Blog Post of Note: How Much Mapping Is Actually Required?

Alex Schroeder raises the question: How much mapping is actually required? He’s not talking about mazes, where the architects include features meant to confuse invaders or lead them into traps or ambush spots. The example he gives is of a fairly linear map with a few branches.

He suggests that this map doesn’t really need to exist at all. The details of the dungeon can be handled entirely with text. I’d agree that a truly linear map with no branches or even one with just one or two side passages could be handled this way.

But some areas should always be mapped, for example one with more than one exit in most of the walls. Even if the area can be described in words, it’s actually easier to understand it with a map. Another example is a room with large furniture, statues, pillars, or anything else that breaks up the floor space. It’s not complicated to describe, but figuring that stuff out with a map is practically instantaneous.

This does lead to some ideas about mapping, but I’ll save those for other posts.

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Empty Rooms and Improvised Contents

Delta’s D&D Hotspot has a second post about empty rooms, worth reading for commentary about Gary Gygax’s habits when keying dungeons. Basically, he didn’t describe room contents other than monsters and treasure, at least not in the early days.

Although I’ve long been an advocate for treating empty rooms as unoccupied, but not truly empty, I’ve also been an advocate for not cataloging room contents. It seems to me there’s more sense in just improvising room contents based on the type of room (kitchen, torture chamber, storage room) and how thoroughly the PCs search.

Cursory Glance:
“You see a typical kitchen with three prep tables, storage cabinets, and a cauldron, with a smoke flue above the cauldron.”

Basic Search:
“The prep tables have several spoons, knives, ladles, and bowls on them. One cabinet contains spices in bottles, another contains pots and pans.”

Examine Cauldron:
“There’s a gunky brown residue and bits of bone caked on the bottom. The underside is covered with soot.”

Each kind of search takes time and adds wandering monster rolls, of course. The main reason to have rooms not be completely empty is to force players to make decisions. There might be something valuable in those rooms. There might be something that’s at least usable, like spices you could throw in someone’s eyes or wood that can be turned into a club. There might be hidden snakes, rat’s nests, and other petty monsters.

Searching every room is probably a big mistake. But so is never searching a room.

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Blog Post of Yesteryear: Fantasy Religion?

I've been getting some traffic from an older post on Andy Bartlett's blog Known World, Old World: Fantasy Religion? I think it's just coincidence and people are just going to that post, then clicking blog links in Andy's sidebar. But it's a worthwhile read: How do you keep the excitement of real-world religion, with its schisms, heresies, corrupt priests (or false priests,) and religious conflicts? Andy's partial solution is... well, I'll let you read it on your own.



This is certainly a topic I've talked about before, but may like to return to.

Using Magic Power Sources for Custom Spell Systems

I’ve completed most of the articles in my series on magical power sources. Here are the series links:

Magical Power Source Articles

1. power source table
2. Astrology
3. Words of Power
4. Invocation
5. Occult Forces
6. Psychic Powers
7. Spirit Binding

But I feel I need to explain how this is all meant to be used in more detail, since there was some confusion. OD&D does not describe how spells are prepped. It’s just assumed that magic-users somehow select which spells to use on an adventure. Actual casting by default seems to be just quick words and gestures, since there’s no casting time given. The magical power sources are, essentially, ideas for how spells are prepped.

• Do magicians find the time when the stars are right for the spells they want to prep?
• Do they chant words of power, or call upon deities to bestow the power?
• Do they grind up, mix, boil, or burn ingredients to release the arcane properties within?
• Do they meditate to call upon their own inner mystical powers?
• Do they command spirits to provide the power?

GMs can select one or more of these as the prep method for their main spell systems. My preferences are:

• A mix of astrology, words of power, and occult properties for magic-user spells (arcane spell lists.)
• Invocation (prayer) for cleric spells (divine spell lists.)

But suppose you want another spell system, for example to make the magic in a distant land seem exotic? Or suppose you want high-level spells to be a little harder, with more restrictions? Having a list of the power sources is a good place to get ideas. Plus, you have the table to roll for random sources.

Most low-level spell systems can use a 2d6 roll on the table for 15 different systems that mix two power sources. Read each die result separately: my preferred systems listed above would be (2,4) or (4,2) for magic-user spells. If the result is doubles, there is only a single power source, but it is more limiting: a result of (3,3) would match the preparation method for cleric spells, requiring 1 to 5 hours of prayer and worship to refresh 1st level cleric spells.

If you need an ultra-low-level magic system, roll only 1d6 and reduce the strength of the spells involved, perhaps limiting the spells to a certain theme. For magic systems that are a little more powerful, roll 3d6 instead of 2d6. Thus, the system requires a mix of three power sources, or one limiting power source and one ordinary one, or a single extremely limiting power source. These alternate magic systems can be made learnable, so that spell casters can pick up spirit-binding as another spell system and either choose which method to use for spell prep or learn spells uniquely tied to spirit-binding.

High-level spells – those above level 6, when I run the game – can likewise be designed as bonus spell systems for spell casters to learn. For example, there might be some powerful divination spells that require a mix of astrology and meditation. For these spell systems, roll 3d6 or 4d6 to define the power sources. Quadruple results can be treated the same as triples, or the GM can design their own ultra-extreme limiting method for each power source.

When mixing power sources, use the longest prep time and the most expensive ingredient costs, as well as any other limitations attached to any of the power sources.

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Fixing Urban Geomorphs

Twice now, I’ve mentioned that I needed to talk about the urban geomorphs.

The Problem:
There doesn’t seem to be much variation between residential blocks. Part of the issue is that I can’t just go wild with every city block: there has to be a sprinkling of crazy stuff amidst a lot of more ordinary stuff. Another part of the issue is that we’re not dealing with just one house per block, but anywhere from 3 to 6 houses. Three houses in one block that are identical to three houses in another block is going to stand out.

Failed Solution:
Every household had some random elements: Person X behaves mysterious, on 5+ on 1d6 it’s because of this, on another 5+/1d6 roll, something related is going on. But that still doesn’t distinguish one reused block from another enough.

The Hidden, Better Solution:
Each of the urban geomorph pamphlets also has a short list of random NPC traits and secrets. I changed these from pamphlet to pamphlet, but the lists were very short, so they didn’t add much variation.

But! Imagine instead that the lists were longer and filled an entire pamphlet… and there’s more than one pamphlet like that. It allows more variety for NPCs in a neighborhood. And some of the plots or secrets I put into the map key would actually work just as well as stand-alone secrets on that list.

Another pamphlet or series of pamphlets could be about events, for example illness or death in a family, theft, intrigue… the sort of thing PCs might get involved in.

What This Means:
Although I still plan on doing some other urban geomorph pamphlets, most of them will probably be craftspeople, shops, inns, and unique locations (cemeteries, abandoned house, pond, fountain, statue.) There probably won’t be any more residential pamphlets, unless I think of a neighborhood intrigue that really, really needs to be written up.

Instead, think back to the conversation Scott Anderson and I had about a potential supplement with unlabeled geomorphs of various sizes. Most of the geomorphs for neighborhoods would be here. There would be large geomorphs usable as player visual aids and smaller labeled geomorphs you cut out and either clip to index cards or tape on a notebook page. Most households will just have a family name and number of family members, but there’s a random chance to add a plot or secret to a family (and in rare cases, two plots or secrets.)

This will add a lot more variety to the geomorphs.

LZ Reference Sheet Cover Style

Incidentally, before I started on the LZ Character Advancement pamphlet, I was already dissatisfied with the cover image I did for the gear pamphlet. It looks very cluttered, like the various props (anvil, hammer, dice, etc.) are there without reason, instead of being poured out of the bag, which is the image I had in mind.

I kind of didn't like the other cover images I did for the LZ pamphlets, either. I liked the basic concept of the piece of paper being broken through. Just didn't like the scenes I'd arranged.

So I did the XP pamphlet cover in a more minimal style, halfway between a normal illustration and an icon or logo. And I redid the other cover images, too.

I think I might stick with this style.

Old Tower, New Tower

This week, Map Monday isn't about releasing a new map. It's about work I'm doing on one or more future maps. I've been trying out a different approach to making the towers for the pamphlet dungeons I've been doing. I might make only a little use of it for future pamphlet dungeons, but I plan on doing 2 to 4 towers in the same style as more traditional adventure modules, the idea being that some of the towers adventurers find will have far more going on than can be covered in a pamphlet.

Here's the exterior of the tower with a cross-section.

Interior details are still being worked on, but I have arrow slits, machicolations for the battlements, and small grated windows for air flow (shown here next to a staircase.)

Here's a detail of the doors. Hinges are only on the inside, handles are inside and outside. 

Beds come with a strongbox. There's also a locked version of the strongbox for things like treasure rooms. Still a lot of detail to finish.

Plans are to add a lot more interior detail as well as external features (trees, wagons, boulders, barrels, fire pits) to create a "basic" tower. Elements can be repositioned and structures can be modified to create unique towers for specific documents. I would only need external shots and floor plans for pamphlets, but I could set up various scenes for illustrations in fuller adventure modules.

Tower Tests

Trying something a bit different with the tower layouts. Will just have to see if this process will be an improvement.

How I Make Tower Illustrations

Still didn't have time to work on my next set of pamphlet dungeons, so I thought I could at least show how I make some of the illustrations I've been doing for the tower pamphlets.

They aren't fabulous illustrations, as you can see in this image from the generic bandit tower pamphlet. But they get the job done. What you may not realize is that it's a composite image made using two different programs. The main program I use for illustration is Inkscape (and occasionally raster graphic programs like the GIMP or Paint.) But the tower itself, and in this case the cart, were created in a 3d modeling program called Wings 3d. I've been using this for years, and although I'd say I still have a long ways to go, I'm reasonably good at modeling things from scratch in it.

What I do is create my scene and take a screenshot of it, as you can see in this image. In this case, each floor of the tower is a separate object, and the cart, if I remember what I did, is something like six different objects. (There's actually another hidden object because I recycled this file from the CorpseBrood Tower model. It's the weird little diamond magical artifact at the top of the tower.)

I then trim the image so that I can import it into Inkscape. Previously, I was using Paint for this, because all I was doing was cropping the image and setting the background to white. The GIMP is notoriously slow when it loads, so for a quick job like that, using Paint seemed wiser. However, I've started using the GIMP anyways because I always apply filters to desaturate the image, so it makes sense to do this in the image prep stage, as I did for the generic bandit tower.

I do both of these steps a second time to get the profile image that I use for the tower diagrams showing what's on each floor. Finally, I open my Inkscape template I've set up as a standard for my tower illustrations and start editing my new tower. I import both the perspective scene and the profile image on separate layers, then experiment with different filters to get different textures. For the cover illustration, I have a background layer where I create abstract leaf patterns for the trees, and I have foreground and detail patterns to draw other elements into the scene, for example the pathway leading to the door, or the projecting rays and bat-winged silhouette on the CorpseBrood Tower cover image.

As I said, not the greatest art, but it's something just about anyone could do, if they want some simple illustrations for a project they're working on. Both Wings 3d and Inkscape are free downloads, so grab 'em and try 'em out.  

Death's Kiss Tower: Notes

You may have noticed a few things about yesterday’s Death’s Kiss Tower dungeon:

1. It’s in trifold brochure format (pamphlet dungeon.)
2. The full title is “Watchtowers of the Golden Hills: Death’s Kiss Tower”.
3. The main monster and supporting monster are specially made for this dungeon.

Pamphlet dungeons seem to be a hot new trend at the moment. See, for example, the pamphlet dungeon jam. I’m not sure who came up with the idea. I thought I remembered someone making dungeon modules that fit folded up in a standard business-size envelope, but can’t find the reference.

I decided to give it a try.

The reason for the two-part title? I thought that if this turned out to be pretty easy to do, it might be a nice recurring feature… so I thought of it as a potential series. I picked towers as a theme because it’s a nice, small, standardized structure. If I do a couple modules like this, a GM could drop hints about a unique abandoned tower in the wilderness and players would need to investigate several towers to find the one they are looking for. So, I named the wilderness area “Golden Hills” because it’s generic-sounding, so it could fit into almost anyone’s campaign (and because it’s vaguely based on the nearby foothills of the Sierra Nevada, sometimes known as “gold country”.)

If I did such a thing, the towers would all have to be nearly identical, but have something unique for each one, either a unique monster or an unusual combo of standard monsters. There wouldn’t be much room in a pamphlet dungeon to explore unusual environments, so the dungeon maps themselves would be fairly bland.

It turns out there may be some problems with these plans, although oddly not the problems I was expecting. I wasn’t sure how easy it was going to be to do a trifold pamphlet using LyX or LaTeX, but it turned out there’s a LaTeX leaflet document style that was pretty trivial to add. I set up an Inkscape document to use as a template for dungeon maps that would fit in one panel of a pamphlet.

I started working on this project about two weeks ago. I went through multiple maps, scrapping them for one reason or another. First map had rooms that were a bit too irregular in size, but because of the limited amount of space, some of my maps were going to be scaled down, making traditional grids hard to read. Second map thus tried to use just a few standard room sizes (20-foot square, 30-foot square, and rectangles made from two or three of those squares.)

The real problem was keeping the content short enough to fit in the available space. Among other things, this meant “fewer rooms”. So I scrapped my second map and started a third with only a few rooms on each level. Here’s one of my maps for the third iteration.

And that was still too many rooms to describe effectively, which is why I scrapped those maps and did the fourth map, which is what I actually used. One big space for each level, minimal notations on the map itself, no need for numbering on anything but the dungeon level.

This raises doubts about whether I could actually make my original concept of multiple tower dungeons work. But I may still give it a couple more tries before passing judgment.

Temporary Place Names

Alex Schroeder has a quick blog post about place names and how to handle them, and has this to say:

If the village is run by a guy called Marcel, should it be Marcelsby, Marcelden, or perhaps based on the forest or river name? [ … ] Perhaps simply waiting for the players to name things works just as well.

That’s an approach I hadn’t even considered, even though I’m always going on about letting the world be created during play. Not everything can be left for players to name, though. Kingdoms, major cities, and large regions should get names. Basically, anything NPCs are going to use to give directions or mention in rumors.

One solution to the naming problem: temporary pseudonames. Take two or three features of a place, compress each down to a single word, and add the generic type (village, forest, river, etc.) This becomes a prompt to help describe a place: “paranoid mining village” means the mines and mining paraphenalia will get mentioned a lot, and NPCs will be secretive and hostile to outsiders.

This doesn’t mean that any of the features of the pseudoname will definitely be part of the actual name, especially if players are doing the naming. They might latch onto other features, perhaps those you don’t consider important.

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Dungeon Module Design

Because I was working on the dungeon module for that map I posted Monday, I revisited a lot of other posts I’ve written on the subject of module design and gathered them together, making a few changes to make what I consider a good set of dungeon design guidelines.

Part I: General Format

Modules are divided into two general parts: the Deep Picture (explanatory stuff) and the Terse Details (practical stuff.)

Deep Picture: Overview of what is going on in the dungeon, who the major players are and where, how zones in the dungeon are arranged, and what might be significant. Use this part to integrate a module into the campaign setting, plant plot hooks leading to the dungeon, or define what may happen to the world after contact is made with the dungeon.

Terse Details: Room keys with barest minimum of information needed to play. Independent of the Deep Picture, and as much as possible each room description should be independent of other room descriptions, or should be on the same page as related rooms, so that there is no page-flipping during play.

The Deep Picture preps you for how to run the adventure, while the Terse Details are what you use during actual play.

A small dungeon would basically be a one to three-page Deep Picture introduction followed by Terse Details in the one-page dungeon format. A slightly larger dungeon would have map and room key on facing pages. If the dungeon is too large to fit the entire room key on one page, for example if it is a sprawling complex with multiple areas or if it has multiple dungeon levels, split the dungeon into sections. Each section would be a map and a key on facing pages, perhaps with a graphic inset showing how each section relates to other sections.

Actual monster stats are perhaps best kept on a separate page, either at the end of the Deep Picture section or the end of the module, which can be printed out and set to one side, so that it is always available regardless of which page you turn to.

Sample Terse Details

120. Ruined/vandalized Kitchen with hearth/chimney. Ogre skeleton. Hidden: snake, 8ft long, sack w/84gp. Shortsword (ogre’s “dagger”) Snake is reincarnation of ogre, becomes follower of high-Charisma Chaotic adventurer.

Detail Elements

• Numeric or other label, in bold, to locate the room on the map
• Name of room, in bold, which can be used to improvise contents
• Obvious things to see in the room, in ordinary text
• Hidden things or triggerable events, in italics

Or:

• Bold text = summary of room,
• ordinary text = what is different than expected about the room,
• italic text = what’s discovered if a certain condition is met (room is searched, monster ambushes party, lever is pulled.)

Common practice for room labels is either letters or numbers in sequence, but a better practice is to use a coordinate grid: number 1-2 or 1-4 across the top of the map and 1-2 to 1-6 down one side to create two-digit numbers describing the room position. I’ve settled on the vertical number being the tens digit, so that rooms 11 to 19 would be the top row of rooms, rooms 21 to 29 the second row down, and so on. Dungeon sections would each have a one to four letter abbreviation so you could refer to a room exit leading to A13, which would be in section A, middle left of map.

If monster stats are moved to a separate sheet, room keys will only contain name of monster (generic or proper) and any description modifier, plus any details needed for play, such as unusual weapon or behavior. (“Troll: loyal to Ogre-King. Goblin named Bruce: loyal only out of fear.”)

Part II: General Level Design Practices

• Use lots of loops and branches
• Include minor level changes (balcony areas overlooking hallways, interconnected pits)
• There should always be at least one obvious thing to do in any room
• Empty rooms aren’t empty if there is something to interact with (multiple exits, locked doors)
• Include hints of reward, with obvious obstacle(s) to reward
• The best puzzles or riddles are built around remembering patterns seen in the dungeons, filling in missing elements by analogy, or recognizing the “odd one out” in a group of three or more elements

Part III: Level Design Procedures

Divide maps into areas with general purposes or themes like:

• Entrance
• Military
• Prison
• Shrine
• Food

There’s no set list for this. Just pick themes that look interesting, or use just about any random resource.

Apply a modifier, either to an entire area or on a room-by-room basis. This can be picked based on what you have in mind for the dungeon or randomly selected.

1. Busy
2. Unused
3. Abandoned
4. Ruined
5. Reused
6. Other

This is a simplified version of a previous list of modifiers. Busy areas will be occupied, Unused areas will be dusty but intact, Abandoned and Ruined will be in different states of dilapidation, Reused areas will have modifications that don’t match the original but still obvious use. “Other” covers a lot of other modifiers, like “Scorched” or “Giant”.

Pick or randomly select a category for each room:

1. Containment
2. Dump/Waste
3. Task/Job
4. Fortification
5. Living/Lair
6. Special

On a roll of 6, there’s a 2d6 follow-up roll to create hybrid categories: interpret each die on the table above, but do not roll again for a 6 result; instead, “Special” represents incomprehensible elements or tricks.

Combine this with the modifier and theme to create room descriptions, like “Abandoned Prison Guard Station” or “Crypt Reused as Lair”.

Some of this will be clearer when I finish my sample dungeon module and can refer to it as an example.

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Pre-Loaded Random Non-Linear Example: Blood of Prokopius

I've been sick for the last few days and unable to write the next installment of the random non-linear dungeon series, so I'll instead link to an example dungeon by FrDave at the Blood of Prokopius blog: The Sunken Halls of the Ape Brotherhood. This uses the leximorph-based pre-loading method to establish the main corridor structure, although instead of randomly-selecting letters using a table, he picked the letters "A", "P", and "E" from the most important descriptive keyword in the dungeon title.

The main thing I'll note is the loops and branching paths, which is what we are looking for in these methods. If entering from the south, there are three routes to choose from, all of which can connect to the same areas, forming a large loop: westwards from the western or middle branch to the apex of the "A", northwards through the flooded chambers, then southwards to the Bizarre Ice Gateway and out the eastern branch of the "E". There are several smaller loops as well: the apex of the "A" and the entire "A" form nesting triangular loops (although you'd have to clear some debris in one area,) the square loop of the "P", the loop(s) between the middle and eastern branches of the "E", and multiple loops of rooms off to the side of the major corridors.

On the whole, very loopy! And a tough environment, too!

Random Non-Linear Dungeons

There was a recent forum discussion about non-linear or "jaquayed" dungeon generation. Justin Alexander introduced the term "jaquaying" to describe a method of non-linear dungeon design that uses lots of loops and alternate paths to avoid the stifling, railroaded feel of linear dungeons. What the forum discussion centered on was the problem of random dungeon generation, for example Appendix A in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. Most random dungeon generators only produce loops by accident.

What Appendix A does, and many alternative generators copy, is it generates shapes or paths. You start at Room 1 and roll for doors or exits on each wall. Each exit leads to either another room or a corridor heading in some direction. Every so many feet of traveling down the corridor, you roll to see if the corridor turns, branches, ends in a T, or intersects with another corridor.

As you generate corridors (or, for that matter, additional rooms that have their own set of exits,) there is a random chance that the direction indicated would lead into an already mapped area, creating a loop. The chance improves as the map fills up. This means that such loops are more likely to be small, which means less of an opportunity for players to exploit the structure of the dungeon to bypass dangerous areas, slip around behind opponents, or evade pursuit. You wind up with less interesting dungeons that way.

My opinion: you really need to move away from randomly-rolled shapes if you want a better chance of getting loops. The way I see it, you have two choices:

1. Start with a network of major corridors that already includes loops, then randomly connect rooms and minor corridors to that base structure.
2. Roll for the destination of corridors or exits, instead of rolling for their shapes.

The best way to explain #1 is to look at the way Appendix A handles starting areas. The first dungeon level starts with either a random room (jump to Table V) or one of five starter areas with a good choice of rooms and passages leading off from the first room. To force loops into your random dungeon, you could similarly have five pre-defined corridor networks that include loops and alternate paths, then check each corridor every 60 feet for branching corridors or doors to build your dungeon around that framework.

For #2, you would replace any roll for direction with a roll for destination, for example rolling for a room number. You would then connect an exit or passage to that destination, adjusting the shape of the corridor to fit the map. As long as there's a possibility of rolling an already-mapped room as a destination, you will get some loops in your dungeon.

You can, of course, mix the two methods with each other or with the random shape method.

I have a couple experimental approaches to each method that I will present in separate posts.

Dungeon Puzzles

While I work out a table for the training and investment costs series and write up some additional posts on that topic,  I thought I'd take a break and talk about puzzles. This was most spurred by someone asking about non-riddle puzzles for a game aimed at kids. The age wasn't specified, but I'm thinking puzzles in general are better off as non-riddle puzzles, anyways, regardless of age. There's a slight difference in expected difficulty or subject matter from age to age, but I see these as the best puzzle types to use:

- One of These Things Is Not Like the Other
I'm sure most of you remember this from Sesame Street. Just include images or symbols of three or more things, most of which are the same kind of thing, but one of them is different. For example, you enter a room with four exits on the opposite wall. Above each door is a small animal statue: a snake, a turtle, a crocodile, a penguin. Only one door is safe; the other three lead to traps.

A variant of this: Find the Error. Naturally, you don't want to turn this into pixel bitching, but if you have three or four recurring motifs that are exactly the same almost every time you encounter them, any deviation from the motif becomes a clue. For example, let's say the dungeon is filled with statues of a man throwing a harpoon, a woman pouring water from a jug, and an eagle holding a fish in its talons, and the GM describes these the same way every time they are encountered, but in one room you see a man throwing a harpoon, a woman pouring a jug, and an eagle holding a rabbit, something's different.

- Analogies or Relationships

An analogy, in this case, means the well-known form "A is to B as C is to D", such as "a sword is to a warrior as a wand is to a wizard". A relationship means an implied analogy, such as the sword/warrior relationship implying an analogy of tool to profession.

This works well for the cliche "complete the statue" puzzle. You have a statue of a warrior in full armor with a hand gripped as if it could hold something. In the dungeon, you find several brass objects: a flower, a long-handled spoon, a spear. Which do you put in the warrior's hand? For a full analogy, you would have at least one complete statue indicating a relationship, such as a wolf eating a deer and a gryphon eating a horse. Then you have a pedestal next to these statues with an eagle in a position as if it is tearing into its prey. Your job is to find the object representing its prey and place it on the pedestal.

A trickier version is a room with three sealed doors and a bas-relief above each door, each depicting a different relationship, say a deer with a fawn, a wolf tearing into a cow, and a man riding a horse. In the center of the room is a statue of a gryphon. Placing a ceramic egg at its base opens one door, placing a ceramic horse opens another. There may or may not be a way to open the third door.

- Memory Games

On various murals throughout the dungeon, you have a series of symbols, always in the same order. For example, triangle, wavy line, crossed circle. Then you get to a room with five  bas-relief symbols that are obviously buttons. The symbols are crossed circle, cross without circle, square, triangle, wavy line. Pressing the right buttons in the right order triggers something, such as a secret door.

Another example are the puzzles in Skyrim. They have a few standard symbols based on animals or creatures, and some rotating pillars or rings with three symbols on each. Somewhere nearby, there is a set of fixed pillars showing the proper order, or there are symbols on a "dragon claw" used as a key. This is actually easier than the puzzle described above, because the solution is never very far away, unless you find a door that requires a dragon  claw that you don't have.

What I'd suggest is that riddles, if they are used at all, are best restricted to clues for any of the puzzles above. They are an extra help on what to do.

Building Monster Lairs

When people new to the original D&D rules (the 3 LBBs) first look at the monster lists, they're a little stunned by the number appearing column in Monsters & Treasure. How would you even run an encounter with 300 bandits? After a while, someone will tell them that these are the "wilderness encounter" numbers, and the treasure table in M&T is wilderness treasure; for dungeons, you use the much smaller numbers suggested in the wandering monster tables in Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, and the treasure tables in that book as well.

This works, but isn't quite true.

The problem is that we're thinking in terms of individual encounters, which is what the wandering monster tables are designed for. Similarly, the treasure tables in U&WA are individual treasure caches, used when randomly stocking each room. But U&WA tells us: "It is a good idea to thoughtfully place several of the most important treasures, with or without monsterous guardians, and then switch to a random determination for the balance of the level." You're not supposed to use random stocking of monsters and treasure for every room.

What the so-called "wilderness encounter" tables are for are entire lairs. Those 30 to 300 bandits? They're in a location dominated by bandits. This may be an outdoor camp, a fortress, or a dungeon level. After rolling for the total number of bandits and leader types, you divide them up into individual encounters, then sprinkle in some other monsters for variety.

Here's an illustration: we start with a concept that we're going to have a couple dungeon levels overrun by goblins who have disturbed a crypt on a deeper level. Let's give the goblins a handful of slaves (maybe a couple kobolds and 1 each of about 6 other creature types) and some kind of pet, maybe giant rideable rats (1+1 HD.) The undead cohort will be skeletons led by ghouls.

There will be 40 to 400 goblins total in the two-level dungeon, plus the goblin king and 5-30 guards (treat as hobgoblins.) Figure there must be about half as many giant rats. Kobold slaves should be much less than goblin numbers: let's use 4d6 for them. Pick six other intelligent monster types to keep as slaves: maybe a caveman, a dervish, an orc, an elf, a crippled ogre, and a wingless pixie. Rescuing some of these may lead to adventures in other areas.

Place the goblin king and some of the guards in one chamber or a suite of chambers, with any features you feel fit the concept. Place some of the other guards in special barracks or at access points leading into the king's chambers. Place the slaves at various labor locations or slaves' quarters. Place some rat stables/kennels, and maybe a rat jousting area or a couple other special locations.

On the lower level, mark your main ghoul lair and a couple special rooms with skeletons and/or ghouls. Ghouls get Treasure Type B, but figure at least part of this treasure, maybe the magic items, has been stolen by the goblins and will be in the goblin king's lair.

Place a couple tricks or unusual dungeon features. You might want to place these mainly in the tomb level.

Make your wandering monster tables, using Goblin, Rat, Kobold, Skeleton as your main entries for Level 1, adding Ghoul to Level 2. Weight the Level 1 chart in favor of the living creatures, the Level 2 chart in favor of undead. Add a few other, lesser monsters, like green slime or normal-sized rats or snakes, to fill out the rest of each chart.

Now, stock the remaining currently-empty rooms on your map, using the method in U&WA. Use the wandering monster chart to decide what monster, if any, is in each room. Just remember not to go over the maximum number of goblins, rats, etc. If you "run out" of goblins or ghouls before you finish stocking rooms, replace them with the lesser "vermin" monsters. Finish up with a few simple traps in various locations.

You can expand this to a full mega-dungeon, picking a new "main" monster type and one or two supporting monsters for each adjacent region or lower level. For example, Level 3 might be an ogre level, the home of the crippled ogre mentioned above, while a distant region on Level 1 may be a kobold lair. Areas around stairs or other access points to other levels will have a monster or two from the other level.

The Forgotten Design of the Thief

In my recent musings about the thief, I speculated that the focus on opening magical closures might imply that the Open Lock ability should really only apply to these kinds of seals, and ordinary mundane locks should be considered trivial for a thief to open (no roll needed.) Jeff responded that the original rules were an Alpha product, and AD&D 1e were a Beta product, not becoming fully realized and tested until at least Unearthed Arcana and the Survival Guides, with later editions improving the design. And he suggests focusing not on what is in the original rules that was later dropped, but why it was dropped:

Look at them, and ask why we don’t do “it” “that way” any more. Did it just not work, or did they come up with a better method. Or, did someone just forget. Maybe there were camps on one side or the other, and one side won out when the next version of the game came out. For instance, it could be that the thief lost out to the niche protection of the magic-user, who has spells to deal with magic traps/locks.

Not to pick on Jeff, but that’s completely backwards thinking. Not only is it based on the false belief in Objectively Good Design, but we know in fact that people were playing D&D before the first three books were even published. It’s not “alpha” – that may have been Arneson’s campaign before he teamed up with Gary. It’s not even “beta”; that would appear to be something like the ”Beyond This Point Be Dragons” document. By the time of the LBBs, there were several people running OD&D in a form we would recognize, although each had their house rules because making your own house rules was still officially part of the game. We also know that Greyhawk is not a later clarification of the LBBs, but Gary’s house rules, which were already in use before the LBBs were published, but were left out because there was just too much stuff to put in the planned three booklets.

And, in any case, AD&D is certainly not the beta version of OD&D. We know why AD&D exists: Gygax and Arneson got into a legal dispute, and AD&D was designed partly to create a game Arneson had no claim to, and partly to act as official tournament rules, for people who wanted a standardized set of rules. It’s not a replacement of OD&D, because OD&D became what’s known as the “classic” line: Holmes, B/X, and BECMI. If a descendant of OD&D was being sold alongside AD&D 2e, we can’t really call AD&D a “beta” version of OD&D, can we?

But leaving that aside, let’s look at that central question: why were certain things dropped? The most common reason is, indeed, that someone forgot why the rule was there. D&D was created by taking stuff that already existed, adapting it to fit some new idea that sounded like fun, and if it turned out to be fun, it was kept. Some things are there specifically to support certain ideas; for example, XP for gold being more than XP for combat is there so that there a greater incentive to avoid fights where possible, and XP requirements that pretty much double every level are there to make it easy for new, low-level characters to catch up with existing, higher-level characters. When people forget or never knew why those things were the way they were, they changed it to make it more “logical” – and created problems, which they tried to fix, creating more problems, and so on.

The thief Open Locks ability is a good example. Gygax, as it turns out, didn’t forget that it applies to magical as well as normal locks. I checked the PHB to be sure, and there it was, on page 27:

Opening locks includes figuring out how to open sliding puzzle locks and foiling magical closures. It is done by picking with tools and by cleverness, plus knowledge and study of such items.

I don’t have the 2nd edition PHB anymore, so I can’t check to see if it is in there. But definitely, every discussion I’ve seen about thief abilities acts like this is mundane lockpicking, and that Hide in Shadows is the same thing as mundane hiding, and Move Silently is the same as being quiet, even though the PHB makes it clear these are supernormal abilities.

And what do we see in discussions of thief abilities? Complaints that the thief is underpowered. Why? Because people forgot what the thief was really supposed to be able to do.

And yes, as Jeff suggested, part of the reason people forgot that the thief was supposed to be supernormal was because “thief” is not just a class name, but also a profession. I’ve complained about this, myself, although I think the Cleric was the first class with a bad name.

Mimics in Modules

I mentioned a little while back some things I dislike about Torchlight. But one thing I kind of liked was the inclusion of mimics. I started thinking about using mimics more… and, by coincidence, Noisms wrote something about them that further piqued my interest. What if excessive magic, especially persistent non-mobile enchantments, cranks up evolution a billionfold? Mimics have developed the ability to mimic because they are evolving in a matter of months instead of of millions of years.

About a year ago, I wrote up my own version of the mimic and sort of merged it with the doppelganger and kelpie. And I speculated about an entire doppelkingdom as a possible legendary locale. More recently, I’d been wanting to do an entire multi-level module, instead of just the occasional one-page dungeon… but I was thinking, “What could I do that was different?” Everyone does dragons, humanoids, and undead. What’s underutilized?

Duh, doppelkind.

Here’s a question for you German speakers, though: if “doppelganger” is a “walking double” of someone, what would be a good German name for the animal equivalent (what I called the kelpie) and the “inanimate” object equivalent (the mimic?) I was tempted to just say “doppelbeast” and “doppelthing”, but I suppose those would be objectionable. Actually maybe I need “doppelflesh”, “doppelstone”, “doppelmetal”, and “doppelliquid”. And something for the big slablike doppelkind that becomes trappers and lurkers above.

Blue Maps

After I talked about writing details directly on town maps, something occurred to me about old school maps. TSR-era maps are usually printed in a shade of blue, instead of in black. Specifically, it’s non-photo blue, RGB #A4DDED, a shade that can’t be detected by the graphics arts cameras typically used back then. TSR used this shade to prevent high-quality reproductions of their maps in bootleg copies of the modules.

This, of course, is no longer true with digital image techniques, but old schoolers are so used to seeing maps that look like that, there are a number of OSR publishers who do their maps in that color. For example, Dragonsfoot uses it in their modules. New schoolers laugh at the stupid nostalgia of the OSR.

However, when I made example maps GM info placement directly on town maps to reduce lookup time, I was having problems getting both the text and the underlying map to be equally readable. It was only after I posted my examples that I realized the solution is to print the player map in black, but make the GM map non-photo blue, so that that GMs can add notes directly to the map in pencil and still be able to read both the map and the notes. It’s a nice re-purposing of an old tradition.

Weapon Tree

So, while I was working to get my new computer on the internet and eventually ready for writing/layout projects, I was also playing a video game. It was, after all, one of the few things I could do until my computer was online. What I was playing was Torchlight, a game I’d never heard of before. Not surprising; I’m not all that big on video games, tend to be slow to adopt a new one and play just a small range of games for freaking ever. But someone blogged several months ago about Torchlight and mentioned that it was either free or on sale for really cheap at GOG Games, so I decided to try it out… and after a month or two, when I had a computer I thought could run it, I finally installed it.

It’s entertaining enough, but it’s a lot like Diablo 1 and 2, which as it turns out I don’t really like all that much. Not because it’s all that hard; I’ve played the Diablos and now Torchlight all the way to the end. It’s just not all that fun. It’s based on these premises:

1. There should be lots of combat;
2. Combat should basically be just a “click-storm”, maybe with some “special moves” (i.e. clicking with the right mouse button instead of the left;)
3. Your other preoccupation is junk farming.

By “junk farming”, I’m referring to what some people may think is a great innovation: the way magic items are arranged and described. See, there’s a bunch of adjectives or descriptors, and each one has a specific mechanical meaning, so you just randomly assign one or more modifier to the base item to get a unique magic item, like “Spiked Epic Potato of Thorns”. Also, there are gems, in several grades (cracked, dull, discolored, etc.) and with a different bonus associated with each variety… and some magic items have “sockets”, which you can put gems into to add specific powers to your epic potato. There are also rare items that come in sets, and if you have two or more items in a set, you get bonus powers.

Problem #1: This is the dullest way you could describe magic items.

Problem #2: Since the game is about collecting just the right gear to defeat those thousands of monsters you are going to fight, and the gear is randomly generated, there’s a lot of it, to give you at least a thin chance of getting the right gear. That means you get a lot of gear. Tons of it, almost all useless, so you have to sell it. Hence, it’s junk.

Problem #3: The gear is keyed to level. Not just the magical gear, but even the mundane stuff. Hence that word “Epic”, which means you have to be about 25th to 30th level, I think, before you can use it. You start getting it when you get to about that level in the dungeon. That means even more junk, and no way to jump ahead and take a risk to get something really good, to make the early battles easier.

In short, what the designers of Diablo and Torchlight think is “fun” is something mind-numbingly boring and not the least bit special.

Now, this is an OD&D blog, not a video game blog. The reason why I brought this up is because this kind of thinking has infected D&D. And not just the WotC editions; I occasionally spot someone offering game material that sounds a lot like this. There was, I believe, an actual Diablo supplement for D&D, so that you could enjoy your boredom in more than one form. But beyond that, the way feats, skills, and templates work is much the same. I was struck by this when I read the thread about the Gelatinous Cube, because basically after the original question was answered, the optimization dorks moved into the thread to discuss the optimum form of Gelatinous Cube, based on adding templates. Half-Fiend Half-Draconian Awakened Gelatinous Cube. Sounds AWESOME!