Another way to have tricky games, the Stable system

Yesterday I read about the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and how you sometimes have to metagame and play them more than once, since there are plenty of instant death situations in those books. I realized there are other solutions which could make those "tricky" situations in a non-solo game.

If you use your henchmen like trap detectors the next lot to sign on will demand extra pay, surely. But, what if you use your own PC?

Way back in the days, everyone used to have multiple characters. In the T&T rulebook from 1979 it's even mentioned as the way to do things. So, maybe it's possible to have those tricky dungeons which "demand" to be tested before you can take intelligent decisions. Just send in one of the clones...

Rethinking the spear trap

Inspired by the table (I rolled a 5) I suddenly realized that on way to make the old chestnut, the spear trap, interesting would be to have a room with a spear trap, sprung. The wall of the room opposite from where the characters enter you have a door. This door is rigged with some kind of alarm. When the alarm goes off, the snake people in a room close by arrive to the party.

Now, imagine a fight in a room with spears sticking out of walls, floor and/or ceiling. Let's also suppose that the opponents are more than one, quick and dextrous. They can probably dodge these spears quite easily, or maybe slither around them. Maybe they even trip and push the player characters towards the sharp spikes.

That would be a far more interesting use of the old spear trap, and a way to make a bunch of weaker monsters more fun to fight.

How about that?

Sherlock Holmes, dungeon delver II

Disclaimer

I guess everyone who saw the movie noticed the elaborate trap, and maybe even thought about it. This is how I see it.

When the trap was triggered Irene Adler was in dire straights. The stake was to get the machine stopped before she died. We get graphic visuals showing us what is at stake, as pig carcasses gets sawn apart. Now did you notice where Sherlock was looking?

He saw the mechanism to the trap, and he saw what was holding Irene fastened. At this point he had two ways to approach the problem, by freeing her or by disabling the mechanism. Note how the clock is ticking, and we have a time limit for the trap. This makes it more tense than just a pressure plate and a save for half damage.

The most delightful part of how this trap was set up was that violence was always an option, as well as a more refined or crafty one. The mechanism was visible and you could poke at it and try to stop it, you could grasp how it worked and try to shut it off. A very real option was also to just jam something durable into the gears and make it stop or at least slow down. This gave it a possibility for multiple types of gamers to solve the issue. Yes, we also had the chains and the lock. The lock was visible, but you had to reach above Irene's head to get at it, and it was moving. Clearly an oportunity for inventiveness, and also sweeten the payoff for successfull disabling by putting the character who tries to solve the puzzle in the line of danger. Everyone loves to succeed when there was a threat of real danger. Naturally, you could hang onto Irene and just try to apply force to those chains and break the hostage loose.

Did you see all that?

I think the way this scene was set up was a marvellous set piece trap that any DM worth his salt should study and emulate. There are multiple venues of approach, and you can work one them more than one at a time. Violence is an option and there is a time limit. Very important for all this to work is that there are nothing hidden. We all see the mechanism clearly and the only thing left is to to try handle the situation. I'd would love that in a game!

A devious trap

Music is wonderful.

I managed to invent a trap today, for one of my projects I'm writing. Now when I have a mp3 player I can listen to music on the bus downtown, or when I'm waiting for a friend to meet me. As I was listening, absentmindedly, I suddenly heard a few words of the lyrics, and at once I knew it was an arcane and interesting thing I had to write about. Where do you get your ideas? Heavy metal lyrics, of course!

Green Devil Face #3 have arrived!

I have gotten my copy of GDF #3 now! Seeing my own weird ideas in print is both nice and a very odd feeling. Thanks for publishing my submissions, Jim!

Should it be that someone feel they have a hard time grasping the Hypercube of Doom, then I can only say that I had one hell of a hard time trying to describe it! The nature of it makes it very hard to illustrate in the two dimensional surface of the zine. If I manage to make something up I'll post it here.

Go grab your own copy, and submit some stuff!

Show the love of traps and puzzles! Green Devil Face needs your submissions!

I read James Raggi's post Monday post and was sad to hear that he felt he had too few submissions to put out another issue.

Come on people! All of you OSR guys and gals who run a game, have you never thought of a piece of trouble for your players?! Submit it.

I sent Jim Raggi three pieces of my own, and you don't want him to be force to publish all of my junk just because you guys didn't give him better stuff to choose from, do you? James Maliszewski have posted a few times about what he thinks the hobby needs. I think it needs to get more people involved.

Submit to GDF. It's a fanzine, it's about puzzles and traps and the editor has long hair. Simple enough.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - fighting spellcasters

Tonight's game was a fairly simple affair. We had few players, but one of them was a new recruit. I'm trying to spread the love of old school delving.

They did some fooling around in Khazan, and tried to make the wizards at the Wizard's Guild create some specialized items for them. One character had heard the rumour that dragons was crazy about avocados, and since they dragon-man in the party eyed him often enough he wanted a box that always would keep some avocados fresh. I have heard of some players trying to "invent" gunpowder in a fantasy game, but having someone trying to invent a magical fridge was new to me.

When they got down to the dungeon, they went purposefully to the most overpowered site they had yet found. I was impressed. Since I had put a very intriguing puzzle there (which have caused some physical discomfort to some poor dwarf) they keep coming back. Once again the hypercube of doom delivered. Now I have mutilated yet another player character.

The big fight then started with three lich kings, or something to that effect. I guess if you dangle enough bling in front of delvers they will bite sooner or later, against better judgement. After two rounds and the effects of protective magic they retreated down to a deeper level, since stairs just happened to be nearby. Later they sneaked out with bleeding and barely conscious party members. Fun was had.

One lesson was had by me. I have not had much opportunity to test the Kremm Resistance rules, and now it confirmed my suspicions. If they spellcaster is more powerful than you it doesn't mean much, and if he is less powerful he can't do much. The rules as written are way to binary.

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.

Review: Green Devil Face #1 & #2

Green Devil Face is a fanzine, and a community project. "It is intended to provide traditional fantasy RPG referees with game material that can be inserted as-is into their games" is the way editor James Raggi presents it as. I have in my hand the first two issues and here are my impressions:

GDF #1 is a small booklet, A5, 28 pages. The only illustrations are the cover illustations, a medieval one with a knight on the front and a anatomical picture of a posing skeleton on the back. There's one map, which looks like it's done on a computer and it's clear and usable. The grid is a bit too dim, but that might get better now that James have a new printer.

It starts with a history of the module, a short paragraph of background story, and a short note of usage. Then we're treated to a random encounter table before the numbered entries on the map are described in order. Clear, classic and well done. All in all the visual impression is nice and proves how good looking something like a basic fanzine can be these days.

So, time to dive in and read! The first sentence was puzzling for maybe five seconds, and then I started to giggle. I was reading GDF in bed and my wife had already fallen asleep so now I had to supress some of my giggling because soon I felt not only like chuckling, but for some serious guffaws. Everyone get's to be in this one! Well known game designers, bloggers and web forum inhabitants are satired and made fun of. Not one to take himself to seriously, the author himself can be found if you look for him. It's not to hard to find things to make fun of in this hobby, and especially in the old school community there are enough odd balls and crazy people for a work like this. Nothing is mean or downright cruel, but the humor is spot on when it light upon some of our silliness. Considering some outburst of moralism and downright rude attitudes I've seen, I think this is a well done way of handling controversy! We're gamers, so instead of writing endless tirades and arguments we should make our point by writing something that can be played! Top marks to James Raggi for that!

The adventure itself is a classic romp with some odd NPC's that can be interacted with in a limited fashion, weird substances to imbibe and treasure to be found. I do like the fact that almost nothing is what it seems, and investigation is both needed, fun and sometimes fatal! This might be a joke, but it is a very playable joke.

Anyone in the old school community online will get a couple of good laughs out of this one, and as if that wasn't enough you get a very devious dungeon to boot! It's cheap, it's fun and it used to be called Fantasy Fucking Vientnam so what is there not to love?!

GDF #2 is also a small green booklet, A5, 24 pages. It have the same kind of old illustrations, but this time only the back cover is from mideval times, since the front is only a little more than 100 years old.

This issue contains 12 different traps and mysteries. A lot of them are one page, and some more involved are 2-4 pages, with examples of usage and longer description of setup and effect. The quality is overall high, and even if some are more clever than others, they are all intriguing.

The idea of having the trap out in the open, and let the delvers make of it what they will is good. There are item traps, water and darkness. Interestingly enough, I think the simpler traps are probably the best ones. Another thing worth noting is that many traps have ideas for tweaking, so the 24 pages are filled more goodness than first apparent! Many traps are very brutal and will take some careful delving skill to handle. I'd love to encounter stuff like this as a player!

All in all I'd recommend GDF#2 to anyone with a interest in puzzles and traps. James have collected some really good contributions and I really hope he gets some more submissions for further issues. Writeup those traps you have designed and send them off! Published glory await you all.

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.

Green Devil Face #1 and #2 has arrived!

Today when I checked the mail I had gotten a envelope with the two issues of Green Devil Face, formerly known as Fantasy fucking Vietnam. I kind of liked that name, actually.
The first issue is one setting, by James Raggi, and issue number two is by James and a bunch of contributors.
I can tell you this much, they are hillarious!. More details after I've read them both.

Traps, weal or woe?

We have had some discussion over at ChattyDM about traps. Chatty started to talk about how to judge the one page dungeon contest, and what the difference between the old school and new school is. Soon we started talking about why traps should be interactive.

It struck me that the reason some people think a traps just means "send in the thief, roll some dice and get on with it" are not because they don't like the idea of traps, but that they have encountered situations which conditioned them to that reaction. Maybe that conditioning even turns them off the idea of traps altogether!

As someone who likes traps, and would like to see them used and enjoyed, I think I have to think more about how I deploy them in my own game. I think I will try to put down my philosophy of traps and their usage, and to stretch my wings a bit maybe I can make it accessible for gamers of any editions or game. Maybe it's to bold a project. We'll see.

Lastly, read this amusing narrative of a close encounter!

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!