Saturday Night thoughts on the sparsely populated dungeon

It's Saturday night, and I feel a Saturday Night Special feeling coming over me.

Some of you might have read my last post on dense Gygaxian dungeons. Given it is Saturday I got to thinking about those places that make the subterranean underworld its flair, and those moments of "sensawunda". Let me quote you from the 5th ed. Tunnels & Trolls rule book.

"Let your imagination go wild - you can do anything you want because this is your creation. Put in a lot of stuff - nobody likes a dull dungeon. "

So, populating your dungeon. I know some people likes the idea of a big underground labyrinth where there are one third empty rooms or something like that. Each to his own. I don't say I don't like to play that way. But, I've come to realize that I'm no longer fond of creating dungeons like that.

I love to invent those crystal waterfalls, devious traps, combat encounters with multiple co-operating foes or locales of majestic proportions and awe inspiring weirdness. Putting down corridors of nothing on graph paper is no longer fun.

Sure, I could use a computer to generating it for me, but I would not find it fun to run either. What I would like to have is a way to make those slow moving bits be outsourced to  a second GM and then I could step in a run the Saturday Night Specials. Maybe. Is there a way to get it all?

I'm beginning to feel I understand what Ken St. Andre wrote above and how well it applies to me. I don't like a "dull" dungeon. It would be cool, though, if you could just rattle off some twists, turns and empty rooms without bother to have the first part make sense or be ever repeatable (like for backtracking out of the dungeon or repeat visits), and then dive into it. Too bad I like the idea of repeat visits to the dungeon. I would never be able to improvise the same map twice.

If that could be done, I'd be very happy.

Empty dungeons - all except the fun parts?

 As some of you might know, there's work going on to produce a 8th edition of Tunnels & Trolls. Naturally, it makes me ponder the qualities T&T have, it's quirks and sparkling facets. I remember how the Trollgod, Ken St Andre, wrote in the former editions about how to approach the game, and how it came to be. One thing I remember from older editions of the game is the suggestion, when designing dungeons, to put a lot of stuff in there. Nobody wants to mess around in a boring dungeon, was the thinking. It ties in to the great debate earlier this autumn about the empty dungeon and the pile of "worthless" treasure.I have talked about it before, and might do it again. Now I have some observations to share of what's boring or fun.

Writing a tent pole dungeon, or a megadungeon, it might make a lot of sense to have sections of the dungeon be quite empty, some to be the highways and some to be Saturday Night Specials. Looking at the Wilderlands, the setting published by Judges Guild, it makes sense. It is basically a big empty dungeon, is it not? Now imagine it all being a vast castle, or a big underground mine and it will look kind of the same. I mean, it's a world in of itself. But, let's for a moment limit the vision to something smaller, which is just one adventure, and not a whole world.

You know what Adventure is, right? Adventure is like real world, except the boring parts are cut out. At least that is a way to describe it I find funny. Approaching it a bit more serious, I find the dungeon design advice which suggest you cram in more stuff there, since nobody want to fool around in an empty dungeon probably belong to that school.

So, then the problem is to identify the "boring parts". I know that for many of us playing these games of adventure, we like to be something bigger and greater than we usually are. But, for some others it's not so focused on the bigger, better and greater part. I have found that for those people it's often a question of exploring a secondary world, that is interesting in itself, as a living real place. Personally I like that aspect. Once I played in a game with a very tantalizing setting, with lot of mysteries and it failed for me. I knew at once when my interest started to wane, because we focused on interpersonal conflicts, and I was more interested in the world we never got to explore.

My hypothesis is that this is related to some sense of "realism". Not in the meaning working like the real world, but working in a consistent way within that world. You hear of a mystery, and you know it's not just some random "oddballness", but there's a rhyme and reason for the thing to exist, and you can find it out.

Then, the boring parts are when you explore a fully realized secondary world, and there's nothing there! You expect there to be rich cultures which behave like they do because of their history. You expect to find artifacts which can be better understood by exploring the ancient history of the fallen empire in the world you are exploring. Empty dungeon rooms can then be something of a let down.

Now imagine someone who does not care much for the secondary world, but cares a lot about for a Saturday night feeling great as the greatest ranger of the North, or the mighty slayer of dragons. Empty dungeon rooms can be something of a let down, reminding you a little bit too much of the cubicle or office space you sat in hours before.

I know, of course, of the argument that proper old school play is as much about resource management as anything else. That being said, I don't think it's the only lesson to be learned from the "old ways" of doing things, and if my "boring parts" are your "fun parts" I actually think that aspect of roleplaying games can be brought forth in other areas, not necessarily related to moving about in space. But, that's a subject for some other day. Today I focused on the psychology of empty rooms, which I don't think was covered during the big brouhaha earlier this year.

Designing a new dungeon - Named Areas

I have started a bunch of new projects lately. Anger have caused springs of creativity to spring forth, and now I have a few adventures lined up and maybe even a few more ambitious things.

Since I love the exploration style of adventuring in a big and exciting dungeon I started to plan, design and draw with a megadungeon in mind. Maybe I'll scale it back a bit, or it will have to be something I'll tinker with for a long time.

If you have searched the web for articles on megadungeon design you have probably already found much of the solid advice there is, so I'm not going to try to sound like I have anything new and revolutionary to add. But, I'll write about a nice way to invent a few of those places in a dungeon that stand out and feel a bit special.

Anyone who have read of old school dungeons probably have noticed that there are names areas which makes you wonder what might lurk there. The Black Reservoir is one of those names. Now you can make those yourself! Check out this wonderful blog post with some handy Named Areas charts!

I bet you would love to know what The Gate of the Deadly Harem Slime Ladies or The Mysterious Cave Lagoon of Copper Blood is? Me too. I'm making it up, and sooner or later you might find out. Slime Ladies? Yep.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - the end?

Last night we had the final session for the campaign. At least it will be the last session with these players, and in Kingston ON. I ran it like I have done it since the start, with a Megadungeon and a sandbox attitude where the players decide what they want to do and the world develops according to their interests. When I have felt unsure I have tried to follow Vincent Baker's advice and "say yes or roll the dice" seem to work just fine. I think the experiment have been a success, and I feel it closed on a chord with power and harmony.

The construction kept going on, and a college, housing and entertainment of various kinds are now available outside the dungeon. I didn't feel I could do as much with that potential with such a limited time, but I still liked the possibilities of adventure that could provide. Maybe they will stay and will become a part of the setting for when I find a new group.

The delving was a bit short, since we all were a bit unfocused. But, we had some glorious fights with gigantic spiders and they managed to poison a delver. I was kind and didn't kill anyone with the venomous bite. The best use of a magic item was definitely the Redecorating Wand, which so far had not found much use. Now, with cobwebs all over the place it found its use and it transformed the corridors into nicely decorated tunnels with drapes of spider silk. Pretty. In the dying moments of the session I short circuited some laborious tunnel crawling and described the vista of the Lost Underground City which they found according to the map they had purchased. Since they had quested for the goblin city and the crystal forest for so long I gave them a glimpse. End with a hint of more and they might keep dreaming. At least that was my hope. In the end everyone got a diploma as a superior delver and thanks for showing up and making it fun. It felt like a cool way to send off the campaign. Someone did this with their Mage chronicle (was it ChattyDM? I can't find anything on his blog archive!) and it seemed nice.

So, as I said the format for the game seems to have worked pretty well. I'm not that fond of the Kremm Resistance rules, and I'm beginning to think that ablative armor like in 4th ed might add a nice dimension of resource management. I'll probably also do some testing with the experience for gold rule next time. Tunnels & Trolls is a fun system, and I think the progress of the characters in the campaign made it feel like an accomplishment, but not so slow as to make it feel like you was at a stand still. What will be my next big RPG project? Time will tell, but I have had suggestions for a WH40k rpg. We'll see.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - zombie overkill and the founding of Las Vegas

Last night's game in the Dungeon of Voorand Campaign is sadly enough going to be the penultimate session. One more Thursday, and then I will pack up my stuff and leave Kingston. I feels a bit numbing to having to end this very enjoyable run, but at least we ends while having fun and still pumped up about everything cool we all want to do in the game.

More than once my dear players have realized that there are more to find even at places they thought had "cleared out", or just left for more challenging levels. I once got to hear that the dungeon felt big and like there was a lot still to explore. I loved that I had managed to capture that part of the Megadungeon concept.

Last night they decided to poke around some dark corners of level one. Naturally, not everything was like when they last were there, and they found a secret little "sublevel" that I had hidden. Not even this time did they explore everything, but they did find a ogre guarding a statue decorated with magical items like a helmet, belt, sword and other trinkets. Since they broke down the door and made a lot of noise, they woke the guardian up. They later found that others had taken his offer of using a bribe, and had plundered the statue somewhat. They did away with the guardian by a very dirty manoeuvrer, and grabbed themselves some magic. Now they have realized that all permanent items come with drawbacks, so it will be fun to see if that makes them vary.

As I have been telling before, we have had an explosion of building lately. We have had a tavern built by a PC outside the dungeon, and today a school for special education (firstly outdoorsmanship) and a casino was built. As you might have surmised from the subject, they are on their way to build Las Vegas out in the wilderness by the foot of the mountain. I think inventive players are the best gift a GM can get. Just imagine the possibilities for conflict, or ways to use this to have them pour out their hard earned money!

In a information gathering pause, shopping around for workers for their projects, they also bought a treasure map! I love these items. They are a good way to give small nudges to players, or to pace the game, or to siphon off some funds, or lead the into traps, or... you get the picture. They decided they wanted to see the Lost City, and the Crystal Forest and managed to find a delver who had been there and draw them a map. The best part of that was that when they entered level three on their way to the edge of their new map, they went in another direction and got themselves into trouble! If I say barracks full of zombies, what do you say? One dead PC later, and they retreated. I thought I said they saw a room full of tripple bunks from which stiff legged creatures shambled. Sometimes having the best armour in the game will make you to brave. Learn when to run.

It was a fun night, and even though we had a death we still play with stables so nobody is running out of clones yet. Next week will be the last, and from experience I think that my players will make it a good finale without me making it any special. We just play games and have fun. Fight on!

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - giant frogs!

Last Thursday we had our latest session of my Tunnels & Trolls megadungeon campaign. I am a few days late with the write-up. Sorry about that.

I have now notified my players that I will wrap up this campaign, but since this is a campaign of the "sandbox" style, I can just go on playing without having to bother to much with wrapping up of "story lines". That is a relief.

We chatted a bit about what the players wanted to check out now. They have found entrances and stairs to multiple levels and sublevels. How it fits together is still pretty much unclear, but apart from a short pilgrimage by our half-dragon to the majestic wyrm guarding a treasure on a rock in a lava sea they decided to focus on tying up loose ends on the fairly well explored level two.

The maps came up on the table and then they started to chart the places they had missed or left for later. They moved around a bit, mapped and became confused and gleefully kicked in the doors that had been stuck (my little piece of old school nonsense). One of the rooms that occupied the characters and their resources was a classic "Green Devil Face" where they spent some time figuring out what triggered the trap and how to possibly evade it. Much fun was had with electricity. Don't try it at home!

Having gotten through the trapped room they finally found my jungle. I shall spend a few sentences explaining where that one came from. As some of you might know, Gary and Rob put in many "sub realms" and other dimensional pockets in the halls of Castle Greyhawk. I know that WG6 Isle of the Ape was a homage to King Kong, and also somehow a part of the Castle. That sure is one weird castle. But, if they could, then can I. Naturally, being a fan of Blackmoor I couldn't help including some giant frogs. All added and stirred gently became a sub realm which can be entered on level two of the Dungeon of Voorand, a gigantic cave filled with dense jungle which is magically kept lit and rainy. My poor players suddenly found their characters fighting random encounters in a jungle, underground. I was happy when I managed to roll up a gigantic frog and a werewolf. The first one was slaughtered, with love and the other one with magic. I decided to be generous and allow not only silver weapons (none available at this delve), but also magic. I think the ability in T&T to power up your spells saved the day. Only one of the characters now have to be chained up in the cellar come the full moon.

Outside the dungeon there's now a fully stocked tavern, built and manned by hyenakin. Food and drink should be available for anyone coming in or out the dungeon thirsty and hungry. Should that not be enough, one of the magic trinkets found in the dungeon can be seen outside. It was a small red bouncing rubber ball, but enchanted to double in size each time it bounce. It's now as large as the tavern, and fastened with chains and is a popular tourist attraction. Could I have planned this myself? Lucky me I have players with imagination. Sometimes I think they have to much of that, though. They have had their own "gazebo moment", and refuse to trust the tavern inside the dungeon. Well, now there's competition and it should benefit all.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - going off the deep end

Today I had something happen that I had thought would happen in one of the first sessions. Having read about megadungeons, I put in a chute down to the deepmost level of my whole dungeon. I put it on level one. I kind of expected the players to find it and be spooked fairly early, but they just avoided it! It looked like a big well where the orcs on level one cast their refuse, but I literally said "they throw down everything they don't want or eat there". I thought that would make someone think they might want what they didn't. That way they never got hold of that magic weapon I put in there for them to be able to fight in incorporeal undead. They managed without, go figure. Today they found it, finally.

For that deep level of the dungeon, I decided to steal an idea from Dave Arneson. That's a good source for stealing ideas! You can read of some of the early adventures in Blackmoor here. So, at the bottom of the dungeon there should be a dragon, right? I placed one down there, and it was sitting on a hoard of treasure in a sea of lava. Inhospitable, to say the least.

For those of my readers who have read the old rule books of D&D, might know that there are maps to be found as treasure. Since I started playing fantasy RPGs I don't think I've seen any, or at least very few, of those. I decided to toss one of those in a scroll case today. It will be fun to see what they do with that. Bring a saxophone to good players and they'll find a use for it. Talking about music instruments, we did have a new player today, who picked "Jazz Trombone" as his Talent. That shows the right attitude, I think. On the spot I invented the Annual Khazan Jazz Festival. Now we had a reason to party, and a nice setting for some fooling around and interpersonal action. Not every fantasy setting has its own Jazz Festival, I'm sure.

Good players also makes me want to highlight something else that happened tonight. When the players decided to go down the well to the roots of the volcano and the sea of lava, they did at all times make sure they had a clear line of retreat. Always make sure to have a line of retreat. Good old classic Gygax delving wisdom from the PHB.

Now the tavern our delving entrepreneur has built is almost finished. Whatever happens, hungry and tired delvers will have a way to get food and drink just outside the dungeon. Heartwarming, isn't it?

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - the entrepeneur phase

Note: I have a newborn son who's only a couple of days old, so right now I'm not totally focused on blogging. I'll try to keep up. This post is a little late. Sorry about that.

Our Wednesday game have had to move to Thursdays, and I've been worried that some of the walk-in attendees would be confused by this. Unfortunately that happened, but we still had enough show up for a game this week.

Now we have entered what I call the entrepreneur stage. Our dwarven hero have lost a couple of limbs, and in order to scale back on the hazards he decided to start a tavern. Earlier that player managed to become the chief of a small tribe of hyenakin by defeating the former chief in single combat. He is now the player's second in command and gets to run the show as usual. Now the tribe have become recruited as loggers, and builder of the tavern. I really like this development. I have not set out any clear targets for the players, except some hooks and rumours about the dungeon. From out of player initiative we now have another campaign reaching development! I can let this tavern be a source of more information, problems and adventures for the players. The best part of being the one player who has to build the environment and provide the building blocks for fun, is when a player starts giving you building blocks they have carved themselves.

The delving this time focused on a weird intra dimensional room they found earlier, which spins like a carousel. Tugging the rope that hangs from out of nowhere in the centre of the room, they started the room spinning and then opened the doors that now lead to adventure. What was most fun for me at this point was when they found a room which wasn't really like anything else they have encountered before. Save or die effects are hated by some, and ridiculed by others. In this instance I had a room with a very subtle threat, that none the less had hints to decipher about what was going on. To my amusement they looked in the right direction and draw other conclusions than the wholly correct one. Hilarity ensued and the party was split in two and had to flee when a fight showed itself way to much for them. Learn to run away, and remember that sharks swim in the shallowest water. I have good players, and they know that. But, it is fun to see them not just waltz through it all and get a reminder once in a while.

Sometimes you hear that any touch of technology or "science fantasy" makes hard core fantasy gamers run away screaming. The module Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is one that those kind of gamers love to hate. Those also seem to be vary of anything related to Blackmoor, since they know there are hi-tech there. Personally I kind of like to mix anything fun in. I decided to put a piece of gaming history in my dungeon. Anyone ever heard of Adventure or The Colossal Caves? If you have, you have probably also played the version with the vending machine in the labyrinth. For me vending machines are neat. They are fun to play with and might dispense all kind of wondrous stuff in a world of magic. Needless to say, I couldn't resist putting in a vending machine filled with toys, gewgaws and magically powered trinkets. I have no idea what some of them can be used for, but I trust my players to come up with something funny. Already the bouncing ball that doubles in size every time it bounces have provided us with fun and laughter. Imagine that one in a cramped environment down in the tunnels of a dungeon.

To Craft Dungeon of Voorand part II

I have been thinking a bit about how to make an interesting dungeon again. One thing I really wanted to make a key feature of my campaign, was for it to be player driven. A sue way to snap the suspension of disbelief for me is to have the world "know" the level of the players and only throw "scaled challenges" at them. They key is to have enough open doors to let the players choose what they want to do. When I look at my dungeon maps I think they are way to limited. If I truly want the players to be able to choose what to explore there has to be a lot of possibilities to move up and down! From now on when I have nothing better to put in, sitting at the graph paper with pencil in hand, I will put in a stairway. How much is good enough? Looking over some old maps, like the maps of Blackmoor castle, you'll see stairways all over the place! Tossing out some numbers I'm thinking that out of ten stairways on a level, at least three should go to the next lower/upper level and four going to stuff way deeper down. Maybe the key here is for the players to encounter a serious temptation, or choice, to go on deeper at least once a game session. I don't think the density of stairs and the possibilities of movement up and down have been investigated much in the discussions online about dungeon design. It would be interesting to know what people think of this. Please let me know if you have any links to discussions like that. For now I have been preparing stuff for my players to explore on level two, three, four and five. If that's not enough I don't know what is!

Playing the Dunegon of Voorand - traps and tricks

Having had little time to prepare, I came to today's session with the intention of delaying my players. Sometimes it comes like a natural thing when the delving expands out of the dark, and the outer world gets involved in the adventure. It happened somewhat last week, when one of the PCs capable of flying decided to fly high over the mountain of the dungeon and scout the area. He found some standing stones, tracks of cattle rustling orcs and enough to entice him to explore some more. This week I actually didn't have to delay much, since the taster of wilderness adventure and wider and wilder lands made further exploration and research about the surrounding lands something they took on voluntarily! Add to that the fact that another player had decided to use some of the NPCs he had recruited and start some serious carpentry down the dungeon to build bridges and stuff. I love when my players get creative like that!

I couldn't really resist using the awesome Carousing Mishaps table by the inventive Jeff Rients, from issue four of Fight On! magazine. So, they did not only get the opportunity to chase down facts about the countryside, they also was tempted to spend some hard earned gold and get some fun to happen. Maybe getting 1 Adventure Point per spent gold was a bit generous, but whattaheck! Our brave dark elf partied like there was no tomorrow and ended up without any clothes or memory in the temple of the Earth Mother, where the angry priestesses chased out the defiler! Fun was had by all.

When they finally entered the dungeon they decided to go down a hallway where I had basically drawn a long empty corridor and then just filled it with odd traps. I made it fairly clear to them that they were traps, and it's impossible to surprise someone that's so lucky like their rogue. But, it turned out that even if it would have filled me with glee to see some tense moments when the traps went off, we did get some good moments out of them anyway. You see, they didn't just roll a couple of dice and them moved along, and they didn't have to think their way through a mental headache while they were trying to have fun with their friends. I managed to do something different.

Leave a trap out in the open, and players will spend time on it. They will take it apart, prod it with ten foot poles, try to circumvent it and then understand what it could have done when they are finally safe. Remember the fun you had when you put it there for them to solve? Just watch your players as they carefully reassemble the machinery so that they can feel that satisfaction when they come back and see that some other delvers have triggered it! I noted that even if the players hadn't understood how the mechanism worked (and I didn't actually give then all the information needed), they still spend a lot of time safeguarding themselves if the trapped would do this or that when they out of curiosity wanted to test it out after they passed it by. Having the whole party kibitzing and taking different precautions was a very interactive way of handling a trap. Playing a game where traps are a thing unto themselves is a mindset, and my players are good at it.

Talking about minds. I was actually fooling around with their minds a bit today. I had hinted that there was a tavern down on level two, and today they found it! It's not just any tavern, though, and I messed with their heads a bit and placed the Tavern out of Time (AKA The Come Back Inn) from Dave Arnesons Blackmoor in there! They seemed scared by time travelling and plane hopping taverns and left quickly. I hope I learned something from Dave of how to keep the players on their toes.

There was some fighting, and they used some of the stuff I posted about combat, and effectively halved the combat adds of a golem by knocking the not so dexterous creature over! It takes a lot of power to challenge these guys in a fight now. We'll see how long they'll stay on level two. Well, they now got one of the colour coded keys I've left in the dungeon, and some rumours about other areas and the pool of the black one down on level five. We'll see where they go next time.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - threats from above and below

Tonight the game went well! Everyone was having fun and we had one character get below zero hit points! They had encountered a room before with water and some kind of hungry monster, that had killed a PC before. This time they were intrigued enough by the three doors on the opposite side of the water filled room to decide to "do" this room tonight.

The room was filled with water, and had poles sticking up with some wobbly planks of wood on them. Since T&T is what it is, they of course have a fairy PC, so she flew into the room to investigate, and everyone else had actions ready to fry anything that moved. It moved. A swirling mass of slithering flying eels attacked and tried to knock the intruder into the water. A minute later it was clear that when prepared, the PC will succeed at what they try to do if they get information and are prepared to act upon it. Fried eel.

Now it became interesting. How do they try to make the crossing safer? It was by no means an easy task just because nobody was trying to push you into the water. Having tied ropes, and also having the flying member of the party steadying along the way did a lot to alleviate the danger. Now it went from interesting to downright scary. Crossing a wobbly plank was a third level SR on DEX or LK. With a rope I reduced it to second level. With someone to hold your and, to one. Our poor human warrior rolls a 1 and a 2. I'm thinking they have really done their homework preparing, so I rule he is still holding on to the rope, but have to make a STR check to pull himself to safety. He rolls a 1 and a 2. Piranhas feeding frenzy ensures and they finally manage to extract the whole party from the room, bleeding. I love fumbles!

Now they get to explore what's beyond that mysterious room. They map a few corridors, open a few doors and find (amongst other things) garden gnomes that makes you dance and a really nice magical axe with a Gristlegrim rune on it in a big chest. They also find another trap.

This time I was almost smiling when they methodically observed the corridor trap, searched for triggers and on the spot invented half a dozen ingenious way to make a trap like this. Then one player decided to just walk down the corridor with his axe at the ready. Gristlegrim will protect his own.

Now, I'm not saying Gristlegrim doesn't protect his own, but sitting at the table hearing the players figure everything out and how to safely disable the trap, I was amazed when one of them decided to just go in there! I love seeing things like that.

In the end they got him up from the spiked pit and decided it was time to head back home. Guess what happens when they go back to the piranha room? I am lost for words when I see a 1 and a 2 hit the table. Same player, same character. They get out, finally, by the skin of their teeth. One character decides to stay in the dungeon and wait for the hyenakin (oh, yes Paul. There are hyenakin in my dungeon!) tribe. He defeated the chief in combat and his second in command runs the tribe while he is delving.

One of the funny things that was said tonight was when the player who rolled fumbles repeatedly tonight levelled up and got a new Talent. He said roughly "I'm taking Carpentry! If I take that I will have to be inventive and find a way to bring it into play!" Good thinking. He got some Adventure Points just for his attitude.

Next week we'll see if they decide to go down one of the mysterious stairs they've found. Will they almost die on level five next week? Level three? We'll see.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - The lure of liches

Today's game was interesting. It was not very heavy on fighting, none at all in fact, but the threat of it hung in there all the time. I dangled the carrot while wielding a big stick.

They decided to stay on level two a while longer, since they knew now that it was far bigger than previously thought. Going down through a "back door", they avoided paying for their entrance. A while back they encountered a bunch of scalykin (a term from our playtest of Vincent Bakers Storming the Wizard's Tower, basically kobolds) and bargained for passage down the stairs to level two. They now have few free passes and they decided to take another route this time.

Down at level two, they went mapping some areas formerly explored and found some interesting stuff. This is where the design of the dungeon becomes interesting. I have drawn two corridors on parallel, and as they go east-west they are connected by passages going north-south. In between those were a space where I fit a bunch of small rooms, all with wooden doors. Basically it was a bunch of "a maze of twisty passages, all alike", but more interesting. Now, they were empty (since I actually try to keep a decent amount of the dungeon open for improvisation) but the doors were interesting. I had planned it so that if you were mapping carefully you would at last notice that the last room was bordering one of the parallel corridors, and the door in that wall couldn't lead to those since there was no door on the other side. One way doors, and false doors, are things I use sparingly but it was my homage to Rob Kuntz and Gary Gygax. For some reason one way doors or false doors for me is a Kuntz thing. I really have to study more of Rob's dungeons one of those days. Suggestions welcome.

Well, they mapped closely, and realized that this was a dead end. What I really liked, though, was that one player decided to bash it with with warhammer to prove a point. Intelligent playing to map and realize it was a dead end, and a sense for when brute force is just plain fun.

They main event for the night, though, was the tomb. I had decided to place not only a jungle environment, a magic shop and a tavern on this level, but also a tomb of a high level wizard/knight. They entered it, scouted around and looked really longingly at the skeletal guardians of the tomb, sitting in their niches with rotting robes bedecked by jewelry and crowns of silver and items of magic. Two things were really fun here. One of my players was really torn. He would have loved to plunder the magical riches, but his fear of fighting powerful undead was tangible. Seeing the player and the character become one, roleplaying at its best, was the kind of sweet moment of indecision which makes it so fun to be the DM. I was very curious myself what this could lead to! I was as much in the dark as they! Throw in some cool stuff and watch the players run with it. I love it.

The second thing was more gritty. In the tomb there was this altar, a magical Rubik's Cube, which was set up to refold itself and open up a small compartment when someone put an offering on the table. In a moment which sits up there with some of the most hilarious and funny stuff I've read in campaign journals, one of my players decided to - wait for it - sit! on the altar! So, it folder into itself while he was sitting on it. I had never imagined anything like that to happen, and had to scramble for an idea of what would happen when an altar was chewing on someones arse! The poor dwarf was castrated and the he not only managed to roll 2,1 on his SPD save, but also roll a 6,6 (spite, of course) on damage inflicted! The image of his misery and the clash of mental images people got from him with a squeaky voice and the full dwarven bearded manliness caused a -10 CHA reduction. He is at 1 CHA right now. Poor sod.

So, they feared undead more that they were greedy, and after s short peek down some stairways to another level, they got back to town and got their 200 AP for surviving 2nd level! They did defuse a couple of other traps as well, and talked somewhat to some other delvers they found but for me the Tomb was the funniest.

So, once again the idea of exploring as central part of the game was proving fruitful for fun. Also, the idea of weird and unscaled encounters proved it's worth. Seeing delvers really fear undead brings back to me the image of Conan, followed by wolves and seeking shelter in a cave which turns out to be an ancient tomb filled with creepy feeling. Sword and sorcery at its most atmospheric. I love this game!

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - Falling down some stairs

Tonight's game was a bit shorter than usual, partly because I'm home alone with my daughter and she wasn't to keen on the idea of going to a game store and watch daddy play a game. I did manage to convince her and it was a game this week! I do think having a regular game make a whole lot of difference.

Last time we played they had found some very twisty passages, and broken down a wall to get to some monsters. Now they decided to go exploring a bit, and that caused them to remark on how the dungeon seemed to grow all the time. I felt really satisfied by that. They sat there and looked at their maps and I got to hear them say that there was obviously some stuff over here and how those investigations shaped their exploration. The Megadungeon really works! While I still think the parts of the dungeon they have explored are kind of to square, I think it might be a good idea to start out soft. I continuously develop the dungeon and I do indeed grow it as they go along for a slightly more "organic" feel. Apparently they now not only plan from expectations build from their mapping and exploration, they also have realized that this is not such a small place after all. Now they are thinking of going back and see if there's more stuff on level one!

So, they found a pool of water, with undecipherable mystic powers. Canteens filled they moved on and after some shenanigans managed to have one character fall down the stairs turned slide and then did a rescue operation to get a 900 lbs (at least!) centaur PC up from level four before he got eaten by a grue. Much fun was had. Croaking frogs caused the players to visibly turn paler. Good stuff. You did it, Dave (and Amityville Mike).

Now I have to go and actually map up some of that level four!

To craft the Dungeon of Voorand, Part I

In my last post I talked about the Dave Arneson memorial adventure we played. I also alluded to my megadungeon The Dungeon of Voorand, which is the place where my players take their character hunting for riches and glory. What I will write about in a short series of posts, is the reasons I have for starting that dungeon, and how and why it's designed the way it is. Fasten your seat belts. Here we go.

Actually, the idea of me running a dungeon based game seemed more than a little far fetched not that many years ago. I started gaming ages ago, with the attitiude that dungeon crawling was just a hack & slash puerile phase wich was beneth me. I was better, more sophisticated, than that! The heights of arrogance that so marks a teenager. Oh well. Much later I had become jaded with the “sophisticated” games I ha d been playing, and after reading some play reports I finally started my own dungeon delve. How that went, and how I did it, is a tale for a later date. Now I'll focus on this specific way of delving, namely megadungeons.

Those of you who keep up with the discussions at Dragonsfoot, or the Knights & Knaves Alehouse or read some of the many old school blogs, might have heard it all before. But since I'm running a T&T game I'll repeat some of the discussions some since the T&T tradition is a bit different from the D&D one. T&T have long been supported more by solo adventuring than the classic GM led way of gaming. Make no mistake though, one of the first megadungeons was for T&T!

A megadungeon is a dungeon that's big. It's supposed to feel vast, multilevelled and encompas the whole of the playing experience. It's a setting of it's own. You don't “clear out” a megadungeon, it breeds new creatures and wonders to explore. The way I see it, the focus is on the exploring. For more really interesting discussions about the care of and feeding of megadungeons I refer to the links above.

So, how have I then tried to accomplish this feel in the Dungeon of Voorand? Well, I started with the idea of a big mountain, a volcano, under which the ancient and powerful goblin god Voorand lair. He is my persona in the game, and the source of mischief and entertainment. I decided to imagine an insanely powerful goblin wizard bored with age and with all the traits of goblins magnified by his power and unstable mind. So, the dunegon would be what have been called a “fun house” dungeon, as fitting with the insane patron. I had some cool ideas and I started to put them to paper.

Pretty soon it became clear that I draw maps with very boring and straight lines, and with plain doors and square rooms, unless I force myself to be adventurous. I knew that on level one I wanted to have a tribe of hyenakin, and a tribe of scalykin and that they were enemies. I also included a bunch of uruks, and a big hulking troll obsessed with cleanliness. Having drawn their lairs and some utility rooms around them, I connected them with fairly straight lines. Now for my first warning. If your dungeon looks like a very sparse tree with a main trunk and some branches you have done the same error I did. Don't do that.

After a session it was clear that this was way to linear, and also way to small! I had put down a few entrances to lower levels on the first map, and now I drew a few rooms on a new paper and then lined up the papers so I could see how the entrance exited in a specific square of my graph paper. From that square I now had to line it up with my new rooms, which naturally made it less linear! I also put in a few stairs from the other parts of level two I had detailed, which now went up to other parts of level one! Of course they sometimes showed up in fairly cramped places when I lined graph paper, which forced me to be creative.

Now you might ask why I did this? What's the point? The point is that in this more convoluted environment, mapping became more involved. It made my players look at their map and wonder “how does that fit together? Shouldn't there be a room beyond there as well, where there's a blank spot?” Wonder indeed, when they suddenly start to see the tunnels themselves as something worth exploring, just like that thread of twine they used to follow through more story and storytelling based games. They were seeking adventure, and not me spoon feeding it to them.

So, the attitude I started with was to make the dungeon the story, the mystery. Thus the exploration became the main theme! After a few months of play I think this way of playing is something very refreshing and cool for me. Naturally the game system I'm using also helps in shaping the game. In the next part of this series I'm going to talk about that, and how Tunnels & Troll made my dungeon suck less.
May you always roll doubles!