Here is some visual inspiration for Isle of the Dead, the Adventurer Conqueror King System setting I am working on. Most of the images are from the excellent Dark Classics blog. The exercise of perusing all those images, and then corralling the most appropriate for a blog post, was very informative for discovering some things about this setting. I am surprised how strong the Mediterranean influence is becoming, and how central the images of the sea are.
Old school dungeon exploration play is commonly organized as one delve per session. It is expected that PCs will return to town between sessions. This is advantageous for a number of reasons. For one, continuity of players is not required (something that is particularly difficult to achieve if your players are adults with jobs, families, and other commitments). This style of old school play is sometimes maligned as “the 15 minuted adventuring day,” but if not exaggerated this structure naturally fits the requirements of the gaming session. However, a problem occurs when the session is drawing to a close but the PCs are nowhere near the surface.
There are several ways to approach this problem. One is to hand-wave it and just assume everyone is able to make it out. This may run into logical problems depending on the obstacles that the party has navigated, but can usually work. Another well known approach is The Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom, which is basically a table of (mostly bad) outcomes if PCs are unwise enough to not ensure their own exit prior to the session end. I have also considered a “dungeon escape” saving throw (maybe the PC can choose their most advantageous save number). Failure would indicate death occurred on the way out.
The Diablo series of video games has a common item called a scroll of town portal. This item allows adventurers to return to town from any area in a dungeon once they have exhausted their carrying capacity. The portal also allows (one way) return travel so that the adventurers can proceed exploring the dungeon from where they left off. Here is a version of the town portal scroll with flavor appropriate to a tabletop RPG.
A scroll of return is part of a teleportation ritual commonly employed by magic-users. The ritual has three parts: first, the scroll of return must be scribed and a circle of return must be prepared. The third part of the ritual is the casting of the spell inscribed on the scroll. The circle of return must be prepared under the gaze of the sun. Thus, it can only be constructed on the surface under open sky. Once these two elements are created, they both radiate magic to detection spells.
Because the gaze of the sun is necessary to the ritual, the current weather is important. I suggest using a standard 2d6 reaction roll to determine the weather if you don’t already have a more complicated system (interpreted based on the season). For example, bad weather might only occur on an “immediate attack” (2) result during the summer, but during the winter might occur on all reactions neutral or worse.
The ritual’s potency is measured by level. A magic-user may create a scroll of return of level equal to or less than their class level. The cost of the components required for the ritual is 100 GP per level (like Holmes scroll creation rules). No matter the level, the creation of the circle and scroll take one day. The scroll only remains potent for a number of days equal to the scroll’s level, and the range of the teleportation is limited to 6 miles per scroll level. The ritual’s caster can sense if they are out of range, and going out of range does not destroy the magic (the scroll may still be employed when the magic-user comes back within range). A magic-user may prepare a lower level ritual if desired (for example, a level 5 magic-user may prepare scrolls of return of any level between 1 and 5).
When the ritual’s magic has expired or is completed successfully, the scroll crumbles to dust. The circle remains and looses its ritual power (and value in terms of components) but still functions as a magical signature that can be identified by other magic-users if not later destroyed. When completed, the ritual returns the magic-user (and companions) to the circle of return. Intoning the spell on the scroll requires a full turn (10 minutes within the game world) of undisturbed concentration. If interrupted, the ritual is not ruined, but the magic-user must start over. Companions to be transported with the magic-user must stand nearby and unwilling creatures may not be transported (though unconscious ones can).
If the circle of return is disturbed, the ritual is disrupted, and the scroll will crumble to dust. For this reason, circles of return are often well hidden or protected. Battlements atop a magic-user’s tower are popular locations for established wizards, but less powerful magic-users may have to make due with isolated glens. A skilled diviner can user either end of the ritual (scroll or circle) to locate the other end. Scrolls of return may be found as treasure. Who knows where the party will end up if the ritual is completed? Maybe some form of magic research could be undertaken to determine where the scroll leads or perhaps such scrolls must be approached blind by those who did not participate in fabrication.
Some sages have speculated that the ritual magic draws power from the sun, and that the slow darkening of the sun over the past thousands of years has been caused by the greed of magicians.
Both Grognardia and Stefan Poag recently mentioned WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins. Apparently this is one of those megadungeon publications that I had never heard of, and does not seem to be very highly thought of by Greyhawk fans (or some Grognardia commenters: exhibit 1, exhibit 2). The Amazon reviews, however, are uniformly positive (even the two star review criticizes it as “a location not an adventure,” which sounds like a compliment to me).
What was the point of this post? Oh yeah, while I was looking for images of the product (because I was not sure if it was a boxed set or something else; the answer is a paperback), I found this evocative elevation picture on the Wizards site:
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The image can be found in this free gallery (cached here since it is freely available), and seems to be from some Third Edition take on Castle Greyhawk. I kind of just want to take that elevation and draw my own maps for it.
Catacomb Librarian is unhappy that the OSR focuses on D&D. I am somewhat sympathetic to this point of view as, despite the fact that traditional D&D is my game, I do not think that it is THE fantasy game. I wish that more people would talk about other games so that I can learn about them. I learned about Traveller from Grognardia. I decided I might be interested in Warhammer because of Chris Hogan’s SBVD. I learned about Iron Heroes from Monsters & Manuals.
The first two of those led to purchases, and I will likely buy a copy of Iron Heroes at some point too. Even though practically speaking I’m not likely to play Warhammer or Traveller (though you never know), I still think I can learn from them. Despite the fact that I am interested in other games, D&D is the most common game, and this makes the language of D&D the shared language of tabletop RPG players. It is a common baseline that you can assume, much as you used to be able to assume that an educated person would have read Plato. (That’s also why it’s dangerous to create giant infodump settings, because doing so raises barriers to entry that are not present if you just say “Moldvay Basic” or “Third Edition Core,” and it’s why the development through play OSR dogma is so valuable.)
I’ve been running a Fourth Edition hack game for the past 8 months or so (2-4 times per month), and I’m just now getting to the point where I feel like I understand the system and its implications. And, despite all its changes, this is a system that still shares some DNA with the traditional D&D I am more familiar with. A game with fewer similarities (like, say, GURPS) would presumably take even more time. Not to mention the fact that you need to find other players that are similarly interested if you want to actually play. G+ and ConstantCon games make this easier, but still not easy (compare uptake of FLAILSNAILS and non-FLAILSNAILS games). In any case, playing via videoconference is still a poor substitute for playing at a real table.
This same dynamic is part of the reason why many people who are used to traditional D&D are turned off by Third and Fourth edition: they make the language less shared. They move or change the landmarks. They fracture the community not just in the sense that some like save or die and some don’t, but in the sense that they change meanings. It’s almost as if half your friends start speaking Japanese. You now have to learn Japanese too if you want to participate, and whether or not you think Japanese is an elegant or beautiful language, it is still work to learn.
There are only so many hours in the day. In addition to gaming, I’m heavily into weight training (a hobby that rules your routines like few others). I also like to read literature and history and spend time with my loved ones. I collaborate with some academics on social science research. Oh, and there is that pesky job thing that occupies 40+ hours of my life every week. When I do get to game, I want the rules to fade into the background.
To quote Noisms from Monsters & Manuals on new rulesets:
Nowadays, the prospect of picking up a 200 (or more likely 400) page-long tome of new rules fills me with dread and boredom rather than excitement, and I find that my attention span is only a fraction of what it used to be.
It’s not that I hate other systems or think that D&D is perfect (though I do think the pre-AD&D versions are pretty elegant), it’s that D&D is the common tongue. Like English, we are stuck with it for now.
Abulafia (also known as random-generator.com) is a nifty wiki that allows one to create automated random tables. Zak over at Playing D&D With Porn Stars has mentioned it a few times (like here). However, I can’t seem to create an account. Does anyone know, by any chance, what the procedure is? Clicking on the log in / create account link only seems to provide login fields.
Am I missing something obvious here? Or is there someone I need to ask?
As a novel, I can’t say that The Shadow People is very good. Important characters show up by coincidence with no explanation. Setting details are dropped with extraordinary specificity by characters that don’t seem like they should know such things. I never did much warm to Dick or Susan; they don’t feel like fully-formed characters and I never found myself really caring what happened to them.
That being said, there’s lots of interesting inspiration to be taken from the middle section on the underearth; for example: “There is always a water barrier between our world and Underearth” (page 33). I also like the take on faeries. Elves are described as small and boneless, and are malicious, somewhat stupid creatures, with countless taboos. They hate metal that comes to a point. They also don’t like nudity, because “it’s too much like the light” (page 124).
The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk is mentioned several times. I have a copy of the wonderful recent NYRB edition which I highly recommend. From the NYRB description:
Late in the seventeenth century, Robert Kirk, an Episcopalian minister in the Scottish Highlands, set out to collect his parishioners’ many striking stories about elves, fairies, fauns, doppelgangers, wraiths, and other beings of, in Kirk’s words, “a middle nature betwixt man and angel.” For Kirk these stories constituted strong evidence for the reality of a supernatural world, existing parallel to ours, which, he passionately believed demanded exploration as much as the New World across the seas. Kirk defended these views in The Secret Commonwealth, an essay that was left in manuscript when he died in 1692.
This is clearly the tradition that St. Clair is drawing from. The entire text of Kirk’s book is available for free on the web, but I find that version rather unpleasant to read and much prefer the hard copy. I had read bits and pieces of The Secret Commonwealth before, but finishing The Shadow People prompted me to go back and read the whole thing (I also mentioned The Secret Commonwealth recently, regarding elf height).
There’s a bit of the Orpheus legend woven into The Shadow People also (Dick going down to the underearth to rescue his girlfriend). The gray dwarf’s plan is just so twisted that I want to base an entire dungeon area around it. Overall, The Shadow People is probably only of interest to Appendix N chasers, but I’m glad I read it.
Rather than take a standard action, a magic-user may ready a counterspell. When deciding to ready a counterspell, the magic-user must select a target caster and must be aware of the target (this awareness can either be via direct physical perception, or can use an intermediate medium such as a scrying spell). From now on, the target will be referred to as the caster. As when casting a spell, no movement is permitted. A magic-user may not use a counterspell when surprised. Only magic-user spells (that is, not cleric spells) may be countered. Countering spells may result in gridlock while both magic-users wait for their counterparty to take the first action. This is intended.
There are two kinds of counterspells, temporary and permanent. A temporary counterspell prevents the casting of a spell, but does not wipe it from the target’s mind (or consume the scroll if they were casting from a scroll). Any magic user may always attempt a temporary counterspell. A permanent counterspell wipes the spell from the caster’s mind as if it had been cast or consumes the scroll. A permanent counterspell costs a spell slot of equivalent level from the countering magic-user. For example, if the target is casting levitate (a second level spell) and the countering magic-user wishes to attempt a permanent counterspell, the countering magic-user must also have a second level spell prepared, though it need not be the same spell. That spell is expended during the countering attempt (whether the counter is successful or not). If the countering magic-user does not have such a spell prepared, treat the countering attempt as temporary.
If the target casts a spell while the magic-user is in countering mode, a counter attempt may be made. If the spell being cast is one that the countering magic-user has in a spell book, the countering magic-user will be aware of which spell is being cast before they must decide whether or not to attempt a counter (though they will still be unaware of details such as the spell target). The caster must make a saving throw versus spells, with penalty equal to the highest level spell the countering magic-user can prepare. If the save is successful, the spell goes off as normal (i.e., the countering attempt has failed). If the caster fails the counterspell save, the spell is countered.
If a 1 is rolled on the counterspell saving throw, the caster must roll on the counterspell catastrophe table (see below). If a 20 is rolled on the counterspell saving throw, the countering magic-user must roll on the counterspell catastrophe table. Engaging in sorcerous combat is always dangerous, and opens a countering magic-user to a magical counterattack. Rather than rolling on the catastrophe table, referees may also make something up that is suitably nasty.
A counterspell scroll is a “bottled” version of a permanent counterspell. A counterspell scroll has a level, determined by the scribe. Costs are as per Holmes scroll creation rules (page 13): 100 GP and 1 week of time per scroll level. A higher level magic-user may produces a lower level counterspell scroll at correspondingly lower cost. Thus, a seventh level magic-user may produce up to fourth level counterspell scrolls. Such a fourth level counterspell scroll would cost 400 GP and take four weeks to produce. Counterspell scrolls are consumed when used even if the target caster makes the counterspell saving throw.
Michael over at The Grumpy Troll posted this great John Blanche picture a while back that is the inspiration for an entire new campaign. The intricate line work in that piece reminded me of some eleventh century Chinese hanging scroll paintings. Check out the scale, especially in the first piece (Early Spring). Do you see the temples? What about the person? This says something about the relationship of the individual (and perhaps the adventurer, in a fantasy gaming context) to the cosmos.
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I’m not generally a fan of multiclassing or overly flexible skill systems. I like archetypes, and I don’t like systems that reward too much synergistic optimization. I like my game choice to occur during play, not before play. That being said, here’s an interesting collection of links:
Taken together, these gave me some ideas that I want to jot down. So here they are. This system below is meant to replace the classes (that is, characters would just accumulate perks from the list).
When you gain a level, choose any two of the following benefits:
0 level characters have one d6 hit die. When making a first level character, pick two benefits exactly as if you were gaining a level.
Max level is 25. I first thought 20 would be nice and iconic, but 25 is required so that a dedicated magic-user can gain the ability to prepare sixth level spells (well, 22, but the magic-user might want an extra hit die or something along the way, and 25 is a nice round number). Use your favorite XP progression table. Actually, you could set the max level to reflect whatever power level you want the campaign to top out at.
Anyone can use any weapon and any kind of armor, but there are drawbacks (chance of spell failure, penalty to thief skills). If you don’t put ranks in the combat competencies, that two-handed sword is not going to do you much good.
Layer on races at the beginning if that’s your kind of thing. Humans would probably get one or two extra benefits at first level to compensate (depending on how interesting the racial bonuses are).
To get a truly schizophrenic interesting character, you could even roll on the benefits table during level-up rather than choosing.
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if Fifth Edition does something somewhat similar, as it would allow the game to include 4E style powers as a replacement for something like a standard attack bump. This would make a traditional fighter compare favorably in terms of power levels to a fighter built with lots of powers and maneuvers. If the 5E designers go in this direction, I’m guessing it probably will not be quite as open (as in, there will probably be a suite of options per class, like in Zak’s post).
[Caveat lector: some partial module spoilers contained below.]
As mentioned previously, I ran The Tower of the Stargazer this past Monday using Moldvay Basic D&D for my standard group of players. Character generation was 3d6 in order. No adjustments were allowed. The PCs included two clerics, two magic-users, two thieves, and a halfling. That’s right, no fighters. Players seemed to choose class based on their highest ability score, making class selection effectively random as well.
This is another way that basic D&D is humanocentric that I had never noticed before: none of the demi-human classes have obvious prime requisites in the way that the big four human classes do. When players rolled intelligence highest, they immediately gravitated towards magic-user (despite my saying several times that playing against type was completely viable due to the decreased emphasis on ability scores). When a few replacement characters were rolled up following some PC deaths (more on that below), one player did choose to make an elf, but only because he rolled a 16 strength and a 17 intelligence.
I said before that I was trying to avoid provisos and exceptions, but I did introduce three house rules. The first was LotFP alignment restrictions (elves and magic-users had to be chaotic and clerics had to be lawful). I wanted to emphasize that alignment was about cosmic forces, not character behavior or morals. The second was a save versus death ray when reduced to 0 HP by damage. Make the save and the character is unconscious rather than dead. This rule was used several times, and it saved one retainer (but none of the PCs). The third was my first Vancian magic variant, a save versus spells to retain a memorized spell after casting. None of the magic-users cast their spells though, so it didn’t come up.
One cleric rolled exactly enough GP for Plate, so he spent all his money on armor and armed himself with a heavy branch as a club (you can’t get much more murderhobo than that). In general, buying equipment was much smoother and quicker than I expected. I told them to not worry about rations since this was a one-shot, but that they would definitely need light sources. I suspect this process was so smooth because all available equipment is displayed on one page (including weapons and armor) and everything is priced in terms of whole GP (no fiddly fractions or multiple coin types). Game designers take note.
I also included two retainers generated using Meatshields! so that there would be some backup characters for players to control if primary PCs were killed (I wasn’t really worried about combat strength). I was originally going to include four retainers, but seven players showed up (six of my normal players and one curious coworker who was entirely new to tabletop RPGs). 11 adventurers seemed like a crowd for the tower.
The session went very well. Several players told me how much more they enjoyed the simple rules and quick character generation. One player said that PC death was the fun part and that being unhappy with character death was like being unhappy that eating an apple leaves a core. This same player wondered if he would be happy with a B/X character for an extended campaign though.
In hindsight, there are a few things that I would have done differently if I was running this adventure again. The first is that I would have included more retainers. The murderhobo cleric was killed by a poisonous spider and then one of the hirelings was knocked unconscious, leaving only one retainer for the cleric’s player and no backups for other players.
When more PCs died because of an exploding door trap, there were no more retainers to take over. I wanted to get the players back in the game as soon as possible, so I had them roll up new characters and begin at the entrance of the tower. This was a mistake, both practically (splitting the party) and atmospherically. Prior to the introduction of the replacement characters, all the PCs had been keeping pretty close to each other, and I felt like this emphasized the strangeness and danger of the tower. After the introduction, everything felt a bit more scattered (though it was still fun). Lacking extra retainers (obviously, you can’t have unlimited retainers, even if I had included more), it would have been better for the new PCs to be discovered trapped in stasis by the wizard 60+ years ago (I wish I had thought of that during play).
I would also create some diagrams for myself of the lever possibilities for the treasure room force field puzzle. Before the session, I reread that area description several times and thought that I had the details down, but during play I still found myself referring to the description continuously and confusing myself. They didn’t solve the puzzle.
There is a set of generative tables in this module for creating labels for crates in a storeroom. The tables creates results like “the rib … of a sailor … who collected … happiness.” I knew that I should pregenerate a set of results, but for whatever reason I didn’t. Rolling on these tables during play felt artificial. After two results, one of my players asked if there were any labels that didn’t follow that formula. Totally my fault here; I knew it would be an issue. (Being a teaching module, I’m surprised the text did not suggest pregeneration though.)
You need to have a backup plan ready in case the players decide to free the wizard and take the 100 GP reward, because that ends the adventure. My players didn’t choose to do that, but if they had I don’t think the adventure would have been nearly as enjoyable. I had some basic ideas for several more encounters in the wilderness, but they were not very well planned out. Since this was a one-shot, there was not a populated sandbox ready for them. I’m glad I didn’t have to improvise.
The ghost encounter was not very impressive the way I ran it. We didn’t have time for a full game of chess, so we just diced for it. I’m not a big game player other than D&D, so there was not an immediately obvious alternative. This encounter needs a carefully planned game or a redesign. Even Raggi admits in the text that during his play testing, a number of his players were bored while one or two concentrated on the challenge. I still think this was totally my fault though, as I foresaw the problem, I just wasn’t able to find (and learn how to play!) another game prior to the session. An empty room plus a generic secret door probably would have worked better. It wasn’t horrible or anything, it just wasn’t very creepy. Live and learn.
I hope we get a chance to continue the adventure, as they were just about to explore the real laboratory and the telescope when we had to stop. Also, the clerics were brainstorming ways to kill the trapped wizard, and it would have been interesting to see if they could pull that off without a TPK.
