Who's your Dungeon Rival?

Tomi Ungerer's "Les Trois Brigands"

To keep the pressure on players, it's a real good idea to have some competition for the spoils of your typical mega-dungeon. Of course, your standard NPC party will answer, but below are eight more unusual ideas.

1. Spyro and Ain, a desperate husband and wife evicted from their farm, carrying a baby (whom they will leave with someone trustworthy at the inn) and accompanied by their dog Ponto. Both are zero-level civilians, and they are carrying a spear, a shield, and an axe between them, equipment they say they found on a dead man by the side of the road.

2. Fazio, a low-level rogue, and the Five Fingers of Fazio, a collection of ex-stevedores, unemployed farmhands, and unclassifiable layabouts whom greed, and Fazio, have persuaded to go dungeon-bound. Fazio has a small sword and boot dagger, the Five Fingers have cudgels, one hatchet, one hammer, and a bill hook between them. Three of them have quilted armor, two have a shield. The whole plan is a swindle, and Fazio sees the Fingers as completely expendable. (Note: this may or may not be his actual motivation in the Trossley campaign).

3. Seven dwarf homesteaders and a wagon pulled by a mule, led by a matriarch with the unlikely name "Ivo Gnarledchasms the Sound of Lozenges." They are well armed and equipped, with axes, hammers, picks, mushroom spawn, casks of ale, and even an anvil. They intend to settle in the dungeon once cleared, and will camp outside in the meantime. They know the story of Snow White and take very poorly to attempts to exploit its comedic potential.

4. Elf and Safety Inspector. A mid-level cleric, one Sister Kunda, has become slightly deranged and is convinced that the dungeon is an unsafe working environment. She intends to rectify this by finding and disabling all traps, catching all monsters and releasing them in the wild, and incidentally carting out all the treasure she can find, because coins have sharp edges and someone might slip on them. Until her job is done she is very insistent that nobody else should go down into the dungeon. Her sidekick is a cynical female elf named Thyale, who helps the good Sister chiefly so she can claim in truth that now she's seen everything.

5. Bax is a mid-level hunter, or ranger if you will, from an aristocratic family. He has become fixated on finding and killing one particular monster deep in the dungeon. He would rather not have any distractions on shallower levels if he can help it and is always looking for news of a quick way down. His entourage includes Mahlathi, a tall, taciturn warrior from the southern continent, who knows no Common but whose language Bax knows; a pipe-smoking bard, Landreaux; four hired crossbowmen; and four baggage handlers.

6. Reckel is a dark, brooding half-orc warrior. His company is made up of shabby, disreputable humans - a spell-slinger, a scout, three rough-looking bandit women. Their intentions are sinister. Aided by his command of most of the major humanoid languages, Reckel has a messianic vision of uniting all the humanoid groups and patrols in the dungeon, marching forth and conquering the nearby area. Not all the humanoids in the dungeon go for his scheme, but he is very good at bargaining with them and they will likely let his team pass through safely.

7. Young Lord Borgis is a spoiled and dissolute nobleman's son from the nearest city. He is here to fulfill a bet, made while drunk, that he could spend a night in the dungeon and emerge alive. He has the best equipment that money can buy, and a grizzled, much-put-upon veteran bodyguard named Deague. But he has also brought along his two foolish friends, some female companions, and a mule loaded with wine and sherry, and he intends to make a joke and picnic of the whole affair. In the likely event that he is lost in the dungeon, his father will offer a large reward for the retrieval of his body and a larger reward if he is returned alive.

8. A standard adventuring party, with fighter, cleric, magic-user and thief. Except the fighter is a doppleganger, the cleric a penaggolan, the magic-user a rakshasa, and the thief a wererat. They met as part of a powerful arch-wizard's menagerie of shape-changers, and were subjected to unspeakable sorceries and humiliations. Escaping upon the wizard's demise, they swore to live as humans from now on, to see how truly human they could become. The rivalry with the players' party, though, makes for a sore temptation to exploit their special powers - one that each of them will have to face in his or her own way.

***

The first two of these rival bands have been met in the Trossley campaign. Last night, the party hacked down, with axes, the door to a trick room (not one of my finest) where any noise would disturb the teetering stacks of bronze pennies and send them swirling down into the depths. Then they came across a couple of Grinning Skull orcs from a lower level, also attracted by the noise, and killed one. There followed a tense fight with four wandering spiders, which left the hireling Balm comatose from poison but surviving his second saving throw and becoming a Level 1 fighter.

Near the end of the fight, when the players were starting to panic, a light from behind revealed the coming of Fazio and the Five Fingers! They rushed forward to help, and their contribution to the fight was minimal but gave a player morale boost when it was sorely needed. With healing spent and Balm near death, the party decided to leave the dungeon to Fazio and his Fingers.

And of course, I needed to know what happened to them. So I ran them through the dungeon, rolling decisions to go left or right as needed, also making checks against their morale and loyalty when needed. Indeed, that's how they got to the fight with the spiders in the first place. About the rest of their day, all I can say right now is - it's fun to be an adventurer as well as the DM ...

You know what's better than a hot elf chick?

(The player of a female dwarf in my Old School Players campaign insisted on the beard. Screw marketing ... keep gaming real ... Play Old School!)

Elf chick meme starts here.

IF Theory Reader

The Interactive Fiction Theory Reader is available on Lulu. It's a very nice compilation of thoughts about interactive adventure design and atmosphere from the text-adventure game revival of the mid 90's. In it is my old (I guess by now "classic" essay on interactive fiction, Crimes Against Mimesis. It's too bad I didn't have time to update it for the book - for example, by adding in material from this series of posts. But there you go.

Speaking of time being short, my "day job" is throwing multiple deadlines at me right now, so posting is looking to be intermittent through the end of the month.

I tend to make 4 kinds of posts: "program" ones where I work my way through a series of essays or observations; "product" ones where I give you something I've been working on, like the current Gazolba adventure or the house rules; play reports (mainly to keep a record of what goes on in my campaign); and "impromptu" posts where I riff on something that's turned up elsewhere in the web. The impromptu ones are easiest to do, so expect more of those in the next few weeks. And it's interesting that one such post - Why's There a Dungeon Under Your City? - is my all-time most popular in terms of pageviews.

Trossley Campaign: Politics, Economics and ... Puppets?

After a long hiatus due to our travels and various other infirmities, the campaign got back rolling Friday evening. Reaction and morale rolls ensured that the remaining hostile kobolds of the Am'rash tribe would stand down for now, so the first half was spent cleaning up remaining pockets of resistance and engaging in humanoid politics. While Boniface the militant came away with a sword of virtuous steel formerly wielded by the Am'rash chieftain, the coin and other effects fell to the Yurog kobold allies. They had offered to "play a game" back at their lair to determine the division of these spoils, a generous offer the party unaccountably declined. Proceeding were interrupted as a group of five orcs chased a Yurog scout back up from a lower level (the result of a "does this cool thing happen" roll). After a joint show of strength, the orcs backed off, and with this increasing the pressure, the party decided to make their apologies, though with some grumbling from the Yurog.

Back in town, more politics ensued, the party being summoned to the Lord Mayor Felmere to give a briefing on the reappeared castle to the local Earl, Grangor of Pendry, and his daughter, the celebrated beauty Ellimer.  Both the Earl and the Mayor grew interested in any treasure flow from the castle. Grangor left with a poor impression of the Castle's worth - the coinless adventuring proving to be, perhaps, somewhat fortunate this time. Felmere, a former adventuring henchman, had other suspicions about the prosperity of the restocked dungeons. Spurred on by news of the arrival of another, somewhat raffish rival adventuring party in town (another "cool thing" roll) he floated a proposal for an adventurer-friendly "tax" on recovered treasure in the form of a compulsory payment toward the purchase of one of the town's abandoned properties.

The main play issue this session brings up is the difficulty I had in creating a conversation between NPCs with the party as audience. I felt like a puppetteer, switching voices not altogether successfully. Maybe some handy finger puppets - or at least miniatures for the figures involved that I could pick up and wave around - would help keep things straight as to who was talking. If that's not, you know, too weird.

I think most DMs try to avoid such NPC-on-NPC scenes for good reason, but the more intrigue one throws into the stew, the more they become inevitable. Any tips for handling them, of course, would be very welcome.

Egg of the Gazolba I

Finally making good on my promise last month, I'll be sharing a non-violent adventure idea over a series of posts, populating it using my problems generator and tricks generator. Note that violence is not necessary in the adventure, but can break out if the players mess up a couple of situations.

The recommended party level, too, is variable. Interestingly, it is not so much skills and character levels that would make the adventure too easy, but access to the kind of powerful non-combat spells that usually are turned down in favor of fireballs and the like. I would hazard the general observation, too, that this kind of magic is a major consideration in any adventure where tricks and problems predominate.

At the end I will produce a map, which will also be an opportunity to share with you another feature you've asked for - my adventure mapping system and the Powerpoint mapping symbols that go with it.

Introduction (and with apologies to Clark Ashton Smith)

The legitimacy of the Sultans of Janpore finds embodiment in the person of the Gazolba bird. About the size of a goose - in the same way a gazelle is about the size of a donkey - and plumed gorgeously in green, red, violet and white, the living Gazolba, only specimen of its kind, literally sits on the head of the true and rightful Sultan on occasions of state; a heavy, serene diadem.

When the Sultan sires male offspring, the Gazolba lays a single, parthenogenetic, opalescent egg. The clutch corresponding to the Sultan's sons lies in a heavily guarded nest in the Carnelian Palace. In the case of the present Sultan, Zadir III, there is only one egg, and the heir is six years old.Young Zadir IV knows that when his father dies, so will the present Gazolba, and a new Gazolba chick will hatch for his own crown.

All these peculiarities of the Sultanate are known to the party, who have been sojourning in Janpore a few days. In good time, a well-fed man, disguised in garb of a commoner's cut but far too well-maintained, seeks them out in their inn. He introduces himself as Arouf, the Sultan's vizier, and proposes a mission that only strangers to the city could undertake, for nobody would believe their story were they to tell it.

It seems that a secret calamity has befallen the palace. The egg of the Gazolba has been stolen - replaced by a painted duplicate. This was noticed by one Mambrun, a palace guard. Only he, Arouf, and Arouf's confidant, the female cleric Yeshaim, know of the theft, which would spell calamity when. It was she who cast the divination revealing that the egg was hidden in the abandoned pleasure tower of the long-departed Blue Witch Xadiva, which sits atop an unscaleable cliff, half a day's journey from the city. The only way in is through a number of caverns in the cliff's surface - but which cavern leads eventually to the tower is unclear. The way to the cliff, however, goes through the Sultan's private hunting forest, which is patrolled by a vindictive and implacable game warden, a half-elf named Vran who is a faultless tracker.

Arouf has arranged for a distraction tomorrow in another part of the forest which will occupy Vran, but otherwise cannot risk any involvement with the caper. The reward to the party for the safe return of the egg is at your discretion; gold, jewels, a ship, or more cruelly, immunity to prosecution on trumped-up charges concocted by Arouf himself. In parting, Arouf makes a cryptic comment about "tests, dangers, and oh yes, fabulous wealth" said still to reside within the pleasure tower.

Fantastic Torch

Amid this amusing series of Photoshopped ads for products only ever seen in movies, behold this dungeon delver staple:

by BRWombat

It's true, even Middle Ages movie torches always go up like they're soaked in gasoline; stay lit forever; are found in sconces without much thought as to who put them there or changes them every two hours or so; and aren't really necessary due to ambient illumination. Yes, the movies are one place where low-tech is better, as we find out further on down the list ...

by Corey Vaspasiano

Pick Pockets

I'm not racist, but most of them are halflings

Another interesting Slate article reports the decline of the New York City pickpocket. Alas, no more need Mom and Dad instruct their kids to put their wallet in the front pocket. Apparently these darn urchins today with their Pokeymons and social networks have no gumption for learning a craft involving elaborate feats of misdirection and legerdemain.

Well - need it be said? Good riddance.

I was in Barcelona last summer during a wave of pickpocketing. Constant reminders on the subway, from hotel personnel, everywhere. Paranoia undercutting our enjoyment of one of Europe's most amazing cities. My wife had a compartment on her backpack (thankfully empty of anything valuable) opened by stealth. Not much desire there to applaud the exquisite art of the sneak thief.

You know, I also feel the same way about the "pickpocketing" skill in roleplaying games. Even when expanded to "sleight of hand" to allow minor conjuring tricks, it's a basically antisocial skill. It screams out "Hey! Thief! Go off and have a solo adventure!" While whispering "Psst! Thief! Care to try your skill on your fellow party members?" Note-passing campaigns with stealth player vs. player action may be fun to run online, but at a tabletop I see that kind of action as a pain (but see also JB's somewhat different take on the whole issue).

And yet ... if you have a character who is a thief, he or she just might have been trained in this very exacting skill. My solution is to treat it as part of the 1-3 background words a starting character gets in my Old School Players system; so if you choose "thief" you will get a minor chance to pickpocket, ruled on the spot, and if you choose "pickpocket" you'll be quite competent at it from the start. I don't want pickpocketing to be at the center of the campaign but it's fine as flavor. Maybe if the game revolved more about intrigue and capers things just might be different. But in my dungeon-bashing game, there ain't no need.