With Pyramid of the Lost King coming in at 103 pages currently and expected to grow to about 105 after all the artwork is in you would think nothing would have had to be cut. After all, at 103 pages what the hell could be left for me to add. Surprisingly at least 4 more locations that were dropped for various reasons. Today we look at one of those: The Ancient Ship
As you can see with the image the ship was going to be three levels and feature over 20 areas, and would have been occupied by Gnoll Exiles, Ghosts, Mechanical Constructs, and Flammable Oil Oozes (who could still attack for 10 rounds after being set on fire and do their damage plus 1d6 fire damage when on fire). It was a fun experiment and gave a lot of environmental hints as to the type of world Usarm once was before the Collapse (or Cataclysm).
In the end, it was dropped for 2 reasons. The main reason was the idea for it occurred to me late in second generation production when PotLK went from being 40 pages to the 103-pagemonster it is now and I was already 7 months behind schedule. Writing out another 5 to the 10-page area would have been another few days to a week’s worth of work and I frankly could afford to waste that much time all things considered. The second reason was the map. At that point I was out of funds for the project from the Kickstarter and things were very tight in my personal life (truthfully they still are) so I couldn’t afford to contract Glynn for another map and at this point had decided against the “Adventurer Maps” I had been toying with for these added locations.
I still want to explore the AncientShip and may one day maybe as a separate adventure or an add-in to PotLK … I don’t yet as much in regards to GLG and my creative endeavors are currently in flux.
