A Dungeon of Random Tables

As a DM, I like to improvise from a set of fairly loose notes. I like being surprised as a DM. On the other hand, improvising requires a level of energy and invention that's not always there.

To get around this issue, I designed a dungeon as a set of random tables. An entry in the dungeon looks like this:

2. Audience Chamber
Visitors to the cult's lair wait here until their audience with the high priest. There are four bedrolls, a barrel of water, a bucket, and a small cabinet stocked with food and drink (6 days worth) here.

1d6-2 visitors are here. (Allows for an empty room.)
50/50 that they are simple hunters or trappers here to trade, or dark pilgrims seeking to join
Use bandit stats for either
Hunters aren't looking for a fight. Even chance that the cultists try to trick or attack PCs

This isn't rocket science, but it had two benefits to me in play.

First, it was fun as a DM not knowing what was in he room until the PCs entered it. It made the adventure more interesting to run, as I was as much an audience for it as the players.

Second, it makes for a very dynamic environment. It made the dungeon feel like a living place with only a small amount of effort on my part.

I used randomness in a few ways:

• Absence/presence of inhabitants, plus their numbers
• Attitudes/general initial reaction (violence, talking, deception, flight)
• State of traps and other features (recently trigger, broken, normal)
• Odd events, like whether the two rival ogres in a room happen to be fighting when the PCs approach

Overall, so far in play it has worked well to make the dungeon come to life. As long as your dungeon map is reasonably non-linear, it can have interesting effects on the flow of play.

Digital Toolkit: The Evernote Dungeon

Right before GenCon, I ran a dungeon crawl adventure using my iPad, a set of dice, and monster stat blocks written down on index cards.

On my iPad, I had GoodReader loaded up with PDFs of the rulebooks I needed to reference. For the adventure, I tried something different. I wrote up the dungeon using Evernote. It worked out pretty well.

If you're not familiar with Evernote, head over to its web site to get a basic overview. I've read that it started as someone's attempt to create an app to help keep track of a D&D campaign. Whether that's true or not, it's been invaluable in organizing my own campaigns.

For dungeons, here's how I use Evernote.

1. I create a new notebook, using the dungeon's name as the notebook's name. For multiple levels in a single dungeon, I create multiple notebooks.
2. I grab an image of the dungeon map and pop that in as the first note in the notebook. I also insert any general notes about the dungeon in this note, like random encounter tables. I use a leading character in the note's title that ensures that it's in the notebook's top position.
3. During the game, I keep that note open to track where the party travels and such.
4. I create a separate note for each dungeon room, and inside that note write down all the typical stuff you normally need to run that chamber. The irritating thing is that using letters instead of numbers makes it easier, as Evernote breaks out notes in separate rows for each letter of the alphabet, by note title. Numbers work OK, but you end up with all of your notes shelved into a single row.
5. In play, I close out the dungeon map note and open the corresponding room note when the characters enter an area.

So that's basically it. I don't bother with monster stat blocks in the notes, instead handling them the old fashioned way via hand written index cards or print outs.

So, that's my experience with mapping dungeons in Evernote. It worked out well in play.

GenCon Wrap Up Part I: Avoiding Con Crud

Or: Why I am happy to shake hands at a con.

The last con crud I picked up was in 2008, and I'm pretty sure it was from a meal. I've been to dozens of shows over that time, shook a lot of hands, and even had a roommate come down with the flu in mid-con. So what's the secret? It's super simple.

• Hydrate. Drink plenty of water, soda, or whatever.
• Aim for six hours of sleep each night. I try to avoid caffeine after mid-afternoon to help with this rule.
• Eat well. I eat at least one salad per day and fruit whenever I can. You can usually find a place in the con center selling apples or bananas alongside breakfast foods.
• Wash your hands. Hot water, soap, and recite the alphabet A to Z to time scrubbing.
• Resist the urge to touch your face, eyes, and nose. You can't catch a cold from germs hanging out on your hands. Those little buggers need an entry vector. Don't give them one.
• Assume no one else is washing their hands. It's kind of paranoid, but it's an easy way to remind myself to avoid touching my face and to wash up before eating. All it takes is That Guy to shake your hand before you chow down on an apple.
• I know some people don't shake hands, but really if you do all this stuff you don't need to worry about. Even if you avoid handshaking, you're still exposed to tons of stuff that you can only counter by washing your hands and taking care of yourself.

GenCon Resolutions

A lot of us use the New Year as a marker for various resolutions. We make promises to ourselves, usually regarding things that are supposed to make us better people. Almost always, a New Year's resolution comes salted with a sense of challenge or reluctance. We never resolve to eat more chocolate or watch more TV. We instead plant a flag in the ground and swear to do something we know is out of our comfort zone.

I think that's dumb. Life is hard enough as it is. I say we make resolutions to do fun things, and use GenCon as the yearly marker for how we're doing.

Here are my GenCon 2013 resolutions:

• Keep my "for fun" D&D game going for the entire year.
• Start a second campaign that hits at least level 10.
• Play at least six RPGs I haven't tried before (new editions count).
• Play at least four miniatures games.
• Paint the miniatures I bought at GenCon: a pack of bullywugs, a set of beast men, and a set of three barbarians.
• Use the painted beast men in at least one RPG or miniatures game.

What's on your list?

Aedric, Sire of Beast and Storm

As the gods crafted mortals in their own image, so too did Aedric craft the beasts in his. The strongest of the gods had little use for words, so his children could not speak. He fought with his fists and teeth, and so too did his children rely on tooth, claw, and talon.

In time, Aedric's children came to hunt the humanoids crafted by the other gods. The crude spears they clutched did little to ward away the griffons, chimera, and other beasts Aedric had crafted. The other gods grew angry. Looking upon Aedric's creations, they crafted a mighty spell to undo their power.

Each of Aedric's creations were split asunder, their power scattered across their new forms. The soaring griffon yielded the eagle and the lion. The vicious ferreg gave rise to owls and bears. Hydras split into swarms of snakes, while perytons spawned deer and vultures. All of the most common creatures of the world so arose.

Few of Aedric's children escaped this scourge. Only the most common of them survived, and stories persist of truly terrible beasts that still lurk in forgotten corners of the world. Each and every last animal can trace its roots to Aedric's brood, and few can imagine what creatures they once formed.

For his part, Aedric swore revenge against the gods and their children. He threw himself into the sky and transformed into a swirling vortex of air to rend and tear the first cities to rubble. Before the gods could stop him, he become one with the cloudy, peaceful sky. Thus, the first storm ravaged the land. Since that day, Aedric appears again and again to punish the land, rising from the serene clouds to deal his punishment before fading again before his brethren can catch and punish him. Over the long years his wrath has faded, but at times it boils up again into a blizzard or hurricane.

Needless to say, the worship of Aedric is at best met with suspicion and fear if not outright persecution. As the lord of storms and beasts, he offers his worshippers protection from his wrath and the brute, physical power his creations embody. His clerics forswear metal armor and prefer simple cudgels, clubs, and maces to more sophisticated weapons. More tellingly, they refuse to bathe, cut their hair, or engage in similar trappings of civilized behavior. To the clerics of Aedric, embracing the way of the beast is key to achieving their god's inner mysteries.

In battle, the lesser priests can take on the forms of common beasts. The more powerful of his followers can adopt the forms of his true children, such as hydras and griffons. The highest ranking clerics conjure air elementals and take the form of terrible, living storms.

Aedric's clerics war against the other gods' mortal followers, though they can set aside their grudge if a greater threat presents itself. In particular, they view gnolls, manticores, and other abominations spawned by The Defiler as a heretical mockery of Aedric's creations.

Aedric's worship flourishes in the distant barbaric lands, far from the Realm of Ten Cities. Rumors persist of hidden cults that lurk in the cities, plotting to unleash a great invasion of beasts to overrun the civilized realm.

Games are Idioms

(Originally posted on EN World, but re-posted here since people on that site seemed to like it.)

I think you can learn a lot about a game by listening to how people describe it after they play it. It shows you how they interact with, see, and process the game.

For instance, last weekend I played Carcassonne. I had some lucky draws I was able to exploit by managing my meeples well. I was able to keep churning through cities and roads, completing stuff at a steady enough pace that I was able to drop some farmers early without hurting myself in the late game. My opponent built a couple of huge cities to narrow my lead, but my edge in farmers sealed the game.

Compare that to a description of our lunchtime Keep on the Borderlands game from Tuesday. The characters had been ambushed by wererats at the Stumbling Giant (the tavern in the keep) the session before. With the help of the guards, they figured out that the wererats posed as halfling merchants and had visited the keep several times before. Oddly enough, though the guards at the gate reported that the halflings always left with a heavily laden wagon, the gnomes they traded with never sold them all that much copper and silver ore. The gnomes were surprised at the guards' description of the loaded wagon.

The PCs had arranged a meeting with the keep's ruler. Unknown to them, the ruler's trusted advisor disguised himself and sought out the PCs to question them. Faced with an inquisitive stranger, the party's wizard slashed the man's arm with a knife to see if the non-silver blade would deal any lasted damage.

It did, and the session ended with the characters entered the ruler's audience chamber to find the "wandering tracker" they had harassed standing at his side.

If you look at my second description, I think it's something you find for most RPGs and other immersive games. I'd describe playing Mass Effect in a similar manner. There's something very important there, a mode of thinking and experiencing the game that the mechanics should support. It's definitely something that influences the Essentials process and a lot of my design.

It's something that I think of as the game's metaphor, or its idiom. To an outsider, D&D is a few people sitting around a table, rolling dice, consulting books, speaking in funny voices, and maybe pushing miniatures around a grid. To the people in the game, it's a tense expedition into an ancient ruin, made all the more deadly by the bloodthirsty, recently awakened vampire that stalks the tombs they explore. That's an important part of the game. Without it, the game is little more than what it appears to be on the surface.

What You Know, Who You Know

There was a thread on EN World a few months back about the role of sages in D&D. In AD&D, there was a fair amount of material in the DMG about the services offered by experts in various fields. If the characters needed to learn the history of the Forgotten City of Thar, they could plunk down some cash and hire the services of an expert.

Over the years, that sort of expertise has shifted from NPCs to characters. Non-weapon proficiencies, and later the skill system integrated into D&D, gave the characters the opportunity to become experts themselves. The sage as an important element of the game faded away.

On one hand, that makes things easier at the table. The DM can salt a dungeon or other location with strange runes, crumbling statues, and other bits that allow for skill checks as a way to add depth, background, and hints to the game.

On the other hand, sages provided a few nice benefits. They are a great way to give the party an interesting, non-combat challenge, a fun NPC to interact with, and a world that feels like a living, active place outside of the immediate bounds of an adventure. They set up a plausible situation where the PCs have to make an NPC happy in order to achieve their goals.

There's a rather easy way to combine the two approaches, giving the characters the benefits of skills like Arcana or History while making sages (and similar NPCs) useful, interesting resources. Simply put, most experts combine off the cuff knowledge with a thorough understanding of how to find an answer. That can easily extend to the PCs.

When the characters discover strange runes carved on to a seemingly impenetrable steel door, a skill check points the way to the expert that can tell them about the runes. The character's knowledge isn't absolute, but it does carry with it an understanding of the experts, important books, and other lore surrounding the topic.

Even better, you can frame that knowledge with an interesting choice. Perhaps the characters can recall two experts who might know about the runes. Yulgash the Exile's knowledge is unmatched, but he dwells in the Forest of Brambles ever since the townsfolk caught his servants pillaging the graveyard. Tharan the Radiant is a close second, but as a high priest of Pholtus any inquiries to him might generate unwanted entanglements. Giving the characters real options is an important part of D&D, and this is one more way to introduce that.