PC Events: Magic User

I figured I should finish these before the year is up:)

PC Events are to be rolled each month (or per period of down time in between adventures if you're a little more casual about timekeeping) to give each character a little something to do in their "real" lives. Erase each result as you use them, and replace them with others of your own creation. It should be up to the player whether to involve the other characters in his/her personal extracurricular activities or not.

PC Events: Magic User (d12)
1. Eureka! You finally discover what made the Ancient Ones so effective at sorcery. Pick your favorite destructive spell - you now get to reroll any result of "1" when rolling damage for that spell.
2. A mysterious stranger petitions you to join him and his associates to witness a rare ritual at midnight tomorrow. What's all this about?
3. For three nights straight, a great black raven has perched outside your window and peered in at you. Is it the familiar of a rival sent to spy, deliver a message, or something more sinister?
4. Accidentally mixing up some wrong spell components together has yielded unexpected results!
5. A young lady (or lad) with peculiar eyes appears one day seeking apprenticeship. You've been wanting an apprentice, but there is something not quite right with this one. Is it a sign of potential danger, or future greatness?
6. You finally break the code! In 1d6 days you can decipher the runes on the old standing stones outside of town and add one randomly determined spell of the highest level you can cast to your spell book.
7. Someone has slipped poison into your drink at your favorite tavern! Save vs. poison. If you fail you awaken 1 day later in the clutches of your kidnappers. If you pass, they advance upon you in the tavern to try and take you by more mundane means.
8. You receive an urgent summons to attend to the old master who trained you in your sorcerous ways. You haven't thought of him in years - what could be wrong?
9. You experience a mishap practicing your art! Your eyes' orbs turn permanently black with white irises.
10. You awaken one morning with a naked body next you! There is not a single mark upon her (or him). What killed her? Not you surely? You must be innocent (right?), but you can't remember a thing about last night.
11. Everywhere you go in town you hear hostile muttering and whispers in your wake. Just last week a young practitioner of the Art was hanged in the town square. Why is the local temple turning the townsfolk against magic-users? Are you safe in public anymore?
12. Out in the forest collecting herbs and components, you espy a rare pseudo-dragon perched near a spring. Is it possible you could tempt the creature to become your familiar?

Next Up: The Paladin

Last Time: The Illusionist

Campaign Concepts: Northaven

The race of Man is dying. Over a thousand years ago the last seven ships of Man fled the Apocalypse and found a safe stronghold in the Haven valley. For a long time life was good for the refugees, and a great city was built, the great valley providing plentiful resources and food farmed by the gentle, semi-sentient Behemoths. The population swelled and the troubles of the devastated outer world were forgotten.

Unfortunately, the last century has seen a sharp decline in those good fortunes. The population is dwindling, each generation smaller than the last. Most of the city of Northaven lies in ruins, the palaces, squares, and gardens empty and untended. The great villas on the outer edges of the valley are abandoned, and Mankind seems lost to ennui.

You are members of the youngest generation to reach adulthood. You hold the complacency of the elders in disgust, and play at being heroes out in the ruined villas and winding forests of the valley. You know something is not right, but the elders only make excuses and ignore your challenges.

What lies beyond the valley now, 1100 years after Apocalypse? What secrets lie behind the elders' vague platitudes and evasive answers? Is there any truth to the rumors of the normally peaceful Behemoths lashing out at their masters? What treasures or knowledge may lie in the holds of the great seven ships, still in perfect condition and abandoned on the valley's icy western shore? Why does smoke even now curl into the sky high up on the valley's eastern edge? Is it mischief in the abandoned villas wreaked by youths such as yourself, a fire caused by lightning from last night's unusually violent storm? Or has some threat from the outside world finally found its way to the last Sanctuary of Mankind?

Northaven is a campaign concept that has been slowly gelling in my idle thoughts. Imagine a fantasy setting where the world has essentially ended, and the reasons for the Apocalypse are either lost to time or closely guarded by the elders who mistakenly believe they are protecting their flock. Where Mankind has a made a valiant effort at achieving a comeback but failed, slowly descending into a long, uncaring death-spiral. Where the whole world outside this one, safe haven is shrouded in mystery, myth, and legend.

The campaign objectives would be two-fold: exploring the unknowably changed world beyond the tall gray mountains surrounding the valley; and uncovering the rot that now threatens Mankind from within.

The PCs are the restless scions of an indolent, spoiled culture, indulging in the "lost" arts of swordsmanship, magic, and exploration, and must meet their fate head-on, whether it is to be the saviors of Mankind, or to be the fools who open the doors to an Apocalypse that has long been slavering for a chance to finish the feast begun a millennium ago.

Mapping Resource Links

Dave's Dungeon Map Generator - A truly awesome old-school map generator drawn tiles made by various artists.

Graph Paper Generator - Go with the 8 squares per inch for those big Megadungeon maps.

Donjon Random Dungeon Generator - Instantly produces a vast dungeon map. Fill it yourself or go with the randomly generated (3x) descriptions.

Judges Guild Blank Hex Sheets - For mapping that sandbox, big and small styles both in one .pdf courtesy of Judges Guild!

Hexographer - Generates full-color, B/X-style campaign maps. Nice free demo or pay for the full program.

Wildgen - Randomly generates a wilderness hex-map.

Year of the Dungeon - Check out Tony's tiny but awesome dungeon maps. Your sandbox should be full of toys like these.

Adventure Generator - from Dizzy Dragon. Utilizes Dyson Logos' geomorphs :

Random Morph Map - Another Dyson Logos random combo machine.

Dyson Logos - Great geomorphs (see above), dungeon maps, and old school character sheets.

Strange Maps - A resource to explore weird maps.

Risus Monkey's Geomorphs - Good stuff.

Stonewerks - geomorphs, etc.

Post-apocalyptic City Generator - instant Dying Earth ruined cities!

Mojo's Mapping Aids - hex map .pdfs

This is going into the Beyond the Black Gate resource pages section of the blog, so please add any good links you have to the comments section below.

Starting Equipment and Megadungeon Tropes

I think a great way to set the tone of a Megadungeon campaign is to prepare some starting equipment packages ahead of time. When I run demos of the Forsaken Halls, each pregen has a carefully selected pile of goodies in his backpack. While they are neat things to have on the surface, I have ulterior motives in putting them there - hoping to inspire and/or reinforce the exploratory nature of Megadungeon play. Starting equipment is also an easy way to add a little bit of flavorful campaign setting material to your games, as with Ming's standard equipment packs back in this old post (specialized Megadungeon equipment here).

Some good equipment to provide to inexperienced Megadungeon explorers includes:

Pole, 10' - This is there for a very good reason. And I don't mean to check for pits. Its there to remind players that every character class can (and should) check for traps. 1 in 6 isn't a bad chance, and its not unusual that I bump the chance to 2 in 6 with the right equipment, or just allow detection automatically when the player describes just the right way to detect that collapsing column or trip wire. As a matter of fact, I try and work in at least one "auto-success" even if I have to fudge it a bit - it's worth it to positively reinforce descriptive play over "roll" play.

Mirror, small steel - Here's another great item. Peek around corners or under doors. Reflect torchlight into hard-to-see places. Fight medusas and basilisks. For such a simple item, it certainly inspires a lot of descriptive and creative actions.

Vial, glass, empty - Fill me! Fill me! this little item screams. Fill me with acid to throw at monsters! Fill me with holy water to throw at undead. Fill me with Green Slime to pour on trolls. Fill me with a sample of the glowing blue water from the fountain on level three to take back to town for analysis. Fill me with venom from the dead giant scorpion. Fill me with ashes from the dead vampire to sell to the rich necromancer. Fill me!!!

Manacles - I don't know why, but my players have rarely been keen on taking prisoners, thus depriving me of the chance to rp orcs, slavers, assassins, and so on. But give a player a set of manacles, and they just can't wait to take a prisoner. Its kind of weird, really.

Pot, iron - Strike another day off the rations? Or cook up some of that dried meat from the storeroom on level two with chunk of mushroom from the Fungus Forest and some herbs from the mad wizard's laboratory. Like our good friend the glass vial, the pot just screams to be filled, and gives players something to talk about during down time while you're rolling for wandering monster encounters. It will also invariably be used to conk someone on the head at that point, and the roll-to-hit will invariably be a natural 20. I don't why, it just works out that way.

Soap - Adventurers stink. This helps monsters track and hunt them. Not a bad to take a quick bath in that underground stream (nevermind the blind albino crocodiles, they'll never notice, right?) and scrub off the funk from those troglodytes. It also makes a great lubricant for those stuck doors, heavy sarcophagus lids, and stubborn turnable statue bases.

Whetstone - Throw a couple of these at the players and they'll actually use them. Weird.

Empty Sacks - Another great "Fill me!" item. Plus it helps players keep those encumbrance rules in mind. You can also stuff them with flammable stuff like flour, cotton, or owlbear feathers and make handy fire hazards to slow down pursuit.

String - Repair torn cloaks, clothes, sacks, and sundries on the spot. Tie one to a heavy stone with a candle at one end for a time-able trap. Use them to mark your way through a maze. Drop torches down pits and wells for easy retrieval. Tie a holy symbol or vial of holy water to the end of your 10' pole to fish around in tombs with.

Some follow-up on non-variable weapon damage

I used the flat d6 weapon damage in Friday's Forsaken Halls session (a report on that later), and...

No problems whatsoever.

I decided to use the 2d6-keep-the-best-d6 idea for 2handed weapons, but none of the players happened to have a 2-handed weapon, so that never got tested.

There were no complaints, and no confusion. Some quick observations:

-It seemed to bring basic combat in line with some "standard" spells like magic missile and cure light wounds, both of which use a basic d6 also (we used Labyrinth Lord for the Halls session just for fun).

-There was a magic javelin (+1) that got a lot of use. I suspect this item may have been eschewed in favor of a non-magical d8 or d10 weapon in variable-damage campaigns due to basic number crunching. Just the impression I got.

-This option may have actually sped up combat just a hair, no more hands hesitating over the dice pile ("what damage does a crossbow do again?"). Everyone pretty much kept a d20 (for attacks and saves) and a d6 (for damage, initiative, and "skills") in easy reach, and saved the other dice for special occasions.

I think a couple of more sessions with non-variable weapon damage are in order to determine if this option is actually better, but I can safely say it definitely wasn't worse, and caused no problems, in case you were thinking of trying it out yourselves.

Thoughts on non-variable weapon damage.

I'm thinking of using non-variable weapon damage for tonight's foray into the Forsaken Halls. I'm sure by now you've probably read JB's in-depth essay on the subject (and perhaps even Alexis' characteristically irascible response), but I don't really have any deep reasoning behind the decision. I just want the focus off the damage a weapon does, and more on the iconic nature of the weapon itself. I'm hoping to see this help to develop the narrative of combat a little more - every weapon is devastating in its own way. I'm hoping the players will have fun with it, if not, its easy enough to go back to the way we've been doing it all along.

My only point of difficulty is with two-handed weapons. Why sacrifice a shield bonus to AC if you're not going to do more damage? It seems like the whole reason to pick up a two-handed weapon is to be able to bring more of your natural strength to bear on the matter-at-hand. So my idea is that you get double your strength bonus (or penalty!) to damage when wielding a two-handed weapon. So the damage chart with two-handed weapons looks something like this:

3 (-6)
4-5 (-4)
6-8 (-2)
9-12 (+0)
13-15 (+2)
16-17 (+4)
18 (+6)

Or 3-8 (-2); 9-12 (+0); 13-18 (+2) with Swords & Wizardry.

So, someone with three strength is completely useless with a two-handed weapon (d6-6) and someone with 18 strength is devastating (d6+6).

Or, I could just go with a flat +1 bonus to damage with 2-handed weapons, but that seems a little off, for some reason. Alternately, I could let the player choose between a +1 to AC, or a +2 to damage, which is similar to how I use two-weapon fighting (choose +1 to AC or +1 to damage).

Thoughts?

Friday Frazetta?

Ok, ok, its not actually Frazetta. You art detectives, you. But it is what appears to be the Mad Monk Rasputin and several Satanic Jawas facing off against Ninja Turtles, so that's got to count for something right?

Right?

To see a bigger version, as well as some more Russian Ninja Turtle craziness, head on over to Monster Brains. Ninja Turtles were a bit after my time in the Saturday Morning Cartoon arena, but had I known that in Russia they were facing off against Predators, Unicorn-Trolls, pig-faced orcs, Robot Dinosaurs with battle axes, some lost Elder Race from C.A.Smith, and the Spinning Flesh-Wheel of Death, I might have paid more attention. Or not.

Normal Frazetta transmissions to resume next week!