SUPER ADVENTURE 4:
MEGADUNGEON CINEMATIC UNIVERSE EDITION
- THE TOWER OF COLLAGE VAN HAUSEN
I am writing this after running the Super Adventure over the last days. It's probably not the most focused post I ever wrote. If you think I forgot something, shoot me a message and I will address it.
Players are still writing play reports. I will link them here as they come in.
Play Reports:
Making Adventures Super
There is this new tradition on the Purple OSR server, a.k.a. Gay Beholder server: Super Adventures. They are in part inspired by the old FLAILSNAILS games on google+ where people would take their characters from various campaigns to other games. Nbateman ran the first Super Adventure in January 2026; Mr. Mann ran the second one in February (he doesn't have a post on it as far as I know, but the one on arcade gaming provides some context), and oldhawkeyes ran the third one in April. They were all different (I only played in the second and third one) but shared a common attitude of anything goes, keep things moving, and make it big. Accurate conversions or adhering strictly to all rules and procedures isn't expected or needed; it's all about the spectacle. Characters from all kinds of systems show up and do wild stuff.
So when I volunteered to run the next one, I wanted to go big. Mr. Mann had already run two different runs for his Super Adventure, and oldhawkeyes planned his as a two-parter. Naturally, I chose to run something insane so people wouldn't forget my name so soon.
Here is the map; it should give you an impression of the madness:
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| Yes, these are fifteen modules frankensteined together. Can you identify them all? |
Tower of Collage: The Setup
The Tower of Collage is the product of a hack wizard named Collage van Hausen, who never has had an original thought in his life. He conjured a big tower by cutting up all kinds of well-known dungeons and dropped it into the city of Bastion. Then he opened its doors to treasure hunters.
Each team that goes in gets a CVH-branded Totebag of Holding to fill with as much loot as they can. Once they are in, there is a timer ticking down (60 minutes real time). When the time is up, they get teleported out of the dungeon immediately.
There is a high-score board outside the dungeon for the amount of gold looted.
I scheduled 13 sessions of 75 minutes each over the span of a weekend (8-10 May 2026). Players signed up and showed up to play with whatever character they wanted to bring from any campaign or system.
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| The news headlines were meant to generate hype among the players. |
Tower of Collage: Making off
Here is what I did and how the tower worked.
I picked 15 modules I thought were memorable, weird, iconic, or funny and cut out parts from their maps. I was more or less picking parts at random, going for the deeper parts when possible.
The following modules were cut up in the process:
Magical Murder Mansion, The Bureau, Hole in the Oak, Temple of Elemental Evil, Gradient Descent, Nightwick Abbey, Whiteplume Mountain, Stonehell, Isle of the Plangent Mage, The Isle, Whalgravaak's Warehouse, The Chair, Tomb of Horrors, Anomalous Subsurface Environment, Dungeon of the Mad Mage
I arranged the cut-up geomorphs in an order that would make transitioning from one zone to the next interesting. Entering Gradient Descent and ending in Whiteplume Mountain or going through a part of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, moving through the entrance of the Tomb of Horrors to end up in ASE was the idea.
I added some doors, ladders, stairs, and elevators and labeled the entrances so the players could choose a starting point. In the end, I had about 115 keys over 63 pages and 20k words.
Arcade Looter Mechanics
Because I wanted to go all in on videogame-inspired nonsense, I added loot crates:
1-in-6 chance of a golden crate in each previously unopened room. They contain a lot of treasure in an extradimensional pocket.
The contents I generated using various online treasure hoard generators for 5e, Pathfinder, AD&D, Starfinder, and later Wolves Upon the Coast, Classic Traveller, Mothership, GURPS, and some Star Wars RPGs. I did have one hoard for level 30 characters in 4e, but that one was too much, and I nixed it when it came up. There was a list of 12 hoards in my document, and whenever players opened one, they rolled for the entry. Between games I replaced the empty entries. There was also a Daggerheart chest in there as a treat (of course, items that say “spend 2 hope points to redraw from your arcana powers deck” do not excite players, but that was the bit).
There was a lot of treasure. If you aren't familiar with these, here is an example:
Random Encounters from the Multiverse
Every dungeon needs random encounters. I made a table with 10 entries I expected the players to find funny. The stats I wrote up (or copied) without careful consideration for system or format.
100 Cops from the NYPD (each AC 9, 1HD, Gun 1d6, Morale 5)
St. Nicolas wants pcs to share the treasure with orphans (AC 1, 7 HD, 2x Attack with fists 2d8 each or Summon 12 Reindeers, Morale 10)
2d8 Orcs with portable holes. Will drop them to the floor and hide in them to ambush (AC 7, 1 HD, 1x Attack with Axe, Morale 6)
Marvel‘s Avengers. Iron Man (AC 0, 4 HD, flies, Attacks 2 x 2d8 lasers) Captain America (AC 5, 4 HD, Indestructible shield, Attacks: punch 1d8 or 1d10 shield throw) The Hulk (AC 9, 6 HD, angry punches 4d10) Thor (AC 5, 6 HD, Attacks: Mjölnir 1d10+6 or lightning bolt 8d6)
Volo from the Forgotten Realms. He is really into eugenics and social darwinism. He is looking for his nemesis, Henri Bergson.
9 Wolves upon a Rollercoaster. One is building the track as they roll. Real Cartoon shit. They crash through walls looking for a good time (AC as plate, 9 HD, Special Attack: Save against Petrification or be run over and flattened. Flattened PCs are blown away by the wind.)
A gay beholder (rainbow colored) on the hunt for CHUDS (AC 0, 11 HD, Att 1 × bite (2d4), eye rays, SV D6 W7 P8 B8 S10 (11), ML 12, XP 5,100
Anti-magic ray: The central eye dispels magic up to 60’ in front. Spell casting fails and ongoing spells and magic items are temporarily disabled. Characters within the ray cannot be affected by the rays from the eye stalks (see below). Eye stalks: Each stalk can shoot a magical ray up to once per round. Up to 4 stalks can fire in one direction at a time: a. Charm person, b. Charm monster, c. Sleep, d. Telekinesis, e. Petrify. f. Disintegrate, g. Cause fear, h. Slow, i. Cause serious wounds, j. Death spell.7 Classless Thieves. Disgruntled because their caste was removed from the compendium of celestial doctrines. If not aggressive they will ask for signatures to petition the cosmic bureaucracy (1 HD, 1d6 Attack, Morale 7)
Collage Van Hausen himself (see Halaster statblock)
4 Wizards of the Cross. White gowns, pointy hats, WOTC on the shirt. Will try to convert magic users to become followers of Christ. Magic is evil. (3 HD, 1d8 Sacred Flame, Morale 11)
I have to say I am very proud of the Wolves upon a Rollercoaster and the Orcs in Portable Holes. They were my favorites. The 100 police officers did produce some great moments too.
Dungeon Mastery in the Tower of Collage
We often talk about what kind of challenge-based play we like in our OSR games. Figuring out how the space works can be done in many kinds of niches within the playstyle. For this dungeon I wanted to make “module knowledge” a factor too. Usually this isn't possible because you would spoil yourself, but here players were encouraged to use their knowledge of Tomb of Horrors or know how to recognize a 5e one to make smart decisions. And of course they could figure out how to get the most chests too.
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| this was another hype lore drop |
How did it go?
This was probably one of my favorite things I have done in this hobby ever!
Out of 13 sessions, 7 had enough players, which was more or less what I expected. The sessions we had were wild and full of memorable moments. The players were engaged, especially those who returned for multiple runs. Yeah, it was exhausting as a GM, but having excited players show up every session was enough to keep me going. And to be honest I would have run all 13 games if people had wanted me to.
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The final score board after 7 sessions. The honorable oldhawkeyes won. |
There were a total of 18 players who played and even more characters. I can't remember all the systems, campaigns, and characters, but there were PCs from OD&D, Land of Eem, 5e, Esoteric Enterprises, Star Marauders, B/X, The Realm of Yolmi, Longshot City, Troika, Swyvers, Mausritter, Cairn, Delta Green, HMS Apollyon, Bunnies & Burrows, and Classic Traveller, as well as some I probably forgot about. There was at least one player who had never played an OSR before and some who hadn't played in quite some time.
They carried out over 4 million gp worth of treasure. Some characters entered as level 2 and left as level 9 with too many magic items to carry.
What about conversions and rulings?
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| this was the last of the lore drops |
What I learned from running a Super Adventure
Events like these can turn a server of yappers into a community. I don't think we are there yet, but I am also very new to this server that has thousands of members but a core group of only about 30-50 active users who actually play there. My own first game as a player on the server was the fairly recent Super Adventure 2; it was what got me hyped to try to play with these people.
And yes, only 19 of the thousands played in this Super Adventure, but the way it connected various campaigns from the last 10 years is truly special. Getting to see what people have been up to in their home groups, old servers, one-shots, etc. gave me a view of what this hobby truly is, beyond rulebooks, kickstarters, and commodities.
Here is a link to the duplicate of our tldraw where you can see the remnants of 7 runs into the TOWER OF COLLAGE.
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