Friday Fantasy: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations is a bit different. Unlike the majority of the releases for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and the releases for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, it is not a scenario. Instead, it is a supplement designed to help the Judge bring the darker, grimmer, and even pulpier world of the City of the Black Toga, Lankhmar, the home to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, the creation of author Fritz Leiber, to life. The city is described as an urban jungle, rife with cutpurses and corruption, guilds and graft, temples and trouble, whores and wonders, and more. Under the cover the frequent fogs and smogs, the streets of the city are home to thieves, pickpockets, burglars, cutpurses, muggers, and anyone else who would skulk in the night! Which includes the Player Characters. Since the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set presents a city setting, what a campaign set there needs more than anything is locations. Places that the Player Characters will visit, whether that is somewhere to fraternise and carouse, worship, case and then burglarise, buy goods and fence their stolen booty, or simply to sleep. Together, such locations and the NPCs found there are places around which a campaign can be built as the Player Characters visit them again and again and they become part of their lives. Scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set provide their own locations, starting with Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #1: Gang Lords of Lankhmar, which provides a gang of fellow thieves and desperate men and women to lead as well as a hideout to use as a base of operations. Subsequent scenarios have provided further locations, such as the theatre in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #3: Acting Up In Lankhmar. Each of these scenarios provides just a handful—at the very most—of such locations, whereas, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations goes much, much further.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations does exactly what its title suggests. Describe and detail a dozen locations in the City of the Black Toga. None of the locations are generic. All of them are specific locations, some part of the city as detailed in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, whilst others are directly inspired by the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. That said, names and details can be changed increasing the versatility of the locations and in some cases, there is some variation included. The majority of the important NPCs are named and given some details so that the Judge can portray them in play. The selection opens with the ‘Crafts Street Watch House’, a better manned and equipped watch house, complete with barracks, armoury, constables’ office, bedrooms for the sergeants, and so on. The interesting rooms for the Player Characters are going to be the vault which holds several chests’ worth of potential loot and evidence and downstairs the interrogation room and the cells where they might end up! Of course, the Watch House need not be on Crafts Street, but could be relocated to wherever the Judge desires. The ‘Fence’s Business’ is a nice combination of secret business, ordinary business, and board rooms.

More expansive and detailed is the ‘Pleasure House’ between the Carousing and the Pleasure Quarters. One of four larger locations in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations, this is a high-end house of ill repute, its proprietor, Lady Minx, taking great care of her staff and their children, catering to certain clientele in secret, yet of course, keeping their secrets just in case something goes wrong. There is a little nudity to the artwork here, in keeping with the swords & sorcery genre, but otherwise there is nothing prurient here and it feels like a working establishment. The idea of the ‘Rented Temple’, placed on the Street of the Gods, is particular to Lankhmar and the example is dedicated to Miska, Lord of Cats, a parochial and quirky choice, and there are alternative suggestions as possible uses for its inner rooms. Similarly, the ‘Second-Rate Sorcerer’s House’ is also quirky and particular to Lankhmar, filled with magical knick-knacks and gewgaws—mostly for shore—which is home to a competent, if middling wizard. The ‘Shop with Attached Living Quarters’ expands upon the alternative use with for options for what is upstairs above the shop. One is a family home, the other a pair of rented rooms, and an open loft area which could be put to various use, including storage, sparring room, dovecote, and others. Thus, this building could have two or three storeys.

The Cuttlefish is given as an example ‘Sailing Ship’. This is a cramped caravel of a type popular amongst Inner Sea traders and similar to the Seahawk, the vessel that the Gray Mouser commands later in his career. Presented as more of a cutaway, the inclusion of the Cuttlefish has lots of gaming potential. The Player Characters might need to sneak aboard or prevent another gang from doing so and the ship will enable them to travel abroad from the city of Lankhmar and explore the wider world. Depending upon their wealth and influence, they might even take command of the vessel and engage in trade, and even a little smuggling. The ship has a smuggling hold—just a small one—which could be used to smuggle goods or passengers or even the Player Characters themselves in secret. Like a lot of lot of the entries in this supplement, the ‘Sailing Ship’ entry is flexible and utilitarian.

Several locations are tied to the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. These include ‘The Silver Eel’, the tavern on Dim Lane where the two adventurers are known to be regulars and the ‘Thieves’ House’, home to Lankhmar’s most notorious and one of its most powerful guilds. It is so powerful that it publicly occupies a whole block in the city and it is rumoured that the surrounding buildings and the cellars and sewers blow are part of it too. Arguably, a whole supplement could have been dedicated to the city’s Thieves’ Guild, but there is room in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations for just two floors to be detailed. This is still the largest entry in the supplement and it portrays the Thieves’ House during the tenure of Korvas as guild master when the warlock, Hristomilo, was in residence. His laboratory is described in some detail and there are suggestions as what his laboratory might be used for following the events of the novella, Ill Met in Lankhmar. Likewise, the ‘Wealthy Villa’ describes the ‘House of Muulsh the Moneylender’—as previously detailed in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set—home to Muulsh and his wife, Atya, although it also includes the slight differences to the richly appointed, three-storey villa, after Atya disappears. The location, of course, is just demanding to be burglarised by the Player Characters.

Other locations in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations include ‘Street Market’ and ‘Warehouses and Rooming House’. The ‘Street Market’ details the ‘Five Knife-Points Market’ with numerous vendors and NPCs that the Player Characters can interact with, selling and buying goods, menacing the vendors for protection money, rob, picking pockets, and so on. ‘Warehouses and Rooming House’ present a rooming house, ‘The Weary Sailor’, and its adjacent buildings. These include several warehouses, including one abandoned, one being run profitably, and one turned into a pit-fighting venue. This small neighbourhood has a delightfully seedy feel to it and certainly worth adding to the Judge’s campaign should her Player Characters want to check out the monies to be made down by the docks in the River Quarter.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations is as decently presented as you would expect from Goodman Games. It is well written, but the cartography really stands out, clearly depicting its numerous buildings in all of their opulence and seediness.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations is a very useful supplement for the Judge running a campaign set in Lankhmar. It presents her with ready-to-play locations that instantly add to the city and bring it life, whether iconic places such as ‘The Silver Eel’ or the ‘Thieves’ House’, or more generic and easily adjusted places such as the ‘Shop with Attached Living Quarters’. In the process, the contents of Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar #7: A Dozen Lankhmar Locations will make both the city of Lankhmar and the activities of the Player Characters all the more believable and memorable.