Tagline: Huh?

“You are a highly trained and well-paid sous-chefs, who have decided to climb to the top of a tall buildng, as fast as you can. Devil Bunny Needs a Ham. And he’s pretty sure that knocking you off the building will help him get one. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps he is not.”

What the hell?

I have been given to understand that Devil Bunny is an arcane reference to the alt.devilbunnies newsgroup. I have to admit, I’m impressed. Very few cult references can slip past me with nary a blink of recognition – but this one did entirely until it was pointed out to me.

It still doesn’t make any sense, but at least the name “Devil Bunny” has been imbued with a certain degree of significance … despite the fact that the devilbunnies of alt.devilbunnies don’t seem to have much of a relationship with the Devil Bunny of this game.

Errr… Anyyyywwaaaayyyyy….

THE RULES

Your are provided with a board which represents a skyscraper. Your start at the bottom with three counters and make your way towards the top along six columns of boxes. You move by rolling two dice, moving your counters by the combined number of pips on your dice (you can break the number up anyway you like between your three counters, and you can move them left, right, or diagonally – but not up and down). You can’t move through other players, Devil Bunny, or the black squares on the board (which basically serve as obstacles).

The exception to this is if you roll a six. If you do, then Devil Bunny moves immediately – “jumping” on the climber who is farthest up the building, and knocking them down. A climber who is knocked down falls straight down until he hits another climber (and is automatically “caught”, by being placed below that climber’s counter) or until he hits the Ground. Midway through the board is the Line of Death – if you hit the Ground while below this line, you live and simply start of. If you’re above it and hit the Ground, you die and the counter is removed from the board.

Counters which reach the SAFETY! at the top of the building score points depending on the order in which they reach it (this is a series of fairly arbitrary numbers based on providing interesting and competitive combinations of exit orders). The person with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Variations: For an easier game, you can move on the black squares. For a more bloody game, have the Devil Bunny jump onto a random column. “You can also experiment with cheese, although it is primarily intended as a healthy snack.”

SUMMARY

Cheapass Games has a habit of designing really fantastic games.

Then there’s this one.

I have the vague feeling that if you first cracked this thing open while being incredibly high with a group of incredibly close buddies this game would have an intensely hilarious component to it that I, playing it sober with my brother, simply missed entirely.

That being said, for $2 it’s a rather fascinating game that’ll chew up at least half an hour with mild entertainment and will, thus, earn it’s keep.

Style: 3
Substance: 2

Author: James Ernest (also E. Jordan Bojar and Toivo Rovainen)
Company/Publisher: Cheapass Games
Cost: $2.00
Page Count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 2000/03/12

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Part 1

Using the experimental hexmap we made for Ptolus (which you might want to open in a second window for easy cross-referencing), imagine that the PCs are staying at the Ghostly Minstrel in hex E3. The GM asks them what they want to do and they say that they want to head south into the Longbottom neighborhood.

What happens next?

TRIGGERING THE KEYED ENCOUNTERS

When it comes to triggering the keyed encounters in an urbancrawl’s key, it seems to me that there are a few different options:

First, there is a chance they might trigger any time that someone travels through the hex. (In other words, even if the PCs are using the “target-based” movement we talked about earlier – when they’re simply moving from one known location to another – you’d still check for encounters in the hexes they pass through.)

Second, the encounters only trigger if the PCs are specifically patrolling or searching or crawling or putting their ear to the ground (or whatever).

(Of course, you could also go both ways by having different odds of triggering encounters depending on the approach the PCs are taking.)

If there is a difference between ‘crawl and non-crawl movement, one way to clearly distinguish between them would be to add some sort of mechanical hook to the ‘crawl based movement: For example, if the PCs want to ‘crawl hex E4 they might have to make a Gather Information check. (This would make an urbancrawl a little more like the old school “clearing the hex” mechanic, in which the PCs would have to specifically state their intention to take a specific action within a specific geographic location.)

This sort of mechanic, however, works best if the players are more aware of the structure: In other words, we’d want them to be able to see the hex they were exploring and know its boundaries. Which leads me to…

NEIGHBORHOODS vs. HEXES

Putting this hypothetical urbancrawl into imaginary practice, I’m almost immediately reconsidering my rejection of keying by neighborhood. Exploring the entire Temple District feels too large, but looking at the Ptolus map and saying “I want to shake things up in the Longbottom neighborhood” feels pretty natural.

Similarly, if I were to look at a neighborhood map of my hometown:

(click for larger version)

Keying content to each community (Nokomis, Powderhorn, Longfellow, etc.) actually feels like a pretty good place to start. And if I ended up wanting more detail than that, I could drill down to individual neighborhoods (so that Powderhorn, for example, would break down into Central, Bryant, Bancroft, Standish, and Corcoran).

Random thought: LANDMARKS. Put a landmark in each neighborhood/community/ward that you’re keying. Like, if you knew the city you’d say things like, “Oh yeah, that’s where Burt’s Tavern is.” Or the Old Clock Tower. Or the Red Sash Brothel or whatever.

CATEGORIZING THE TRIGGER

So the PCs head south into hex E4 and start poking around. They end up triggering the ‘crawl encounter, so I check the key:

E4. BLACKSTOCK PRINTING: Blackstock is one of the few businesses in the city with a functioning, large-scale movable type printing press. (Many of the city’s newssheets are printed here.) What is not widely known is that the press is controlled by six of Aelian Fardream’s clones (who were awakened from temporal stasis due to a strange magical surge several years ago).

In actual practice, my key would probably have more info about Blackstock Printing than that. (In fact, you can find a lot more information on pg. 353 of Ptolus.) But what I’m struggling with is the idea of what it actually means to trigger this particular encounter. Off-hand there a couple possibilities:

First, they could be walking by Blackstock Printing when they spot the same person standing in two different places at the same time. (That’s an interesting hook that might prompt them to investigate.)

Second, we could use something like the scenario included in the Ptolus sourcebook: The Shadow Eyes clone of Aelian Fardream attacks someone in Midtown. The PCs later overhear an eyewitness saying that she’d seen this guy before – at a printing shop in the South Market.

I can see how either of those could be a natural response to “we’re poking around the Longbottom neighborhood”. But what if they had headed southeast and ended up triggering the encounter in hex G4 instead:

G4. POTIONS AND ELIXIRS: A well-stoked alchemical supply and potion store. The sole proprietor is a half-elf sorcerer named Buele Nox.

Harder to see what triggering that encounter actually means. Part of that can simply be explained as the Potions and Elixirs shop not having innate interest, but to some extent I think that’s actually begging the question.

As I struggle to come to grips with what the encounter trigger really means in terms of the urbancrawl, I think I’m coming to the conclusion that part of my problem is that the urban environment simply lends itself naturally to a wider array of categorical experiences than a dungeoncrawl or hexcrawl.

Let me unpack that a bit: The default trigger for an encounter key in the dungeon is simply “entering a room”. Similarly, the default trigger for an encounter key in the hexcrawl is “seeing something on the horizon”.

Or, more generally, they both boil down: “They see something.”

This works in the dungeoncrawl because the border of the room is clearly defined. It works in the hexcrawl because the encounter stands in contrast to the wilderness around it.

The problem with the city (at least to my perception) is that the points of interest to a wandering adventurer are not placed in plain sight and/or immediately contrasted from the surrounding context: The monsters and mysteries and oddities and weirdness are tucked out of sight and generally inaccessible to the average person just walking by.

I’m beginning to suspect that the answer to this conundrum lies in a pair of questions: Why are the PCs urbancrawling? And what are they actually doing when they “crawl”?

Before we delve into those questions, however, I think I want to take a brief detour through some old school inspiration.

Go to Part 6: Old School Inspiration

A great post over at the Reef: The Surest Way to Become a Better Game Master.

Spoilers:

STFU AND LISTEN TO THE PLAYERS

She approaches the issue with a slew of anecdotes about games gone wrong (and also games gone right). I’ll back it up with a bit of theorycraft that I’ve mentioned here before: Your players have a pretty good idea of what they’ll find interesting and entertaining. Let them pursue the goals and plans they want to pursue and you’re far more likely to meet with success than if you try to second guess what they “really” want.

You don’t need to take on total responsibility for the game. In fact, you shouldn’t.

Also of value are the follow-ups she and her husband wrote:

How to Do This (in Practical Terms)
Why It’s Generally a Bad Idea to Say No
Answering Other Objections

As I mentioned recently in The Principles of RPG Villainy, it’s amazing how often saying “don’t railroad your players” results in people agreeing that it’s a bad idea while simultaneously trying to justify why they do it all the time.

Go to Part 1

So what we’re going to do here is take a map of Monte Cook’s Ptolus and drape a hex map over it. Then we’re going to pull existing location keys from Cook’s description of the city and we’re going to use them to key the hexes.

I’m choosing Ptolus for this exercise because the city is densely packed with existing material that’s both utilitarian (apothecaries, marketplaces, and the like) and also studded with adventuring potential. The goal is to see if simply creating an urban-themed hexcrawl will provide any insight into an urbancrawling structure.

As I’m writing this, I have absolutely no idea if this is going to work. (And perhaps a secret little hope that it will miraculously turn into a fully functional urbancrawl and solve all my problems.)

THE MAP

(click for larger image)

THE KEY

As you’re looking through this key, remember that the urbancrawl key doesn’t represent all the information that you might prep about the city. For example, you might also prep a list of shop where potions are sold. Or make a note of where the popular (and unpopular) taverns are. (These would all obviously be things that would reside within the boundaries of the hexes, but they wouldn’t be interacted with through the urbancrawl structure.)

It should also be noted that this isn’t a complete key. For example, some of these locations would need full maps along with map keys. I’m not going to bother doing that right now, though, because the primary goal of this exercise is to look at what you’re keying.

A1. ZELLATH KORY’S HOUSE: A small house serving as the homebase for a Sorn cell. (The Sorns are a decentralized assassins’ and mages’ guild.) Zellath Kory is the cell leader.

A2. CASTLE SHARD: A huge castle made from purple stone, housing a massive crystal with strange magical properties. It is ruled by Lord Zavere and Lady Rill.

A3. KADAVER’S: A secret bar for criminals hidden beneath a dilapidated manse.

A4. VLADAAM ESTATE: The noble estate of the Vladaam family. The Vladaams rule over a vast criminal network. The grounds are defended by a pack of warhounds.

B2. PYTHONESS HOUSE: A haunted castle. (Standard dungeon crawl described in the Night of Dissolution adventure.)

B3. CLOCK TOWER: A major landmark in Oldtown, the Clock Tower no longer works. A cellar below the Clock Tower leads to a very old family crypt that once lay under the manor that was built on this previous built on this spot. The crypt provides access to an underground complex known as the Buried City.

B4. SKULK ALLEY: An innocuous looking dead-end alleyway between a pair of buildings. Scrawled on the wall is the skulk symbol. Those who wait in the alley for at least half an hour are approached by Shim, a skulk willing to serve as an information broker and private detective.

B5. THE BOILING POT: A large and well-established slophouse run by a jovial fellow named Dellam Koll.

C1. WELL OF THE SHADOW EYES: A dry and disused well in a dead-end Rivergate alley. At the bottom of the well there’s a secret door leading to the underground Ravenstroke complex, a magical lair created by the wizard Aelian Fardream. It is now controlled by the Shadow Eyes, a magical clone of Fardream.

C2. CHAPEL OF ST. THESSINA: One of the many temples of Lothian found throughout the city. The chapel has been secretly taken over by the Pactlords of the Quaan (who have replaced the priests with doppelgangers and are using the upper levels for a variety of purposes).

C3. GALLOWS SQUARE: A public square where the city’s executions are held.

C4. ROGUE MOON TRADING COMPANY: A three-story building serving as the base of operations for the largest merchant company in Ptolus. (Some people call it the Star of the South Market.) Tamora Riagin runs the office here.

C5. CHON: A clothier/tailor.

D2. RED STALLION PUB: The largest, most popular alehouse in the North Market. Co-owned by Yallis Kether and Utha Aryen. At night, the Red Stallion holds contests for drinking, singing, and throwing darts. (The winners get free drinks the following night.) A former delver named Jurgen Yath can also be found there, willing to sell information about the Dungeon beneath the city.

D3. SADIE’S REST: A memorial park dedicated to Sadie of the Moors. Bron Higger is the caretaker.

D4. RAMORO’S BAKERY: Ramoro Udelis and his wife Carlatia run this South Market bakery. The house itself is old and ill-kept, but the baked goods are excellent. Ramoro’s brother, Pauthan, is a pickpocket who “works” among the bakery’s customers.

D5. THE MYSTERY PUB: A tavern known for elaborate, bizarre, and magical games and entertainments.

E1. KILLRAVEN’S TOWER: An old stone tower that leans precariously to one side and appears to be abandoned. Word on the street is that it’s actually the secret entrance to Kellris Killraven’s underground stronghold. (Killraven is attempting to establish a new crime family in Ptolus.) In reality, however, it has nothing to do with Killraven.

E2. TEMPLE OBSERVATORY OF THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES: The most distinctive portion of this temple is the cylindrical observatory with its giant telescope, used to observe significant events and omens in the skies, particularly the night sky. The temple is run by Helmut Itlestein, also known for being the head of the controversial Republican movement.

E3. GHOSTLY MINSTREL: An inn, pub, and restaurant all in one. It’s become the meeting place of choice for delvers and adventurers. The Minstrel is haunted by an actual undead bard.

E4. BLACKSTOCK PRINTING: Blackstock is one of the few businesses in the city with a functioning, large-scale movable type printing press. (Many of the city’s newssheets are printed here.) What is not widely known is that the press is controlled by six of Aelian Fardream’s clones (who were awakened from temporal stasis due to a strange magical surge several years ago).

E5. COCK PIT: An underground cockfighting arena which has grown into one of the largest illegal gambling dens in Ptolus.

F2. CATTY’S HOUSE: A small house serving as the homebase for a Sorn cell. (The Sorns are a decentralized assassins’ and mages’ guild.) Katrin “Catty” Salla is the cell leader.

F3. TEMPLE OF THE FROG: An abandoned ruin. The vile cultists who once ran this temple were driven out by adventurers six years ago.

F4. KERRIK’S: The proprietor of this bar, Kerrik Tanner, is also a contact point for the Vai assassins.

F5. WOODWORKER’S GUILDHALL: Run by Guildmaster Falen Jenn.

G1. NALL HALL: A cultural center for people from the northern wasteland of Nall or those who have descended from Nallish folk. They hold dances, feasts, and festivals to preserve their traditions – but all are welcome. (At the festival, PCs will be approached by a young woman named Sanne who is trying to find someone to look for her husband, Sebastin. Sebastin disappeared on a delving mission in the Dungeon below the city while using a map that he purchased from someone at the Red Stallion Pub.)

G2. SMOKE SHOP: The Shuul mechanists’ guild sells cutting-edge technological items here – spectacles, watches, spyglasses, magnifying lenses, goggles, precision tools, pills of various kinds, and (their newest creation) the aelectrical lantern. They also sell all manner of firearms and technological weaponry. Crimson Coil cultists have been stealing gunpowder from the shop in order to construct a huge bomb.

G3. TERREK NAL’S HOUSE: Terrek Nal was apprenticed to the mage Golathan Naddershrike. Naddershrike proved a cruel master cursed him with a monstrous appearance, Nal murdered him in rage. After the murder, Nal returned to his family home and remains there in seclusion: The right half of his body is a glaring red and pink, slick with pus and strange excretions. He emits a foul stench too powerful to cover with perfumes. The greatest, change, however, is not physical: Nal now gains sustenance from fear instead of food and drink. When driven to desperation, he ventures out of his house and terrorizes people – he doesn’t harm them, merely frightens them in order to survive. A wealthy businessman who was assaulted three days ago has put a bounty of 500 gp on the monster’s head, describing his assailant as “a twisted man-thing with melted flesh”.

G4. POTIONS AND ELIXIRS: A well-stoked alchemical supply and potion store. The sole proprietor is a half-elf sorcerer named Buele Nox.

G5. MIDDEN HEAPS: A huge trash dump backed up against the southern city wall. The merchants in charge of the heaps charge a small fee for the dumping of trash (and for a little extra won’t bother inspecting it too closely). They’ll also sell scrap and broken items for 5cp per pound. Ratmen, goblins, and even otyughs are known to make their homes amidst the towering piles.

H3. DAYKEEPER’S CHAPEL: The Daykeeper’s Chapel is charged with beginning the ringing of the dawn bells each day (the other chapels take their cue from its beginning). Sister Arsagra Callinthan also oversees a variety of charitable outreach programs into the warrens. At the moment, Sister Arsagra has offered sanctuary to a man named Kobal who is being hunted by the Pale Dogs. (Kobal has discovered that Jirraith is a doppelganger.)

H4. JIRRAITH’S LAIR: The Pale Dogs are the most prominent of the gangs in the Warrens. They’re led by a mysterious man named Jirraith who keeps his “headquarters” in the top floor of an average-looking tenement. He has no bodyguards there, but he has a trained gibbering mouther. Even his lieutenants don’t know that Jirraith is actually a doppelganger.

H5. PORPHYRY HOUSE: A vile whorehouse secretly run by naga mistresses. The whores are actually polymorphed hydra hatchlings.

I2. DOCKMASTER’S TOWER: A strangely-shaped tower that looks out across the Docks. The Dockmaster who lives within maintains all the crew and cargo manifests, inspection reports, and shipping information that pertains to any craft that enters or leaves Ptolus. In fact, an officer from each ship must check in with the Dockmaster immediately upon arrival and immediately before departure. The Dockmaster, however, is grotesquely obese and never leaves the upper level of the tower: He transfers paperwork and messages via a basket on a string outside one window. For anything more, he has a small girl named Secki (age 8) who works for him.

I3. ENNIN HEADQUARTERS: The headquarters of the Ennin slavers (who work with the Pactlords of the Quaan).

Go to Part 5: Using the Ptolus Hexmap

The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft are available in a handsomely compiled e-book from the Arkham Archivist, so there’s never been a better time to read Lovecraft’s original stories if you’ve been depriving yourself until now.

If you’re feeling ambitious and want to read all of Lovecraft, then simply reading the stories in the order that they were written is definitely the way to go: You’ll see the evolution and transition of his ideas in “real time” (so to speak) as the mythology of the Mythos grows up around you. I, personally, find this experience fascinating because, at the beginning of his career, Lovecraft was extremely racist, virulently xenophobic, and cynically terrified of the future. At the end of his career he would certainly not be considered liberal by today’s standards, but his views on all of these subjects had radically shifted and softened. I find Lovecraft’s racism appalling, but I find the totality of his career to be hopeful and uplifting: People can learn. People can get better. People can expand their horizons.

But tackling the complete corpus of Lovecraft is definitely a major undertaking, so it’s understandable if you’d rather just sample his work. For that approach, this is the list I recommend for getting a good overview:

• The Dunwich Horror
• The Call of Cthulhu
• Shadow Over Innsmouth
• The Colour Out of Space
• Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
• At the Mountains of Madness

The order in which you read these six stories doesn’t matter much (although I’d save At the Mountains of Madness until last). But if you read all six you’ll have a pretty good sense of Lovecraft’s breadth, you’ll have experienced most of the “big ideas” that people talk about when they talk about Lovecraft, and you’ll have read a good selection of Lovecraft’s best work.

A case could be made for adding “The Shadow Out of Time” and “The Statement of Randolph Carter” to this list (the latter of which should be read before “Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” if you read both). But I, personally, don’t think they’re as good as the six stories listed above.