Gamer ADD: A Subsector Map

As my mind continues to insist on thinking about a Traveller Campaign based on the Peace Finally Comes map, I decided to develop the Suleiman Subsector of the Solomoni Rim. It falls within the Imperial Starlane, sits at the edge of the Solomani Confederation, has an Aslan population, and has the Azeremiid Cluster — a group of worlds that has a history of cooperation that dates back to the Long Night. Seems like a place ripe for adventure:

The Monastery of St. Gaxyg-at-Urheim

About ten years ago (has it really been that long?) I drew a map for James Maliszewski over at Grognardia. At the time, there was a bit of an effort to create a "crowd sourced" megadungeon that used contributions from a variety of volunteers. Being a bit of a map geek, I drew several that James was pleased enough with that he shared them with the world at large. 

If you hadn't noticed, after a long hiatus, James has started posting again over at Grognardia. He also let me know that he wanted to do something with one of those maps I drew all those years ago. You can find his musings here. 

As a thank you, I thought I'd share another map that I drew for my own version of St. Gaxyg-at-Urheim. It briefly showed up in my Lost Colonies campaign very early on when Hamlen lost his beloved spiked club down an underground river. That river led to an underground waterfall which is at the bottom of the map. The club was found, some orcs were felled and then the party went off on one of their many tangents. Enjoy!

 

My Greyhawk Campaign

As someone who tries to practice what he preaches, I have started working on making The World of Greyhawk into a sandbox campaign that I would actually like to run.

A little history is needed here: Greyhawk was never really part of my D&D experience. I never ran it. I never played in it. Modules explicitly set in the Greyhawk world were stand-alone adventures or ported over to another gaming world. Most campaigns I have run have either existed within worlds I created from scratch or from one of the many Judges Guild products I have used throughout the years. As a player, in the pre-3e era, every campaign was a home-brew. When I finally did play 3.5/Pathfinder my DM used Paizo’s Golarian almost exclusively.

By the time I had an interest in doing something related to Greyhawk, it had developed such a large canon that I felt overwhelmed at the idea of ever running a campaign there. Then I got a .pdf of the first edition of The World of Greyhawk. At a mere 32 pages, it is far more akin to something Judges Guild produced back in the day. In other words, there is enough information to get you started, but it leaves a whole lot of room for you to make the world your own. It is actually really inspiring.

Know also that I have had a long time love/hate relationship with the A-series of modules (Against the Slave Lords). I own the hard cover reprint that includes A0 and have long wanted to make them work. The one time I did run them as a campaign was both a blast and a complete disaster. I would love to have them on the map of a sandbox to allow them to organically happen within context of a good campaign.

The first thing that I need to do in order to make this work for me is to radically narrow the scope of The World of Greyhawk to a map that can easily fit on a single sheet of 8.5 x 11. Given the fact that A0 is set on the shore of the Sea of Gearnat in the Kingdom of Nyrond and that the other modules in the A-series all take place in The Pomarj, here is the map I came up with:

What I really like about this map is that except for a few hexes on the east side of the map, virtually everything is Wilderness. I am actually excited about this . . .

The Gygax 75 Challenge Part 5

Week 4 of the Gygax 75 Challenge is dedicated to creating a Town. We finally come to a part of the process in creating a campaign that I personally rarely bother to do. For one, both T1: The Village of Hommlet and B2: The Keep on the Borderlands provide everything you need for a starting town for a sandbox campaign. Sure, I need to re-skin a few things to fit them into my world, but that pales in comparison to the amount of work I normally think necessary to make my own. Personally, the Village of Hommlet has been the foundation of my most successful campaigns.

In addition, even when I don't start with either the Keep or Hommlet, I rarely bother with creating shops or NPCs until the players specifically need or ask for them. This keeps my prep time down and allows me to play up elements of the campaign that are important to the players in the moment.

Those times I do go to the trouble is generally in context of an urban campaign, where part of the fun is exploring the city itself and the various factions and personalities that make that city into a character of its own.

That being said, I am looking forward to going through this part of the Challenge specifically because I normally don't. I am eager to see what fruits Otus' suggestions bear.

Step One is to find or sketch a map of the town. I really appreciate Otus' advice here. There are plenty of old maps and generators online that will produce a map that far outstrips what I can produce in a significantly less amount of time (and I have a graphic design background). So I found this online generator and popped out a map I liked the general look of. I took into my old copy of Illustrator and finagled a few things and produced this:

So, now that I have an inspiring map, I'll continue with creating the town in my next post.

The Gygax 75 Challenge Part 4

In a continuation of Week Three of the Challenge, the next step on the list is placing monsters. Otus suggests 11 (probably to make coming up with a Wandering Monster Table based on 2d6 (2-12) dead simple. Lets compare this to the math of my favorite style of stocking a dungeon — Moldvay:

The number of rooms in this dungeon design range from 21 to 36. At the low end, Molvay’s math suggests 7 monsters and 12 and the high end. With 28 rooms, my dungeon is representative of an average dungeon size using Otus’ suggestion of 1d6+6 rooms per level. According to Moldvay’s math a dungeon that size should have about 9 monsters and a dungeon with 11 monsters would have 33 rooms.

So, the monster density is a little high for my personal taste; however, it is not outside the realm of possibility if one were to use Moldvay’s random method rather than simply adhering to the math.

So here is the list:

1st level: 9 Stirges, 3 Dinosaurs (Giant Lizard, Gecko), and 4 Giant Crab Spiders
2nd Level: 5 Subhumans (Hobgoblins), 4 more Subhumans (Hobgoblins), and 1 Ice Walker (Ghoul)
3rd Level: 3 White Apes, 4 more White Apes, 1 Skinwalker (Wererat who can disguise himself as a White Ape), and 1 Skinwalker Overlord (Doppelgänger)
Chasm: 1 Winter Beast (Gelatinous Cube)

In terms of numbers, I followed Moldvay’s suggestions on his Wandering Monster Table.

The next step is to place 1d6 features through out the dungeon. I rolled a ‘4.’ This is a wild deviation from Molday. According to the strict math of Moldvay’s Stocking Table my dungeon of 28 rooms should have 4.67 traps and 4.67 “specials” — more than twice the amount I rolled up and 1.5 times the maximum roll of 6.

I will concede, however, that traps and (particularly) specials may very well be the hardest part of creating a dungeon according to the Moldvay model. So, in context of quickly churning out a dungeon with three levels, this is understandable. That said, if one is fortunate enough to own The Tome of Adventure Design it has tables that let you randomly create both traps and tricks. So, several rolls can get you well on your way to 8 to 10 traps and specials.

One can tell I am used to designing dungeons using Moldvay’s model by my choice of using a Crashed Spaceship for a theme — it allows for a lot of the Traps and Specials demanded of the style to be creatively dressed up. In making my map, I planned for three: two engines room (one intact, one melted down) and the bridge which has a window which looks out into a frozen lake and a domed underwater city.

That leaves me with one feature: neanderthal cave drawings in the entrance cave depicting a star falling from the skies.

The next task is placing Treasure. This is interesting, because this number is going to be higher than Moldvay. Had I used his math (and his distribution of monsters, specials, traps, and empty rooms), I would have 4.5 monsters, 3.1 Traps, and 2.3 Empty Rooms with Treasure for a total of 9.9. In contrast, according to Otus’ math 7.3 monsters, 2.67 features, and 2.1 Empty Rooms have Treasure, for a total of 12.

Whether or not you like this depends on what system you use. Since I am using Moldvay’s Basic D&D as my chassis, 1 gp = 1 xp. Thus, Otus’ method of distributing Treasure means more potential experience for my players. I see this as a feature rather than a bug. To put this in perspective, here is my list of monsters with their xp value:

9 Stirges = 117 xp
3 Dinosaurs (Giant Lizard, Gecko) = 150 xp
4 Giant Crab Spiders = 100 xp
9 Subhumans (Hobgoblins) = 135 xp
1 Ice Walker (Ghoul) = 25 xp
7 White Apes = 535 xp
1 Skinwalker (Wererat) = 50 xp
1 Skinwalker Overlord (Doppelgänger) = 125 xp
1 Winter Beast (Gelatinous Cube) = 125 xp
Total xp = 1362

An average party of 4 PCs needs between 8000-10,000 xp total to get to second level. That means if this dungeon is to advance the characters to second level, there needs to be a minimum of 6,638 gp in treasure. Distributed over 12 rooms, that is an average of 553 gp per room. To make things simple, we can round up and say 600 gp per room.

As an aside, if I use the average gold amounts for the Treasure Types as noted in Moldvay, and leave out the Individual Treasure Types, here are the monsters that have treasure and their treasure totals:

Stirges = 250 gp (no Magic Items)
Subhumans (Hobgoblins) = 4000 gp (15% chance of 3 Magic Items)
Ice Walker (Ghoul) = 2000 gp (10% chance of Magic Item)
Skinwalker (Wererat) = 1000 gp (10% chance of 2 Magic Items)
Skinwalker Overlord (Doppelgänger) = 2500 gp (25% chance of 5 Magic Items)
Total Treasure = 9,750 gp
Total Potential XP = 11,112 or 2,778 xp per PC in a party of 4.

I am actually really happy with that.

As far as Magic Items go, Otus suggests that 3 “Wondrous Items” be placed throughout the dungeon. He suggests pulling these from the source materials. I appreciate the use of the word “Wondrous.” This gives me the wiggle room to provide either actual Magic Items from Moldvay, unique items inspired by my source material, or “Specials” inside the dungeon that have “wondrous” effects. In other words, I can taylor this part of the dungeon design to how much magic I want in my campaign world.

Since one of the main points of dungeon delving in my campaign is to find greater sources of magic, I am sore tempted to use Moldvay’s Magic Item suggestions and re-skin them for my campaign. This would mean that I successfully rolled for either the Subhumans to have magic or I got lucky and I rolled for both the Ice Walker and the Skinwalker to have magic. Despite the incredible luck that I would have to have, I prefer the latter because it spreads things onto two different levels with the bigger reward on the 3rd level.

I (seriously) rolled up a Sword +1, +2 vs. Lycanthropes for the Icewalker (Ghoul). I’ll re—skin this as an ice weapon that is used against Skinwalkers and has a side affect of “freezing” them in a single form.

For the Skinwalker (Wererat) I rolled a Sword +1, +3 vs. Undead (seriously). This will be a plasma weapon usable by anyone that is extra effective against the “ice” creatures associated with the Winter Witch (Medusa).

Finally, I rolled up a Scroll with 2 spells on it. I randomly determined the spells and came up with Detect Evil and Dispel Magic; however, due to the hint of further adventure underwater, I decided to substitute the latter with Water Breathing.

The final step is the distribute any of the Theme Budget that is left (which, if you follow my advice from my last post, becomes irrelevant).

The Extra Credit for this week was to map out on graph paper the map, which I did as default (and interestingly it is suggested that Gygax saw this step is imperative) and to create a Wandering Monster Table. Here is mine:

Wandering Monster Table (2d6)

2. Skinwalker (Wererat)
3. 1d6 White Apes
4. 1d4 Dinosaurs (Giant Lizard, Geko)
5. 1d10 Stirges
6. 1d10 Neanderthals
7. 1d8 Fire Beetles
8. 2d4 Subhumans (Goblin)
9. 1d6 Subhumans (Hobgoblin)
10. 2d8 Winter Walkers (Zombie)
11. 1d6 Ice Walkers (Ghoul)
12. Winter Knight (Thoul)

Here is the final map with all of my notes:

The Gygax 75 Challenge Part 3

Otus quotes Gygax as an introduction to the third week of this challenge, saying that it “is very difficult and time consuming.” Which is why, I believe, Otus has gone out of his way to simplify the process of creating a dungeon. While I understand why, his methodology deviates in many significant ways from my own, so this should be interesting.

The first task is to describe the entrance in 7-10 words. As someone who blogs, writing to 7 to 10 sentences is more in my wheel house; however, I appreciate the challenge of brevity. Sometimes it brings out creativity in a way that length does not.

A natural cave opening that looks like a dragon’s mouth.

I am sore tempted to write more, but the point here is to channel that creative spirit into the dungeon itself and to actually get the dungeon finished.

Step two is to draw out the dungeon, by which he means a simple point-to-point map. Here is my first real beef with Otus’ methodology; however, I must fully acknowledge that my beef is personal and not general. I don’t hate point-to-point maps (I tend to use them myself as a player when I am designated party mapper), but I find them next to useless in terms of dungeon design. The reason being that I am an (extremely) visual person. With a bunch of bubbles on a page connected by lines I have a really difficult time “seeing” the dungeon and how it works. Placing traps, monsters, treasure, etc. becomes an exercise in arbitrariness. I cannot begin to understand why those things exist where they do.

However, for the sake of demonstrating this process, here is the “bubble” map:

Admittedly, this is not my first draft. It is a copy of the map that best represents my final map. It just goes to show how much I struggle “seeing” this map…I had to draw out a full-blown dungeon map in order to be able to create an understandable point-to-point map!

Despite my problems with this step, I will actually use it in future — as a way of planning out the layout of my final map on a page. I tend to find ways to complicate maps because I like to have things in my dungeon that give players access to multiple dungeon levels in one go. I can trace the concept back to the side-view map of Stone Mountain in Holmes, except I like that shaft to have connecting points to all the other levels:

So, when trying to plan how to lay out a complicated map with three different levels all connected to a large chasm on a single page, I found this step to be kinda useful.

Otus calls for 1d6+6 rooms per level. While on the small side in terms of an Old-School aesthetic, it makes the prospect of creating a three level dungeon in short order doable. For the record, I rolled 9, 9, and 12 for the number of rooms. Due to the fact that I was struggling with the point-to-point mapping style and making it sync with my final map, I ended up with 8, 8, and 11 rooms plus the chasm which reaches all three levels. So, technically, I did 9, 9, 12 if you count the chasm as a room for each level…

Otus suggests having 1d3+1 ways up or down on each level. This is classic Old-School design. It provides players options when exploring and planning expeditions. This is especially important if there is something they wish to avoid that is preventing them from getting to a destination lower in the dungeon. On my “bubble” map, all the squiggly lines are elevation changes: 4 on the first level, 3 on second level, and 3 on the third level.

The next task is to come up with a theme for each level. Personally, this is of greater importance to me than anything up to this point. Again, as a highly visual guy, I have a hard time “seeing” the dungeon without knowing the theme before conceiving of the layout of the map. This was an impossible ask in my case, so I must admit, I did this first:

Level 1 = Caverns
Level 2 = Ice
Level 3 = Crashed Spaceship

Otus also suggests creating a “budget” of 1d3+2 references to the theme for each level. This is the first time in this exercise where I have to vehemently disagree with Otus. While I understand the need for brevity in order to minimize how daunting this project can be, limiting the top end of references to the theme hamstrings the creative process and will make for a worse dungeon. One of the important features of Old School dungeons are empty rooms. They are an important feature to the aesthetic, but they can and will turn a dungeon crawl into a grind if they are simply empty rooms. Giving each a bit of flare by tying them into the theme of a dungeon level transforms the experience into actual exploration as the players try to piece together all these data points to paint a larger picture and understanding.

Thus, I would suggest that rather that placing an upper limit to the “theme budget” of each level, I would place a lower limit. This gives a designer the ability to minimally dress up the dungeon in order to get the process done quickly, but doesn’t limit imagination. I found myself completely shackled because most of my monsters fit the themes, blowing my budget. Thus, rather than spend time making my dungeon better by coming up with more ways to fit the themes, I wasted time trying to justify why the monsters didn’t reflect the themes. For the record, I rolled 3, 3, and 4.

This is turning into a really long post...so I'll stop here and continue the rest with my next post.

The Gygax 75 Challenge Part 2

Week two of the Gygagx 75 Challenge focuses on The Surrounding Area — the terrain around the beginning settlement and the dungeon. Otus points out that Gygax suggests:

...sitting down with a large piece of hex ruled paper and drawing a large scale map. A map with a scale of 1 hex = 1 mile ... will be about right for player operations such as exploring, camping, adventuring, and eventually building their strongholds. Even such small things as a witch's hut and side entrances to the dungeon can be shown on the map. The central features of the map must be the major town and the dungeon entrance.

To that end, Otus suggests getting a sheet of hex paper and drawing several features on it:

• One settlement of a significant size
• Two other settlements (camps, larger or smaller towns, a keep, the unusual home of a fantasy race, etc.)
• One major terrain feature (covering at least three hexes) 
• One mysterious site to explore
• One (main) dungeon entrance

For the purposes of this exercise that is a really good start. Being someone who loves maps and has the graphic design experience and various computer programs to take advantage of those skills, I look at this and see a very sparse map. This is also where I am going to repeat some practical advice I gave earlier.

I knew I wanted an area with a lot of mountains, possibly a pass through those mountains to something dangerous on the other side. Having a frozen lake wouldn't hurt. Instead of trying to do all that myself, I leafed through an atlas. Two areas fit the bill nicely: Bhutan and Kyrgyzstan. While I think Bhutan more strictly fits what I was originally imagining, the map of Kyrgyzstan was too visually interesting to pass up:

I flipped the map 90 degrees counter-clockwise and began placing all the features on the map:

It should be quite obvious that I look some liberties. That is the point. Using a map helps ground the world in reality, and most of the geographical features will make sense; however, I wanted the area controlled by the Terran Empire to feel tinier and more isolated. Converting the plains in the southwest corner of the map into a sea accomplished that while following the geographic outline of the original. I also added some thorps and hamlets in between my two other larger Settlements and an extra mysterious site at the top of the map, representing the danger that lurks beyond the mountains.

As an aside, I did follow the 1 mile = 1 hex scale suggestion; however, I also included some larger 6-mile hexes to make things easier on myself if I ever decide to make a larger map with a  6 miles = 1 hex scale. I also added hex numbers. This makes the process of keeping track of various things on the map so much easier later in the preparation process, even well into a campaign.

Note: naming things is probably the most difficult thing for me when making a map. I'll usually do the following things to help out:

1. Come up with a theme. In this case it was all things cold: ice, snow, dark, etc.
2. Choose a cool language as a basis to translate my conceptual words. I used Hungarian.
3. Decide which geographical features will have been named by Civilization (usually important things, or things natives would not have been interested in or keen to talk about).
4. Name things using English for those that Civilization named and a transliteration of the translations for everything else (I am not going to bother trying to make people try to pronounce the long and short umlauted vowels found in Hungarian, and sometimes changing a letter or two just makes it sound cooler).

This will help develop a linguistic feel for your world and an easy method to come up with names on the fly in the future. For example, if the party stumbles upon  a village I haven't named, I can go to Google Translate type in "village" and out comes the new name of the place: Falu.

Don't be afraid to name things simply. For example, I named the river next to a lot of the settlements River North because it literally is the river people take to go north. Ft. Frontier is literally a fort on the frontier. Despite maybe sounding too simple, it is useful to name things by a descriptor to give players a sense of the world.

The Extra Credit of this second week involved "pimping" the map. I do that by default. In addition, there is the challenge of coming up with a simple Wandering Monster Table based on a 2d6 resulting in a range of 2-12 in a bell curve. In other words, whatever creature ends up at 2 or 12 is going to be very rare while those at 6 to 7 are going to be common. Here is mine:

Wandering Monster Table (2d6)

2. Skinwalker Overlord (Doppleganger)
3. 1d8 Skinwalkers (Wererat)
4. 1d6 White Apes
5. 1d4 Dinosaurs (Giant Lizard)
6. 1d6 Berserkers
7. 2d4 Pterodactyls
8. 1d10 Neanderthals
9. 2d4 Subhumans (Orc)
10. 1d6 Ice Walkers (Ghoul)
11. 1d6 Winter Knights (Thoul)
12. Winter Witch (Medusa)

Note: My monster list includes a number of non-standard monsters that are simply monsters that primarily exist in Moldvay (Pterodactyl is from Cook's Expert) re-skinned to fit the concept of my campaign world. This is another practical tip that I feel is often over looked: there are a ton of creatures in D&D that have nigh-identical stats but feel different simply because of how they are described. Re-skinning monster stats is a quick and easy way to create a bevy of new monsters without having to do all the statistical work. Just rename things, describe them how you want and go!

Also note: The number appearing is largely based on the Wandering Monster Tables in Moldvay. The two exceptions are the Skinwalker Overlord and Winter Witch. Moldvay gives a number appearing as 1d6, but I want these creatures to be very rare, so that even when encountered, there will only be one.

One thing that is missing from my WMT is something Otus suggests:

...include adventure hooks, like “Three goblins looting the corpse of a dead noble. Characters might recover the body and/or signet ring for a reward.”

I am not a big fan of these kinds of notes in connection to a random table, not because they are bad (adventure hooks and notes associated with various hexes are an essential parts of a sandbox campaign), but because they are not that useful to my style of play. Random tables are very capable of giving nonsensical results. When I am forced to find a reason why the result isn't nonsensical, that reason often ends up being a better hook than I ever could dream of in my preparation process.

A Map of The Land of the Ten Clans

Any resemblance to the Real World is purely intentional

Mathetes to Diognetus: A Campaign Map

Hades as a concept is not only useful as an inspiration for the Aidisian Empire and how it functions, but it is also fodder for influencing the geography of the campaign. According to the Aeneid, the underworld had an entrance close to the volcanic Lake Avernus which is located near the city of Naples. Here is where I go really old school. The best fantasy maps are really just maps of real places that have been rescaled, turned upside down and/or relabelled.

Thus, if one takes a look at a topographical map of the area around the Lake Avernus, one finds something that looks great, is geographically realistic (because it is real) and inspires all kinds of ideas:

Therefore I am going to start here by changing the scale and re-labelling things. 

Here is another tid bit of advice from a guy who has run a lot of games over the years and has drawn a lot of maps: practically, most of a typical fantasy campaign happens within an area approximately 20-30 square miles. There is really no real need to do any kind of serious mapping beyond that. Generally, I will have abstract ideas pencilled in like, “there is a big jungle to the south” or “the Great Kingdom is to the east” or “there are barbarians to the north.” Sometimes those notes become relevant. Most of the time, they don’t. Thus, whenever I begin a campaign, I stick to a map that is approximately 20x30 miles and it generally serves me very well throughout a campaign.

One other inspiring thing about using the concept of Hades is that it offers up a lot of names that I can port into re-labelling the map. Thus, this will be a fun place to explore for anyone who is up on their Greek and Roman mythology:

Gamer ADD: Map for B1B2T1

So, my brain won't let go of the idea to place those great introductory TSR modules B1, B2 and T1 all on the same map. Despite the fact that Gygax gives a very detailed description for the location of the Village of Hommlet, placing it in Greyhawk, I have no real desire to use TSR's first flagship campaign world. For one, while the location works great for T1, there really is no place to put the locations of B1 and B2 to my satisfaction. Secondly, I am far more of a Judges Guild kinda guy, and the freedom I have to mess with the Wilderlands is exactly the sorta thing one needs for a project like this.

Thus, I ended up using about 20 or so hexes from Campaign Map Two, aka Barbarian Altanis. BTW if you haven't picked up Rob Conley's colored maps of the Wilderlands, do yourself a favor and get them.

There are several reasons I chose this location:

• Rogahn and Zelligar (see B1) fought off a barbarian horde, which can now be understood to be Altanians.
• There is an unnamed castle up the coast (and off the map below) that is led by a 7th level Lawful Good Cleric. Since we need a place from whence the followers of St. Cuthbert led a crusade against the ToEE, this castle makes a nice stand-in for Verbobonc. 
• There is a Dwarven village (Kolda) at the foot of the Ered Perack Mountains that can nicely serve as the warning sign that humanoid activity in the Cave of Chaos has come to a head. The town has been overrun and Dwarven refugees will be a source of information both in the Village of Hommlet and the Keep.
• There is both a keep and a village in close proximity on the map that lend themselves very nicely to be the location of Hommlet and the Keep.
• There is a swampy patch of land with lends itself to the Mound of the Lizard Men from B2 as well as a place to locate the Moathouse from T1.
• South of the map below, there is a lair of Owlbears, justifying the inclusion of the Owlbear in Cave G.
• The name Fogbound Forest just seems a great place to put Quasqueton.
• Finally, there are a bunch of hills at the foot of the Ered Perack Mountains which allow for the Caves of Chaos to be spread out in a more realistic manner.

Here is the map:

Key:

1 = The Mound of the Lizardmen (B2)
2 = The Spider's Lair (B2)
3 = The Bandit Camp (B2): These would be a rival gang that was not willing to work for the evil cleric Lareth from the Moathouse in T1
4 = The Mad Hermit (B2)
5 = The Cave of the Unknown (B2): Meant to be utilized by a newbie DM to create their own dungeon, this Cave is intended to serve the same purpose with one twist — the Dwarves of Kolda knew of and began to explore this place before abandoning the project due to what was down there.
A = Cave A: Kobolds
B = Cave B: Orcs
C = Cave C: Orcs
D = Cave D: Goblins
E = Cave E: Ogre
F = Cave F: Hobgoblins
G = Cave G: Shunned Cavern
H = Cave H: Bugbears
I = Cave I: Minotaur
J = Cave J: Knolls
K = Cave K: Shrine of Evil Chaos
Q = Quasqueton (B1)

Prepping an Adventure vs. Writing an Adventure

Recently, I have gotten a couple of compliments for stuff I’ve done in the hobby. Firstly, one of my friends sent me an email thanking me for getting him back to the gaming table and for doing all the prep work necessary for running a game. Secondly, Ifryt, who writes Miasto ze Spizu, a Polish-language RPG blog, recently ran my adventure The Hermit Caves and wrote up a nice little review. I had to run it through Google Translate, but he liked the module for all the reasons I wrote it, which thrills me to no end.

While I am tooting my own horn here a little bit, I find the juxtaposition of these two comments actually really interesting because of the rather large difference between how I write an adventure to publish and how I prep to run an adventure. While my writing and layout style is quite different from the traditional module, I am nonetheless heavily influenced by the way modules have traditionally been presented. Part of me wonders if Referees, when prepping their own adventures, feel obligated to (at least in part) duplicate what has been published throughout the years.

Since I run a sandbox-style game and my schedule is filled with family, job, church, etc. I long ago realized that I cannot prep my adventures like a regular module. I don’t have time and my players may never actually go where I do all that hard work. Therefore, I have developed a shorthand of adventure prep and have a copious collection of random tables.

Here is an example of how I would come into a gaming session with Dyson Logos’ map The Liar’s Cave:

Note: I typed this out so you could read it (my handwriting is awful).

To explain: I take the back story presented by Dyson, added six monsters (stats on the side) and then rolled for each room using Moldvay’s table from his edition of Basic D&D:

• E= Empty
• ET = Empty with Treasure
• T = Trap
• TT = Trap with Treasure
• S = Special
• M = Monster
• MT = Monster with Treasure

One thing that I believe gets overlooked in Moldvay’s Basic is that he provides an average value to Treasure Types A-M. This gives me the freedom to arbitrarily assign treasure based on average value rather than rolling on the treasure table. It also allows me to use resources like The Mother of All Treasure Tables (MoaTT), originally published by Necromancer Games, which provides various treasure troves valued at 10 gp all the way to 50,000gp.

Thus, I have noted at each room with treasure a roll on the tables in MoaTT.

Now all I have to do is ask various questions on the day:

• Why are the monsters in this room?
• Why is the treasure in this room?
• What do they think of the party?
• Why a trap here? What trap is appropriate?
• What weird thing am I in the mood to have be a Special?
• Etc...

This is really all the information I need to run a successful dungeon delve that brings with it surprises for both my players and myself. In a way, I am exploring the dungeon with my players since much of the information that might have appeared in a grey box in a module of old, I am making up on the spot by answering questions either my players ask or I ask of myself.

In other words, the amount of work I put into prepping an adventure into The Liar’s Cave pales in comparison to the work I put into The Hermit Caves, yet both can (and have) produce(d) great gaming sessions.

So, to all those yet-to-be Referees (and maybe to those who already are): you don’t need to go to the lengths of a written module to produce great adventures of your own. You don’t need to feel intimidated by all that flavor text and all that background information and all the crunch. If you are willing to be creative, accept the surprises and seemingly nonsensical results that random tables can provide and be comfortable with the reality that if it makes sense to you in the moment, it will most likely make sense to your players, you can jump into the world of Refereeing with as little as a piece of paper with a rough map, a few monster stats and some random tables and still be just as effective as if you’d written everything from scratch.

Isometric Map Experiment

Of all the iconic and popular TSR modules, the one I probably dislike the most is I6: Ravenloft. While it reads like a pretty decent dungeon crawl with some nice innovations (like the different goals of the Count and his variable locations through the castle, etc.), I have always found it to be unplayable. 

The reason for this is simple: trying to read and make sense of that isometric map gives me a headache. I actually tried to run Ravenloft once in a session and practically abandoned the module in favor of making stuff up on the spot because that was far more enjoyable that trying to figure out where everything was on the map.

Ever since the release of Ravenloft, I have avoided isometric maps like the plague. I would even be tempted to say that I hate them because they render otherwise good material into real or digital toilet paper. I say almost because I will certainly admit that a well done isometric map is a pretty thing to look at. I will also concede that I have wondered if there aren't times when an isometric map could actually do a better job at the table of presenting certain ideas.

As I am gearing up to actually do my own version of ToEE, I got an idea that might very well fall into this category: it is a four story tall room with entrances on all four stories. As an experiment, I ventured to produce an isometric map. I then produced the exact same map in a more traditional way to see which of the two did a better job.

Please note: these two maps are not finished products. I kept the maps relatively simple so that I could easily wrap my head around both versions; however, as rough drafts of an idea I think they both do a very good job of being proofs of concept.

Putting aside which one is "prettier," because I am not really interested in that at this point, which one would you rather have at the table to run a game?

A Spaceship Map

Well, I just finished a week sans wife taking care of the kids by my lonesome. Thus, blogging became a very low priority; however, I do want to share the fact that I am working on an introductory adventure for Star Lite. Here is the map, enjoy!

Under Portown: A Map of Portown

When looking at the description of Portown as presented in Holmes, there are only a couple of features that are explicitly known:

• The ruins of the Tower of Zenopus are west of town sitting on top of a hill overlooking some sea cliffs and next to a graveyard.
• Other Magic-users have moved to town.
• Portown is a small city, but busy being a hub where caravans deliver goods to ships that venture into hostile, pirate-infested waters to the north.
• Portown is cosmopolitan with both human and non-human inhabitants from all over the world.
• The Green Dragon Inn is popular enough that adventurers gather there to organize expeditions.

In trying to take this information and turn it into a usable map, I have found that the urban hex-crawl style of map has several really nice features.

• Placing specific details, like the tower ruins and the Green Dragon Inn are a breeze because those are abstracted into an existing hex with the proper theme. I need only make sure that the “Necropolis” hex (where the Sample Dungeon will be found) is on the west end of town and nest to the sea.
• Less specific details, such as magic-users moving to the area are also a breeze to incorporate. I just need a hex that is appropriately scholarly, such as a “University District” hex.
• Larger concepts, such as the trade route, are also easy to portray with hexes that have to do with such trade such as “Port” and “Bazaar.”
• Lastly, if one wants to either enlarge or further detail a city later on, it is as easy as adding a few more hexes. For example, here is what could be termed a “Small but busy City:”

I know the numbering is off, it will make sense below

Hexes include: Port, Olde Town, Bazaar,Burgher’s District, Palace District,University District, Necropolis, The Ancient City, Inn Way, Tent City and Tavern Row.

I, however, want even more city to explore and I also want more potential for political intrigue. Therefore, I decided to add the following:

Hexes include: Monastery District, Barracks Row, Guildhalls and Business District

I then remembered I didn’t have slums or place where a Thieves’ Guild might find home so I added some more:

Hexes include: Lower Guildhalls, Upper Slums, Thieves’ Quarter and Lower Slums.

Here is the final key for the map:

1. Port
2. Olde Town
3. Bazaar
4. Burgher’s District
5. Palace District
6. University District
7. Necropolis
8. The Ancient City
9. Inn Way
10. Monastery District
11. Barracks Row
12. Upper Guildhalls (so called because of its relative elevation)
13. Business District
14. Tent City (so called because this is where caravans make camp while transferring their goods)
15. Tavern Row
16. Lower Guildhalls (so called because of its relative elevation and the fact that its takes are not as high class as the Upper Guildhalls)
17. Upper Slums (so called because of its relative elevation and due to the influence of the monasteries)
18. Thieves’ Quarter
19. Lower Slums (so called because of its relative elevation and due to the influence of the Thieves' Guild).

Overall, this method of city mapping/city building is really user friendly.

Please note: as I proceed with this particular project, I will be assuming that the larger picture within which Portown is placed will correspond with my earlier work of trying to piece together Holmes' Sample Dungeon and Cook's map of the Known World.

Under Portown: The Beginnings of a City Hexcrawl

I really cannot understand these city folk. Why would anyone want to live in this filth infested maze where you cannot see the horizon?
— The Journal of Sho Zo-ton from Afar

I used to live in Boston. I did not like it. Unless you live within spitting distance of the T (which I did not) Boston is an inhospitable maze of one-way former cow paths that can get you turned around faster than you can say “Red Sox.” Whenever you get directions to someplace, you have to make sure you get directions to get back as well, because these two trips are normally very different animals. Thus, when I found this post by WQRobb on Hexcrawling a City over at Graphs, Paper, and Games I grokked it immediately.

In Boston, navigation involves knowing landmarks and how those landmarks are connected. Thus, a trip to the school might be understood as “grocery store-church-school.” Very rarely did street names ever become relevant. Indeed street names are a false friend in the Boston area because there might be several streets by the same name in different parts of the city (which got me really lost once after which I never made the same mistake again).

The idea to make a FRPG city map abstract is nothing new (see Vornheim); however, none of them made me immediately think of my years in Boston the way WQRobb did. Navigating a hex crawl city evokes the navigation-by-landmark survival strategy I had to live by in Boston. It also opens up the possibility for getting lost or discovering things that you weren’t even looking for (like the time I was walking around Prague looking for a restaurant and spent the next several hours at the Jewish Cemetery instead).

Thus, I plan on mapping out Portown in the hex crawl style suggested by WQRobb. Thus, each hex in the city will have a theme. For example: The Monastery District. There will be several main features within each hex that can be looked for and found:

1. The Cathedral of St. Garbee (3 in 6)
2. Quasgadontee Monastery (3 in 6)
3. Skete of Seefeg the Searcher (2 in 6)
4. Catacombs of St. Ree’U (2 in 6)
5. Amit the Hut Dweller (1 in 6)
6. Lost

Thus, if one is simply exploring a hex, roll a d6 and find the result. A roll of ‘6’ gets you lost. This can mean either wasted time inside the hex (and more opportunities for random encounter) or ending up in an entirely different hex. This can be determined at the whim of the Referee.

If one is looking for a specific location (like the Cathedral) there is a given success rate for actually finding it. A failed roll results in getting lost with the same results as above. At the discretion of the Referee, chances to find a particular location can be increased with multiple visits (demonstrating a better knowledge of the layout of the city); however, there can never be better than a 5 in 6 chance of success (one can always get lost).

To pass through a hex requires a roll of a d6. A roll of 5 or 6 results in getting lost.

Every time a die roll is required inside a hex to find a Main Feature, to explore or to pass through the Referee gets to make a roll for a Random Encounter. The chances on having a Random Encounter are up to the whim of the Referee.

A Random Encounter Table in the Monastery District might look like this:

1. Roll on Main Features Table (you’ve accidentally found a location, but a ‘6’ still means getting lost).
2. A Religious Procession
3. Monk(s)
4. Pilgrims
5. Temple Guard
6. Monster (TBD)

Add a +1 to the roll when exploring at night. The “Monster (TBD)” is an opportunity to take whatever faction is currently dominant Under Portown and bring them to the surface whether on some nefarious errand or to track down and take revenge on the PCs is up to the Referee.

While this might look like a lot of work, I think it actually will end up being less work than trying to draw out an actual city map and placing all these features on that map. I also believe it will make urban adventuring a lot more evocative and interesting than a traditional street map.

A Holmes Inspired Megadungeon: Under Portown

Ever since I started down the path of trying to combine Holmes and Cook, I have been trying to create a megadungeon that would tick off all the boxes I see suggested in a Holmes-style game. To a certain extent, I have accomplished much of what I wanted with my version of the Chateau des Faussesflammes, but the result has been, well, really complex.

As my Gamer ADD has recently returned to Holmes, I have been working on taking some of the ideas I put into practice with the Chateau, but in a much simpler format in order to flesh out the Sample Dungeon found in Holmes. 

Here is the basic concept: The dungeon beneath Portown is part of the Mythic Underground. Therefore, it is an NPC unto itself. One of the great dangers of the Mythic Underground is that as an environment, it is hostile to adventurers (as is evidenced by the fact that doors easily open for monsters, but PCs must use Thief Skills, spells or Strength). One way that hostility can express itself is by actually changing.

Under Portown, there are six elements of the dungeon that do not change. One is the entrance and there are five special areas which all play a major part in the backstory of the dungeon itself. I've drawn these up here:

The idea here is that the spaces around these six elements can change on a whim. For my part, I am imagining various factions vying for control of the dungeon. Each faction controls a different version of the dungeon. As each faction's power waxes and wanes, the Mythic Underground exposes different versions of itself to the surface world.

Thus, I can take a piece of tracing paper and draw out different "levels" and place them over my six static elements. Here is a version where I took pieces and parts of the Sample Dungeon of Holmes:

Alternately, I can do this electronically. I purposely used geomorphs to create the five main elements of the dungeon so that it would be possible to create something in Dave's Mapper to drop my main elements into with little effort on my part:

The result is an ever-changing megadungeon with an unlimited number of rooms; however, PCs will always have anchor points of familiarity if they can find those unchanging elements of each version of the dungeon. If they can figure out part of the mechanism of when the dungeon changes, they can also begin to have some control over which version of the dungeon they explore.

Gamer ADD: Underneath the Haunted Keep

When creating a potential mega-dungeon, I like to not only come up with a history of the place, but a side-view in order to get a handle on what i can expect of the place. So here is a starting side-view of the Haunted Keep:

The Rotating Room is a trap of sorts that leads unwary parties into the False Tombs and likely to their doom. The Vault of the Dawnbringer used to be part of the Tomb of Queen Mabh, but was shifted over time. When the Tower was built, the vault was found and sealed with a secret entrance. I like the possibilities of weirdness due to the angle of the floor. The Tomb Of Queen Mabh has no physical entrance and can only be accessed via magic. The Underground River connects The Corrupted Roots, The Well, The Undercroft of Alberic and The Vault of the Dawnbringer.

Gamer ADD: A Map of the Haunted Keep

Haunted Keep Background

In the ancient days when the Shorsai Forest was part of great expanse of woods that made up the Forest Kingdoms, an elven queen of great renknown by the name of Mabh died a tragic death. With great pomp, she was entombed in a burial mound with some of her most prized possessions.

As the ages passed, the Great Forest receded and Shorsai Forest became part of the Wilderness. The legend of Queen Mabh passed into distant memory. With the coming of man came a desire to tame the Wilderness. The first settlers of the area built a keep upon a rise within a clearing in the middle of the Shorsai Forest. Little did they know that they were building on the burial mound of the long forgotten Queen Mabh.

For many years, the keep served its purpose well by keeping the forces of Chaos at bay. Save for strange dreams that sometimes haunted the inhabitants, the keep began to thrive. Things changed, however, when the keep was expanded. Rumors warned of a gathering army of humanoids to the north. Therefore, a tower was built to help protect the keep in case of a siege. Due to the movements of time and earth, one of the prized possessions of Queen Mabh had been displaced to the ground where the tower was built and the short sword Dawnbringer fell into the hands of men.

This greatly angered the spirit of Queen Mabh and she reached far and wide to find her brethren to take revenge on those who had stolen her prized sword. With dreams she pleaded with elven heroes to find the Siege Seed to destroy the keep’s walls and to kill every one inside.

Finally, an elf by the name of Ionhar answered the call and completed the task to find the Siege Seed. Raising an army he drove north out of the Forest Kingdoms and laid siege on the keep. While the bulk of Ionhar’s forces attacked the keep’s tower, a small force snuck behind to bury the Siege Seed at the base of the keep’s northwestern wall. A great tree sprang forth from the earth, tearing a huge hole the the keep’s defenses.

Before the elves could overrun the keep, however, the humans retreated to the tower, where they were able to seal its only entrance with a great stone. Unable to bypass the tower’s defenses, the elven offensive ground to a halt.

Enraged at the failure of the elven forces, the spirit of Queen Mabh turned to necromancy. She cast a spell that doomed her soul to undeath and enveloped the entire keep in a life-draining green flame. Elf and human alike were consumed. No-one has seen the Dawnbringer since that fateful day.

Since then, the keep lay in ruin and came to be known as the Haunted Keep due to the strange green glow that could sometimes be seen at night coming from the ruins. Whether the glow comes from Queen Mabh herself, the ghosts of the armies that once fought over the keep or if it is merely the trickery of the fey that have since come to make the Shorsai their home no one knows.

A Question of Scale

In my last post, in which I gushed over the Swords & Wizardry Legion Pack (SWLP), I nitpicked about the scale of the map provided on the back of the folder that comes with the pack. I still maintain that 50 miles per hex is WAY too big, especially if this packet is intended for use as an introduction to FRPGs. Now, as an experienced Referee, I might want to erase all the villages and towns and then focus in on one 50 mile hex to make it my own, but such an exercise makes the map provided rather useless.

While still in full-on Gamer ADD mode because of this gorgeous little package, I stumbled across this map via the internet:

This, I believe, comes from the Necromancer Games adventure Shades of Gray designed for 3e. Note two things:

1. It depicts part of the map provided with the SWLP.
2. According to the scale of this map the distance between Darnagal and Potter's Field is about 50 miles.

According to the map provided with SWLP, the distance between these two towns/villages is around 6 hexes or 300 miles. That translates into travel times of just less than a week on the older map to a travel time of over a month on the SWLP map.

To put this in context, I looked up my old stomping ground on Google Maps and planned a trip from the Boston Convention Center in downtown Boston to Fenway Park. This morning, the fastest route was 7.7 miles. If we did to Boston what Frog God Games has done to their world, that distance would now be 46.2 miles. A trip of about 17 minutes is ballooned to a trip of over an hour. At that distance, the Boston Red Sox really aren't in Boston anymore.

I have no issue with Frog God Games trying to make their world much bigger than what it has been is the past, but not only does it make the map provided in the SWLP useless, it also radically changes the material previously provided by Necromancer Games and Frog God Games. If I ever wanted to run Shades of Gray, for example, I would either have to ditch the map from the SWLP or re-write significant portions of the adventure to fit the new scale.

Or, as I mentioned in my previous post, I can just drop the '0' from the '50' and use the map as it was originally designed.

Swords & Wizardry Legion

I got a very special surprise in the mail today. Michael Badolato was kind enough to send me the Swords & Wizardry Legion packet and it is Awesome! This thing is gorgeous and it makes me wish I were 9 years old again so that this could have been my first introduction to roleplaying. It is simple, elegant and just gorgeous to look at. You get two cards for each character class that has everything you need to know on them. It has two copies of S&W Light. It even has a small pad of graph paper. As a big fan of cartography, my favorite part is the map of The Gulf of Akados Region from Frog God Games' Lost Lands on the back of the folder. My Gamer ADD is in overdrive. This little packet is a goldmine of inspiration. Kudos to everyone involved!

I do, however, have one small complaint. Again, as a big fan of cartography, I take huge issue with the scale of the map of The Gulf of Akados Region. It declares that each hex is 50 miles! My first Lost Colonies campaign, which lasted about 3 years, took place largely in one 50 mile hex. This scale is grossly out of proportion.

To give some sense of context, the Gulf of Akados, which takes up about a third of the map, is larger than the Mediterranean Sea. Almost half again bigger. There are several Ruins on this map, giving potential Referees all kinds of opportunity to create dungeons and adventures of their own. Unfortunately, due to the scale of the map most of these ruins are between 150-200 miles away from the nearest town or village noted on the map. Swords & Wizardry movement rules state that a character can hike their base move in miles per day. Given the average burden of a typical 1st level character, that base move is most likely going to be 9. At nine miles per day, a party of adventurers would have to travel between 17 and 23 days in order to get to the ruins marked on this map.

In other words, as is, the map is useless. Fortunately, it is rather easy to erase that ‘0’ after the ‘5’ and reduce the travel time to 2 days and the size of the Gulf of Akados to about half the size of Lake Superior.

Other than that “typo” this is an incredibly cool little package.