WH40K Campaign: Mapping B.R.7 Part 3

As I have admitted before, one of my least favorite parts of this hobby is actually keying a dungeon or adventure. When it comes to actually being at the table, I much prefer working off of simple notes and a bunch of random tables. It helps me be creative and it makes my time at the table far more enjoyable — I get to be surprised by my own creation.

As such, the most challenging aspect of mapping B.R.7 is going to be keying this potentially massive megadungeon. One of the ways that I improvise at the table is coming up with themes for various sections of a dungeon — based upon either the architecture, inhabitants or both. In thinking in terms of a hive city, one basic theme will be city zoning.

I took a brief look at the zoning laws of New York City this week and determined that they have three basic zones: Residential, Commercial and Industrial. Each of these has three subcategories based on population. This can be extrapolated into nine zones:

• Poor Residential (high population)
• Middle-Class Residential (medium population)
• Upper-Class Residential (low population)
• Warehouse/Storage-Commercial (low population)
• Office Space Commercial (medium population)
• Retail Commercial (high population)
• Heavy Industry (low population)
• Medium Industry (medium Population)
• Light Industry (high population)

To this list I would also include Military (since there is such a huge emphasis on war in the WH40K universe). Thus, for every section of map I make, I can roll on a table to determine the basic zoning (and thus the theme) of the area:

01-03   Poor Residential (PR)
04-05   Heavy Industry (HI)
06-08   Warehouse/Storage (WS)
09-10   Medium Industry (MI)
11-12   Light Industry (LI)
13-13   Military (M)
14-15   Middle-Class Residential (MR)
16-17   Retail (R)
18-19   Offices (O)
20- 20  High-Class Residential (HR)

This roll can be modified in the following ways:

• Apply a -2 when a neighboring zone is either PR or HI.
• Apply a -1 when a neighboring zone is either WS or MI.
• Apply a +1 when a neighboring zone is either MR or R.
• Apply a +2 when a neighboring zone is either O or HR.

From there, I intend to pull out the yellow pages, in order to make several tables to determine what each room in a zone actually contains. For example, a table for an R zone might include:

• Restaurant
• Clothing
• Electronics
• Grocer
• Office Supply
• Luxury Items

Then I can roll to see what condition the room is in:

1    Heavily Damaged (nothing of value)
2-3 Lightly Damaged (some items of value)
4-5 Looted (in good condition but no items of value)
6    Untouched

This will give me a lot of information to improvise with. From there, it is only a matter of putting together several wandering monster tables to reflect territories held by various factions.

Lost Colonies Session 57

Personally, one of the philosophies that I accept when it comes to running a successful campaign (from both the perspectives of someone who runs a campaign and one who regularly plays in a campaign) is allowing the players the opportunity to earn what they want out of the campaign. This requires the ability to listen to the players and to integrate what they want into the fabric of the campaign.

I preface this post with this statement, because my players were all really excited, pleased, thrilled and any other positive adjective you can think of at the end of our last session specifically because I listened and allowed my players that opportunity.

The last time we left our stalwart adventurers, the party had gone back to Redwraith in good faith, taking the bodies of the slaad that they had hunted down as they had promised. When faced with several possible choices as to what to do next, the party could not ignore the fact that they had found two keys of a set of four that would open a massive door inside the Black Tower. They had to know what lay beyond.

The majority of the session, therefore, involved a systematic exploration of the rest of the Black Tower, in search of the other two keys. The newest member to join the group was killed midway through the session (that’s three characters in two sessions for the poor guy) as he decided to venture too close to a pool that everyone knew was home to a gigantic, mutant octopus. The irony of it is that the party had decided to mess with the pool rather than try to deal with a section of the dungeon entirely submerged in water — which is exactly where the final key lay hidden.

The battle for the final key proved to be the most exciting because I misread a monster description and Dn. Swibish managed to roll a successful Turn check. The party managed to attract the attention of the key’s guardian, a type of underwater mummy that would kiss its victims and send sea water rushing into their lungs. I rolled damage every round, when the players should have gotten saving throws; however, I also figured that once the creature was killed, the drowning would stop (which, according to the saving throw version wouldn’t happen). So, it all balanced out in the end; however, it also meant that the party had to gang-tackle the mummy in order to prevent it from escaping so that they could kill it before party members drowned (if it had not been for a couple of well-timed CLW spells, two party members would have died).

Having successfully procured all four keys, the party then prepared itself for a massive battle with whatever foul evil lay behind the door. Unfortunately for them, they did not bother reading all of the script inside the pyramid which would have told them exactly what was behind the door — a direct connection to the Negative Plane which was the final step in transforming oneself into a lich.

After describing what lay beyond the door and the fact that there were a pair of very loud bangs that followed, I started counting. I got to about ‘5’ when the confusion wore of my players faces and they all screamed “RUN!” At this point, I instructed the party to show me where they were gong to run. Had they taken the most direct route out of the dungeon, I would have allowed them a chance to escape; however, this is not what happened.

Rather, they got to witness first hand the destruction that they wrought. Due to the fact that there was a rip in space and time that was sitting right on top of the dungeon of the Black Tower, opening a gate directly to the Negative Plane was catastrophic for the immediate area. The two were attracted to each other like a pair of magnets and their collision wiped clean a great evil that had stood for over a thousand years.

The party got caught in the shock wave and was hurtled through time and space. At this point, I drew up a quick table of various places in my repertoire that they could end up in. A couple of our players have been asking about running a sci-fi campaign (something no one seems interested in actually running). Since I have already introduced the idea of space ships to my campaign, there were some sci-fi options on the table, one of which was the result of the players' roll.

Thus, the session ended with the party waking up to find themselves inside a metal room in an entirely alien environment, to the great delight of the table.

Lost Colonies Session 56

As life has been less demanding of late, I have had more time to get together with my regular group and play. Unexpectedly, they wanted to run a session of Lost Colonies this week and I got to improv an entire session off the top of my head and had an absolute blast.

The last time we had a session (back in June), the party had gotten distracted from its pursuit of the slaad and his frogmen cavalry and lost two characters as a result. They did, however, survive a couple of combats within the bowels of the Black Tower they had no business getting into in the first place.

It is here that I have to admit something about the Black Tower. I have never mapped nor keyed this dungeon. Given the proclivities of my group, the Black Tower was never much of a priority until my players suddenly made it so (“Oh, crap — they are actually going to go in!?”).

I armed myself with three things:

1. A purpose for the tower itself — therein is the ability to transform oneself into a lich.
2. A really cool map.
3. An inspiring collection of monsters (The Tomb of Horrors Complete [THC]).

One of the things that I adore about the THC is that there are a whole slew of “themed” monsters — blood, sand, cold, clockwork, fire, etc. I was thus able to immediately determine that each “level” of the dungeon had a theme — each related to the concept of death and necromancy. I settled on sand, blood, cold and water.

Since the map itself suggested that there were four keys scattered about in order to open up the sphere at the center of the dungeon, I figured that these keys were necessary to get to the same location — where one could choose to become a lich. The instructions would be on the sand level inside the pyramid. Thus, the slaad was looking to take advantage of the location and secure himself some serious undead power before moving on to conquering bigger and better things.

What was left was riffing off the themes in order to make memorable-looking rooms that the players could interact with. I used a combination of fiat and die roll to determine where monsters and treasure were (sometimes the geography suggested an antechamber with a guardian in front of a treasure horde). When it was time to have a monster show up, I simply leafed through the pages to find whatever themed monster suited my fancy at the time and ran with it.

All-in-all it was a tremendous amount of fun for all. I got to be pleasantly surprised by the dungeon — I had no idea going in what was there until my players got there. My players got to experience a combination of a cool map, cool monsters and the creativity they inspired in me. I heard on more than one occasion “That’s so cool!” and “I’m stealing that for one of my dungeons!” (which I heartily endorse).

Some highlights:

• The blood level was coated in a layer of blood except for one particular area which appeared clean and dry. At the center of this area was a ginormous blood suckle bush (tree, really) to which I gave max hit points and double the number of attacks. My players don’t know this, but they really dodged a bullet here. My die rolls were really bad.
• In the cold level was a room half encased by ice. Inside the ice was a warrior guarding a treasure chest. I really enjoyed this for two reasons. First, it was really inspiring to my players. They got really creative about how to get to the treasure. Secondly, a die roll entirely transformed the room. The players cast Detect Magic, so I had to roll to see if the treasure horde had any. It did. The resultant two items changed the warrior from a passive guardian to an active one that (due to surprise) put some serious hurt on the party. The other item is a bane weapon.
• The first key that the party found was encased in a column of ice. What they didn’t realize was that the interior was hollow and full of flammable gas.
• One of the guys in our group has really earned himself a reputation for having his characters die on him (he is on character number eight in our AD&D campaign). Some of this can be chalked up to the fact that he is a newbie. Increasingly, however, the dice just seem to hate him. He lost two characters this session. Both times, he died because of residual damage (other players set off an area effect trap/spell) that on average should have been survivable. Both times, however, he failed a saving throw and my damage dice were just absolutely nasty. Fortunately, he has developed a really good sense of humor about the whole thing. He doesn’t even name his characters until they actually survive an entire session.
• The players found the slaad and the resulting combat was a lot of fun. The reaction I got from my players was truly precious when my first two actions were to use Power Word Stun and Gate in another slaad. But, as happens, the dice favored the bold and (while seriously hurt) the party managed to fell the two beasts without any casualties.

The party exited the dungeon with the bodies of the slaad to take back to Redwraith in order to help the city’s morale and demonstrate their good faith (having told the city that they would kill the slaad). The session ended with the realization that the party is currently being pulled in several directions at once (just the way I like it):

• The gate that now stands open over the Black Tower is incrementally getting bigger.
• There are still heinous things crawling around inside the Black Tower itself.
• The only means that the party has to control the gate is on the petrified figure of Ahkmed.
• Dn. Goram has urgent need of the party in the Elflands.

Lazy Post — 23 Questions

A couple of folks have chimed in with their answers, so here are mine:

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
That boring Sword +1 might just be an elf of the Winter Court trying to escape mortality.

2. When was the last time you GMed?
November.

3. When was the last time you played?
Last Saturday.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.
The Brainlashers need your help — the great machine that kept their inter-dimensional uber-gate from tearing giant holes in time and space has been destroyed.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?
I usually chime in with what the NPC henchmen and followers think about the situation.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?
Somebody will usually show up with leftovers, cookies or pizza.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?
Physically, no. Mentally, Yes. There have been plenty of times when I have come into the game physically exhausted and I haven’t noticed a difference in how I feel physically, but having to improvise always takes its mental toll.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?
Talking with what every other character thought was a god while insisting that it was merely an angel at best and a demon at worst. (I survived too!)

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?
No, all my players like to immerse themselves into the reality of the world. We tend to be goofy out of game.

10. What do you do with goblins?
In the Lost Colonies, goblins are creatures who desperately feel the need to attach themselves to some creature more powerful than they are. They understand themselves to be so pathetic that unless they have something like an ogre, troll or dragon to “back them up” they have no courage what so ever.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?
A painting by Romanian artist Sever Frentiu.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?
The Halfling war cry: No one insults a Halfling’s cheese and lives!

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?
Mr. Stater’s Pars Fortuna has a simplified version of feats called boons. I wanted to use them as an inspiration for my own musings about feats.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?
Anyone who is willing to do their stuff in B&W.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?
Yes. I gleefully play up those things that creep out my players and am quite guilty of having creatures crawling around my worlds that PCs have no business messing with.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)
Roshia’s Gauntlet by Dave Dollar. It is an independently published funhouse adventure from back in the day that has a specific goal — seeing if the characters are worthy to have a powerful wizard as a patron.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?
I’d love to game in a high-ceiling room with lots of natural light with everyone comfortably ensconced in big fluffy sofas and chairs.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?
Empire Builder (Mayfair’s Railroad simulation board game) and GURPS Traveller.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?
The Bible and HPL.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?
The kind who is unafraid to be wildly creative.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?
I've used my time on Mt. Athos to translate both the monastic lifestyle and the physical properties of the monasteries themselves into my games.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?
No. There are so many wildly awesome products out today that far surpass my own idea of the possible that for me to wish for anything else would be disingenuous.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?
Not really. I think this is one of the reasons I blog — it gives me an outlet to geek out that I would otherwise not have.