The concept of the depthcrawl was created by Emmy “Cavegirl” Allen for The Gardens of Ynn and The Stygian Library. It’s a method for procedurally generating exploration-oriented pointcrawls with a strong sense of progression into a vast, unknowable domain. Allen, in particular, uses the concept to great effect in creating feyish, non-liminal spaces, but I think it can be put to good effect in almost any number of ways.

WHAT YOU PREP

To create a depthcrawl generator, you need to prep:

• Locations
• Details
• Events
• Encounters

Each of these will be listed on separate random generation tables. The size of these tables, the number of entries appearing on them, and the organization of those entries will depend on both the desired scope of your depthcrawl and the specific depthcrawl procedure you set up (see below). You may also find it useful to create additional procedural generation tools — for example, The Stygian Library has a table of random tomes — but these are not strictly necessary and will depend on the particulars of your scenario.

LOCATIONS are the core element of each point in your pointcrawl. You can go very generic with these, perhaps offering nothing more than a label or a few words of description (e.g., “grove,” “stream,” etc.). But I think you’ll have better results if you provide at least some degree of specificity. A simple example might be something like this:

AN ANCIENT TREE

A tree at least two or three times larger than those which surround it. Its bark is intricately carved with arcane runes which glow blue during the day and crimson red at night. Close inspection reveals that several of these runes have been marred, rendering them unreadable.

But even higher levels of detail are certainly possible, perhaps ranging all the way up to providing a small map of a dungeon, cave, or building.

DETAILS either add to or somehow twist the nature of locations. These might be individual elements (e.g., a lamp-post or Jarcani runes) or they could be broadly thematic (e.g., lurid light or clockwork parts), with the former generally being additions to the scene and the latter usually altering it.

For example, if you combined “abandoned mansion” with “lamp-post,” that probably means that there’s a lamp-post at the mansion — perhaps quite naturally in front of it; or perhaps oddly standing in the middle of the dining room. On the other hand, “clockwork parts” might transform a “forest grove” into a technomantic marvel of mechanical trees and steampunk critters.

EVENTS are active elements that are either taking place in the location when the PCs arrive or which will happen while they are there. You generally want to avoid specificity here, instead indicating a broad type of event, so that events can be repeated again and again — transformed by their immediate circumstance — without the depthcrawl becoming repetitive.

The exception is any element of the setting which should be repetitive. For example, if there are strange crystalline pylons which float throughout the area and periodically send a pulse of light straight up into the sky… well, the arrival of a pylon is probably a good candidate for an event.

Another trick is to use an event to trigger specificity from a different random generator, such as your encounter tables. For example:

TWO FACTIONS ENGAGE

Roll twice on the Encounter Table to determine which creatures are present. Then roll on the Reaction Table to determine what their current relationship is (friendly, uncertain, or hostile).

Or:

MAGICAL GATE OPENS

Roll a random Location to which the gate leads. On a roll of 1, it instead operates as a sphere of annihilation.

ENCOUNTERS are a standard check and table for wandering monsters. You could flesh this out into a more robust generator (adding a reaction check, % lair, or other such things that seem appropriate), but you really want these to be procedural encounters, not designed encounters. You want to be able to inject these denizens freely into any number of situations.

CREATING LOCATIONS

The magic at the core of the depthcrawl is taking a location, detail, event, and (optionally) an encounter and weaving them together to create something unique. So if you prep twenty locations, twenty details, and twenty events, you don’t end up with twenty options, you end up with eight thousand options.

And really it’s even more than that because there are lots of different ways to interpret each combination of elements.

For example, let’s say you roll up:

• Location: Ancient Tree
• Detail: Clockwork Parts
• Event: Magic Gate Opens

You might decide that the interior of the tree is laced with strange clockwork parts (which you can see where a bolt of lightning split the trunk long ago) and the runes are part of the powerful technomantic construct which can be used to open a magical portal.

Or, alternatively, you might decide that a strange clockwork device has been attached to the side of the tree and is very carefully slicing out each arcane rune from its bark one at a time. They are being collected by (roll an encounter) strange warriors wearing insectile-helmets, who return via a magical portal that opens while the PCs are investigating the tree.

DEPTH

The core concept of the depthcrawl is that the rolls on these random tables are affected by depth, with the results of the checks sliding across the table based on how far the PCs have progressed into the depthcrawl.

Note: Event rolls are often not affected by depth because they typically flow depth-affected content — i.e., random encounters — into a generic event type.

Depth itself is an abstract concept, representing how far the PCs are from where they started (the entrance of a labyrinth, the interplanar gate, their base camp, the silver skein that lies on the border of the afterlife, etc.): You can think of it as literal depth beneath the earth (i.e., similar to how you descend from one level of the dungeon to the next), but that’s probably more deceptive than not. Depth in a depthcrawl could just as easily refer to how far you’ve journeyed into the Venom Abyss of Planegea, for example.

Regardless, the further you get into the depthcrawl, the larger your depth becomes.

The most basic version of a depth check is a die roll + depth. For example, 1d20 + depth or 1d8 + depth. In setting these values, you’ll want to consider how deep a typical adventuring party will go and how many entries you want to key to each table.

For example, let’s say you see a typical adventure in the Venom Abyss going to a depth of 10-15 locations. If you’re rolling 1d20 + depth, that means you’ll need to key at least 35 entries (the maximum roll on the die + the expected maximum depth of 15).

You’ll also want to think about the cap value (i.e., 35+ if you’re keying for 1d20 + 15 depth). Broadly speaking, you can either set a maximum effective depth (i.e., even if you go past depth 15, you just roll as if depth were 15) or you can have some sort of endgame result, such as:

• You arrive at Blood Mountain in the heart of the Venom Abyss.
• You have passed into the Underdark or out the far side of the forest.
• Reality itself begins to fray and break apart as you journey further into the Madlands of the Feywild.

You can also see how the group’s current depth creates a strata. If you’re rolling 1d10 + depth, for example, and you’re at depth 10, then you’ll have a “strata” of possible results from 11 to 20. Each change in depth changes the range of possible results, creating a “definition” of that strata that obviously overlaps with other depths: depths 10 and 11 are largely identical, but the difference between depth 5 and depth 10 is quite large, and the difference between depth 5 and depth 15 is complete.

Note: Hey! Couldn’t you just do a completely separate table for each individual depth so that every depth would be completely different from every other depth?

Sure! What you’re describing is actually quite similar to the dungeon level encounter tables from the original 1974 edition of D&D, but you may not find it particularly effective when used as part of a depthcrawl: Dungeon levels, for example, are filled with lots and lots of rooms, so you’ll use the level-based encounter tables repeatedly. In a depthcrawl, however, the PCs are almost always moving from one depth to another after just a single location, so you’d use all of your specialized tables only once-ish.

The other value you can play with is depth increment. Instead of increasing depth by just one point, you might instead increase it by 4 points (or 2 points or 5 points or whatever). The effect, obviously, is to more rapidly shift the group through the distinct strata of the depthcrawl. (Which can have the potentially negative result of either shortening the depthcrawl or requiring you to key much more material to handle much larger depths.)

Another technique you might consider is a depth pool. Instead of making a die roll + depth, you could instead roll a number of dice equal to the depth. For example, at depth 4 you might roll 4d6. This has the effect of rapidly increasing the average depth result while keeping lower results possible. (For example, each additional d6 of depth increases the average result by 3.5 and the maximum result by 6, but the minimum result by only 1. If you calculated a depth increment from the average of the roll, 4d6 would be equivalent to die roll + 14. But whereas die roll +14 has a minimum result of 15, the 4d6 roll obviously has a minimum result of 4.)

Note: You could mix-and-match different depth checks for different elements of the depthcrawl. For example, maybe you roll 1d20 + depth for locations, but roll 1d6 per depth for encounters, so that the location types throughout an area remain fairly constant, but the danger of encounters shifts rapidly.

RUNNING THE DEPTHCRAWL

When it comes to running the scenario, you can think of a depthcrawl as a kind of “cap system” for a pointcrawl: The core scenario structure is the pointcrawl itself. The depthcrawl is mostly added on top of that procedure in order to generate the pointcrawl map through play.

Start by creating the ENTRANCE:

• Make a depth check on the Locations (You start at Depth 0.)
• Make a depth check on the Details
• Roll on the Events

This is the location where the PCs enter the depthcrawl.

On each navigation turn, the PCs will choose one of three moves:

• Stay
• Go Deeper
• Go Back

If they STAY, they are remaining in their current location. Follow your normal procedures for that location.

• Make an encounter check.

If they GO DEEPER:

• Increase the group’s depth by one depth increment.
• Draw a path between their current location and the new location.
• Make a depth check on the Locations
• Make a depth check on the Details
• Roll on the Events
• Make an encounter check.

If they GO BACK, they travel along a path they’ve already explored to a location they’ve previously visited:

• Set the group’s depth to the established depth of the location.
• Make an encounter check.

You can choose to make this a player-known structure by telling the players that these are their three navigational options (stay, go deeper, go back), but they’re structurally broad enough that you can run the depthcrawl as a player-unknown structure by simply interpreting their navigational declarations according to the appropriate move.

(For example, if they say, “Let’s head down the river and see where it leads,” that’s Go Deeper. If they say, “Let’s search the mansion,” that’s Stay. If they say, “We should go back to the Old Mill,” that’s Go Back. Possibly multiple Go Backs, which you can resolve one at a time, depending on how many points they need to pass through to retrace their steps.)

A key thing to remember is that the depthcrawl is designed to cover a vast and enigmatic territory. In general, it should be assumed that there are any number of potential ways that PCs could enter or leave a location. The fact that they only have a binary choice (go deeper or go back) is not reflective of every location being a chokepoint; it’s that in the absence of navigational information the choice of direction is arbitrary.

As they explore, of course, they will be gaining navigational data (i.e., the paths which connection locations), and will then be able to make meaningful navigational choices.

Go to Part 2: Advanced Options

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 29C: Skirmish in the Cauldron

“Friends of that meddlesome paladin!” The minotaur turned back towards the northern passage. “Stop hiding like cowards! Attack!”

The minotaur dashed forward, quaffing a potion that caused him to suddenly blur with speed. Bunching his powerful leg muscles he leapt up onto the thick rim of the immense iron cauldron.

“They’re drinking our wealth away!” Tee cried, firing at the minotaur.

I’m a big fan of consumable magic items: Drink a potion, it’s gone. Use up the charges in a wand, it’s done. 5^th Edition D&D turning a bunch of consumable items into permanent items via recharging charges is somewhat inexplicable to me.

See, the great thing about a consumable item is that you can give it to the PCs with an almost completely clear conscience: If you give them a permanent item and it screws up game balance, then you’ve got a permanent problem. Miscalculate and give them a consumable item that’s more powerful than you thought it would be? It’s a self-correcting problem.

In fact, you can do this deliberately: Here’s an incredibly powerful item far beyond anything you’d normally be able to get your hands on. It can literally change the course of the entire campaign… but it’s only got one charge. Use it wisely.

(You’ll see some of these uber-powerful consumables show up in future sessions.)

Monte Cook’s Numenera is a game that leans in hard on consumables: A billion years in the future, cyphers are the enigmatic remnants of the mega-civilizations which lie between our own time and the neo-Renaissance of that far-flung epoch. All cyphers are consumables and the vast majority of them are one-use items. Furthermore, due to strange interactions between cyphers it’s very dangerous to carry more than a few of them, so you’re heavily motivated to use the stuff you’ve got so that you can pick up more.

It’s a fantastic mixture of lore and mechanic: The cyphers are constantly injecting a wild mixture of new abilities, keeping the game fresh and exciting.

Even when treasure hordes get larded with consumables, though, I too often see GMs ignore them during encounters. As you can see here, that’s not my philosophy: My bad guys will use their personal stockpile of consumables to best effect, which has the dual effect of (a) injecting them with unexpected abilities and (b) enraging players who are being blasted at the expense of their own reward!

But it’s a good rage: It motivates players to think strategically and strike hard to preserve “their” loot. It’s a very diegetic way of rewarding better performance with bigger rewards.

When I’ve set up an encounter, I actually enjoy rolling on some random magic item tables to generate one or two or a grab bag of consumables. It’s a great way to shake up an encounter and make it a unique experience: An elite squad of goblin commandos who suck down potions of giant strength are very different from the ones with potions of gaseous form or invisibility.

TANGENT: THEATER OF OPERATION

In Running the Campaign: Dungeon as Theater of Operations I talked about how you should stop thinking of an encounter as “belonging” to a specific room and instead start thinking of the dungeon as a holistic environment.

I mentioned that when you, as the GM, think about the dungeon this way and run encounters this way, that the players will also learn to think that way. And you can really see that in this session:

• The lamia flees from Area 11 to Area 10.
• NPC reinforcements arrive from Area 1.
• Agnarr is forced to flee down towards Area 17.
• Ranthir blocks the hallway between Area 10 and Area 17 to cut off the reinforcements.
• Later, Ranthir races up through Area 6 and into Area 3 to try to cut off the goblins’ escape.
• Missing some of them, he chases them through Area 1 and down the long hallway, while Tee also fetches up in Area 3 and takes out some of the other goblins.

This is an encounter that could have stayed locked to Area 11. Instead, it ranged across almost the entire dungeon level.

Campaign Journal: Session 30A – Running the Campaign: Cut on the Cliffhanger
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Go to Part 1

I’ve already provided a detailed breakdown of how you can prep and run the Betrayers’ Rise dungeon to best effect in Call of the Netherdeep: Running Betrayers’ Rise. You can just check out that article to provide the spine for this section of the campaign.

But here are a few extra things to think about.

RIVALS

Where are the Rivals and what are they doing? If they aren’t working with the PCs, you might consider having them enter the dungeon after the PCs and begin exploring. (Maybe they’re there to help; maybe hinder. Maybe working with another researcher. Having the Rivals and PCs end up in a proxy fight for the researchers they’ve been independently hired by is certainly a viable option here.)

LORE OF ALYXIAN

The prayer site and even the iconography around that site are a great opportunity for injecting more Lore of Alyxian into the campaign. Take a peek through your revelation lists and see what clues you can lay down here.

TOROG’S COMMANDMENTS

As a bonus, here’s a hyper-specific tip. In Area R13, there’s a puzzle. The designers include a hint which can be accessed with a relevant check:

Hints. A character who makes a successful DC 14 Intelligence (Religion) check recalls one of Torog’s commandments: “Seek and exalt places where no light touches.” If they aren’t sure what that means, a character can guess that the darkened passages of the labyrinth are related to this commandment by making a successful DC 10 Wisdom (Insight) check.

This is okay as far as it goes, but in my experience it’s more effective to have information like this in a different room. And it turns out that there’s a statue of Torog over in Area R12:

A beam of light from above illuminates a statue in the middle of the room. The statue, made of pale marble, is shaped like a man on his knees, arms pinioned behind his back, trussed up in chains that cut into his skin. Hooks line the corners of the figure’s mouth, pulling his lips away from his teeth, and smaller barbs encircle his eyes, holding the eyelids open.

So what you can do is either (a) have the players make the DC 14 Intelligence (Religion) check in Area R12 to recall Torog’s commandment, or (b) actually just inscribe the commandment onto the statue.

The point is that it now requires the PCs to actually put information from two different areas to solve the puzzle. That’s a more satisfying experience than, “Oh, you’re struggling? Make a check and I’ll give you a hint.” And connecting information in a dungeon like this makes the dungeon more dynamic and interesting. Even having stuff just a couple rooms away makes the place feel like a total environment, rather than a sequence of isolated rooms. As a result, it also encourages exploration and strategic thinking.

Go to Part 7: Cael Morrow

Go to Part 1

As the PCs arrive in Bazzoxan, we come to what I consider the core structure of Call of the Netherdeep. It works like this:

• In Ank’harel there are three factions — the Allegiance of Allsight, the Consortium of Vermilion Dreams, and the Library of the Cobalt Soul.
• Each faction has a specific ruidium agenda regarding ruidium. (The Allegiance wants to use it to become arms dealers; the Consortium wants to monopolize it for arcane research; the Library wants it destroyed.)
• Each faction has sent a researcher to Bazzoxan — Prolix Yusaf (Allegiance), Aloysia Telfin Consortium), and Question (Library).
• The PCs should arrive in Bazzoxan and befriend a researcher (or more than one).
• The PCs will follow the researcher(s) back to Ank’harel and join a faction (or more than one, although that probably won’t remain tenable given the factions’ mutually contradictory goals).
• The PCs will then perform faction missions, which lead them to Cael Morrow and then the Netherdeep.

Conceptually, this is a very elegant structure: You can see how the PCs are allowed to make one-on-one connections with NPCs which are then used to (a) draw them across the world to another continent and (b) pull them into more complicated alliances and politics which nevertheless remain meaningful to them because of the personal connections they’ve made. And at every step of the way — researchers, factions, missions — the tripartite structure gives ample opportunity to inject the Rivals and have them challenge the PCs (both ideologically and otherwise).

In practical terms, unfortunately, someone decided to cripple this structure right out of the gate in Bazzoxan by larding it with railroads and badly preprogrammed cutscenes. There are a number of smaller head-scratchers, but there are two major culprits.

First, all three researchers are hidden behind weird cutscene-triggers. To meet Prolix, for example, the PCs need to:

• Randomly decide to check out the crematorium.
• Talk to the crematorium workers.
• Agree to help them load corpses into the furnace.

Shortly thereafter, Prolix will come rushing up.

The sequences for meeting Question and Aloysia are no less convoluted (with the trigger for the latter actually being hidden inside Question’s scene like a Matryoshka doll).

Note: All of this actually makes perfect sense if you imagine Call of the Netherdeep as a video game in which the players are expected to click on every NPC to receive their preprogrammed dialogue. Unfortunately, this is both (a) undesirable and (b) doesn’t actually work in a tabletop roleplaying game. (You can’t actually click on every single patron in the tavern until you randomly click on Question.)

Second, at the end of the Betrayers’ Rise dungeon, there’s a railroaded cutscene in which Aloysia shows up with the Rivals, attacks the PCs, and tries to steal the Jewel of Three Prayers.

This sequence is broken in so many ways that it’s actually difficult to enumerate all of them — it assumes the Rivals aren’t working with the PCs; it assumes the PCs didn’t agree to work with Aloysia when she proposed doing that earlier in the adventure; it assumes the PCs have the Jewel; etc. — but the biggest problem is that it completely breaks the core structure of the campaign.

By force-framing a scene in which Aloysia becomes a maniacal, monologuing villain, the adventure collapses the PCs’ choices: The Consortium of Vermilion Dreams has just attacked them and (possibly) robbed them. Even if they had the opportunity to join the Consortium they almost certainly wouldn’t, and it’s rather unlikely they will have the opportunity, because Aloysia is their only contact with the Consortium and she’s either their enemy or she’s dead.

(Bizarrely, the book nevertheless acts as if joining the Consortium is just as likely in Ank’harel as joining the other two factions.)

In any case, we’re going to take all of this stuff, scrunch it up in a ball, and throw it away.

PREPPING THE RESEARCHERS

Our goal, basically, is to switch everything from preprogrammed railroads and cutscenes to active play. We could honestly just wing it, but we’ll probably get better results if we create some clean prep that’s designed for flexible play at the table.

The first thing we’ll want to do is prep our three researchers — Prolix, Question, and Aloysia — using universal NPC roleplaying templates. It’ll make them a lot easier to pick up and play, while simultaneously giving us an opportunity to clearly wash away all of the nonsense and other detritus.

When designing the Key Info for each researcher consider:

• How do they point the PCs towards the Cyst of Avandra? This might be directly or through another researcher (see below), but their most immediate function is to point the PCs towards the right location in Betrayers’ Rise.
• Make sure to include their faction’s ruidium agenda. (Even if they don’t just spell everything out, you’ll want to start hinting at these dynamics… which will also get the players thinking about it and forming opinions.)
• What unique Lore of Alyxian do they have to offer? Each researcher makes an excellent vector for this (based on both what they learned in Ank’harel and what they’ve learned since coming to Betrayers’ Rise).
• What offer will they make to invite friendly/allied PCs back to Ank’harel after they’ve completed their business in Bazzoxan?

CROSS-INTERACTIONS

Next, we want to start lightly tugging the PCs into the faction politics and maybe even prompt them to start thinking about their allegiances. To do this, we’ll want to give each researcher an agenda vis-à-vis the others:

• Aloysia will attempt to eavesdrop on conversations between the PCs and other scholars. (And can be caught doing so by attentive PCs.) She might also ask the PCs to distract Prolix so that she can slip away and so something without his prying eyes.
• Prolix may tell the PCs that he’s been sent primarily to spy on Aloysia. And we can strengthen this by having Prolix ask them to break into Aloysia’s room and steal her notes.
• Question suspects that one of the other Ank’harel researchers has stolen one of his sketchbooks. She’d like the PCs to recover it.

Other options you might consider could include hiring the PCs to:

• Accompany them on an expedition into Betrayers’ Rise.
• Retrieve ruidium samples for them.
• Assassinate another researcher. (My gut says it’s probably better to limit things to light intrigue at this point, but if it feels right to ramp up the stakes and/or escalate someone into being a villain in the players’ eyes, go for it.)

Any offers that the PCs don’t take up, of course, it’s fully possible that the Rivals might do instead.

LOCATION TRIGGERS

Instead of hard-coded cutscenes, you’ll want to look for opportunities to introduce the researchers flexibly as the PCs explore Bazzoxan. You might find it useful to prep a short list of options for each researcher (but, again, avoid actually doing half-page scripts or anything like that).

Prolix might be at the crematorium. But he’s also at the inn. Or studying a sacrifice engine.

Question is at the inn. Or leaving an offering at the Wall of the Unforgotten (she’s made, and lost, friends here). Or studying carvings at Betrayers’ Rise.

Aloysia is at the inn. Or demanding soldiers from Verin to escort her into Betrayers’ Rise. Or getting a puncture wound treated at the infirmary (she was helping in the fight against the gibbering mouthers, CotN, p. 50).

Rather than keying these to the researchers, I would still jot these down as 1-2 sentence notes in each location key. When the PCs go to a particular location, you’ll have those options right at your fingertips.

CHECK OUR WORK

With everything we’ve done, we should be covered here, but treat each researcher as a revelation and make sure you’re satisfying the Three Clue Rule.

If, as we’ve previously discussed, you’ve got “look for local researchers” set up as the default action for the PCs to take when the arrive in Bazzoxan, this should largely take care of itself, as the PCs can simply ask around town and almost anyone can point them in the direction of one, two, or all three researchers. (“I actually just Question over at the Wall of the Unforgotten.”)

Of course, the researchers are also their own proactive nodes: When in doubt, or if you’ve got a researcher who has been MIA so far for some reason, just have one of them show up. You can easily justify that happening almost anywhere.

MAKE AN ENEMY

I mentioned above that befriending a researcher is an essential element in the core structure of Call of the Netherdeep. Although it’s not essential, you may find that it’s highly effective to focus on the opposite — to pay attention to which researcher(s) the PCs have made their enemy.

(And to do the same — both friends and enemies — for the Rivals.)

In fact, if you have the PCs interacting with the researchers and the researchers all have active objectives in conflict with each other, this will likely happen quite naturally. You just need to make sure that you lean into it: If the choices the PCs are making are big, meaningful choices, then the blowback from those choices should also be big and meaningful (and it should be quite difficult to walk the tightrope of somehow keeping everyone happy… or at least duped).

The beauty of it, of course, is that ANY of the researchers might end up being this enemy. Because you’re not predetermining it or forcing it, it’s the players who are responsible for the consequences.

To seal the deal, having some sort of big finale in Bazzoxan featuring a confrontation with this enemy is probably desirable. You can concoct a custom scheme for each researcher or play it by ear to see what makes the most sense, but it’s probably just fine if we draw inspiration from the book here: The enemy researcher tries to steal the Jewel from the PCs.

A few things to think about:

• Where do they do it? (This will depend, at least in part, on what the NPC knows about the PCs’ location and intentions.)
• How do they do it? (Broadly speaking you’re probably choosing between an open assault or a stealthy heist. If the latter, make sure you slather plenty of evidence around so that the PCs know exactly who did it.)
• What allies can they call upon? (The Rivals may or may not be available, but there are a lot of other NPCs in Bazzoxan. Some of the researchers have access to teleportation and might even return to Ank’harel and bring back a strike team from their faction.)
• How does the guilty party flee to Ank’harel ASAP? (Assuming they survive the attempt.)

You may discover, depending on how things play out, that it’s more natural to let the PCs travel to Ank’harel and then run this confrontation as one of their first experiences there. Nothing wrong with that. The point is, after all, to be actively playing in response to what the PCs are doing.

Go to Part 6: Betrayers’ Rise