Friday Fantasy: The Veiled Dungeon

Given the origins of the roleplaying hobby—in wargaming and in the drawing of dungeons that the first player characters, and a great many since, explored and plundered—it should be no surprise just how important maps are to the hobby. They serve as a means to show a tactical situation when using miniatures or tokens and to track the progress of the player characters through the dungeon—by both the players and the Dungeon Master. And since the publication of Dungeon Geomorphs, Set One: Basic Dungeon by TSR, Inc. in 1976, the hobby has found different ways in which to provide us with maps. Games Workshop published several Dungeon Floor Sets in the 1980s, culminating in Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh; Dwarven Forge has supplied dungeon enthusiasts with highly detailed, three-dimensional modular terrain since 1996; and any number of publishers have sold maps as PDFs via Drivethrurpg.com. Loke BattleMats does something a little different with its maps. It publishes them as books. To date, this has included the Big Book of Battle Mats: Rooms, Vaults, & Chambers, the Big Book of Cyberpunk Battle Mats, The Dungeon Books of Battle Mats, The Wilderness Books of Battle Mats, The Towns & Taverns Books of Battle Mats, and Castles, Crypts, & Caverns Books of Battle Mats. However, The Veiled Dungeon is something a little different, something more like Dungeon Planner Set 1: Caverns of the Dead and Dungeon Planner Set 2: Nightmare in Blackmarsh.

The Veiled Dungeon is a boxed set containing a set of maps, encounter cards, and a book of encounters and monsters, all of which can be used in the adventure in the book or used by the Dungeon Master to create her own encounters. It is designed as both toolkit and ready-to-play adventure and comes decently appointed in whatever way the Dungeon Master wants to use it. The adventure itself, ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’, is designed for Player Characters of between Third and Fifth Level for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It comes as a boxed set containing twenty separate maps, forty monster cards, and a reference book.

The maps are done on double-sided seventeen by eleven light card sheets, in full colour and marked with a grid of one-inch squares. All are suitable for use with both wet and dry markers. They include hallways, corridors, dormitories, storerooms, workrooms, crumbling bridges over yawning magical chasms, grand staircases, magical circles, ziggurats, shattered rooms, courtyards and entrances, and more. They are bright and colourful and done in the style recognisable from maps from Loke BattleMats. They are also compatible with them, meaning that they can be used alongside all of the publisher’s maps to expand the playing area and add variety.

The monster cards are also double-sided and done in full colour. On the front is an illustration of the creature, which of course, can be shown to the players when their characters encounter them, whilst on the back is its full stats for easy reference by the Dungeon Master. There are one or two NPCs, such as the Veteran Scholar, but the rest are all monsters. Many of them are animated objects—animated objects to be found in the scenario—and it is clear that the author has had a lot of fun naming and designing them. There is the ‘Animated Scroll Storm’, which acts like a swarm of paper that inflicts paper cuts and on a critical can cast a random cantrip; ‘Bad Dreams’ is animated bed that inflicts ‘Things that go bump’ damage and if a target is prone makes them fall asleep ‘Night, Night!’; and ‘Belligerent Bookcase’, a ‘Vindictive Teacher’ that makes attacks against targets with an Intelligence of twelve or less at Advantage and will then ‘Throw the Book’ at them! The most fun, at least in terms of names, is the ‘Chest of Jaws’, that likes to grapple its targets and steal small items with ‘’That’s Mine’ and then hangs on with ‘Lockjaw’ for both Advantage and extra damage. The animated furniture is especially fun and all of the pieces could easily be used elsewhere—as could many of the monsters.

The Reference Book for The Veiled Dungeon is initially somewhat confusing. Is it, or is it not, a scenario called ‘The Veiled Dungeon’? Well, sort of, but first what the Reference Book does is actually break down the elements of the dungeon, not necessarily to help the Dungeon Master run the pre-written version which follows later in the book, but to help the Dungeon Master create something of her own, but still similar. The elements common to both the adventure contained in the box and the one that the Dungeon Master might create include the myth of the Veiled Dungeon and its invasive fog that shifts and walls that move. How scholars keep discovering it and as they dig deeper, becoming obsessed with exploring further, arousing the interest of a deity of madness and obsession, until they make one terrible discovery, and the fog is unleashed, wreathing its way through the complex, changing and twisting the walls and rooms and letting deadly new monsters in!

The Reference Book then takes the Dungeon Master through the different elements of the adventure. This begins with the maps and then provides tables for creating motivations, persons and organisations that might employ the Player Characters, the size of the dungeon and variations upon it, and then multiple different encounters. It breaks these encounters down area by area rather than by individual locations. The last part of Reference Book consists of the bestiary for ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. From ‘Activated Rope’, ‘Animated Scroll Storm’, and ‘Arcane Golem’ to ‘Veteran Scholar’, ‘Unwelcome Rug’, and ‘Wyrmspawn’, every monster gets a decent write-up, typically a paragraph in length. The more major monsters, like the ‘Malevolent Veil Fiend’ and the ‘Sentinel Statue’, get much longer write-ups, as befitting the threats they represent.

The tools are there for the Dungeon Master to create her own version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’, but the Reference Book also includes its own pre-written adventure, essentially the designer’s own version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. This is ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’. The Cerulean Ruins are an important ‘Site of Special Arcane Interest’—or ‘SSAI’—currently being excavated by the Yore Institute. The latter hires the Player Characters to investigate the complex after contact has been lost with its staff and students. It is part-scholar, part-archaeological dig, that gets increasingly darker and weirder. The Player Characters will initially gain some information about the status of the complex from a former employee who has turned ‘ruin raider’, but it does not quite prepare them for what they find. Much of the fittings and furniture have been twisted into malevolent monstrosities and there is a growing sense of madness and chaos, the deeper the Player Characters go. Progress through the dungeon is intentionally compartmenalised. This is done by making the Player Characters need to find keys to unlock particular sections of the dungeon. This is not only a device to have the Player Characters explore every section, but also to prevent them from haring through the dungeon, so forcing the Dungeon Master to clear the table of one set of maps and then set up another.

In the epilogue to the adventure there is an interesting line: “One of the scholars also points out that they have uncovered rumours that might lead to another set of ruins similar to this one!” Which, should the players and their characters follow up on, would enable the Dungeon Master to use the tools to create a new version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’ of her own, which almost exactly, but not like The Cerulean Ruins. What happens if the Player Characters do follow up on this lead is not explored in the Reference Book, sadly, since some overarching plot could have provided more motivation and storytelling possibilities than simple repetition. Nevertheless, ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’ is a good scenario with a decent mix of exploration and combat and a few clues to help the players and their characters work out what is going on.

Physically, The Veiled Dungeon is a handsome boxed set. Everything is well presented. The artwork is excellent and the cartography is as good as you would expect.

The Veiled Dungeon is a slightly odd product, both an adventure and a toolkit to create similarly themed adventures. It perhaps could have done with advice to connect the adventures or provide a bigger plot perhaps, so that the Dungeon Master would have found it easier to create and link, if that is what she desires, the variants upon ‘The Veiled Dungeon’. Nevertheless, whether she is running the included ‘The Raiders of the Cerulean Ruins’ or a version of ‘The Veiled Dungeon’ of her own devising, the contents of The Veiled Dungeon are going to look good on the table.