Spes Magna Games

I took a break from grading book reports and pulled out the Four Evil Brothers’ Fortress map (FEBF), a blank sheet of graph paper, a pencil, a couple of black markers, and an eraser. Some time later, I had remapped FEBF’s northwest quadrant, as you can see below.

I tweaked the layout a bit, most obviously by adding some thickness to the walls. FEBF’s exterior wall is 5 feet thick. Interior walls are usually about half that, although there are few places where the walls are thicker. I also changed the map scale from 10 feet to a square to five feet a square. The quadrant barely fits on the paper, but it fits.

I left off all the doors. The original write-up included brown puddings as wandering monsters, and brown puddings eat wood and leather. Given how long FEBF has been abandoned, it’s reasonable that brown puddings would have devoured most wood and leather in the complex. FEBF was built in a swamp, and I like the idea of swamp monsters more or less having free run of an ancient fortress of evil. It’ll change the ecology of the place a bit, I’m sure.

I also like the idea of a dungeon crawl without doors. Nothing to close or open. Nothing to barricade or listen at. Adventurers with light sources will unintentionally cast illumination into shadowy corners. The thick walls, all made of stone, baffle or block sound. Add details related to years of humidity, darkness, moisture, and rot, and the entire place is likely rank with mold and fungus.

How long before explorers develop respiratory problems?

Tags: dungeon crawls, maps, place of power

In the past few weeks, I finally got my library remodeled. New shelving installed, new paint, new floor, better use of space, et cetera. It’s a roomier, brighter place now with more exposed wall on which to display framed art, my Greyhawk maps, and a selection of LPs above my turntable. During the reshelving process, I found 18 pages stapled in the upper lefthand corner. The pages summarize a dungeon that I wrote some time after I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (so, after the summer of 1985). The dungeon itself is written for 1E AD&D. After this paragraph, you’ll see a column of pics of the dungeon. Each pic embiggens when clicked upon (caveat: the pictures might not open in a new tab).

The dungeon had an poetric intro, which I’m pretty sure I wrote in the form of an epic limerick. I strung together several limericks that told the story of four evil brothers who built a fortress in a swamp. Mondo, a paladin, assembled a team of heroes, who assaulted the evil brothers’ fortress, emerging victorious but only after many goodfolk fell in battle. Unfortunately, I no longer have that epic limerick, thus making the world a poetically poorer place.

The fortress itself is divided into five parts. Each brother lived in one of the sections accessed via tower (the circular rooms to the northwest, north, east, and southwest). Each tower leads into a quadrant (loosely speaking), and each quadrant is not directly accessible from any other quadrant. Each brother had his own motif, and the chambers in his quadrant reflect that motif. For example, one brother was a thief and a glutton, and his quadrant included a sumptuous dining hall, extensive kitchens, and a collection of treatises on lockpicking. Each brother also had a special item that enabled them to control the maze in the center of the fortress.

I don’t recall the exact workings of the maze, and that description isn’t in the dungeon’s write-up. I remember that each brother had a special item (which are mentioned in the dungeon’s write-up). These items could somehow be used to change the configuration of the maze. Why and how? No idea. There might have been some sort of dimension travel possible when the last maze configuration was unlocked through the use of all four items at once.

Looking the Wandering Monster Chart, a few things become clear. First, I used the 1E AD&D’s Monster Manual II method to construct a random encounter table. Using 1d8+1d12, the table produces results from 2 to 20, “with a large flat spot of equal probability in the 9-13 range” (to quote MM2, page 138). The more common monsters go in the slots near the center of the table. As one moves closer to 2 and 20, the monsters become increasingly rare. Returning to the Wandering Monster Chart, I see that there is a death knight in the dungeon, but that fearsome monster isn’t likely to be encountered just wandering around the place. The most common encounter is “no encounter”, with hordes of giant rats or a solitary mist horror being somewhat less common.

Also, with at least a small nod to a sensible dungeon ecology, most of the monsters are undead, not particularly intelligent, and/or small enough to access the fortress via the narrow arrow slit windows that pierce its walls. The major villains in the fortress, based on the Wandering Monster Chart, would be the aforementioned death knight as well as a ghoul lord and a night hag (whose presence hints at the dimension travel angle that is perhaps connected to the maze).

Take a look at the stat blocks. Notice the circled portion. After HD and hp, there is a bonus. This is something I picked up from gaming with Lewis Pulsipher, game designer and contributor to the Fiend Folio and Dragon magazine. A giant centipede has a +1 to-hit bonus. By contrast, the night hag (not shown) has a +8 to-hit bonus. THAC0 worked like this:

Character’s THAC0 – (d20 +/- all relevant modifiers) = AC hit

So, a character with a THAC0 of 18 scores a 15 on his to-hit roll. This hits AC 3 (18 minus 15). Lew’s method kept everyone’s THAC0 at 20 with a variable attack bonus equal to the difference between 20 and the creature’s THAC0. So, a night hag has a THAC0 of 12, and 20 minus 12 equals 8, so a night hag has a +8 to-hit bonus. (This also means I either goofed the giant centipede’s attack bonus or else I wanted robust giant centipedes.) Using Lew’s system, THAC0 ends up like this:

20 – (d20 +/- all relevant modifiers) = AC hit

So, if that night hag scores a modified 22 attack roll (14 + her bonus of 8), then she hits AC -2 (20 minus 22). Lew’s system sped up combat by keeping the minuend at a constant 20. This system also foreshadows 3E D&D’s base attack bonus system, which I’ve long maintained is just THAC0 standing on its head.

In the last picture, we see handwritten notes about the dungeon. For whatever reason, those last pages never got typed. What likely happened is this. I had a leave coming up, probably for Christmas. I knew gaming with my old group from high school would be part of that leave, and, therefore, I needed something to DM. So, I drew the map, and then used one of the few military computers I had access to where I worked. The paper on which the print appears was fed through a dot-matrix printer in a continuous feed. I can see where I separated the pages and removed the left and right strips along the perforations. Then, I ran out of time, and so I hand-wrote the rest of the dungeon while on leave but before we met to play.

I remember running the adventure. There are a few marks here and there in the text that indicate which encounters the players faced. I fondly recall the ambush on the party by the githyanki warband (yet another dimension travel hint), but I’m not sure what happened after that. The githyanki might have been the encounter that broke the party, especially since the githyanki managed to catch the PCs by surprise in a crossfire of rebounding lightning bolts.

Ah, good times.

Tags: 1E AD&D, dungeon crawls, place of power

I shuffled my Atmar’s Cardography cards from Norse Foundry dealt out the top four, and arranged to form a mini-dungeon. With graph paper, pencil, felt tip pen, and an eraser, I turned the cards into the The Chamber of the Crooked Star, a 1E AD&D micro-dungeon. You can download the PDF of this mini-dungeon by clicking on the correct link.

Enjoy!

Tags: AD&D, dungeon crawls, micro-adventure

If you’ve still not checked out Dyson Logos’s excellent maps, you owe it to yourself to do so. For example, check this one out.

Doesn’t that just scream awesome? Doesn’t it make you want to use it for a game? The answer to both questions is, “Yes. Yes, it does.”

In keeping with the second affirmative, I cobbled together a short, one-page Swords & Wizardry adventure based on Dyson’s Smith chart map. You can download it as a PDF by clicking on the picture that accompanies these words. Perhaps “adventure” is too big a word for what I’ve done, but it could at least be a part of a larger adventure.

By the way, if you dig Dyson’s work, check out his goodies over at Lulu and RPGNow.

Tags: dungeon crawls, Dyson Logos, One-Page Dungeon, Swords & Wizardry

Again, I’m not quite sure I’m a reflective enough gamer to complete the 30-Day D&D Challenge in its literal intent. I’ve run so many adventures for just about every version of D&D that I’m not sure I can pick a favorite one. I can, however, at least pick out one adventure that I’ve enjoyed, specifically The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. I’ve run this delightful module three different times that I remember. I’ve never had a party of adventurers complete the module with what could be called rousing success. Two parties failed; the third survived but unleashed a horrible evil.

The first time I ran Lost Caverns was in high school. I don’t remember everyone who played. Fred was there, probably running Blake. Big Greg was there, and he definitely ran a cleric of Poseidon. (Why Poseidon was a deity in the World of Greyhawk is a mystery.) There were other players, perhaps Little Greg, the other Mark, and Ben. Someone was playing a cleric of Thor.

Regardless, the adventure proceeded apace through the lesser caverns until the party reached the gorgimera cavern. Aside from the gorgimera, there were stairs leading from this cavern down to the greater caverns. I described how the gorgimera took wing as the party entered, maneuvering to attack. For some reason I’ve forgotten, the players sort of panicked, especially Big Greg. The cleric of Poseidon had a necklace of prayer beads that included the bead of summoning. So, Big Greg, thinking that the party needed direct divine assistance against the fearsome gorgimera, used this bead to call forth Poseidon himself.

I described how Poseidon appeared in all his divine majesty. How the stones shook. How the cavern grew larger to accommodate his awesome stature. How Poseidon casually swatted the gorgimera from the air, killing it, and then asked, “For what great purpose have you summoned me?”

This was not what Big Greg expected to happen, and Poseidon was displeased to have been summoned for so trivial as task of slaying a mere gorgimera. In tribute, he demanded one magic item from each party member. The cleric of Thor balked. Poseidon reminded his cleric (Big Greg’s PC) that “[n]o cleric [of a Greek mythos deity] may have dealings with clerics of other sects for any reason (on non-hostile terms) as this is considered a minor transgression by their deity and punishable by the stripping away of the third and higher levels of spells for a lunar month” (1E Deities & Demigods). Poseidon demanded his cleric teach the cleric of Thor a lesson in manners to avoid this punishment. This resulted in a cleric versus cleric smackdown which Big Greg’s cleric won. Poseidon took as many magic items as he wanted from the defeated cleric of Thor.

Then, just before leaving, Poseidon used his prerogatives as the god of natural disasters to have an earthquake strike the caverns, collapsing the paths back out of the lesser caverns to the surface and leaving the party no choice but to head down to the greater caverns despite their weakened state.

The party continued on. They eventually faced Drelzna, and the survivors managed to return to the surface, but poorer and perhaps wiser than when they went in. Lost Caverns tore through their resources, and I think the cleric of Thor was dead by the end of the adventure.

The second time I ran Lost Caverns I was stationed at either Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. I don’t remember who the players were, which might mean I wasn’t running the adventure for my regular gaming groups at those duty stations. (That would be either the group with Wayne Royals or with Lewis Pulsipher at Fort Bragg, or the group with Ron Chance [no relation] at Schofield.)

Anyhoo, what I do remember transpired in the greater caverns, so I’m guessing the group did okay in the lesser caverns. I think it was during the fight against the demonic bar-lguras that one of the PCs died. The party retreated and, by accident, ended up in the cave with the chasme demons. Since the party had just suffered a defeat, I decided the chasme would be more conversational than confrontational.

For some reason, the players decided to trust the demonic fly monsters. I mean, what could go wrong? Right?

Turns out, plenty went wrong. The adventurers lamented the loss of their party member, and asked if the chasmes could help. One of them assured the PCs that, yes, it could restore the dead to life, but the process took a little time. The party agreed, and so the chasme rammed its proboscis into the corpse’s chest and pumped in a load of demonological goo. (By this time, I was just making stuff up as I went along.) The chasme told the adventurers to take the corpse with them, and after a while he would revive.

So, the adventurers took the corpse with them, and after a while the cadaver exploded, releasing several more chasme that had spawned from the demonological goo. At this time, the other chasme and the bar-lgura ambushed the party. During the resulting slaughter of PCs, two of the adventurers fled in terror, desperately hoping to find some safe haven. They found it by blundering into the magical cavern which teleported them into an alternate dimension valley populated by centaurs. Without the means to return to the cavern, and with the rest of the party dead, that particular foray into the caverns came to a screeching halt.

The last time I ran Lost Caverns was after I converted the module to 3E/3.5E for Man Day. The adventure became part of the campaign’s metaplot that pitted the PCs against a gradually revealed plot by forces loyal to Nerull, Erythnul, and Hextor to conquer a large swath of the World of Greyhawk. I replaced Drelzna with a monster called the Abyssal Mind, which turned out to be a fiendish vampiric intellect devourer.

This last group was the most successful, completing the modified module with no PC deaths (as far as I can remember). Unfortunately, they did fail to defeat the Abyssal Mind, and that horrible monster escaped its prison in the greater caverns to spread its evil on the surface. This was sort of recurring motif in that particular campaign. The PCs would defeat the forces of badness, but some element of badness would escape in order to cause trouble later on, such as when the adventurers were manipulated into freeing the Deathless One, a lich in service to Nerull.

But that’s another story.

Tags: 30 Day D&D Challenge, dungeon crawls, monsters