Since we’re going to be discussing the Caverns of Thracia extensively as part of the Xandering the Dungeon essays, I finally motivated myself to collect the campaign journal / exploration of OD&D that I wrote in early 2009 so that they could all be accessed through one handy link. Check it out:

Part 1: Character Creation
Part 2: The First Foray
Part 3: Death in the Ruins
Part 4: The Second Party
Part 5: The Final Foray
Part 6: The Second Session
Part 7: The Twin Travails of Thalmain
Part 8: The Massacre of Fire

UPDATE: The following posts also contain thrilling exploits from the dungeon:

The Intemperate Jungle
My Favorite Character Sheet

You might also want to check out the (Re-)Running the Megadungeon essays, which use a behind-the-scenes peek at this campaign as an example of how to properly run a megadungeon.

I believe that dungeons should always be heavily xandered.

…

Okay, it’s true. I’m just making up words now. Recently, though, I’ve been doing some deep dives into the earliest days of D&D. I’ve been reading and running the rules and adventures of those bygone days and discovering — or rediscovering — the amazing work of Arneson, Gygax, and the many, many others who were exploring the brave new world of roleplaying games. When it comes to xandering the dungeon, what I wanted was a word that capture the pioneering dungeon design of Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and, above all, Jennell Jaquays, who designed Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Griffin Mountain, and a half dozen other old school classics for Judges Guild, Chaosium, Flying Buffalo, and TSR. Because a word for that didn’t exist yet, I felt compelled to create one.

This article originally coined a different term. Click here for an explanation.

I first started running Jaquays’ Caverns of Thracia last year. It inspired an entire campaign, and while exploring its depths with my players over the past several months I’ve often found myself ruminating on the mysteries of its labyrinths and trying to unravel why it’s such an utterly compelling and unforgettable adventure. Along the way, I’ve come to the conclusion that everyone should be more familiar with Jaquays’ amazing work, so let’s take a moment to dive deeper into her legendary career and also consider what makes a dungeon adventure like Caverns of Thracia different from many modern dungeon adventures.

After amazing work in tabletop RPGs, Jaquays transitioned into video game design, and in that latter capacity she recently wrote some essays on maps she designed for Halo Wars:

Memorable game maps spring from a melding of design intent and fortunate accidents.
Jennell Jaquays – Crevice Design Notes

That’s timeless advice, and a design ethos which extends beyond the RTS levels she helped design for Halo Wars and reaches back to her earliest work at Judges Guild.

And what Jaquays particularly excelled at in those early Judges Guild modules was non-linear dungeon design.

For example, in Caverns of Thracia Jaquays includes three separate entrances to the first level of the dungeon. And from Level 1 of the dungeon you will find two conventional paths and no less than eight unconventional or secret paths leading down to the lower levels. (And Level 2 is where things start getting really interesting.)

The result is a fantastically complex and dynamic environment: You can literally run dozens of groups through this module and every one of them will have a fresh and unique experience.

But there’s more value here than just recycling an old module: That same dynamic flexibility which allows multiple groups to have unique experiences also allows each individual group to chart their own course. In other words, it’s not just random chance that’s resulting in different groups having different experiences: Each group is actively making the dungeon their own. They can retreat, circle around, rush ahead, go back over old ground, poke around, sneak through, interrogate the locals for secret routes… The possibilities are endless because the environment isn’t forcing them along a pre-designed path. And throughout it all, the players are experiencing the thrill of truly exploring the dungeon complex.

By way of comparison, Keep on the Shadowfell, the introductory adventure for D&D 4th Edition, is an extremely linear dungeon:

(This diagram uses a method laid out by Melan in this post at ENWorld. You can also find a detailed explanation in How to Use a Melan Diagram.)

Some would argue that this sort of linear design is “easier to run”. But I don’t think that’s actually true to any appreciable degree. In practice, the complexity of a xandered dungeon emerges from the same simple structures that make up a linear dungeon: The room the PCs are currently in has one or more exits. What are they going to do in this room? Which exit are they going to take?

In a linear dungeon, the pseudo-choices the PCs make will lead them along a pre-designed, railroad-like route. In a xandered dungeon, on the other hand, the choices the PCs make will have a meaningful impact on how the adventure plays out, but the actual running of the adventure isn’t more complex as a result.

On the other hand, the railroad-like quality of the linear dungeon is not its only flaw. It eliminates true exploration (for the same reason that Lewis and Clark were explorers; whereas when I head down I-94 I am merely a driver). It can significantly inhibit the players’ ability to make meaningful strategic choices. It is, frankly speaking, less interesting and less fun.

So I’m going to use the Keep on the Shadowfell to show you how easy it is to xander your dungeons by making just a few simple, easy tweaks.

Go to Part 2

XANDERING THE DUNGEON
Part 2: Xandering Techniques
Part 3: The Philosophy of Xandering
Part 4: Xandering the Keep on the Shadowfell
Part 5: Xandering for Fun and Profit

Addendum: Dungeon Level Connections
Addendum: Xandering on the Small Scale
Addendum: How to Use a Melan Diagram
Dark Tower: Level Connections

Over the past few days quite a few people have sent me e-mails asking about Legends & Labyrinths, and it looks like my post from earlier today about working on a different project has prompted a fresh series of questions. I talked about this a little bit in the comments a few days ago, but I’ve decided to front page it for people to know what’s going on.

Here’s the situation:

The bulk of the rulebook is finished and is essentially functional. What isn’t done? Primarily the spell and monster lists. The monster creation system also needs to be tweaked some more. Also, final layout and (with layout) the SRS.

In other words, the game is in a completely playable state. (Since it’s 100% compatible with 3rd Edition, you can just use the spells and monsters from the SRD or existing core rulebooks.)

So why hasn’t the book been finished and published? Largely because the interior art portion of the project fell apart and I don’t have the budget to redo it properly. And I’m enough of a perfectionist that if I’m going to do it, then I’m going to do it right. Particularly if I’m expecting people to pay money for it.

Does this mean the project is dead? I hope not. I’ve got a couple of ideas about how to raise the funds for the interior art, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to tell y’all something soon.

But the one resolution I’ve taken away from the clusterfuck that happened around L&L is that I’m not going to talk about a product until it is 100% done and ready to go. I do this work for love on a shoestring budget. And hearts and shoestrings both have a reputation for breaking.

So, once I have something concrete, you’ll be the first to know. And if I ever believe that L&L is never going to happen (which would depress me terribly), I’ll also let you know.

But beyond that, I hope you’ll all bear with me while I do my best to avoid doing a Harlan Ellison impression.

I was never really able to take the ENnie Awards seriously after they nominated the truly god-awful Pit of Loch-Durnan as Best Adventure in 2001: This early D20 product featured truly gorgeous cover art, but everything else about it — the interior art, the layout, the cartography, the NPCs, the “plot” — was atrocious. Imagine the opinion you’d have of a new film award that nominated Gigli for Best Picture in its first year of existence and you’d have a pretty accurate gauge for my opinion of the ENnies.

Recently, however, I’ve found myself thinking that the ENnies have probably refurbished their reputation in my eyes. It took the better part of a decade, but the stink had definitely worn off.

(You can see where this is going, right?)

The 2010 ENnie Nominees were named a couple days ago. And I’m sorry but this:

Does not deserve to be shortlisted as Best Cartography of the Year. Not even as an honorable mention. To do so is to, once again, turn the ENnies into a joke.

Allow me to be crystal clear on the nature of my complaint: There’s nothing inherently wrong with these maps. They’re clean, clear, and functional. (Quibble: The fact that the direction of north switches between the first and second maps is unnecessarily confusing and will almost certainly result in GMs having the PCs enter through the wrong door.) They aren’t bad maps. I mean, if I thought they were bad maps I’d have to look at my own maps from The Complex of Zombies and take myself out back for a good horse-whipping:

There’s nothing wrong with functional, workman-like cartography. But there’s a reason that “workman-like” and “award-winning” aren’t synonymous.

On a more positive note, the adventure this cartography is taken from — Death Frost Doom — is very good. It’s a little rough around the edges, but provides the raw material for an incredibly evocative and haunting experience. If it had been nominated as Best Adventure it wouldn’t have even made my eyebrows waggle. It probably would have even gotten a nod of satisfied approval. I recommend that everybody reading this check it out.

I think the most charitable interpretation of what happened here is that the judges for the ENnies recognized Death Frost Doom‘s general quality as an adventure and ended up looking around for a category to stick it into so that it would be “properly” acknowledged. This is slightly better than being swayed by a pretty cover wrapped around dreck, but is still pretty questionable behavior for any awards program that wants to be taken seriously. It tarnishes the credibility of the awarding body’s judgment, calling into question the value of the awards lists in judging quality, and thus obviating the entire point of an award in the first place.

Buy this. It’s good.

It looked absolutely nothing like this.

I usually don’t get heavy into personal biography around here, but I got married on Saturday. On the Wednesday before that, my brother and best man ran a session of OD&D for my small bachelor party. By means of celebrating my wedding, here are some highlights:

(1) John H. rolled up a cleric with 4 Intelligence. In addition to taking everything hilariously literally, he was also convinced that he was actually a wizard. (Even going so far as to dress up in pointy hat with stars on it.) He carried two wands — his small wand was a stick he’d found on the ground; his big wand was a mace (“a big stick with a big metal star”). Although he couldn’t cast any spells (being a 1st-level cleric), Andrew H.’s charcter (who was a magic user) would cast spells for him, thus supporting his delusion.

(2) David P. played Enriquill. Enriquill was a dashing fellow who insisted that the true joy of adventuring could only be found in “savoring the finer things”. For example, the exquisite delicacy which are the sightless eyeballs of giant bats. (He would also sample cave moss and lichen, leading us to discover the crude goblin carvings describing three pits as “Deep”, “Deeper”, and “Deepest”.) When Enriquill died towards the end of the evening, with his dying breath he gasped, “Eat my eyeballs…”

And we did.

(3) I played Matharl, a dwarf with golden eyes, silver skin, and copper hair (which he would cut once every three months for the profit). Matharl had once been a member of the Doge City of the Imperial Emperor 362. (Yes, the 362nd Doge City of the Dwarven Empire. We have delved deep. And wide. And also invested heavily in surface real estate.) But after contracting the metallo curse, he was exiled.

(4) We also had a newbie at the table who had never played an RPG before. He rolled some truly amazing ability scores, but then balanced out his luck by rolling a 3 on 3d6 to garner only 30 gp in starting cash. Trying to buy decent starting equipment with such meager funds was an exercise the whole table contributed to. We eventually got him decent armor (leather) and a weapon, but ran out of money before we could get him rations.

(5) Our newbie had also shown up late, so the rest of us were already in the dungeon. Our DM decided to start the newbie back at town. When he was presented with, “You’re in town. And out of food. What do you do?” His response was, literally, “Wait… This is how we do this?”

He was pretty consistently awesome throughout the entire evening. A little too eager to leap head-long down dungeon passages, but Matharl eventually resigned himself to that by simply keeping his ass as far back as he possibly could while the suicidal little runt went on his rampages.

(6) I say “runt” because in filling out his character sheet our newbie had created a 342 year old, 4′ 3″ , 184 pound human named Rico Suave. (Ricky II.) This was good, goofy fun. It was also great because the upper level of the DM’s dungeon was composed of tight passages that we were forced to crawl through (with branching tunnels that we eventually found led to the Deep, Deeper, and Deepest shafts mentioned above). While he’d insisted that everyone except my dwarf would be forced to remove their armor while crawling through these cramped passags, Rico Suave had inadvertently ended up being shorter and weighing less than I did. Ergo, he, too, was able to keep his armor on. This allowed us to travel down the passages front-to-back

(7) This prevented a repeat performance of an early disaster in which gremlins — little green balls with red-veined legs — had savaged Rico Suave from behind and stolen his food. Actually, that encounter probably would have ended okay if I hadn’t set the tunnel on fire.

(8) The session started when we received a mission from the sultan to rescue his harem. (A perfect scenario for a bachelor party game.) He offered us a 1,000 gp reward and then gave us the intel he had received from a palace guard who had followed the “swarthy, humanoid kidnappers” to a cave 4 days from the city. We couldn’t question the guard because the sultan had killed him to keep slanderous rumors from spreading about the loss of his harem…

… Matharl instantly realized that if the sultan was willing to kill his own guard for having even less information than we would once we returned the harem, that we probably wouldn’t be seeing that reward. On the other hand, there were 8 beautiful harem girls in a cave.

Before leaving town, though, we made a point of spreading rumors all over town that the sultan had lost his harem. We even mentioned the reward and the location of the cave. We figured there was a pretty good shot that other adventurers might show up, clear out the upper levels, and leave us with a clear shot at the harem girls.

(9) That didn’t happen, but it did set up the scenario by which Rico Suave joined the party. The DM staged a scene in which Rico Suave heard our 4 Int pseudo-wizard talking about the 1,000 gp reward. When he later showed up, though, we managed to convince both him and the 4 Int wizard that the reward was only 500 gp. (But  we would totally split it evenly with them.)

THE BIG FINISH

After several perilous delves, we descended the Deepest shaft and found a metal plate. We knocked loudly and waited. When it opened, a pair of glowing eyes peered out from the darkness below. I wanted to know what it was, so I dropped my torch. The DM ruled that it landed pointy-end first, rolled for max damage, and ended up having the torch skewer the furry goblinoid straight through the forehead. He plopped down dead.

Rico Suave, naturally, leapt down to the corpse. He yanked the torch free and then looked around… to find himself surrounded by a ring of more furry goblinoids and several ettins, all looking at him in complete shock. Rico Suave looked up, “Uh… guys. There are a lot of them down here. I think–”

And then he was torn limb from limb.

Thinking quickly, Matharl called out in goblin, “Quick! Over this way! The vile murderer has jumped down this shaft!”

I was able to convince the ettins and goblins that Rico Suave had killed my father. We had pursued him into these caves seeking vengeance, which we were grateful they had given to us. They offered me the honor of chopping off his head. Which I did.

It turned out that they were in a celebratory mood themselves, having recently “fulfilled the prophecy” by sending a band to the “surface of the daybringer’s bright light” to capture “the veiled ones”. We managed to get ourselves invited back to a celebratory feast of prime Rico Suave meat. (Enriquill: “Always enjoy the finer things.”)

When we got to the feasting chamber, we found four of the harem girls huddled in a corner and quickly confirmed that the other four had already been eaten. (Apparently the dwarf girl was a good cook and had been forced to cook her friends.) Rico Suave wasn’t quite enough meat for all of us, so the ettins were getting ready to sacrifice another harem girl to the pot.

Matharl, thinking quickly, offered to first perform a sacred ritual of his people to thank the humanoids for fulfilling his vengeance and to bless their feast. Although one of the ettins fell to arguing with itself over the matter and one of the goblins looking a little suspicious, Matharl convinced them to kneel in a circle around the cooking fire. He said that the ritual would bring the power of the daystar into their hearts and then doused them with the holy oil.

And by “holy oil”, I mean “highly flammable oil”.

With the monsters doused, everybody lowered their torches and started a bonfire.

As we were leading the harem girls out, we discovered that some cryptic remarks the ettins had made earlier actually referred to sea serpents and green gelloid monsters. It was during the final battle against these creatures, holding the line while the harem girls escaped, that Enriquill fell.

But we emerged largely victorious. And since Enriquill was dead, we each had a harem girl for ourselves. Since the girls were pretty certain that the sultan was almost certainly going to kill us (even if we hadn’t let four of the girls get eaten before we saved them), and they weren’t particularly enthusiastic about going back to him anyway, we decided that we’d heard some wonderful things about the city of Waterdeep.

(The DM was surprised to learn that we had been in the Forgotten Realms this entire time.)

FURTHER READING
Reactions to OD&D
OD&D in the Caverns of Thracia