Over the past 30 years or so, there’s really no question that dungeon maps have become prettier. For example, here’s part of the map from A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity (published in 1980):

And here’s a similar map from 2008’s Keep on the Shadowfell:

The fancier textures certainly look very nice. And they may tell you a little bit more about what you’re looking at. (The tables are made of wood, for example.) But for the most part, the utility of the map from Keep on the Shadowfell is essentially unchanged from the utility of the simpler maps from two or three decades earlier.

One of the ways in which “pretty” could be turned into functional utility, of course, is if the maps were offered in a format and size at which they could be easily turned into battlemaps and displayed on the table for the players to appreciate and interact with.

But setting that aside, how else could we improve the utility of our dungeon maps? Or, to put it another way, what information could we be coding onto our dungeon maps to make them more useful?

Let’s start with doors.

OPENING DOORS

The humble door:

I don’t know about you, but one of the first things my players want to know when they come to a closed door is: Which way does it open? They want to know if they can get access to the hinges or if they’re going to need to bash it down.

And does it open to the left or right? If people decide to start peeking through it or want to brace it against a nearby wall, these become important issues.

Naturally one can just make a judgment call. But how nice would it be to have this information encoded on the map? (If for no other reason than to make sure it opens the same way when the PCs come back.) It seems like it would be pretty easy.

Ironically, the first module ever published for D&D included this information on the map. Here’s a sample from The Palace of the Vampire Queen, published by Wee Warriors in 1976:

(The circles represent secret or concealed doors.)

So, that’s one option:

We could also simplify that design by removing the swinging arc to leave a simple open angle:

Another option, recently proposed, is Roger’s “Elvis Door“:

I’ll be honest that I’m not much of a fan of the Elvis Door, largely because nothing about it intuitively says “door” to me. And even after staring at it for awhile, I’m not entirely sure I’m reading it correctly. For example, when I look at it in actual practice (on a map designed by Telecanter), I keep trying to read the slant as indicating that the door is being pushed on the slanted side (which I’m fairly certain is actually the exact opposite of what the symbol is supposed to be communicating).

One last option, a simple arrow:

This symbol has the disadvantage of only indicating the direction of the door and not its direction of swing. (Although it might be useful for a door that actually swings up like a garage door.

What are your thoughts? Which symbol (or symbols) seem to intuitively make the most sense to you?

For my mileage, I’m increasingly liking the doors from Palace of the Vampire Queen. I was initially skeptical of the extra arc line, but I’ve found that in actual practice this makes it much easier to use the maps. (Without the arcs, the simple angling line tends to simply “fade” into the rest of the map and disappear.)

Go to Part 2: Stairs

This post is part of the RPG Blog Carnival for Cartography.

More “Fun With Vornheim“, this time dealing with the aftermath of a magical catastrophe.

As a backdrop detail, rumors surge through the city streets about an explosion in the Mages’ Quarter. To determine the aftermath of the explosion, I roll on the “Magic Effects” table on page 60:

“Caster’s body turns to living tarlike substance — cutting, thrusting, and piercing weapons lodge harmlessly in it. Objects must be removed before effect ends or caster dies.”

I’m going to arbitrarily say that happens to (2d100) 38 people, who go rampaging through the streets before getting contained by the town guard.

One of the PCs, however, decides to take a greater interest in the catastrophe. Using the “Contacts” rules from page 39, he knows he has 3 contacts he can tap.

Who are they? We use the City NPCs table on page 50 and we get:

• Brazz the Slow, Hunter: An expert in the geography of the Underforest. He’s suspicious of “top-folk”, but bribe-able.
• Madchen Unwern, Barrister: She will betray anyone who trusts her, then confess and beg for mercy. Enjoys beekeeping and horticulture.
• Deelia Wyrd, Half-Elven Shoemaker: She has an obscure ceremonial obligation to do some strange but subtle ritual at dusk every day. May or may not actually prevent genuine dire mystical consequences. (Let’s say that at dusk each day she must bind the imps to make her shoes. Without that geas placed upon them, the imps would be free to assassinate the Pale Goddess and free the Dark Spirit of the City.)

So the PC starts hitting up his contacts. What do they know? We roll on the “Contacts” table on page 52:

• Brazz: “No, but if you’re interested in that, I have another proposition for you.” (Brazz doesn’t know anything about the explosion in the Mages’ Quarter. But recently he has been encountering animals in the Underforest which have been transformed into similar tar creatures. Most of them seem to be coming out of the Chasm of Blue Fire.)
• Madchen Unwern: Says she doesn’t know and seems afraid to say. (She was approached last week by a wizard who went missing in the explosion. She knows she met with him, but now her files on the case are missing… and so are her memories of the meeting.)
• Deelia Wyrd: “Mmmm… maybe — let me see, can you come back tomorrow?” When the PCs come back, something has happened. (Hmm… I’m not sure. Maybe one of her imps disappeared during the explosion and hasn’t returned? Maybe she can dig up some background details on the wizard who was killed in the explosion? Or she can tap her mystical resources to find a tome describing previous appearances of the tar creatures? Fortunately, I’ve got some time to figure it out.)

That’s what Vornheim: The Complete City Kit has to offer. Pick up a copy and start having fun!

UPDATE: The author of this book has been credibly accused of being a serial abuser and rapist. Although I am leaving this post up, I cannot recommend that anyone purchase this or any of his other works, as he has also demonstrated that he will use income from projects like this to continue harassing his victims.

Continuing our “Fun With Vornheim” series from yesterday, today I’m going to use two of the tools included in Vornheim to create a drama-filled scenario.

First, I’m going to use the “Aristocrats” table on page 46 to create four unique nobles:

• Kyle the Exquisite, who has a peculiar fondness for injured women.
• Lady Orchid the Decapitator, who only derives pleasure from others’ fear.
• Clarissa the Cleaver, who believes the city to be a living entity hostile to her.
• Sasha the Immense, who wants to kill her sister.

Now I flip to the “Connections Between NPCs” chart on page 53 and use it to determine that:

Kyle the Exquisite:

• Is attracted to Sasha the Immense.
• Secretly disguises himself as Clarissa.

Lady Orchid:

• Frightens Clarissa, who believes her to be an agent of the living city.
• Has befriended Kyle the Exquisite.

Clarissa the Cleaver:

• Is Sasha’s sister.

Sasha the Immense:

• Is suspicious of Lady Orchid.

INTERPRETATION AND EXTRAPOLATION

That gives us quite a lot of juicy material, obviously. How can we interpret it and extrapolate from it?

Kyle the Exquisite is a young and decadent nobleman who has been placed in charge of the city’s executioners, who are also known as the Three Grim Ladies: Orchid, Clarissa, and Sasha. He magically disguises himself as Clarissa in order to be near to Sasha, who he secretly loves.

Sasha, who stands eight feet tall due to the giant’s blood in her, doesn’t know about Kyle’s disguise and is incredibly jealous of her sister (who she believes wants to steal Kyle’s affections).

Clarissa gives every appearance of being a beautiful, delicate flower. Many believe that she has been forced into this line of work by her cruel half-sister, Sasha. But the truth is that her timid veneer merely disguises a crazed bloodlust. Recently she has taken to drinking the blood of the prisoners she executes, and these primitive blood rituals have, in fact, connected her to the malevolent Spirit of the City.

Lady Orchid, a minor noblewoman who has been sentenced to duties of penance as an executioner in order to shame her father, has befriended Lord Kyle who is the only person of her true rank she is allowed to associate with. She is right to fear Clarissa, however: The City wants her and her entire family dead.

More Fun With Vornehim: Ca-Tar-Strophe

UPDATE: The author of this book has been credibly accused of being a serial abuser and rapist. Although I am leaving this post up, I cannot recommend that anyone purchase this or any of his other works, as he has also demonstrated that he will use income from projects like this to continue harassing his victims.

Vornheim: The Complete City Kit by Zak S. of Playing D&D With Porn Stars is available for pre-order. And if you pre-order you can immediately download a PDF copy.

Which I did.

I’ve actually been looking forward to Vornheim with the most excitement I’ve felt towards any RPG product since Monte Cook’s Ptolus. I’m not entirely sure why, but every single thing I read about this book mademe say, “Yup. This is something I need to buy.”

I haven’t had a chance to fully digest the book yet, but I am having fun with it. Which is why I’m recommending that you buy a copy for yourself ASAP.

It should be noted that only about half the book is dedicated to describing Vornheim itself (a city from Zak S.’s campaign). But even here pretty much everything is presented in a format which makes it immediately and palpably gameable (a tribute which I think has become strongly undervalued in too many products which are ostensibly supporting roleplaying games). Vornheim has a unique, metal-punk flavor all its own; but even if you don’t use Vornheim itself, you’ll find that it’s easy to grab chunks of it to inject a little weirdness into your own campaigns.

It’s the other half of the book, though, that got me really excited. This is the section where Zak S. lays out a panoply of practical tools for running “urbancrawl” adventures. Stuff like: On-the-fly neighborhood streets. On-the-fly building floorplans. How to leverage the legal system for flexible, entertaining interactions. Rules for searching libraries. NPC generators. Book generators. And on and on and on and on.

Not everything Vornheim presents resonates with me. And I can say with a fair degree of confidence that much of it — perhaps even most of it — will not find its way into my permanent toolkit. But there’s so much of it that even the fraction that does resonate with me and will permanently improve my games makes Vornheim well worth every penny I spent on it.

And because the book presents such a cornucopia of useful material, I can pretty much guarantee you that if you have any interest in running urban-based fantasy at any point in your campaign, then you, too, will find it worth every penny.

One particular tool presented in Vornheim is so cool I’m not entirely sure how to discuss it without spoiling it. You know how useful a properly designed GM screen can be? Well, I’m pretty confident that Zak S. is going to revolutionize the utility and lay-out of my GMing space with what I’m referring to as “GM tablemats”. These are graphical charts which are designed to be rolled on. Not rolled and then consulted: You literally roll dice on the table and the position of the dice immediately feeds you useful information.

In fact, trying to discuss this book without simply spoiling its contents is quite difficult. So instead, let me share its awesomeness by way of example.

FLOORPLAN SHORTCUT

Here’s a floorplan that took me 30 seconds to roll up using the “Floorplan Shortcut” on page 38 of Vornheim:

The “pretty” version of it shown here took me another 4 minutes to quickly map using Dundjinni, but I was able to generate the usable-at-the-table version in less time than it takes to resolve the PC rogue picking the lock on the front door.

A quick flip to the back cover, a roll on the GM tablemat there, and I discover that this is a clockmaker’s house.

More Fun With Vornheim: A Noble Drama

This tip has been updated and revised. The new version can be found here.

A couple rules of thumb I use for crafting evocative descriptions as a GM:

THREE OF FIVE: Think about your five senses. Try to include three of them in each description. Sight is a gimme and a Taste will rarely apply, so that means picking a couple out of Hearing, Smell, and Touch. Remember that you don’t actually have to touch something in order to intuit what it might feel like if you did.

TWO COOL DETAILS: Try to include two irrelevant-but-cool details. These are details that aren’t necessary for the encounter/room to function, but are still cool. It’s the broken cuckoo clock in the corner; the slightly noxious odor with no identifiable source; the graffiti scrawled on the wall; the bio-luminescent fungus; etc.

THREE-BY-THREE: Delta’s 1-2-(3)-Infinity talks about psychological research demonstrating that repeating something three times takes up the same space in our brains as repeating something infinitely. Thus, once you’ve hit the third item in a sequence, any additional items in that sequence are redundant.

Extrapolating from this, for minor scenes you can describe three things each with a single detail. At that point, you’ve filled up the “infinity queue” in your players’ brains and their imaginations will impulsively fill in the finer details of the scene you’ve evoked. For “epic” descriptions, use the full three-by-three: Describe three different elements with three details each.

Like most rules of thumb, of course, none of these should be treated like straitjackets.