shifty louts

Arduin Arcade Session #8 / Super Adventure #7 - The Return to the Howling Tower

event

Players

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Summary

Wurdigan the 9th. Peace Festival. Month of the Sun 5202

As part of the Big Purple’s emergent tradition of Super Adventures:™:, where players bring characters from various rulesets and/or worlds, October was my month to run one. I ran three sessions across Saturday, October 10th, 2026.

My initial set-up was to merge a few various server lore bits and bobs, notably Idraluna's SupAdv #6 regarding D-Day, a bit taken from Spuk’s SupAdv #4, which saw the Bunnies and Barrows character Orangeberry merge with MONARCH from Gradient Descent, and Hawkeye’s Sheep Dogs (a Delta Green x Wolves Upon the Coast mashup), which, in a sense, rewarded the community who have participated in these events with some sort of connective tissue between past events and the present1.

The pitch was simple enough.

Declassified D-Day reports tell a story that was never meant to be read.

On June 6th, 1944, something went wrong.

Amid the beaches and bombardments, strange figures began appearing across the battlefield: adventurers from impossible kingdoms, soldiers from futures that had not yet happened, monsters from worlds that had never existed, and occultists who seemed to know exactly what was coming.

The Nazis had opened something beneath Normandy.

Something they called the Multiversal Egg.

The war ended. History moved on. The reports were buried.

But the Egg never really closed.

Now Timeline 3 is coming apart.

The President of the United States and Remus, Joseph R. Biden, and the Giant Wolf Carnifex have been notified of another Multiversal Egg found in the bathroom of a Burger King off Route 30.

The government then hired occultists, esotericists, podcasters, UFO researchers, disgraced academics, internet schizos, and anyone else sufficiently obsessed with forbidden knowledge to investigate.

At its center stands the mountain keep of Sorven of the Seven Lights, a Black Magus whose name appears only in occult manuscripts in Miskatonic University's Special Collection.

Sorven has allied himself with the perfidious remnants of the time-traveling Nazi occultists who opened the Multiversal Egg on D-Day, 1944.

Together they have occupied the Howling Tower.

Something is being assembled there.

Intercepted SIGINT keeps repeating three words:

ORANGEBERRY.

EVILBERRY.

MONARCH.

D-Day was only the beginning.

Prepping Super Adventure #7: Return to the Howling Tower

As for the actual prep side, I relied on a few things.

Given the gonzo, multiversal nature of Super Adventures, I decided to set the location in an ongoing open table game I run, set in the Howling Tower of Arduin. The Tower’s strange-shaped dungeon rooms and gonzo creatures would allow for some over-the-top DnD-isms, and I decided upon using the famed Arduin critical hit/fumble tables as well as variable weapon damage.

For Super Adventure #7, I placed players on Level A of the Howling Tower. From there, I read bits of Gradient Descent and decided upon Level Three of the Cloudbank location as the most likely location that said evil Nazis would be creating their android army.

In the words of Chris McDowall, I’m exposing my prep. Hopefully, it is insightful or revealing in some fashion for you.

Maps

Portions2 of the Howling Tower and Gradient Descent.

maps maps2 maps3

Encounter Tables

In typical GM fashion, I built a bespoke encounter and tables that combined both Howling Tower and Gradient Descent.

  1. 1 T’Cheem Battle Spider: see Howling Tower
    1. 8HD. -3AC. 40”. Machine Gun (Save vs. Breath for half). Pincher (1d6) or Forelegs. Missile. (Save vs. Death). Fire and cold only do half damage. Sonic and Lightning do 50% more damage.
    2. Mech-Spider
  2. 1d2 Nazi Robots: as Large Robots
    1. 5HD. 3AC. 12”. Electro-Whip (2d6 vs. metal armor) or Railgun (ignores armor, 1d12 dmg)
  3. 1d12 Ghosts in the Machine: as Wights (pg 12)
    1. 3HD. 6AC. 9”. Claw (Save vs. Death). On a failure, 1d6 damage and -5 WIS permanently. If 0 WIS, going permanently insane.
    2. Can pass through all barriers
  4. 1d20 Battle Bones: see Howling Tower
    1. 2HD. 5AC. 9”. 2 attacks. Broadsword (1d10).
    2. Four-armed skeleton with glowing green flame eyes.
    3. Supernatural HD
  5. Cloudbank Androids: as Goblins (pg 10)
    1. 1-1HD. 6AC. 12”. Electrical attacks do x2 damage.
    2. 1 Infiltrator
    3. 2d10 Security
      1. SMG. Save vs. Wand or 1d12 dmg.
      2. 2HD
    4. 1 Forgotten
  6. 2d8 Nazi Soldiers: as Brigands
    1. 1HD. 6AC. 12”. +1 Morale
    2. SMG. Save vs. Wand or 1d12 dmg.
    3. Grenade. 2d6 dmg. Save vs. Breath to jump out of the way
  7. 3d10 Ebon Skeletons: as Skeletons
    1. 1HD. 8AC. 6”. As Weapon
    2. Supernatural HD
  8. Always in groups of 10. Troubleshooters: as Brigands with 3AC.
    1. 1HD. 3AC. 12”. +1 Morale
    2. Always attack. No questions asked. Black exo-suits. Their voices are amplified and distorted. Their visors shine red in the dark. They are merciless, brutal, and a terror to behold.
    3. SMG. Save vs. Wand or 1d12 dmg.
      1. 1 Team Leader: +1 to morale.
      2. 2 Scouts: +4 to hit
      3. 2 Assault: Shotgun. Save vs. Wands for 4d8 at close range
      4. 4 Gunners: standard kit
      5. 1 Support: Cybernetic diagnostic scanner
  9. 1d4 Skullmoculus: see Howling Tower
    1. 1+4HD. 5AC. 4”. Bite (1d6 + Toxic Saliva). Save vs. Poison or Sleep for 1d4 days. Saves like 8 HD MU. Sees all invisible beings. Leaps up to 7’
    2. Humanoid skull that walks on “walking fingers”. Watchdog-like undead thing. Screeches and hissing. Staccato gobbling.
  10. 1 Brain Eater: see Howling Tower
    1. 3+1HD. 2AC. 36”. Tentacle (1d8 + Crush + Life Drain). Crush does 2d8 + 1 Life Drain after attacking. Oozes slime that deals 1d4 acid.
    2. Demon (1d10HD). Pulsing, glowing red brain-creature with fiery yellow eyes and a grey-green spine-like tentacle
  11. Thunder Bunny Swarm: see Arduin
    1. 7HD. Bite (1d6 + Disease). Save vs. Poison. 1d3 turns. Dizzy and Blurred Vision. -3 to Attributes and to Hit
    2. All attacks automatically hit, but melee and ranged attacks deal a maximum of 2 damage. Spells and area-of-effect attacks deal full damage.
  12. Nazi Wizard: as 8th-level Warlock
    1. Spells Known: Ensorcel Person, Glaciating Gesture, Ventriloquism, Darkness, Enervating Emanation, Phantasmal Forces, Bind Person, Fly, Ensorcel Monster, Thaumaturgical Terror
    2. Magic Items: Wand of Paralyzation, Potion of Gaseous Form, Potion of Invisibility
    3. Accompanied by Soliders/Skeletons/BattleBones and/or Robots/Skullmoculus/Braineater
  13. Android Skeleton Mass (created after Session 7.2)
    1. 15HD. 0AC. 2d8 Smash or Electric Shock (2d6 + Paralysis Save). ADV against poison, disease, and mind-influencing effects. Immune to fear
  14. Arduin Fire Demon3 - Who Entrenches Injustice - Šefroš
    1. 9 to 12HD. -4AC. 12” (24” Flying). Attk. Claws (4d6 + 2d6 Fire damage).
      1. 200f in a 10’ radius around them. Can heat the air in 30’ diameter around them at 20f/turn to 400f maxiumum
      2. Can create 1d10 Wall of Fire/day
      3. Every 3rd melee turn that can do a Fire Breath cone (18-20 on a d20 roll)
      4. They can throw an 8d6 Fireball every other melee turn. (14-20 on d20 roll)
      5. They can use up to LVL 3 Magic.
      6. 100% Fire and Sonic Proof. Lightning and acid do ½ damage. Cold and water do 50% more damage.
      7. Hate all other fire-based beings and attack them on sight.
      8. Favorite food is elf hearts

Treasure Tables

As for treasure tables, I built six lists of treasure, and after an appropriate amount of time delving or after an encounter, I had players roll a d6 for the treasure they found. Put simply, I placed treasure where I thought appropriate. Simple as

This process wasn’t revolutionary; I opted to use the treasure generator from Odd Referee Tools to spin up the bulk of the list: six entries from the Artifact table found in Gradient Descent, while the six treasures are found in the Howling Tower, and six random guns pulled from The Vastlands Guidebook - VLG by Wizardthieffighter, simply because I like them. 🤷

General Thoughts

All in all, the process of prepping Super Adventure #7 took maybe like an hour and a half at best and was very much in the vein of this Scribbles meme.

scribblesmeme

The actual running of the game was smooth and the session had a number of elite level gamers, which made me a bit nervous, to be frank, but by the by the actual nuts and bolts of running the game went fairly smooth with few hiccups, likely due in part to most players bringing DnD-shaped characters which made for smoother processing of party actions and combat. I think the over-top-nature of the Howling Tower and Arduin added the over vibe as well.

As is server tradition, I used Target20 and the routine ODnD procedures for adjudication. Nothing spectacular there beyond the use of variable weapon damage.

Once again the implementation of the Arduin Critical Hit/Fumble tables yield some awesome kino and hype moments like Bogdan gutting the same Red Dragon is one fell swoop, Marcel deftly drifting cutting a nazi robot arms and other stand out moments include Meatface taking a Dragon’s flaming breath, Nome’s aerolith gun gravity welling nazi troubleshooters, Uale getting one-shotted by a shotgun only to regenerate, to Lerden’s Eaglecry Sword wishes coming in clutch to save Nome, clearing the way through some highly dangerous rooms, and bringing about the creation of Goodberry the Bunny to counteract Evilberry

It was true joy to be add server’s community, building upon the Super Adventure tradition amongst fellow gamers. The players made it a joy to run and I likewise had a blast running it. A big shoutout to all the players who participated, you know who you are!

Aftermath

headband jaws whirlingdeath Skullmoculus Spiderbot

Images taken from the Howling Tower

  1. Heiro’s Headband
  2. Jaws
  3. Whirling Death
  4. Skullmoculus
  5. Spider Bot

Treasure Found:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Foes Encountered:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Rumors:

Deaths:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

XP Awarded:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Notes

  1. However, this is all a bit opaque for players with fresh set of eyes who’ve never participated in something like a Super Adventure before. In someways, it is likely a bit off-putting as the premise relies of past knowledge, but some times them’s the breaks.↩

  2. Note that not all of the Howling Tower and Cloudbank Facility was explored.↩

  3. HD as d10. Max HP. Infravision 120’. Hearing regardless of obstruction 120’ Regenerate 6HP/round after 3rd round. Only magical attacks or energy weapons do damage. All LVL 4 classes and below (3rd LVL for clerics) Save vs Death. If failed, flee. If passed, paralyzed with fear or pass out from fright!↩

#arduin-arcade #superadventure