Converting BSOLO: Ghost of Lion Castle to DCC?

[DataPacRat]

I have an inexplicable but long-standing fondness for the old Basic D&D solo adventure module, "Ghost of Lion Castle", in which a wizard or elf explores an abandoned lion-shaped wizard's fortress. I'm thinking of DCC-ifiying the thing for my own entertainment; does anyone have any advice on nudging the monsters and treasure closer to DCC's "even a silver piece is nothing to sneeze at" approach?

If I were to assume that each pregen character died while inside, leaving their gear (which is actually a rule in the module); and that exactly one of each of the 27 randomly-encountered monsters was encountered and defeated; the total magical haul would be: 3x swords +1, 3x daggers +1, 3x ropes of climbing, 4x potions of gaseous form, 3x potions of healing, potion of invisibility, 2x potions of levitation, 3x rings of protection +1, 2x rings of invisibility, gauntlets of ogre power, elven boots, elven cloak, wand of paralyzation (5 charges), bag of holding, glowing coals (flickering light, no heat or smoke); scrolls (2x continual light, hold portal, invisibility, levitate light, protection from evil, shield, sleep, 2x web); 6x spellbooks (1: charm person, hold portal, magic missile, read magic, sleep. 2: continual light, web). The cash and gems would add up to 6,134 gp. (Also, the PC could get a signet ring indicating they're the old wizard's heir, opening a possible plot of claiming and defending the castle.)

My first instincts are just to chop all the cash values to a tenth - ie, gp to sp - and running the +1 items through the flowchart of Crawl issue 2 page 9. I'm hesitating before committing to replacing every monster's treasure with that issue's full Loot system; my headcanon for the module is that all the magical items are from the old wizard's own hoard, just dragged around by various critters. Except for the gear left behind by previous explorers, which may need yet another approach.


As long as there's /some/ consistent rule I can lean on, I'm open to just about any suggestions you'd care to make. So - care to make any suggestions?

[GnomeBoy]

Not familiar with the module, but my gut says this:

Reduce all coins to copper only. Sounds like there's still a king's ransom (so to speak) in peasant terms. Maybe even then cut the numerical value by one-quarter or one-third.

Drop all the magic items, except for a few choice ones. If your Zero Level weapon is an ice pick and you find a normal long sword, that's pretty magical, in and of itself. Maybe don't drop them all, but drop 90% of them, the rest are the wizard's stash of magic items. Were it me, I'd roll randomly when stuff turned up to see if any of it was magical, so it'd be unpredictable. Each item that comes up, I'd roll a d10 and if I hit a 10, that item I'd leave as is, and anything else I rolled would be mundane, meaning potions are just liquid (or maybe... poison...!), wands are spent, etc.

Any thing useful there?

[DataPacRat]

Not familiar with the module, but my gut says this:

Reduce all coins to copper only. Sounds like there's still a king's ransom (so to speak) in peasant terms. Maybe even then cut the numerical value by one-quarter or one-third.

So, drop the cash value by 1/100, or even 1/400; sure, I can work with that.

Another approach I've started looking at is flipping through a gear-list like Castle Oldskull's "Treasure Trove" or TSR's "Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue", replacing the raw gp with various wizard-oriented items - books and writing gear, wizard's lab equipment, alchemically preserved components for various potions, and so on. Maybe I'll combine the methods - use the raw gold-piece-value for the books and lab-gear, and slash any gp remaining to cp.

Drop all the magic items, except for a few choice ones. If your Zero Level weapon is an ice pick and you find a normal long sword, that's pretty magical, in and of itself. Maybe don't drop them all, but drop 90% of them, the rest are the wizard's stash of magic items. Were it me, I'd roll randomly when stuff turned up to see if any of it was magical, so it'd be unpredictable. Each item that comes up, I'd roll a d10 and if I hit a 10, that item I'd leave as is, and anything else I rolled would be mundane, meaning potions are just liquid (or maybe... poison...!), wands are spent, etc.

"Crawl issue 2" has a table with a similar approach: for any potential magic item, roll d%, and there's only a 1% chance it's even a "Lucky" item (otherwise it's just worth d4 times the usual), if it passes that test there's only a 1% chance it's at least a +1-or-equivalent magical item, and then similar further checks offer the chance that it's +2, +3, or +4. Having a 1-in-10,000 chance any pre-written magic-item is actually magical puts a rather different spin on the magical economy than 1-in-10; that is, since I don't expect to check anywhere near 10,000 magic items, odds are that the "Crawl" approach would simply end up "no magic items, period", which is a /little/ less common than feels right. Maybe if I checked /every/ item for magical potential, "Crawl"'s approach would work out. (Though I'd still have to figure out how to tweak it to apply to miscellaneous magic items without explicit pluses, like the classic elven cloak and boots.)

Checking just the pre-written magic items with a 1-in-10 chance seems saner than checking them with a 1-in-10,000 chance, and a lot less work than rolling percentile dice for every single found object.

Any thing useful there?

Certainly seems like. I'm open for further discussion and more ideas, of course.