This is more of a mini-reaction, but during last night’s session I was suddenly struck by something in OD&D’s description of vampires:

VAMPIRES: These monsters are more properly of the “Undead” class rather than Lycanthropes.

Whenever I read that passage, I would think to myself, “Well… yeah.”

But tonight I had an epiphany which may already be obvious to some of you: “Oh! Of course! They could be classified as lycanthropes because they turn into wolves.” (This may be because I’ve been spending a bit more time than usual around Dracula.)

Bit of a digression here: I went to see Blade II in the theater with a large group of friends and friends-of-friends. My most vivid memory of the experience comes from the car ride home, when I listened to someone in the backseat ramble on for 15 minutes about all of the different ways in which Blade II had violated the continuity of Vampire: The Masquerade.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Blade II took it’s fair share of inspiration from the milieu of the World of Darkness. But it is also self-evidently not the same setting and, therefore, not bound by its rules.

With that being said, I do think it’s interesting to note the degree to which roleplaying games encourage us to think about myth and fiction in terms of categories and quantifications.

To explain what I mean, let me digress again: We interpret all media through the lens of our previous experiences with media, a fact that I think can probably be seen most clearly when we are young (and our exposure to media limited). For example, I can remember when any new work of space opera I encountered was first understood in the context of Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Star Trek. Unless the author clearly established a delineation, I just sort of assumed that their universe worked like an admixture of the Federation and the Galactic Empire. This wasn’t a conscious choice on my part: It was just that my formative experiences with these works had created a lens through which other experiences were understood.

This is an effect which has been significantly diffused as my exposure to science fiction has broadened and deepened, but this doesn’t mean it’s gone away: When an author invokes the Singularity, my brain promptly plops in a whole gestalt understanding of what that means based on exposure to Vinge and Stross and MacLeod and Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase and God only knows what else. Because it’s diffused, I think it’s easier for each work to make its unique impression upon me. But that filter of previous experience can’t be fully escaped.

So, to escape out of this recursive sequence of digressions, let me say this: Sitting in that car 10+ years ago, I could shake my head sadly at someone who interpreted all fiction through the lens of a roleplaying game. But it took this sudden epiphany regarding OD&D vampires to realize the degree to which a youth spent pouring over Monster Manuals had planted some pretty deeply rooted hierarchies into my understanding of the fantastic.

Vampires are undead.

So are skeletons and zombies. Actually, the clear-cut and categorical distinction between skeletons, zombies, and ghouls (among other things) is something else that I almost certainly owe to D&D.

And this isn’t just me. And it isn’t just limited to roleplaying games. By vector of fantasy fiction and film and computer, this stuff has seeped into the cultural gestalt.

This was something we talked about during rehearsals of Drakul: I think it’s actually impossible for any person in the modern world to fully appreciate Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I mean, I’m generally somebody who really enjoys reading works with an eye towards their historical context: I get a huge kick out of reading Skylark in Space and realizing that this shit had never been done before. I can feel the vicarious thrill of imagining what it would be like to read that book for the first time in 1928. But with Dracula I can’t quite pull it off: I mean, I can sort of intellectually see that Stoker is very carefully hiding the true nature of Dracula from his readers and treating it as a terrific mystery. I can logically conclude that Victorian readers would be wondering what strange and horrible curse had afflicted Lucy.

But my brain just keeps thinking, “It’s a vampire.” She has bite marks on her neck? It’s a vampire. She’s experiencing acute blood loss? It’s a vampire. C’mon, let’s get with the program. It’s a vampire.

And so forth.

To make a long story short: I find the degree to which pop culture fantasy has eradicated the mystery of the mythic interesting to consider. Perhaps even more interesting is the question of how we can inject that sense of mystery (and majesty) back into our own fantasies.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

The description of the original helm of teleportation from OD&D recently struck me as particularly interesting:

Helm of Teleportation: The Magic-User employing this helm must have a Teleportation spell in order to take advantage of the device. Having but one such spell the Magic-User can Teleport himself endlessly about the universe, but if he teleports some other person or object the helm does not function and the spell proper is used. Thus the helm is good only to transport the Magic-User himself. Treat as a non-protective helm if worn into combat.

(A passage which also indicates that “protective helms” should have some beneficial effect in combat, but if there’s any explanation for what the benefit would be the rules are rather silent on the matter. I’ve been thinking about applying a -1 AC penalty for missing helmets. But I digress.)

What I was particularly struck by in this passage was the similarity between its mechanical construction and the construction of reserve feats from Complete Mage for 3rd Edition. Conceptually I always liked the idea of reserve feats (allowing spellcasters to make minor magic-based contributions on a regular basis), but found the actual execution to be rather broken. (Allowing wizards to do 6d6 points of area effect damage per round with no saving throw, for example, no longer qualifies as a minor contribution.)

But it might be interesting to take properly balanced reserve-type abilities and have them accessible via magical equipment (like the original helm of teleportation). I’m particularly drawn to the image of magic wands that don’t have charges, but instead allow you to use specific spells you currently have memorized in a powered-down form.

On the other hand, maybe chewing up an equipment slot would be necessary to keep this sort of thing balanced. Or what if there was a percentage chance that you’d lose your reserve spell whenever you triggered the reserve item? In a semi-similar fashion, AD&D’s helm of teleportation limited the number of uses per day based on the number of teleport spells you had prepared. (So that the item extends your magical endurance, but not necessarily limitlessly so.)

Cyclopeatron wrote an interesting post t’other day regarding the fact that blog posts which are the equivalent of op-ed commentary tend to attract more comments than blog posts containing creative content.

To a large extent this makes sense: Commentary posts inherently serve as the opening salvo in a potential conversation, inviting responses which either disagree with that commentary or extrapolate upon it. Creative content, on the other hand, doesn’t have an easy response: If you liked it, there’s not much to be said beyond “nice” (and that seems pointless enough you’ll probably skip it). If you didn’t like it, you’ll probably feel no particular compulsion to be a jerk by saying “you suck”. (A critique might be useful, but if it wasn’t invited you’re probably wasting your time and likely coming across as a jerk again.)

But the point Cyclopeatron makes is that this has a real effect on what bloggers write: The only real payment we get is the social validation from seeing people talk about what we wrote. When commentary posts see so much more activity than creative posts, we’re being strongly encouraged to write commentary posts instead of creative posts.

Despite this predilection, I agree with Cyclopeatron that the RPG blogosphere is a happier and healthier place when it’s filled up with awesome creative ideas. Towards that end, I propose Alexander’s Rule:

If you use something awesome from a blog in your game, go back and tell the creator about it.

That might mean taking fifteen seconds to write a comment. (“Hey. I ran the Dungeon Crawl of Ultimate Doom last night and it killed three PCs. Nice work.”) It might mean writing up a full session report, posting it to your own blog, and sending the original creator a trackback or link. Or anything inbetween.

Lemme take a second to practice what I’m preaching. Let me just stick a little spoiler protection for my players (who should read no further here)…

(more…)

One of the key concepts of “(Re-)Running the Megadungeon” is that the goal of the adventure is not and cannot be to “clear the dungeon”. Such a goal would be as meaningless as a World War II game in which the goal was, “Kill all the Nazis.”

(I suppose, in a general sense, you actually could hold such a goal. It would be something like the ultimate instantiation of the hack ‘n slash campaign: There’s a dungeon over there. Go slash at it for awhile. The important thing, however, is that one cannot reasonably expect to achieve that goal. That’s just not going to hack it.)

The loss of this clear-cut goal is problematic because “clear the dungeon” has long since become the default tactical solution for virtually every scenario in D&D. Oh, it’s usually gussied up a bit. But you’d be surprised at how often everything boils down to “clear the dungeon”. For example:

• “The forces of chaos are marshaling for an assault on the last bastion of civilization?” “How do we stop it?” “Go to the Caves of Chaos and… clear the dungeon.” (B2 Keep on the Borderlands)
• “The corrupt mayor is planning to release the Yellow Sign and drive Freeport into madness!” “How do we stop it?” “Go to the Lighthouse and… clear the dungeon.” (Freeport Trilogy)
• “Slavers are kidnapping people off the streets!” “How do we stop them?” “Go to the slave pits and… clear the dungeon.” (Scourge of the Slave Lords)
• “The Giants are arming for war!” “How do we stop them?” “Go to their steading and… clear the dungeon.” (Against the Giants)
• “Kalarel is trying to summon something terrible from the Shadowfell!” “How do we stop him?” “Go to the Keep and… clear the dungeon.” (Keep on the Shadowfell)

There’s nothing terribly wrong with this formula, of course. As you can see, it can be easily mapped to any number of potential crises. It has the virtue of being easy to set-up (Bad Guys X are trying to do Bad Thing Y and they can be found at Bad Place Z). And the players generally know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing (“Wipe them out, all of them”).

However, it does have the rather unfortunate side-effect of inherently funneling everything through the combat system, drastically narrowing the range of potential gameplay. And when you attempt to apply this default formula to the megadungeon it creates two major problems:

First, it’s a grind.  If your goal is to “wipe out all the bad guys” in a dungeon filled with bad guys, then the megadungeon boils down to a very simplistic dynamic: You go into the dungeon, empty as many rooms as possible, and then retreat. Then you go back and  you do it again. And again. And again. And again.

Second, the formula is inherently designed to use up material, whereas your goal with the megadungeon is recycle, reuse, and remix material. And the more you restock the dungeon while your players are trying to destock it, the more of a grind the whole thing becomes.

SETTING A DEFAULT

Having set aside the default mode of “clear the dungeon”, what are we to replace it with?

It’s not unusual at this juncture for someone to say, “Exploration.” Go poke around in the corners of the dungeon because you’re curious about what might be hanging out down there.

It’s not a bad suggestion, per se. But in my experience, exploration for the sake of exploration can be rather aimless. It lacks the necessary specificity to function as the driving force behind a campaign. I suspect this is because it doesn’t provide a strong enough criteria for decision-making: If you’re standing at an intersection in the dungeon and your goal is merely “to explore”, does it really matter which way you go? Not really. You’ll be exploring whichever way you go.

But “exploration” remains a compelling concept. Is there a way we can make it a more clearly defined goal?

Gold.

Here I once again find myself looking back to the earliest versions of the game, when the default method of play was not “kill the monsters”, but instead “find the treasure” — i.e., exploration geared towards a more specific end. And, notably, a specific end which — unlike “kill the monsters” — doesn’t pre-suppose the tactical and strategic means of success. (“Kill the monsters” implies blasting them with spells and poking them with pointy bits of metal. “Find the treasure” might mean killing monsters… but it could also mean sneaking past them, negotiating with them, distracting them, hiring them, tricking them, trading with them, or any number of other possibilities.)

TREASURE HUNTING

“Find the treasure”, in its most generic form, may not be terribly compelling. But it is sufficient for reliably getting the PCs to the entrance of the dungeon (and universal enough that it provides little meaningful constriction in terms of the types of characters that can be created; of course, there’s also no reason why a player couldn’t find a more unique goal for their PC).

Before one simply writes off “find the treasure” as bland pablum, however, consider that in its more specific forms “find the treasure” has served as the basis for some of the great stories of our time (or any time): Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Maltese Falcon, The Hobbit, The Illiad, The Golden Fleece. They’re all stories about treasure-hunting.

And OD&D builds a method for building towards that specificity right into its rules for procedural content generation: Treasure maps.

If you’re randomly generating treasure troves using the OD&D guidelines, then most intelligent foes will have a 10-15% chance of having one or more treasure maps. These can, of course, take many forms. (The Judges Guild Book of Treasure Maps supplements included everything from journal entries to scribbled notes to careful exemplars of cartography.) But the point is that a treasure map points you towards some specific treasure: You are no longer just poking around for gold in the general sense; you are specifically seeking for “the Tombe of Aerthering who is called DAMNED” (to take one example).

SPECIFIC DUNGEON GOALS

Moving beyond that, the point of setting a default goal (like “find the treasure”) is not to limit the game, but rather to provide a baseline to ensure that gaming happens. The point isn’t to say “you will go treasure-hunting”, but rather to say “if you can’t think of anything better to do, we’ll default to treasure-hunting”.

More generally, once you’ve used your default goal(s) to get the PCs into the dungeon complex, more specific goals will generally tend to accumulate on their own. In my Caverns of Thracia game, for example, a deep grudge quickly settled in against the minotaur who kept cropping up on an irregular basis. (He had killed or maimed more than a dozen PCs, so the grudge is probably understandable.) There were cheers at the table when he was finally cornered and killed in a recent session.

Have we arrived back at “killing the bad guy” as a viable megadungeon goal? Sure. (You didn’t think I was advocating for combat to be taken out of D&D, did you?) It’s not necessary to completely abandon the “there are bad guys, go get ’em” formula. But it may require a little more subtlety than that mail-order course on strategy from Palpatine University might suggest. “Wipe them out, all of them” might cut it if they’re the only guys in the neighborhood, but picking a fight with every humanoid tribe in the region because you want to put the cultists on level 4 out of commission probably isn’t a great idea.

Which begins to move us in the general direction of a more general precept: While it is necessary to maintain some sense of mystery regarding the depths of the megadungeon (as drawing back that veil of ignorance is one of the rewards for playing in a properly compelling megadungeon), it’s also important to foreshadow those depths by revealing certain details. These details, in turn, become goals for the PCs to achieve.

(The methods by which this foreshadowing can occur are essentially limitless: For example, the PCs may know that Black Donagal fled into the depths because they saw him do it. They may learn about the minotaur court by questioning a prisoner. They may find a map indicating the location of the Hall of Golden Maidens (if only they could identify one of the landmarks on their map). And so forth, not to mention divinations and magical visions.)

At this point, we can successfully return to the idea of “exploration” as a meaningful goal. Because while “exploring for the sake of exploring” is unfocused, exploring because you want to find the Tunnel of Black Rainbows is more than specific enough.

But we don’t have to stop there: The features of a megadungeon are people, places, and things. And all of these features can be foreshadowed and, thus, become goals. And out of people, places, and things every story in the history of the world has been told.

The default gets them playing. But once they start playing, there’s no limit to the things they can find or the goals they can discover.

In “(Re)-Running the Megadungeon” I talked about how to keep a dungeon complex fresh by restocking the room key and using wandering monster tables as a form of low-tech procedural content generation. In “Wandering Adventures” I talked about how the OD&D wandering monster tables could be used to generate entire adventures. Now I want to build on those ideas by touching on the basic concept of factions in the dungeon.

To immediately boil the idea down to its core: If your dungeon has a life beyond the activities of the PCs, it is much easier to revitalize the dungeon between delves. The life of the dungeon will naturally generate the ideas necessary to restock the dungeon (and, thus, carry a lot of the weight for you). This becomes even easier if the dungeon contains multiple, independent factions. (And even moreso if these factions are openly hostile to each other.)

Nor does this have to be something that you need heavily pre-plan. It can largely just be a matter of keeping one eye on it during your restocking process: “Okay, the PCs killed 70% of the orc population on Level 3. Who can take advantage of that? What will the Orc King’s response be? Actually, wait, they killed the Orc King. Have the orcs broken into factions? Could the Red Prince (I just made that name up) have allied with the goblins on Level 2 to push his claims? How will the other orcs feel about being asked to co-exist with lowly goblins? Will they turn to the Voodoo Necromancer (just made that up, too) who was once the Orc King’s advisor?” That’s about 15 seconds of brain-storming. Follow it up with a couple minutes of actual prep and you’ve got orc-and-goblin warbands with faces painted bright crimson squaring off against orc warriors ‘roided out on alchemical strength-boosters wearing the bone fetishes of the Voodoo Necromancer. It doesn’t even really matter if the PCs get involved in the actual politics of the situation: Even if they just hack their way through these orcish factions, they’ll (a) recognize that the dungeon has changed in their absence and (b) get some unique and interesting hacking out of it.

(You can see a similar real-play example of this in Delve Seven of “(Re-)Running the Megadungeon” when the elementalist gets killed.)

So, obviously, there’s nothing wrong with winging it. In the process of winging it, however, I’ve found it generally useful to prep two key pieces of information:

1. Identify each faction.
2. Identify the territory controlled by each faction.

Most of the time, it’s not necessary to get really obsessive with this. For example, in the Caverns of Thracia I don’t really have much more than a general sense that “the cultists control this chunk of the map”, “the lizardmen control these rooms”, “the anubians are based out of this complex”, and the like.

My understanding of the complex is fairly amorphous, and putting more detail into it is probably counter-productive: It’s unlikely to ever be noticed by players, it’ll bog down your prep, and it’s rarely representative of the fairly amorphous nature of contested territory. Precision will also tend to bog down your ability to flexibly interpret the results from your random encounter tables.

(Of course, if you’re designing a scenario in which particular focus or importance is placed on factional play, more detail may be merited.)

RANDOM FACTION INTERACTION TABLES

With that being said, it might be valuable to build some quick, light tools that will allow you to procedurally generate the ebbing shifts of factional fortunes in the dungeon. For this purpose, let’s turn to the Caves of Chaos from the classic B2 Keep on the Borderlands.

For those unfamiliar with this module, the Caves of Chaos are particularly useful for this purpose because they’ve already been conveniently split into factions: Essentially you’ve got a small valley full of caves, with each cave leading to an interconnected system of caverns and serving as the lair for one of several chaotic factions. The factions are:

(“Wandering Adventurers” refers to an NPC party entering the Caves of Chaos.)

FACTION CONFLICT CHECK: After each visit to the caves by a party of PCs, make a faction conflict check. Roll 1d6. On a roll of 6, conflict has broken out between the factions. Roll twice on the faction table to determine which two factions have come into conflict. (If you roll the same number twice, either re-roll or assume some sort of civil strife.) Then roll on the Conflict Resolution Table:

Stalemate Skirmish: The factions are largely unaffected by the conflict. Their forces may have been reinforced, or you may wish to subtract 1 or 2 members from one of their encounters. (The conflict may leave them ripe for alliances against their recent foes; or leave a chamber showing recent signs of conflict; or a couple of corpses tossed onto the valley floor to be feasted on by the owlbear.)

Faction Damaged: A damaged faction has suffered losses equal to roughly 25% of their strength. Subtract 1d4 members from each encounter (keyed or random) with that faction.

Faction Crippled: A crippled faction has suffered loses equal to roughly 50% of their strength. Eliminate entire encounters or subtract 1d12 members from each encounter (keyed or random) with that faction.

Faction Destroyed: A destroyed faction has been eliminated. Their lair may lie empty, be occupied by the other faction involved in the conflict, or restocked randomly. Their population has been killed, driven off, or enslaved.

Factions Unite: The two factions have allied with each other. (One of the leaders may have been killed. The alliance may be for some short-term goal. Or the populations might be fully intermixed between the lairs.)

USING THE TABLES

Like a random encounter table, the output here is designed to be flexibly interpreted. Once again, the Caves of Chaos are great for this sort of thing because it already includes some short notes regarding the relationships between the factions. (For example, the owlbear is described as having recently munched on some gnolls. The two orc chieftains have a secret meeting room that only they know about. And so forth.)

Mostly for the fun of it, I’m going to roll up a couple actual examples using these tables. We’ll start by assuming that I’ve just rolled a “6” on my Faction Conflict Check and go from there:

1. DETERMINE FACTIONS: I roll 1d12 twice, generating 9 and 5. That’s the Minotaur and the Ogre.

2. DETERMINE OUTCOME: I roll 1d8 and get 8. That’s Factions Unite.

3. INTERPRET RESULT: The Minotaur and the Ogre are the two solo factions in the Caves. (There’s only one Ogre and one Minotaur.) Scanning their entries, I see that the ogre is willing to sell his services to the highest bidder and the minotaur has a lot of money. So let’s say that the minotaur has hired the ogre for some purpose. What could it be? Well, the minotaur is willing to help the bugbears if they pay him in slaves. What if the bugbears cheated the minotaur and now he wants a little help to get the payment he feels is his due? That sets up a scenario where the PCs could arrive in the valley to see bugbears fleeing from their caves; or find bugbears shackled in the minotaur caverns; or just the minotaur and ogre huddling up in the minotaur’s cavern while they plot the glories of their revenge.

Let’s do it again:

1. DETERMINE FACTIONS: I roll 4 and 12. That’s Goblins and Wandering Adventurers.

2. DETERMINE OUTCOME: I roll a 5 for Both Factions Damaged.

3. INTERPRET RESULT: This one is pretty easy to figure out. A group of adventurers entered the goblin caverns, wreaked some havoc, and then got driven off.

4. GOBLIN ENCOUNTERS: There are 36 goblins total in this lair. A 25% loss would represent 9 goblins. I can represent this loss pretty easily be eliminating the wandering patrol of 6 goblins (the surviving goblins have bunkered down) and the 4 goblins guarding the store room.

5. ADVENTURERS: Where’d they go? Well, let’s say it was a party of 4 adventurers. One of them is dead and his corpse can be seen on a spike outside the goblins’ lair. The rest are either (a) camping nearby and looking for allies; (b) sold to the hobgoblin slavers; or (c) both.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It should be pretty easy to see how this simple system can be used to add a little quick spice to the complex between PC visitations. Combined with the ability to simply use some generic wandering monster tables to rapidly determine the new inhabitants of any lair complex emptied out by the PCs, it’s pretty easy to see how the Caves of Chaos could be easily used pretty much endlessly for low-level adventuring.