I'm running a DND zombie apocalypse game set over a year after the initial scourge. The players have had the goal of making it to a rumored safe Haven as their goal since game 1 and have finally made it within spitting distance 6 games in but now I have a problem.
Ive got a good idea for the Haven town and a decent layout for them but it's lacking that apocalypse town feeling. I need some building ideas or something the 'fill in the blankspace' as it were
Every structure is stone for the first floor and there are no doors or windows on the first floor. You enter a building only by climbing a ladder that is lowered down to let you in. Some of the buildings have bridges connecting them at the third or fourth floor level. Lots of bars on the windows and fields of fire to allow building to cover each other with arrow fire. You may wish to have a storehouse or something completely made of stone that holds a significant portion of their food reserves; something like a key building that needs to be defended.
Rope ladders and suspended bridges that can be pulled up to prevent them being used by unwanted guests. Skulls on pikes at the entrance ways help convey the proper welcome to your zombie guests. There should also be some sort of cataclysmic defense in case the main entry way is breached, like pots of boiling oil that can be tipped over to flow back out through the gate; and maybe set aflame. Maybe a ballista pointed at the gate from the inside so that if they breach the heavy door a ballista bolt is shot back through the gate that kills the first twenty invaders. A trap that opens up and sucks a dozen zombies in? And of course, the obligatory portcullis. Good luck. Have fun storming the castle!
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
A thought for the cataclysmic defense since I'm assuming holy magic is a thing, vats of holy water instead of/in addition to the boiling oil. Also maybe magic circles that will turn undead for a limited time, the party has to push back zombies that make the save long enough for NPCs to make a new barricade.
well depends on if the town does or does not have a wizard:
if if does: go nuts, have a lava moat, have it float gently above the ground, have it be concealed by illusions or surrounded by magical wards
if not: make shure they have some kind of stone wall at least, maybe pikes or sniper tower like implements.
also, consider if the town had some kind of purpose before the incident, maybe it was a mining town, and it still has some prospecting equipment and explosives arround, the barricade being made out of boulders and minecarts and whatever and former mineshafts being turned into living areas, perhaps tunnels have been dug underground to acess to sepperat areas?
perhaps the settlement is in a forest and the settlement mainly exported wooden trade goods, perhaps its an quarry, perhaps its an former dwarven fortress? an elven enclave or an location where some character class used to reside?
if all else fails, use the random dungeon tables in the dmg to create an history for the location
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
One year wouldn't be enough time to make large-scale changes (in the absence of wish spells), so a walled town would have been a walled town already. The buildings inside might be boarded up on the lower floors, but between zombie-evading, zombie-fighting, and getting the crops in with a depleted population so you survive the winter, nobody has made some kind of ideal zombie-proof town. Any expansion would be log walls, like an Old West fort.
One thing you'd have time to do is build barricades of junk (wagons, material from torn-down buildings, whatever) in concentric rings in the streets to give the inner town another line of defense.
The town inside the walls might be crammed with refugees or eerily silent. There would almost certainly be some kind of intense religious types.
One year wouldn't be enough time to make large-scale changes (in the absence of wish spells), so a walled town would have been a walled town already. The buildings inside might be boarded up on the lower floors, but between zombie-evading, zombie-fighting, and getting the crops in with a depleted population so you survive the winter, nobody has made some kind of ideal zombie-proof town. Any expansion would be log walls, like an Old West fort.
wish? you are thinking a little too big here friend, there are actiually two spells that can quite effectively create stone walls:
-the mighty fortress spell is an 8th level spell, that lasts for 7 days and creates an mighty fortress, if recast every 7 days for a year, the fort becomes permanent
-the wall of stone spell has an duration of concentration, up to 10 minutes, but if an caster concentrates on the spell for the full duration, the walls of stone created by the spell last forever, and its only an 5th level spell also available to four elements monks and artificers of sufficiently high level.
-stone shape and fabricate can be used by spellcaster to do hard work and detailed changes quickly
again, this assumes one of the citizens is indeed an high-level spellcaster, when spellcasters overall (or any member of any of the classes) are rather rare, not everyone is a wizard but even a experienced wizard who is far from the pinnacle of wizardry could still probably muster some spells that can permanently change or improve an town, wish is far from the only option
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
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I'm running a DND zombie apocalypse game set over a year after the initial scourge. The players have had the goal of making it to a rumored safe Haven as their goal since game 1 and have finally made it within spitting distance 6 games in but now I have a problem.
Ive got a good idea for the Haven town and a decent layout for them but it's lacking that apocalypse town feeling. I need some building ideas or something the 'fill in the blankspace' as it were
Every structure is stone for the first floor and there are no doors or windows on the first floor. You enter a building only by climbing a ladder that is lowered down to let you in. Some of the buildings have bridges connecting them at the third or fourth floor level. Lots of bars on the windows and fields of fire to allow building to cover each other with arrow fire. You may wish to have a storehouse or something completely made of stone that holds a significant portion of their food reserves; something like a key building that needs to be defended.
Rope ladders and suspended bridges that can be pulled up to prevent them being used by unwanted guests. Skulls on pikes at the entrance ways help convey the proper welcome to your zombie guests. There should also be some sort of cataclysmic defense in case the main entry way is breached, like pots of boiling oil that can be tipped over to flow back out through the gate; and maybe set aflame. Maybe a ballista pointed at the gate from the inside so that if they breach the heavy door a ballista bolt is shot back through the gate that kills the first twenty invaders. A trap that opens up and sucks a dozen zombies in? And of course, the obligatory portcullis. Good luck. Have fun storming the castle!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
A thought for the cataclysmic defense since I'm assuming holy magic is a thing, vats of holy water instead of/in addition to the boiling oil. Also maybe magic circles that will turn undead for a limited time, the party has to push back zombies that make the save long enough for NPCs to make a new barricade.
If the players are making the town maybe ask them for input?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
well depends on if the town does or does not have a wizard:
if if does: go nuts, have a lava moat, have it float gently above the ground, have it be concealed by illusions or surrounded by magical wards
if not: make shure they have some kind of stone wall at least, maybe pikes or sniper tower like implements.
also, consider if the town had some kind of purpose before the incident, maybe it was a mining town, and it still has some prospecting equipment and explosives arround, the barricade being made out of boulders and minecarts and whatever and former mineshafts being turned into living areas, perhaps tunnels have been dug underground to acess to sepperat areas?
perhaps the settlement is in a forest and the settlement mainly exported wooden trade goods, perhaps its an quarry, perhaps its an former dwarven fortress? an elven enclave or an location where some character class used to reside?
if all else fails, use the random dungeon tables in the dmg to create an history for the location
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
One year wouldn't be enough time to make large-scale changes (in the absence of wish spells), so a walled town would have been a walled town already. The buildings inside might be boarded up on the lower floors, but between zombie-evading, zombie-fighting, and getting the crops in with a depleted population so you survive the winter, nobody has made some kind of ideal zombie-proof town. Any expansion would be log walls, like an Old West fort.
One thing you'd have time to do is build barricades of junk (wagons, material from torn-down buildings, whatever) in concentric rings in the streets to give the inner town another line of defense.
The town inside the walls might be crammed with refugees or eerily silent. There would almost certainly be some kind of intense religious types.
wish? you are thinking a little too big here friend, there are actiually two spells that can quite effectively create stone walls:
-the mighty fortress spell is an 8th level spell, that lasts for 7 days and creates an mighty fortress, if recast every 7 days for a year, the fort becomes permanent
-the wall of stone spell has an duration of concentration, up to 10 minutes, but if an caster concentrates on the spell for the full duration, the walls of stone created by the spell last forever, and its only an 5th level spell also available to four elements monks and artificers of sufficiently high level.
-stone shape and fabricate can be used by spellcaster to do hard work and detailed changes quickly
again, this assumes one of the citizens is indeed an high-level spellcaster, when spellcasters overall (or any member of any of the classes) are rather rare, not everyone is a wizard but even a experienced wizard who is far from the pinnacle of wizardry could still probably muster some spells that can permanently change or improve an town, wish is far from the only option
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes