and the round passage - stairs? - to the left - and, of course, the temple? in the center)
Question - the center chamber appears to have steps up to some kind of dais with doors behind - the outer passages don't have any steps, are they sloping passages or are the angled lines in the center room something else?
Anyway, this is the kind of map that catches my attention - if it has one or two "interesting" features, I'm all about it...