The D&D 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide introduced a new Bastion system, giving PCs the opportunity to create personal strongholds. To briefly sum up the Bastion system:

1. Your bastion is made up of facilities which can (a) be ordered to provide a special benefit and (b) include a number of hirelings. (Some facilities will also let you recruit defenders.)
2. A bastion turn is 7 days. On each turn, you can issue orders to any/all of your facilities.
3. If you DON’T issue any orders to your bastion, then a bastion event is rolled.

Each PC automatically gets a bastion at 5^th level. All or any of the PCs in a group can choose to combine their bastions into a single physical location. PCs gain additional facilities at 9^th, 13^th, and 17^th level.

You can’t spend money to make new facilities, but some facilities can be enlarged by spending 2,000 gp and you can swap one facility for a different facility each time you level up.

If your bastion is attacked (as part of a bastion event, for example), then:

1. You automatically defeat your enemy.
2. Lose 6d6 defenders.
3. If you end up with 0 defenders, then one of your facilities has been damaged and can’t be used for one bastion turn.

The bastion facilities mostly avoid dissociated crap, but there are a handful of hilarious exceptions, such as:

• Performing a play to gain +d6 to any later d20 roll of your choice.
• Expert skill trainers who can make you proficient in skills, but only for 7 days.
• Warrior lieutenants who won’t defend your bastion if it’s attacked, but CAN raise armies for you. (The armies also won’t defend your bastion.)

Overall, though, the Bastion system is meaty. It packs a lot of stuff into just twenty pages. I’m also a big fan of the conceit of “assume your bastion has a complex economy that usually breaks even.” It immediately knocks out a bunch of bookkeeping that can keep people from wanting to interact with systems like this. (It would probably work even better if the system was more explicit in (a) stating this conceit and (b) embracing it in the design. For example, you could have bastion events that could include stuff like “Shortfall — this month you’re in the red; what are you going to do about thast?” But I digress.)

Perhaps the most important feature, in my opinion, is that PCs automatically gain that bastion stuff when they level up. I’ve long argued that if you want strongholds to be a core part of the D&D experience, then you need to go back to the PCs getting them as an automatic perk. If the players see a cool toy on the list of stuff they when they level up, they’ll want to go play with their toys.

Which would then, ideally, position the DM to use the group’s bastion(s) to create cool adventure hooks, complications, and evolving narratives. And, simultaneously, the players would be set up to use their bastions to cleverly solve problems, set goals for themselves, and explore new opportunities for their characters.

Unfortunately, those hooks and opportunities don’t exist. In fact, because of how the system is designed, they can’t exist.

THE BASTION BUBBLE

The problem is that bastions have been designed to exist in a bubble.

The advantage of this bubble is that you can have bastion play without changing the way you run campaigns: It’s a downtime action PCs can take without taking a break from adventuring. Bastions are a little solo game that the players run off to the side that occasionally pops out a healing potion.

The problem, though, is that the bubble also means that there’s no clear vector for integrating bastions into your campaign:

• there’s no way to level up from doing Bastion stuff; and
• there’s no way to improve your bastion without leveling up.

As written, the DM can’t say, “Go on this adventure and your Bastion will get this cool improvement!” And a player can’t say, “I want this cool improvement for my Bastion, how can I make that happen?”

Meanwhile, bastion events are all designed to be neat, tidy, and basically resolve themselves. (If they mad a mess, after all, the PCs might have to stop following the plot and go clean it up!) So the system also doesn’t generate adventure hooks.

It’s not just that the Bastion system doesn’t plug into or generate adventure content. It’s designed to actively REPEL attempts to do so: Nothing goes in. Nothing comes out. (Except the gachapon prizes.)

This is why bastion events only trigger when the PCs aren’t home (and don’t issue any orders).

It’s why defenders and hirelings don’t have stat blocks: You can’t take a hireling with you on an adventure. You can’t join your defenders in fighting to protect your bastion.

It’s even why the bastion economy is kept entirely separate from the PCs’ money. (And don’t worry your pretty little heads about any of the details.)

And even though it’s never explicitly said, it’s also why it’s strongly implied that if the PCs have retreated to their bastion, then they should be left alone.

The campaign is over here. The bastion is over there. Stay in your lane.

Okay, but can’t we just burst this bubble?

Even if the Dungeon Master’s Guide says that we can’t, that doesn’t we couldn’t, for example, reward the PCs with a new bastion facility.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. To use the example of facility rewards, consider how many facilities each PCs from leveling up: Two at 5^th level; two more at 9^th; once more at 13^th; and one more at 17^th.

Assume we have a group with five PCs who have their bastions physically united: At 5^th level, when they get their bastions, they’ll have a total of ten facilities… but there are only nine Level 5 facilities. Similarly, at 9^th level they’ll get +10 facilities, with only ten Level 9 options to “choose” between.

While you can duplicate facilities and a few of them have benefits that would make that worthwhile, you can see how, in a pretty typical group, there are no hard choices when it comes to the group’s collective bastion. Your players can just say, “One of each, please!”

As analogy, imagine that PCs automatically got magic items when leveling up. In fact, they get so many magic items from leveling up that they can have one of every single magic item in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. If that were true, it would be quite difficult to motivate the PCs with the promise of a magic item. And the same thing happens with bastion facilities.

You can work around the edges a little bit here. For example, as I mentioned, there are some bastion facility upgrades. You could expand the number of meaningful upgrades available and offer them. You could create new facilities. You could also play around with the idea of granting access to level-gated facilities.

There’s other stuff we can do, too: We could create stat blocks for our hirelings and defenders. We could replace the bastion event triggers and revise the whole system into something that the PCs can meaningfully interact with. But it turns out the bastion bubble is baked in pretty deep and, if we want to burst it, we would need to rip a lot of stuff out and rebuild it.

CONCLUSION

The bastion bubble is, ultimately, rooted in a more significant and widespread problem with the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide: The lack of a clear vision of play.

If the Bastion system, for example, had been built with a clear vision of play in mind, then we would expect Wizards of the Coast to write their upcoming adventures/campaigns with the Bastion system in mind: Since we’re assuming that all PCs will have them, we should logically account for them in our prep and expectations.

I suspect, however, that this will not be the case, for much the same reason that — while most of the sample adventures in the Dungeon Master’s Guide feature overland travel — only one of them actually uses the Journey system that’s presented as the scenario structure for that. (And this despite the fact that, unlike the bubble of the Bastion system, the Journey system has a clear integration with play!)

This is also why the Bastion system has some weird level-gating. Some of these are inexplicable. (Why, for example, can’t you run a Pub until you’re 13^th level?) Others, however, are pretty clear-cut: Since there’s no clear vision of play — of how the Bastion system is supposed to actually work at the table — anything requiring novel or challenging storytelling — like leading an army or running a guild — is just dropkicked to a high enough level that Wizards, whose campaigns that virtually all end at 15^th level or before, can just shrug and say, “Not our problem. Figure it out yourself.”

This is why I think the Bastion system will, unfortunately, just wither on the vine. And I strongly suspect that, rather than the ideal outcome of Bastion-based adventures, we’ll instead see a worst-case scenario. Like the half-formed downtime mechanics in the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide, this half-functional Bastion system will only become an impediment to people trying to implement better and fully functional solutions.

You’ll see a lot of people trying to implement, say, Trollskull Manor from Dragon Heist in the system and getting stuck.

Which is too bad, because there’s something almost brilliant about the Bastion system. And I do think that, thanks to their automatic acquisition, we’ll see a lot of groups, possibly even a majority of groups, using strongholds, something which hasn’t been true since the ‘80s (which, not coincidentally, is the last time they were a core part of the D&D rules).

In truth, I hope to be proven wrong here. I think it would be marvelous for Bastions to burst out of their bubble.

For that to happen, though, someone will need to find the thing that strongholds in D&D have always struggled to find: A clearly understood structure and vision of play.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 43A: Scouting Porphyry House

They knew that Porphyry House was engaged in illicit as well as salacious trade, and they doubted the cultists were bringing their other business brazenly through the front door. There had to be a second, surreptitious entrance somewhere.

Probably underground.

Probably in the sewers.

So what’s happening at the beginning of this session is that, after giving up on the idea of finding an entrance to Porphyry House through the sewers at the end of last session, the players almost immediately worked their way back around to the same conclusion: There must be an entrance through the sewers!

There isn’t.

Whereas the PCs’ scouting in the last session was still taking them interesting places (because they were following paths to interesting things, even if their reasons for doing so were erroneous), we’ve now reached the point where they’re really just ramming their faces into a wall. It’s like searching a dungeon room you’ve already searched three times and hoping you’ll find something new, only at a slightly larger scale.

So, as a GM, what do you do about this?

Well, I actually have an article about this: Random GM Tips — Driving Past the Dead End.

They eventually found their way to the right area beneath Porphyry House… but found nothing except a few impassable pipes which might (or might not) lead into the House.

By the time they re-emerged from the sewers, evening was settling in and they were reminded that they had an appointment with Rehobath in the not-too-distant future. They decided to leave and try again the next day, and on their way back to the Ghostly Minstrel laid out a plan to magically tunnel their way into the house from below (if they could figure out exactly where they should be digging).

What you’re seeing reflected in the campaign journal here is a very hard frame — the time spent at the table is minimal, while the time that passes in the campaign world is significant. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it would have been along the lines of, “Okay, going down into the sewers you begin exploring. You’re right in the heart of where the older sewer systems in the Warrens meet the newer systems of the Guildsman District and it’s all a chaotic jumble. You eventually find your way to the area right under Porphyry house, but there’s nothing there except drainage pipes.”

To break this down, there are four key components:

• I’m shifting from Now Time to Abstract Time. (There’s no reason to, for example, play out a tunnel-by-tunnel exploration of the sewers because there’s nothing meaningful to find and no meaningful choices to be made during that exploration.)
• The PCs are still doing the thing that the players want them to do. (I’m not saying, “No, you can’t search the sewers.”)
• The passage of time is significant. (I’ve talked about handling the passage of time through a mental model of Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Overnight. In this case, they spent their afternoon on the sewer search, thus the frame of, “By the time they re-emerged from the sewers, evening was settling in…” This is further reinforced because they have an evening appointment.)
• Their action has a concrete conclusion. (They didn’t just “not find an entrance to Porphyry House.” Their efforts resulted in them finding the point closest to Porphyry House. The distinction is subtle, but distinct: The former says “maybe you missed something, so you could look again.” The latter says, “you succeeded in your search and this is what you found, even if it isn’t what you wanted to find.”)

We have, thus, spent only a couple minutes of our valuable table time on this interaction. And while the players feel that they’ve been allowed to do the thing they wanted to do, they’re also been pushed away from the idea of “let’s just search again” because (a) the result has been framed as a definitive answer to their query and (b) we’ve also established that it will cost them a significant resource (time) to continue pursuing this.

Now, as you’ll see in the journal entries for the rest of this session, the players nevertheless did continue masticating this idea, intermittently discussing their options while pursuing other agendas. They really wanted a discreet entrance to Porphyry House. But rather than just boiling away table time fruitlessly searching the sewers, they instead turned their thoughts to more creative solutions: First by hatching the idea of drilling up into Porphyry House from the section of sewer they had identified as lying under the whorehouse, and then by refining that idea into stoneshaping through the rear wall of the building.

So, in short, I’m making a note here, “Huge success.”

Campaign Journal: Session 43B – Running the Campaign: D&D is Educational
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 43A: SCOUTING PORPHYRY HOUSE

October 25th, 2009
The 23rd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Porphyry House stood on one end of an open plaza in the Guildsman’s District near the Warrens facing a large, dilapidated open-air rotunda which stood along the Old Sea Road near East Street. It was an elegant, two-story structure constructed of dark purple and mauve porphyry. Minarets rose from each of the buildings’ four corners, and a central dome served as the roof. Its façade was decorated with several statues, bas-reliefs, and other carvings of handsome men and beautiful women (many of them striking a variety of lewdly suggestive poses).

The plaza itself was sparsely populated. A small band of jugglers was performing near the rotunda, and a few others were lazing here or there. No one seemed to be approaching the brothel itself (it was, after all, still the middle of the day), but a pair of guards – one male, one female, and both quite attractive – stood before the large pair of golden doors leading into Porphyry House. These guards were dressed in purple ceremonial full plate, which was both form-fitting and revealing of more skin than would normally seem practical. Their faces were masked by helmets with white porcelain masks depicting beautiful and handsome faces. The doors themselves were fully fifteen feet tall and featured detailed carvings depicting a frenzied orgy.

The party was impressed, but not daunted. Elestra transformed into a bird and performed a discreet aerial survey: She found no secondary entrances and no windows. Even the minarets appeared to be decoratively constructed out of solid rock. The only way in or out of the building seemed to be the front doors.

They thought about simply sending Agnarr through the doors looking for all the world as if he were a customer, but rejected the plan when they considered their fair degree of fame. If he was recognized by the cultists, that could horribly wrong.

“It might not work anyway,” Ranthir said. “They may not take walk-ins.”

“How do you know something like that?” Elestra asked, eying him up and down.

“I come from a city.”

“I come from a city,” Tee said. “I don’t know stuff like that.”

“They may not take customers at all,” Tor said. “I think the whole thing is a front.”

Ranthir agreed it was a front, “But to be one it must take customers. It would be suspicious if they turned away custom.”

Tee agreed. “And it probably makes a lot of money.”

Agnarr was glad the infiltration plan had been abandoned. “Tor and I could just sneak up on those guards and stab them from the side. They’ve got poor periphery vision in those helmets. They won’t see us coming.”

“Where did you learn a word like ‘periphery’?” Elestra asked, eying him up and down.

“What about everyone else in the plaza?” Tor asked. “Won’t they see us?”

“Not if we’re subtle.”

“So… everyone will notice?”

“Where did you learn a word like ‘subtle’?” Elestra asked.

They knew that Porphyry House was engaged in illicit as well as salacious trade, and they doubted the cultists were bringing that other business brazenly through the front door. That meant there must be a secondary, surreptitious entrance somewhere. Probably underground. Probably through the sewers.

They found a nearby sewer entrance at East Street and Hogshead and went down to explore. Unfortunately, they were right in the heart of the multi-layered interstice where the older sewer systems of the Warrens met the newer systems and it was all a chaotic, jumbled mess. If their senses of direction had held true, they eventually found their way to the area right beneath Porphyry House… but found nothing except a few impassable pipes which might (or might not) lead into the House.

ON HOLY BUSINESS

By the time they re-emerged from the sewers, evening was settling in and they were reminded that they had an appointment with Rehobath in the not-too-distant future. They decided they needed to leave and try again the next day, and on their way back to the Ghostly Minstrel laid out a plan to magically tunnel their way into the house from below (if they could figure out exactly where they should be digging).

At the Ghostly Minstrel they used the paving stones they had taken from the Temple of the Ebon Hand to quickly clean themselves, but didn’t worry themselves beyond the bare necessities (they were only meeting with Rehobath, after all). On their way through Oldtown, they took a short side-trip to the alley on Yarrow Street and spoke with Shim. They suspected that once the cultists learned that both the Temple of the Rat God and the Temple of Ebon Hand had been raided, their security precautions would skyrocket. They wanted to attack Porphyry House before that could happen, and the most effective way to do that was to find the cultists’ secondary entrance as quickly as possible. If anyone could do that, they felt it would be Shim. They introduced him to Nasira and got down to business.

“So let me get this straight,” Shim said when they had finished their explanation. “You want me to find a secret entrance to a brothel?”

“As quickly as possible, yes,” Tee said.

“And quietly,” Ranthir said. “We don’t want them to know we’re coming.”

“You’re looking for a discreet rush job on a whore house?”

“It sounds unsavory when you put it like that.”

“Could you keep using adjectives?” Shim said. “I like nice, expensive adjectives.”

They hashed out some surprisingly reasonable terms. Shim promised to bring them whatever he found first thing in the morning.

Throughout the conversation, however, Tor’s thoughts had been distracted by their upcoming meeting with Rehobath. They didn’t know what he wanted, but if their connection with Sir Kabel had been discovered then there was every possibility that they were walking into a trap.

So Tor asked Shim: “Do you have any idea why Rehobath might want to meet with us?”

“Fifty gold crowns.”

Tor shrugged and paid it.

“I’d guess it probably has something to do with your friend Dominic.”

Which it did.

They arrived at the Holy Palace to find it now staffed with servants in the livery of the novarch. The entire building was filled with a greater sense of pomp and circumstance than when Tor had first visited it only a few days before. They were led down a long hall upon a carpet of red and gold, passing between the great curves of two balustraded stairways, and through a door into the minimalist grandeur of Rehobath’s throne room.

When they arrived, Rehobath was surrounded by a number of functionaries. But he sent these away and spoke with them privately, keeping only a few guards at the far end of the hall.

“You have heard, I am sure, of what your friend Dominic has done?” Rehobath said, eyeing them with either suspicion or calculation.

The news was all over the city, so there seemed little risk in admitting it.

Rehobath gave them a report from one of his “house servants” (in other words, one of his spies). It detailed Dominic’s appearance in Empress Square the day before in much greater detail than the news reports they had been able to collect themselves.

“Did you know this was going to happen?” Rehobath demanded.

“Of course not,” Tor said.

“It doesn’t even sound like something that Dominic would say,” Tee said.

(“Well, maybe that last bit,” Elestra muttered.)

Rehobath looked sharply at her. “You think he may have fallen under the control of the traitors?”

“Perhaps,” Tee said. “Or it might not be Dominic at all. It could be an impostor. Or an illusion.”

“Yes…” Rehobath said, his eyes drifting into shrewd thoughtfulness. “That will serve… It might even be true.”

With a final nod, Rehobath changed the topic to the Banewarrens. They gave him a mildly edited account of their progress (particularly neglecting to mention the details of the legend lore spell Ranthir had cast). When Rehobath learned that they were waiting for a wish spell, however, he promised to expedite the matter with Heth Neferul.

From the moment they passed into the Holy Palace, Nasira’s nervousness had grown. Who, exactly, had she agreed to work with? And why did they seem so close to this freshly-minted novarch? Were they truly allies of Rehobath? But as their conversation continued, she became more convinced that the others were playing at some deeper agenda. At the very least, their travails together had instilled her with some trust of them. She would wait to hear their explanation.

Running the Campaign: It’s Gotta Be Here! – Campaign Journal: Session 43B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Review Originally Published February 7th, 2001

The Spear of the Lohgin is a dark horror module for D&D developed under the D20 Trademark License by Paradigm Concepts, a newcomer to the gaming industry who plans to release further D20 adventures and a completely separate game called Pulp in the near future. The Spear of the Lohgin is the first in a trilogy which Paradigm is calling the Canceri Chronicles (which is, itself, the first installment of a trilogy, to be followed by the Milandir and Coryani Chronicles). That being said, The Spear of the Lohgin stands just fine by itself. (No, really, it does – I’m not just saying that.)

Although plagued with editorial problems and a host of execution errors, the core of The Spear of the Lohgin is an extremely evocative, fairly well-done piece of horror. It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but worth the effort.

PLOT

Warning: From this point forward, this review will contain spoilers for The Spear of the Lohgin. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

Several hundred years ago, the Lohgin family was a noble house favored by the god Illiir, who gifted them with his own Spear, a weapon engraved with the Word of Illiir itself. The House of Lohgin fell when Jude Lohgin, enraged by his father’s favor falling upon his younger brother Vir, formed a pact with demonic forces, killed his sister-in-law, and began to open a Gate to the realms of the Triumvirate of Dark Gods. Vir, receiving word of his brother’s treachery, returned home and impaled Jude upon the Spear of the Lohgin.

Unfortunately, Vir interrupted his brother just as he opened his Gate – and something came through it uncontrolled, attempting to possess Jude. Seeing his brother torn to shreds by the demon’s rage, Vir felt his faith falter… and the Spear broke in two. Vir fled, leaving the demon trapped – pinned halfway through the Gate by the point of the holy spear. Vir would establish a new town to the south, but the demon would remain… slowly corrupting the land around him.

Centuries pass, and the PCs come on the scene. Someone has stolen the haft of the Spear of the Lohgin (which has become a holy relic), and has taken it back to the Lohgin Stronghold where the evil was done long ago. If they restore the Spear – allowing it to be removed from the demon – then the Gate will open and the land will fall beneath the forces of Dark Gods.

LOW POINTS

The most egregious flaws in The Spear of the Loghin are to be found in the boxed text: For example, I find that boxed text which summarizes an entire conversation (instead of actually letting your PCs have the conversation) is a bad idea. I think that boxed text which makes decisions for the PCs is a bad idea. I even have a sneaking suspicion that you shouldn’t have a big block of boxed text, followed by details about stuff which happens in the middle of the block.

And then there’s the text which has been boxed, which shouldn’t be boxed. And the the text which should have been boxed, but wasn’t.

If I was the suspicious sort, then I would say that this adventure was written without boxed text in mind, and then somebody came in after the fact to add the boxed text and botched the job.

As a final, general note: As I see more and more D20 products, I’m quickly reaching the conclusion that I’m going to get very, very sick of Campaign Cartographer maps. Particularly Campaign Cartographer maps rendered in a meaningless gray scale with strange and incomprehensible symbols which are left utterly unkeyed. If you can afford a really excellent Brom cover and some average to disturbingly good interior art (as Paradigm Concepts apparently can), then find someone who can actually draw a legible map.

HIGH POINTS

I always dread reviewing products whose faults are concrete and whose strengths are ephemeral. It’s so easy to trot out a litany of flaws in such cases, pat oneself on the back, and trot off into the sunset content with the thought you’ve scored some cheap points and come across as incredibly clever.

But to do that wouldn’t be fair to products like the The Spear of the Lohgin. Yes, there are problems with the presentation. Yes, there are some questionable visual elements. Yes, there are some structural deficiencies.

But the The Spear of the Lohgin excels at putting down on the page a visceral, extremely disturbing variety of horror adventure which I haven’t seen in a published D&D product previously. It’s the type of horror which can get away with the graphic depiction of grisly detail, while – at the same time – maintaining an eerie mystery about it all. It’s a “best of both worlds” approach which I find to be extremely effective.

So, yes, there are some accessibility problems here. But I would say that it’s worth the fight to crack this nutshell – because the nut inside is of top quality.

Writer: Jarad Fennell
Publisher: Paradigm Concepts
Price: $9.99
Page Count: 32
ISBN: 1-931374-00-7
Product Code: PCI 1001

I had a weird Mandela Effect with this one. For 20+ years I’ve been convinced this module was called The Spear of Lohgin. It was even written as such in this review. When I went to grab the cover image, though, I discovered that it was, in fact, called The Spear of THE Lohgin. I have no idea how the alternate version of reality became lodged in my brain.

It’s interesting that my past-self wrote about the difficulty of expressing the ephemeral qualities of an adventure like this. Although I could not recount to you any of the specifics of the plot of The Spear of the Lohgin after all these years (and never had a chance to run it), it’s always stuck in my mind as having a very strong VIBE. Re-reading my review has encouraged me to revisit this particular module.

In fact, I’d recommend that you grab a copy, too, but that seems to be curiously difficult. Although the second module in the Canceri Chronicles, Blood Reign of Nishanpur, is still available, for some reason this one is not. Paradigm Concepts’ Arcanis setting went on to be featured in its own RPG in 2011 and featured an incredibly successful living campaign which ran for over a decade and had dozens and dozens of adventures released for it. They won ENnie Awards and Origin Awards. But their website and the Living Arcanis website went quiescent in 2020 and I was about to write that they seem to have quietly slipped away…

… except I just discovered that they’re still active on Facebook, apparently ran events at Origins and Gen Con last year, and also released a new Legends of Arcanis adventure, Things Left Behind, in August 2024. I don’t understand why the News section of their website hasn’t been updated since 2017, but good for them!

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

MAPS

Arneson’s maps for the Castle Blackmoor dungeons are simply fabulous. I’ve previously discussed how incredible the first room of the dungeon is, as well as the terrors of Tanglefuck, but all of the levels are deliciously labyrinthine and intricately xandered. Of particular note is Arneson’s heavy use of diagonal tunnels, which are surprisingly effective at confusing the players’ spatial intuition.

When you reflect that, with these maps, Arneson was doing something that no one else had ever done before, the fact that they nevertheless stand the test of time and still create a completely compelling dungeon experience is a jaw-dropping accomplishment. Blackmoor is, in my opinion, a timeless classic.

In terms of utility, though, the biggest obstacle to using the Blackmoor maps are the unkeyed staircases. There are A LOT of them (which is good), but:

• there is no indication of where each staircase goes;
• staircases can attach to multiple levels; and
• staircases can skip multiple levels before reaching their destination.

For example, consider this section of Level 5:

Figuring out where all these stairs connect is made even more difficult because the maps for different dungeon levels are done at different scales (to accommodate larger levels that otherwise wouldn’t conveniently fit on a single page).

Basically, if you jump into Castle Blackmoor without predetermining how the stairs connect to each other, you’re going to end up slamming your face into the wall in the middle of the session trying to figure it out. Fortunately, DH Boggs at Hidden in Shadows has done a bunch of work on this issue, which you can find at Aligning the Stairs, Shafts, and Elevators in Blackmoor Dungeon.

The other thing to note about the Blackmoor dungeon is the lack of a room key. I pulled a few details from tales told of the infamous dungeon, but mostly I just improvised my descriptions. One of the cool things about the campaign was the way in which improvised details would become unexpected poles of adventure, but my notekeeping system wasn’t designed to record these details. As a result, the dungeon was really “living in my head,” and when COVID created a long break in the campaign and the dungeon was no longer being refreshed in my imagination each week, it fell apart.

Another challenge or crux to be solved when using the Blackmoor dungeons are the tunnel maps. Levels 4 and 5 of the dungeons connect to a much larger network of underground tunnels that run underneath the town and nearby area. Here’s a sample of what these maps look like:

The rectangular dotted line indicates where the Level 4 Dungeon map would “fit” on the tunnel map. What the oblong-shaped set of dotted lines indicates is unclear, but you can also see indications given for where these tunnels connect to the Cemetery, Inn, and Church as seen on the Blackmoor Village Map. Additional areas intersected by the tunnels are indicated, but completely unkeyed in The First Fantasy Campaign.

To deal with this, I started by prepping a version of the Level 4 Tunnel Map that included the Level 4 Dungeon Map:

(This was not necessary for the Level 5 Tunnel Map because there are fewer and less complicated connections to the Level 5 Dungeon Map. Although it’s useful to note that the Level 4 and Level 5 tunnels sometimes intersect the same subterranean areas.)

The next question was figuring out what the various numbered areas were. I decided to grab a couple dozen Dyson Logos maps, stock them with my Arnesonian stocking procedures, and drop them in. This was really fun, and one of my big regrets with the campaign is that my players didn’t do much more than dip their toes into these tunnels.

A final crux was how to handling the stocking of huge number of denizens. Basically, if you use the 1974 D&D rules for randomly generating the number of creatures appearing, you can end up with stuff like 17 ents, 76 dwarves, or 23 hobbits keyed to 10’ x 20’ room. This “horde in a small room” is also a problem with Arneson’s published key — which, for example, includes 32 dwarves in a 5’ x 10’ room — and it’s entirely clear what his intention was or how that would be handled at the table.

I saw basically three options:

1. Revise the # appearing to some reasonable count based on the size of the dungeon.
2. If it makes sense, spread the creatures out through several neighboring rooms.
3. If the stocking procedures indicated an impossible number of creatures in a room, treat the room as the entry point to a sub-level that could t hen be stocked with the indicated creatures.

I wanted to use the original stocking procedures as my guiding light as much as possible, so I discarded #1. I did a little bit of #2 where appropriate, but I generally found #3 the most interesting option.

So I once again grabbed a bunch of Dyson Logos maps. In this case, though, I just stuck the blank maps into a folder labeled “Sub-Levels.” When the PCs reached a location that required a sub-level, I would grab a map semi-randomly from the folder and slot it in.

My seed key for the Blackmoor Dungeons, by chance, mostly had these sub-levels generated on the lower levels, so I ended up only developing two or three of these in actual play. But it was a fun way to make the Blackmoor Dungeons my own, and the mixture of Dyson’s mapping with Arneson’s was an interesting change of pace.

ENCOUNTER DIE

In my Blackmoor campaign I also used an encounter die mechanic, as detailed in the Blackmoor Player’s Reference. This was not an Arnesonian technique, but something I adapted from OSR mechanics, most notably Courtney Solomon’s hazard die.

The basic concept is that, instead of rolling 1d6 per turn and generating a random encounter on a roll of 1, you roll 1d6 per turn and each die result has a different effect:

• Encounter
• Monster Sign
• Torches Burn
• Torches & Lanterns Burn
• Rest
• Dungeon Effect / Trap

The idea is that this eliminates a bunch of timekeeping activities, instead loading everything onto a single die roll that you were going to make anyway.

My verdict?

It sucked.

Because something is always happening, every dungeon turn got bogged down in some random bookkeeping. It was a mood- and pace-killing source of constant annoyance.

I ended up dropping the system entirely after a few sessions, and I don’t recommend it.

GROUP VENTURES

Fairly early in the campaign, due to a confluence of events, a group of PCs ended up taking over the local church in Blackmoor. This created an unexpected group venture, and managing that group venture in an open table created logistical issues for which I didn’t find a satisfactory solution before the campaign ended.

The problem, in short, was that there was church-related development and church-related adventures that these PCs wanted to pursue. But because they were all in it together, they wanted to resolve these activities only when they were playing together.

Additional complications were added because some of the activities they wanted to pursue — throwing a big festival to celebrate the rededication of the church; proselytizing to other communities around Blackmoor — both required special prep from me and also had a wide impact on the entirety of Blackmoor.

The result was this tight nugget of activity in bespoke sessions that could also create a weird pattern of lockouts in the rest of the open table. It probably would have worked out OK if these three players had ben able to get together on a regular basis, but there were A LOT of scheduling problems and cancellations. (Which were then further complicated by the COVID pandemic and lockdowns.)

As I say, this is a problem did not actually solve before the campaign came to an end. But figuring out how to handle group ventures like this in the future is definitely on my To Do list for future open tables.

FURTHER READING
Reactions to OD&D: The Arnesonian Dungeon
Reactions to OD&D: Arneson’s Machines

The Blackmoor Cruxes
Reactions to OD&D