OSR Commentary On The Use & Abuse of Funhouse Dungeons In Old School Campaigns

So I've been reading a lot about 'fun house' dungeons & how the OSR as a community is divided about them over the years. I personally don't give a fig what the community thinks. The fact is that the players & dungeon master are the final arbitrators over what's presented at the table end of story. Now back to fun house dungeons & the neo OSR titles because last night I was looking at Alan Chamberlain & Mark Taormino's Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #4: Vault of the Dwarven King. Oh Christ, not another commercial for Maximum Mayhem Dungeons?!? No,no, we're going to take a moment to delve into bridge between funhouse dungeons,weirdness, & mad gods. No not archmages(archmages are merely the salesmen & pitchmen), no I'm talking about the gods!


Nope its not. Instead we're going to take a moment to talk about  fun house dungeons the two most cited examples are White Plume Mountain and The Ghost Tower of Inverness.   People often hate funhouse dungeons  because of  the fact that they often have overarching room concepts that break the general Tolkein fantasy tropes with more modern pop culture references. Alan Chamberlain & Mark Taormino's Neo OSR adventure creations play with this quite often & repeatedly this leads me to believe that these gentlemen are fans of the 'fun house' dungeon concept.
To quote Jeff Rients here from comments in Grognardia comments section,"I believe that the descent into the dungeon is a symbolic representation of the rational mind attempting to understand the irrational, unconscious self. Therefore dungeons should have something important to say but they are under no obligation to make any sense."   Yeah alright I can get down with that sentiment but let's take this further for a moment down into the depths of the Sword & Sorcery lens for a moment. Robert A. Heinlein' Glory Road came out in '64 & its a science fantasy novel that came out smack in the middle of the Vietnam War. 

Glory Road & fun house dungeons  are   a part of a much older pulp tradition though as we'll see.

Glory Road's sentiments helped to define many of the readers thoughts of the Vietnam in many respects;"There is an old picture of a people traveling by sleigh through deep woods — pursued by wolves. Every now and then they grab one of their number and toss him to the wolves. That's conscription even if you call it "selective service" and pretty it up with USOs and "veterans' benefits" — it's tossing a minority to the wolves while the rest go on with that single-minded pursuit of the three-car garage, the swimming pool, and the safe & secure retirement benefits."
Instantly the reader is hurled into the fact that the main character is an adventurer & lost soul like so many of the 60's & 70's generation who comes across this add;" ARE YOU A COWARD? This is not for you. We badly need a brave man. He must be 23 to 25 years old, in perfect health, at least six feet tall, weigh about 190 pounds, fluent English with some French, proficient with all weapons, some knowledge of engineering and mathematics essential, willing to travel, no family or emotional ties, indomitably courageous and handsome of face and figure. Permanent employment, very high pay, glorious adventure, great danger. You must apply in person..."Words of an advertisement E. C. Gordon (later known as Oscar) keeps encountering. Ch. 3 Glory Road.
Now I'm not getting into the policies, politics,etc. that helped to shape the Vietnem war, I get to see those everyday with my father's Parkinson's disease thanks to Agent Orange. No this is about those soldiers & veterans who returned home longing for that undefined quality to fill the hole inside their souls. This is something that has been on going since the Lost Generation. That feeling of adventure & romance is exactly the sort of thing that these folks were after;
"I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be — instead of the tawdry, lousy fouled-up mess it is.
I had had one chance — for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be — And I had known it ... and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is all you ever get."

Its this  sentiment that dark gods, wizards, & things from outside love to take advantage of. When you set up a funhouse dungeon with all of the black legends,mythology,etc. your plugging into the very core of adventurers. The funhouse is the challenge of adventure & its feeding some very dark forces in the background. These gods might be Lovecraftian entities, the lords of Chaos,etc. But the specticle of the whole affair keeps the gods entertained. But why? Because the blood, chaos, etc. is the point folks. These funhouses are the 'pay for view' of the multiverse.


In fact I've talked about this sort of a mid point of cosmic entertainment before with a Retro Review C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness By Allen Hammack For Advance Dungeons And Dragons First Edition and Your Old School Campaigns 

In fact these sorts of isolated funhouse locations go way back into the pulp tradition & take full advantage of those 'heroes' & fools who fall into their clutches. The tube is always on & its turned to a dead channel that being your adventurer's soul. The management is always bringing in new acts, prizes, & keeping the gig going.


They might be creating entire segments of reality out of the astral material, importing in monsters,etc. all in an effort to feel far more then what the players or PC's are aware of. Funhouse dungeons are merely the anchors in the PC's reality and that feeds the sink of the evil ala Adventurer, Conqueror, King.  This leads to an undercurrent of evil about these places & yet no one seems to be able to shut these adventure locations down. Why? Because their providing far too much power,excitement, & terror to the gods as well as the masses.

Fantastic Adventure, Goddess of the Golden Flame, cover art by Harold W. McCauley

But why have funhouse dungeons in a campaign setting? Well there are number of old school reasons   for them. 

1. They provide great public relations, marketing, & advertising for the cults of the gods & provide a venue for their power, glory, & wealth within another god's reality. 
2. 'Fun house dungeons' give adventurers a 'hero's death' in a fitting way that will long out live them giving the players something to talk about for years. 
3. In old school post apocalyptic wastelands funhouse dungeons are a perfect venue to introduce fantasy PC's into the mix. These dungeons beg to have cross world origins and existences allowing all sorts of horrors to visit from fantasy & science fantasy. 
4. Dark cults can operate right out in the open as PC's line up to go for the adventure location allowing dark magick to operate right under their noses. 
5. Artifacts acting as dimensional anchors can be dangled right in front of PC's and they don't suspect a thing because its all part of the 'funhouse' location. Artifacts spread god's power, mythology, dogma, and religion all in one. 
6. An arch wizard is the perfect dupe & target for a Lovecraftian god, "Of course the purple mage Fra butt lick created the tower of Lurx' ". 
7. 'Fun house dungeons ' are the perfect locations to spring monsters you've never used before because you want to. 
8. Don't over explain the existence of fun house dungeons they exist as entities unto themselves. 
9. They make excellent otherworldly portals to other worlds  because they've got guardians & reasons for existence built right in. 
10. Adventurers might be hired to help maintain a fun house dungeon location and act as agents as they did in my campaigns over the years.

Mediations on C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness (1e) for Sword & Sorcery & Domain Level Campaign

"A shadow from the past, the Ghost Tower of Inverness has loomed ever larger in the mind of the great Seer of Urnst. Now he has convinced the Duke that an expedition should be organized to go to the ancient keep and recover its greatest treasure - the fabled Soul Gem."


So opens one of the more iconic & in some ways controversial titles in the 'C' or Competition series of modules, 1980's The Ghost Tower of Inverness is pure competition module right out of the gate. You can construct a storyline around it for your home campaign but the tower itself is situated in the world of Greyhawk an ancient magical tower located in the southern Abbor-Alz Hills. My version of the tower had a slightly more Moorcockian origin. The place moved between dimensions and the fabled Soul Gem, a legendary artifact of great power powered it. Wiki has a good breakdown of the adventure and of the process for tournament play;"All of the characters are in the dungeon of the Duke Justinian Lorimnar of Unst for various crimes and charged with the task of recovering the Soul Gem for the Duke:
Hodar - A sorcerer practicing forbidden magic specifically outlawed by the Duke
Zinethar - A priest who led a temple revolt against the Duke's citizens
Lembu - A fighter who killed the palace guard captain and 11 of his men in a barroom brawl
Discinque - A thief who attempted to steal jewels from the crown, only to fall off the wall on top of the guard patrol
Li Hon - A monk indentured into the Duke's service by her monastery in lieu of tax payment

The Duke, after providing gold for the characters to equip themselves, also provides a magic item (the Amulet of Recall) which teleports the party back to the Duke, no matter where they are. After equipping is complete, the palace guard escort the characters to the ruined site of the ghost tower, where players must then figure out actions on their own how to best enter the tower and recover the gem. Tournament Points are added, or deducted, from both team and individual scores depending on how characters choose to handle the situations they encounter. These include a chess room, a "frozen bugbear" room, a "tunnel" room, and others." So part tournament module & a possible enigma wrapped around a traps & tricks core of weirdness. Players & their PC's have to think on their feet, for Hyperborea The Ghost Tower is a chance to present a Hyperborean artifact of both extreme power & dangerous weirdness. In other words the tower itself should be an artifact of mythology and local legend.


The key to doing this is in the use of Duke Justinian Lorimnar of Unst who could be a minor official in the bureaucracy of Hyperborea or another sword & sorcery world. Think the bureaucracy of ancient Rome and uncaring attitude of an Eighties flick like Greed and you get the idea. This is a man willing to send others into harm's way to achieve his own ends. The tower is as much an npc as any other character in this adventure and care should be taken to get this point across the players. They've got to work together as a team and this is one that has to be played with experienced players to get the best out of the Ghost Tower of Inverness.


This one isn't player vs player its a team effort scaled around the adventure goals themselves which are reflected in the 'fun house' nature of the Ghost Tower, its dungeons, traps, items, and the adventure location's ins & outs. All of this revolves around the theme of the dungeon which highlights both its qualities and style of play.


So how does this relate to domain play? Well the tower could be one aspect of a right of succession which some retroclone & completing the adventure are part of a noble birth right. This all of course ties back into who and the elements of  C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness,


There are few reasons why "The Ghost Tower of Inverness" (1980), by Allen Hammack,  the second adventure in the competition (C-) series actually can work as an old school campaign venue :

1. There's no tears or fuss setting this one up in your own campaign world setting. There so much D&D DIY that can be done with C2 that it lends itself for a different sort of style of play. 
2. Stretching the players and the party's role at the table marks the beginning of the use of the fun house as something more. 
3. Traps, tricks, and lethality  makes this one a dangerous module to run as you the DM want or need it. 
4. This module has an air of the weird and pushing it in the extra direction of sword & sorcery isn't that hard. 
5. Have you ever wanted to push as clown or other dangerous NPC theme in a module? This is the module to unleash a bunch of psychotic clown or other nasty you always wanted to. 
6. Not easily broken, there are several strange bits in the Ghost Tower that can be adapted into your home campaign or to tackle their own version. 
7. There have been numerous adventure locations in sword & sorcery campaigns that are exactly the sort of fun house play. 
8. There are themes and setting ideas that roll themselves through  C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness, with a bit of foreshadowing these can be come wholly important to the party when they enter the tower. 
9. The tower can be as much a prize as the treasure and material within it. With a bit of luck & some good rolls the PC's can deal with both the hazards within the Tower and then I've had several players want to make the Tower their domains! I can so see this happening because of the artifact status of the tower. 
10. The tower works as both an iconic adventure and as a gate way to further explorations in the surrounding lands. 

Because of the iconic nature of this module there's something about running it once per group that makes it stand out. This is only one of my experiences with C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness & there's lots of potential for expansion that makes this one a classic but as always your mileage may vary a bit. 

Retro Review C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness By Allen Hammack For Advance Dungeons And Dragons First Edition and Your Old School Campaigns

A shadow from the past, the Ghost Tower of Inverness has loomed ever larger in the mind of the great Seer of Urnst. Now he has convinced the Duke that an expedition should be organized to go to the ancient keep and recover its greatest treasure - the fabled Soul Gem. And so begins one of the more troubling and controversial modules for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or so it would seem. Right out of the gate  this isn't a light weight module, once again the C here stands for competition and that's exactly what the Ghost Tower of Inverness was meant for. This adventure centers around an adventure for 5-10 PCs, levels 5-7. That's right you can shove ten friends through this adventure and it has the potential to grind their character sheets  into confetti. This adventure was meant for tournament play and in fact its the second in the series that shows how to run a convention set for a game. C2 has a reputation as somewhat of a 'fun house' dungeon with lots of interesting tricks and puzzles inside of it. There's also lots of potential for sword and sorcery action!


So what do the dungeon master do once your party of adventurers has conquered the Temple of Elemental Evil and had the audacity to take over The Keep on The Borderlands? Well you stick them into the dungeons of the Duke of Urnst and have the Seer of Urnst have visions of their greater destiny conquering the Ghost Tower of Inverness! Its  former lair of the legendary wizard, Galap-Dreidel whose tower spies out from the mists of Woolly Bay. But why does the tower still exist and what are its secrets? Well, our answer lays with the wizard Galap-Dreidel whose always been lurking in the back of my campaigns with his chaos artifact the Soul Gem. Now if you've read or played through C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness By Allen Hammack then you know that the dungeon is rather interestingly aligned with the four elements in rather clever and puzzle like ways. Why? What possible reason is there for the 'fun house' like element of the tower? Well imagine if you will that the chaos gods who hold Galap-Dreidel's soul leak out a bauble or treasure or two into the bays and surrounding area of the tower to allow the legendary status to continue among the world of men. This keeps the tower fresh in the minds of the locals and allows the tower to collects but most of all keep the gods of  chaos entertained. Evil gods are funny that way and the adventure elements of the tower amount to reality television for the gods. Perhaps its because I read the a 'The Vanishing Tower of Voilodon Ghagnasdiak' by Michael Moorcock's Elric saga back in high school but many of the adventure setting elements of the tournament module have always plugged right into C2.



Yes, this is a fun house dungeon with some rather shall we say unique issues. This included an interesting way of purchasing magic items before play began, those choices of which affected the entire outcome of the adventure. C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness is the type of module that fits into the background of a Dark Albion or Lamentations of the Flame Princess pseudo historical setting quite readily, the place to stick it near frog men of France on a small island or remote location. The reputation and legendary status of the place would attract adventurers like flies or moths to the lamp light to have it snuff out their souls



Now I've used this module as an introductory adventure to really challenge some new players to AD&D style games and have quite successfully done so in the past because all of the PC classes from AD&D 1st edition are represented. The Wiki entry for the Ghost Tower has a very nice break down of them; "

Players may choose from one of five pre-determined characters listed in the module. All of the characters are in the dungeon of the Duke Justinian Lorimnar of Unst for various crimes and charged with the task of recovering the Soul Gem for the Duke:

Hodar - A sorcerer practicing forbidden magic specifically outlawed by the Duke

Zinethar - A priest who led a temple revolt against the Duke's citizens

Lembu - A fighter who killed the palace guard captain and 11 of his men in a barroom brawl

Discinque - A thief who attempted to steal jewels from the crown, only to fall off the wall on top of the guard patrol

Li Hon - A monk indentured into the Duke's service by her monastery in lieu of tax payment

The Duke, after providing gold for the characters to equip themselves, also provides a magic item (the Amulet of Recall) which teleports the party back to the Duke, no matter where they are. After equipping is complete, the palace guard escort the characters to the ruined site of the ghost tower, where players must then figure out actions on their own how to best enter the tower and recover the gem. Tournament Points are added, or deducted, from both team and individual scores depending on how characters choose to handle the situations they encounter. These include a chess room, a "frozen bugbear" room, a "tunnel" room, and others."  So what does this tell us about the make up of the 'party'? Well its been created for tournament play obviously but it could also be that these adventurers could have been gathered from across the campaign face because of the Duke's personal connections to the adventurers. Well, over the years I run a sort of Clue movie connection thread through the NPC's so that each of them had a dark secret connecting family, loved ones, friends to the Duke thus giving and tying in far more motive to the Tower itself. I've also thrown in the Duke's murder after completing the tower adventure itself.

Yeah so where would I place this inside of the environs of Hyperborea? I wouldn't exactly. In point of fact I've used the tower as a ghostly place that comes and goes of its own volitation and magical whims making it just that more dangerous and enabling a dungeon master to dove tail it into the back end of a campaign where  and when its need according to the adventure plot line of the players. The player's actions and motivations move everything along in a campaign. But is the timing of these that ties the whole campaign together. Always the let the players move the action and swing of things.


Is the C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness still relevant to OSR gaming and should you use it at your table? Yes and once again yes. Here's why the module remains actually useful. The internal workings of the adventure present a highly dangerous and deadly series of adventures that can easily modified to suit your own campaigns quite easily. You don't have to change the internal puzzles, monsters,or adventure elements at all. Just have the tower show up as needed then go from there; in other words place the tower at regular places and as the needs of your campaign dictate. 

Confession time, I've used C2 from time to time in many other games especially the Stormbringer rpg, the mad cap horrors of The Tower of Inverness suits the weird nature of the rpg and the tower has appeared in the Young Kingdoms a number of times. The weird nature of it suits one of the lesser used chaos gods. Balo the Jester of the Chaos Gods has his thumb prints all over the ghost tower. The traps and tricks are his hallmark and make an excellent in for this whack job of a god to come bum rushing  into your campaigns through the tower's machinations.


C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness By Allen Hammack remains a very interesting module that runs the gamut of fun house and dungeon crawl with lots of deadliness thrown into its mix but it can also make an amusing and deadly addition into your old school campaign mix if presented an interesting way.