I’ve recently been crafting a D&D campaign set in Monte Cook’s Ptolus. While working on adventure prep for the campaign, I’ve found myself reminiscing about one of my favorite gaming memories:

IN THE DEPTHS OF KHUNBARAL

THE PARTY: Talbar is an elemental cleric and an emerging missionary of the Reformist movement. Marco is a fighter wielding a sword of bone which feasts upon the blood of its victims. Granger is a rogue with a cloak of shadows and a vorpal blade. Gorin is a sorcerer whose half-draconic blood is beginning to manifest itself. And Katalina is a monk.

BACKGROUND: The PCs are on a quest to retrieve three magical seals needed to close a rift between this universe and a hellish demon prison (a rift they bear some marginal responsibility for creating in the first place). They have come to the long-abandoned dwarven city of Khunbaral, knowing that one of the three seals was being held in the dwarves’ protection when the city fell.

The ruined city of Khunbaral is currently inhabited by several power groups: A clan of ogre-led goblins has recently moved into the upper levels of the city. A colony of dark-scaled draconics specializing in the arts of the shadowdancers came here centuries ago to make sure that none could ever reclaim the seal. The seal itself is in the possession of a black dragon.

And, most importantly of all, a force of dark dwarves has recently arrived in the lower levels of the city. They cleared out the dwarven wights which had previously prowled those lower levels and are now working to excavate and retrieve the dwarven forgestones. The dark dwarves serve the demons beyond the dimensional rift, and their goal is to bring these forgestones back to the fortresses and use them to froge powerful magical weapons for the demonic armies being raised there.

It must be understood that this dark dwarf force was huge and powerful — several hundred strong with CRs equal to or higher than the PCs’ current level. The entire adventure was designed with the expectation that the PCs would not be confronting the dark dwarves in any meaningful way: Their mission was to retrieve the artifact, and they could do that by sneaking around the dark dwarves. The idea was to establish the theft of the forgestones and the dark dwarves as powerful enemies so that these plot points could be revisited later in the campaign.

Finally, there were two powerful dark dwarves in charge of this expedition: There was Sarathek, a powerful sorcerer (several CRs higher than the PCs). And then there was Thuren Issek. Issek was six levels higher than the PCs and designed to return as the right-hand lieutenant of the dark dwarven general later in the campaign.

THE TALE: Breaching the defenses of Khunbaral was a legend in itself. The orcs and ogres had built up a strong position in the ancient dwarven gateway, and the PCs were forced into an epic battle of feints, all-out assaults, tactical retreats, and ambushes over the course of three hours before finally breaking through their defensive lines and rooting them out.

The party descended carefully into the deeper levels of the city. They had a much easier time with the shadowdancers, seizing key tactical chokepoints in the first early and chaotic moments of encountering them, holding those chokepoints, and then tightening the noose.

At this point, things were going exactly according to design. As they went deeper into the heart of the city, they encountered a dark dwarf scouting party. After meeting with some initial success, they were forced to flee when a seemingly endless train of reinforcements (particularly sorcerers) began to arrive. They regrouped in the upper levels and then sought a different route back down into the dungeon. Eventually they found themselves behind the dark dwarven lines, in a deeper part of the city near the crypts and the mines.

Things went wrong, however, when they encountered Thuren Issek and a party of twelve dark dwarves excavating in the area beneath the forges. These dark dwarves were all the same CR as the party — and the party knew they were a tough fight because they’d faced these guys before. They hadn’t encountered Thuren Issek before, but from his gothic and sepulchral armor which seemed to pulse like a living shadow in the flickering light of the torches — they knew they were seeing something nasty. So it was clear that they were outnumbered and outgunned. And this encounter had been designed so that the PCs could easily detect the dark dwarves without the dark dwarves detecting them (because of all the noise from the excavation). This was the scene where the PCs would learn about the excavation of the forgestones, establish a major (and scary) villain for later in the campaign, and then sneak away to find their magical artifact.

So, naturally, they decided to attack.

Here’s how it went:

1. On the first round of combat, as the very first action, Granger (the rogue) charged the undefeatable Thuren Issek — a character he can only hit on a natural twenty.

2. Granger rolls a natural 20.

3. Confirming the crit, Granger rolls another natural 20… with his vorpal sword.

Snick. With razor-like precision, Thuren Issek’s head rolls from his shoulder.

The rest of the dark dwarves — who had proven so difficult the last few times the PCs had fought them — went down in chaos and confusion within three rounds. Not only had the loss of their leader completely changed the dynamic of the encounter, but they had been caught without their weapons ready. The PC spellcasters, for their part, launched a coordinated blitzkrieg of firepower. By the time Marco, the fighter, charged in, the dark dwarves had been so debilitated that he was able to cleave through them like butter.

It had taken less than twenty seconds. Flawless victory.

The party takes Issek’s head as a trophy (an action which, under my house rules, also prevents Issek from being raised). Marco actually starts wearing it as a necklace. (It fit in well with the necklace of goblin ears he’d been collecting up to hat point.)

The explosions and sounds of combat, however, attract another group of dark dwarves in the area — this one including sorcerers. The party, already badly injured, retreated… but only to a carefully chosen fallback position where they laid an ambush which wiped out their pursuers and killed two of Sarathek’s four apprentice sorcerers.

…

Okay. No problem. I can think quick on my feet, too. That night I send Sarathek to invisibly infiltrate the PCs’ camp and steal back Thuren Issek’s head. He succeeds, slits Marco’s throat, takes the head, and returns to the dark dwarven sector of the dungeon. There he manages to resurrect Issek (although, under my house rules, he has to chew up almost all of the dark dwarves’ healing potions to do it, which had previously been a key tactical advantage for them).

This works out well. Things are back on track and I’ve played perfectly fair. Plus, the PCs are going to have a real grudge against these guys for later in the campaign. This is actually going to be better than I’d hoped for, because now the PCs are going to be personally invested in making these villains pay.

The next day, things don’t go so well for the PCs. Through a series of unfortunate tactical mistakes, they run into an ambush themselves and are nearly killed. They manage to escape, however, and spend the night huddled in a small secret chamber that the dark dwarves haven’t discovered yet. Throughout the night they hear great booms echoing throughout the complex. (Unbeknownst to the PCs, their efforts had thoroughly spooked the dark dwarves. Issek was now using explosives to quickly finish their work instead of waiting for the careful excavations to be completed.)

But the day after that is the big pay-off: The PCs stumble upon the dark dwarves trying to escape the complex with the forgestone. The revived Thuren Issek is there. Sarathek is there. Sarathek’s two remaining apprentice sorcerers are there. The two or three dozen surviving dark dwarven fighters (out of the hundred and fifty or so originally in the complex) are there.

It’s a battle the PCs can’t possibly win…

… and yet they try anyway.

It starts with the invisible spellslingers — Talbar and Gorin — slinging fireballs at the dark dwarves carrying the forgestone out of the complex. They manage to kill enough of them that the remainder can no longer carry the massive, heavy stone. It falls, crushing several more of the dark dwarves beneath it, and (as planned) blocks a narrow doorway — splitting the dark dwarven forces in two.

Marco cries out: “Return the necklace!”

And then, on the very first round of combat, Granger — with his vorpal sword — charges Thuren Issek.

And rolls a natural 20.

And rolls a natural 20.

AND CHOPS HIS HEAD OFF AGAIN.

It was literally the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen at the gaming table.

The dark dwarves tried to recover. They rallied briefly under the leadership of Sarathek. But when the PCs focused all their energies on Sarathek long enough to destroy him, the broken ranks of the dark dwarves were rapidly wiped out.

Through wit and guile and luck, the PCs had accomplished the impossible. The epic battle with a black dragon of shadow that followed had been meant as the high-point of the adventure. It instead served merely as a suitable epilogue to the legendary Twin Deaths of Thuren Issek. When the party, at last, emerged once more into the wholesome light of day it was a triumph.

There are other achievements of the gaming table which live fondly in my mind. But this remains my favorite. Perhaps in large part because its a saga which could never have been anticipated or arranged. As a DM I never would have set my PCs against such daunting odds if I’d intended them to truly confront them. And even if I had somehow contrived such a thing, I never could have arranged for the Twin Deaths of Thuren Issek. This is a story which only exists because that particular group of people got together and played that particular game. That’s what makes it special.

Mike Mearls is talking about skills. His brief thoughts prompted a rather lengthy train of thoughts from me.

There are basically two types of utility that can be gained from a skill system:

At one extreme, you give a unified mechanic for setting difficulty levels and skill checks. This system is extremely simple to use because all a GM has to do is decide how difficult he wants a task to be (or thinks a task should be). It gives complete flexibility, but no support. For some people this is great: The GM is capable of making consistent, on-the-fly decisions that are satisfying for his players and the rules are extremely easy to learn and remember.

By adding more complexity to the system, you can offer more support to the GM in setting difficulty levels. This is what the core rulebooks do: For any given skill, there are specific guidelines for how difficult various tasks are. For some people this is great because it hard codes a consistency into the system: Players are able to anticipate how hard a task is going to be and the difficulty of a task will remain consistent from one session to the next and even from one group to the next.

(What I like about this approach in the core rulebooks is that you ALSO have a unified mechanic for determining DCs: It’s the best of both worlds. If you want or need the support of the specific guidelines, they’re there for you. If you don’t then you can just ignore them.)

By adding complexity to the system, you can also make using skills either more interesting or more precise. Examples of this include the Craft skill (which already includes a mini-mechanical system for more precisely handling the crafting of items), but could also include stunt systems designed to let you use skills in more complicated and inter-related ways.

Thus, when Mearls says: “Adding more rules to the D&D skill system […] doesn’t make it more interesting. It just bloats the system.” I don’t follow the logic. Certainly adding more rules CAN be nothing more than bloat, but they don’t NEED to be nothing more than bloat.

For example, let’s take a non-RPG example in an attempt to weed out people’s biases. We could talk about Monopoly and Candyland and Chutes & Ladders, for example: Sure, you can strip out all the rules about collecting rents and buying properties from Monopoly. Similarly, you can strip out all the rules about Rainbow Trails and Lollipop Woods from Candyland. But, in either case, you’ve simply stripped the game down to a mechanic of: “Use randomizer. Move piece around board.”

Similarly, you could remove all the rules for combining cards into more powerful hands in Poker, and thus boil the game down to “high card wins”.

Now, there are lots of people who don’t play RPGs in order to experience a game which is MECHANICALLY interesting. They don’t want interesting gameplay from the system, they just want a mechanical structure on which to hang their storytelling and roleplaying. That’s why lots of people want nothing more than a simple, unified mechanic with no bells or whistles: Roll a die, add a modifier, compare to a DC.

For people who want a mechanically interesting game, however, that simplicity is boring. You need more rules in order to make the mechanics interesting — in order to make Monopoly a different game from Chutes & Ladders.

Now, certainly, that doesn’t mean that “more rules = more fun”. For example, Monopoly probably wouldn’t benefit from a system in which you had to re-calculate variable interest rates for loans and mortgages, with those variable interest rates also impacting the rental rates for various properties.

But if you’ve got a stunt system in D&D which does nothing except “bloat the system”, then what you’ve got is a very poorly designed stunt system. Which is why it’s fairly shocking to hear Mearls, the designer of very good stunt systems (IMO), repudiating them as bloated design.

Also, Mearls’ math is wrong. In a system in which skill checks are 1d20 + ability score vs. DC, he claims that: “The (DC – the ability score + 1) times 5 is the chance of success.” It’s not. Take a DC 10 task attempted by someone with an ability score of 10, for example. Mearls claims that the chance of success is 5% (10 – 10 + 1 = 1 x 5 = 5%). It’s not, it’s actually 105%.

(The DC is 10. Your check is d20 + 10. Even with a roll of 1, your result is 11 and you succeed at the check.)

Mearls actually meant that the chance is (DC + the ability score + 1) times 5 is the chance of success.

Adding further perplexity is the fact that Mearls talks about this in connection to a house rule which is primarily about how skills are selected at character creation/advancement, rather than about how DCs are calculated.

Which leads to the other problem with Mearls’ system: There’s no mechanic for advancing skills. Since the DM is apparently supposed to just set a difficulty based on the percentage chance of success he wants a character to have, this isn’t a big deal… except when it comes to opposed checks.

So, boiling it down, I feel there are two points trying to be made here:

1. It would be nice if you didn’t have to spend skill points. Particularly from the POV of GM prep, having to spend all those points is time-consuming.

2. If you just want a barebones mechanic for determining success or failure, it would be nice not to have all these other rules and guidelines “bloating” the system for you.

Both strong points, but Mearls’ suggested solution is over-wrought and ill-thought, IMO. Here’s an easier solution:

SUPER SIMPLE SKILL SYSTEM

1. Characters have a skill bonus equal to “class skill max ranks”. Thus, a 3rd level character has a skill bonus of +6.

2. Characters select a number of skills equal to their class’ skill points per level + their Intelligence modifier (minimum 1).

3. Skill checks are d20 + ability modifier + skill bonus.

4. Ignore all of the suggested DCs in the Skills chapter. For an average person the task is:

DC 0: Automatic
DC 5: Simplistic
DC 10: Easy
DC 15: Average
DC 20: Difficult
DC 25: Very Difficult
DC 30: Almost Impossible
DC 40: Impossible

There you go. For prepping characters, all you’ve got to worry about is selecting which skills they have. For resolving an action, the DM just picks the DC he feels is appropriate. Plus, the system is completely compatible with the existing rules.

(Note: This system explicitly does not use the class/cross-class distinction between skills. It also ignores synergy bonuses, although you can toss those back into the mix on a check-by-check basis if you like.)

I’ve spent most of my free time for the past two weeks prepping what I hope will turn out to be a really fantastic D&D campaign. It started life as an Order of the Stick-inspired desire to do some old school dungeon-crawling. I’ve been aching to return to Rappan Athuk, one of the greatest dungeons ever designed, ever since I ran a very successful one-on-one session with my good friend Dave Blackmer a couple years back. So I picked up my Rappan Athuk modules and started prepping a barebones setting to drop the dungeon into.

As  I worked, though, it didn’t take long for my quick, barebones preparation to become increasingly elaborate and detailed. In addition to a plethora of original work, the campaign now includes material incorporated from The Crucible of Freya, The Vault of Larin Karr, The Tomb of Abysthor, Demons and Devils, Demon God’s Fane, Beyond the Veil, and more. Putting the best of Necromancer Games and Monte Cook together in one room has created a truly remarkable synergy that’s really gotten my own creative juices flowing.

In a couple of days I’m hoping to have a new sub-level for Rappan Athuk that I’ve prepped converted into a “suitable for general comprehension” format so that I can share it here. But I’m in a roleplaying mood, so I thought I’d share something else with you.

On Halloween this year, Wizards of the Coast posted Bruce Cordell’s v3.5 conversion of Gygax’s classic Tomb of Horrors. For those of you unfamiliar with the Tomb, the module was first released in 1978 as one of the first modules available for the AD&D game, after being used for the Official D&D tournament held at the very first Origins convention. At the time it was a fairly innovative product: In addition to the “map and key” presentation which was standard for the time, Tomb of Horrors also came with a pamphlet of forty illustrations, each presenting some part of the module which could be shown to the players at the appropriate time.

But it wasn’t the illustrations which made the Tomb a classic: It was the deathtraps. No module has left more characters cowering in terror, unable to open the next door out of sheer fear of the doom that surely awaits them, than the Tomb of Horrors.

A couple of years ago I did my own v3.5 conversion of the infamous Tomb. My version went a bit further than Cordell’s has, largely because there is a very significant and very legitimate critique of the Tomb: There are many places where the module just doesn’t play fair. The Tomb is more effective if the players can look back and regret the choices they made because they could have made a different choice. The Tomb as written, unfortunately, features many junctions where death is simply capricious. Opening a random door with an undetectable and inescapable death trap isn’t as much fun as opening a door that triggers a trap you can desperately attempt to escape. My version of the module doesn’t make things any easier (in fact, it often makes it more difficult) — but it does play fair. So that, when death comes, the players will feel terror, not resentment.

In my version I also focused the module on its trademark traps: Combat, already rare in the original Tomb, is rarer still. And always a result of a trap or trap-mentality. Most importantly, I include boxed text — making it very easy to make sure you’re giving precisely the right information about each area to the PCs (and no more).

For the past couple of years, I sporadically tried to get various people interested in publishing an updated version of the Tomb. There didn’t seem to be any interest. So I’m delighted that Cordell’s version has seen the light of day. Even if I’m secretly bitter and resentful that it wasn’t mine. (Okay, there’s not really any bitter resentment. A little secret disappointment, perhaps.)

But rather than letting my version of the Tomb molder on my hard drive, I’m going to share it with you here:

The Tomb of Horrors (RTF)
Map 1
Map 2
Map 3
Map 4
Map 5
Map 6
Zip File (All of the Above)

You’ll also want to grab either the original module or Return to the Tomb of Horrors (which includes a facsimile of the original module) for the original handouts. These handouts can also be found in the Bruce Cordell version, interspersed throughout the text.

If you end up running my version, I’d be very interested in hearing how it went. This adventure can be a lot of fun when used a one-shot. I’ll frequently pull it out if some of my players can’t show up for the game.

To give you some idea of what you’ll find inside, let me present a sample area from the module:

AREA 7 – THE FORSAKEN PRISON

This chamber is a 15’ by 15’ shaft 100’ deep, carved out of solid granite. Characters teleporting to this area from the Arch of Mist (Area 5) materialize at the top of the shaft and automatically plummet to the bottom of the shaft, taking 10d6 points of falling damage.

[[HANDOUT #9]]

FIRST LEVER: At the bottom of the shaft is a lever built into the wall. The lever is marked with Acererak’s sigil. Pulling the lever causes the floor – which is a trap door – to drop away, opening up another 100’ shaft. Characters falling down the second shaft take 10d6 points of falling damage. The character who pulled the lever may make a Reflex saving throw (DC 15) to grab onto the lever, rather than falling down the pit.

TRAP DOOR: The trap door here is illusion protected and also requires a Search check (DC 25) to detect. There is no way to determine that the lever is the triggering mechanism, but the trap door itself can be prevented from opening with a successful Disable Device check (DC 25). After 1d10 rounds, the trap door resets itself and can only be opened by pulling the first lever (which is now on the other side of the trap door of solid stone).

SECOND LEVER: At the bottom of the second shaft is another lever built into the wall. This lever – in all ways – appears to be identical to the first lever above. Pulling this lever, however, opens a secret door in the ceiling of the shaft leading to a crawl space (see below).

FLOOR: The floor of the second shaft is also a trap door, illusion protected and requiring a Search check (DC 25) to detect. And there is also another 100’ shaft below this trap door. But there is not, in fact, any triggering mechanism which opens this trap door.

WALLS: The walls are carved straight out of the rock face and smoothed. Scaling them requires a Climb check (DC 30).

SECRET DOOR: To find the secret door in the ceiling of the shaft before opening it requires a Search check (DC 25). The door is a solid slab of granite about 2’ thick (360 hp, hardness 8) and can only be opened by pulling the second lever. After 1d10 rounds, the secret door will close itself and can only be opened again by pulling the second lever.

CRAWL SPACE: The crawl space beyond the secret door is very narrow. See Area 3 for a complete description.