We’re done with Triskelion, and on to newer content. Published in 2016 after a successful kickstarter, Grande Temple of Jing is written for Pathfinder 1e, but suitably portable. Clocking in at 500 pages, it’s a beast, but luckily, it’s in big font and pathfinder verbosity. Given the monster of a name, I’ll be calling it GTOJ for short.
GTOJ at it’s core is a bunch of independent dungeons that can be mashed together 6 ways from Sunday. Ostensibly, it’s the great dungeon of the Trickster God Jing, who invented the concept of dungeons, and the reason everything is cliche is because it was invented here first, which is a great framing device, and also provides some of the comedy that makes this adventure so fun.
The first week, we’ll cover the Introduction, Adventures in GTOJ, and The Meta Levels.
Introduction
If I could print out the first 9 pages of this book and hand it to every new OSR DM and every person who wants to write adventures, I would! It’s a master class in providing all the information needed to understand the purpose of the rest of the adventure. It also contains well reasoned verbiage on what it means to DM old-school. Gold for XP; Randomness is fun; Rules are Important, but Fun is More Important.
The next 16 pages covers all the information you’ll need during average play. I’d almost suggest having these pages printed out separately for how often they’ll get referenced during the first few sessions. It also has some ways to turn this megadungeon into other, simpler megadungeons, if that’s what you want/need.
The author also suggests adding adventures to this dungeon monster, because chaos is fun. I agree.
Adventures in the GTOJ
These are 7 story hooks to get your players bought into GTOJ in several different forms. All of them are cool in their own way, and it would be neat to find ways to use some/all of them in the same playthrough. There’s also a d100 table of rumors, which are always nice to have.
The Meta Levels
There are 5 primary meta-levels, the Highway, Trials, Gauntlets, Arenas and Vaults. * The Highway provides an alternate way to tie all the disparate floors together, and comes with it’s own adventure (one of my personal favorites) * Trials are "challenge course" mini dungeons that have an alternate goal beyond "clear every room" * Gauntlets are 5e adventures, aka "Encounter Corridors". A handful of fights/traps in a row, survive to win. * Arenas are just tournament arcs, consisting of 3 rounds. * Vaults are "Fancy treasure rooms" that require 3 keys to enter. Only one is described in the book, with the intent that the DM would make more if they want to.
Each of these meta-level types have a connecting "path to victory/freedom" that drags you through all of them, and are a great way to pallette cleanse megadungeon play, without taking a break from your characters.
Wrap
Can’t wait to start ont he actual content next week! Look forward to probably early posting from me (because I love this thing).