Vacuous Grimoire

I intend to grittilly break my home group's game system...

Expanded Vision for Metropolis of Chaos

Original Map for Abyssal City

So, I'm kind of chewing over this "Metropolis of Chaos" thing in the Abyss, looking at my maps from 1980 or so, and it doesn't look so much like a city-size, let alone a "metropolis." Of course there are corridors and chambers underneath this visage which is where much of the old adventuring took place, but it still isn't what I am looking for as a preeminent location to cavort with demons in the deadly and ceaseless combat I envisioned for goodly adventurers entering this locale. Too "granular" for something I'm wishing to be an unworldly large cesspool.

I was reminded of the original 1980 City State of the World Emperor map versus the 2005 tentatively released and never consummated re-imagined Virdidistan (as the World Emperor's City State was named).

Original 1980 City State of the World Emperor Map (Viridistan)

2005 "reimagioned" City State of the World Emperor Map (Viridistan)

First off, the size of the two cities are completely different. The original is at best a half mile across, where as the modern imagined Viridistan is nearly two and a half miles. Secondly, the modern version has, for me at least, a much more aesthetically pleasing shape for an exotic metropolis that once was the capital of a vast empire - much more "Roman" and cosmopolitan whereas the original looks dark ages medieval. Lastly, the modern map looking at it now, is much more playable in that the different quarters and significant locations stand out and are not lost among the "granular" maps of shop interiors, streets and alleyways.

Interestingly, the original did not, a'la City State of the Invincible Overlord, assign shopkeeper and other denizens to specific locations throughout the City State, which actually irked me at the time. However, in theory as I have never tried this, a game judge could use the Shop Guidebook and run players through Viridistan without needing specific streets. Locals would know where they were going and foreigners would be hopelessly lost most of the time anyway. (See, try to imagine life with no GPS)

What I think I might do is establish an area map along the lines of the modern Veridistan map, and run up some various "quarter" or area encounters that could be dropped in anywhere within a region of the Metropolis of Chaos, and then have primary locations for crazy temples, castles, and such for Demon Lords. Even though I will be "reimagioning" my maps, that means I don't necessarily have to throw out the various encounters I wrote for my old scenario. Just widen the proscenium a bit...

Underport: Abyssal Descent Review

tenfootpole.org

Bryce Lynch over at Ten-Foot-Pole, a blog dedicated to providing reviews of Old School Renaissance products was kind enough to review Underport: Abyssal Descent. Please check it out to see what you think.

Bryce wrote what I consider a very kind and fair analysis of the dungeon. If someone is on the fence about spending $5 for a copy at DriveThruRPG this could provide more of a sense how the scenario might meet your expectations.

Ten-Foot-Pole has been reviewing OSR gaming products going back to August 2011, approximately 49 months worth of reviewing somewhere between 5-10 modules each month. So Bryce has read tons of new gaming products which makes his thoughts pretty valuable in that I don't know of any other OSR gamer who has tackled such a volume to at least be able to compare what a lot of DIY OSR homebrew publishers are throwing out there on the RPG market in terms of style and playability.

One main conceit I have in dungeon design is that the game judge should have virtually every important bit of mechanics to run a particular encounter. As I discussed in a previous post (ha, coincidentally posted 3 days after Bryce's review), including monster stat blocks in OD&D or 1e/2e was relatively simple - maybe 2-4 lines of text or sometimes only 1 line!

With the 3e advent of skills monster stat blocks exploded.  

Knights of the All Mind supplement was intended to reduce the size of stat blocks (and player character sheets). In All Mind most of the modern (and open source) elements are retained, but in a hybrid fashion reverts to using class/race abilities or straight attribute checks to adjudicate things like picking locks, hiding, hearing noises, tracking, etc. from earlier editions of The World's Most Popular Role Playing Game.

Bryce and other present-day game designers have expressed to the contrary, just describe the encounter ommitting all the stat blocks. The game judge can just look up the necessary details in her bestiary. This also has an added advantage of making the encounter pretty much system-neutral.

Not to mention it makes it super easier on the writer because the focus is solely on the adventure. In the two years* it took me to transcribe Underport: Abyssal Descent from it's original version, probably two thirds of the work (or more) was used adding the stat blocks for different creatures that were translated into the All Mind format.
(*two years working very, very part time)

Of course, I am still left with my conceit. And maybe judges do have everything they need - because of the variety of game systems it's probably that each judge translates adventures into whatever rules and bestiaries that are being run at the time. Heavens to Murgatroyd, that's actually what I do running other folk's work.

Well, Metropolis of Evil will give me an opportunity to dance around with these philosophies...

"Metropolis of Chaos" Tentative Cover

This will get me a "mature audience" designation (gore) for the title on DriveThruRPG. The benefit is that starting from here, not having to worry about the children, will likely lead into a somewhat more fitting and disturbed abyssal direction...

Dungeon Designing

The experiences of my formative dungeon delving days of yore were classic Judges Guild. Tegel, Badabaskor, Dark Tower, City State, in general these are somewhat of a monster zoo, something in every room. Badabaskor has an overarching theme of the brigands, and Dark Tower of course has the twin towers to Set and Mitra interplay, but in general our group fought through room by room looking for loot. Fast forward 35 years and "Hey, it's been an hour and we haven't fought anything!" is still a somewhat common refrain.

That is not to say there are not thematic or non-violent interactions as part of developing stories, just that players mainly wanted to throw down some dice which in the early days most often meant fighting.

Here are some ideas I wanted to share about designing dungeons related to my experience with the idea that the number one function of dungeon scenarios is PLAYABILITY i.e. the dungeon's ability to assist the DM guiding a group of player characters through an environment in a way that is entertaining over multiple gaming sessions.

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Judges Guild obliged with something to fight, or some challenge in every room and that's pretty much my philosophy as well. Perhaps some encounters may be silly enough to be essentially de minimis, or so overpoweringly destructive to be basically a player IQ test whether or not to confront the encounter, but things are always there. 

Which is an interesting segue into game balance. I do not balance my encounters, but in general the lower number levels are the easier encounters which become progressively more deadly as the dungeon level number increases. In addition, however, I will purposefully will put some discongruent encounter on every level of the dungeon because it provides opportunities for characters to think beyond their fighting prowess and reminds them that dungeons are deadly. The reason all the loot hasn't been absconded with is on account of most of the would-be looters got killed.

Keeping the gamers on edge also help make the conclusion of any session more a natural and much needed respite than some sort of unfulfilling "oh look, it's midnight and we should stop." Parties should be concerned when they're running low on cure spells or offensive magic when there is not place to rest. Deeper in a dungeon your party should realize safe places to rest are much more important than treasure. Particularly when a party has scored a lot of loot, but is now contemplating what they must fight back through to escape the dungeon.

How do dungeon creatures eat? Interact with each other? Here I do try to group monsters somewhat thematically. For instance undead can sort of infect things around it, so you probably would find entire dungeon levels with undead dominated by them. Same thing on the "underworld" or "underdark"-connected levels. On these levels adventurers will likely find Underworld race strongholds surrounded by dangerous creatures these races enlist or nurture to guard adjacent caverns. I also tend to have water flowing through dungeons. It provides sustenance and also mixes up terrain for a combat sequence. (Also water attracts its own inhabitant nasties.)

Note that in my experience having a central theme being this Underworld tribe versus that Underworld tribe and the party needs to help X by doing Y is a recipe for disaster. You ABSOLUTELY DO NOT KNOW what your players will do. I have seen PCs, in an entire campaign devoted to ultimately destroy a heinous demon, at the penultimate moment, where to destroy an artifact found and used by the party to imprison said demon will forever slay it, then ask, "What do you suppose the demon would give me if I freed it?"

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Another element I enjoyed as a DM was that Judges Guild provided a brief stat block typically with everything needed to run the encounter. This was not a terribly huge amount of information back in the OD&D times, but it honed my thinking that a DM should be able to run an encounter in general without having to flip pages or search through other books. That is probably the number one thing that comes out for me playtesting scenarios, "Oh, here is a place where I should have listed spells," or "this magic item really needs a description here for the monster to use it."

That is probably my main beef with skill points is that they increased the size of stat blocks such that it became difficult to write a nice, succinct encounter without lines and lines of stats, most of which is superfluous because never comes into play during the encounter.

Now, if I see a particular skill that ranks pretty high and seems integral to the operation of the encounter, I just add in the attribute some other way e.g. a +15 ranks in "Hide" for some kind of sneaking beastie will become a 75% Hide in Shadows.

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Insummation (a single word that doesn't exist, but should):

1) Design dungeons around frequent encounters. Not exactly a random monster zoo, but keep the party moving and on their toes also with using the natural settings of the dungeon (pits, rivers, pools, lava, radiation, gas, etc.) to interact with a party during an encounter. Encounters through dungeon levels should be pronouncedly more challenging to the players with a variety of incongruent encounters interspersed.

2) Permit overall thematic aspects to arise organically i.e. provide the elements for roll paying various organized dungeon municipalities, but avoid making their conflicts the central theme of your game's stories. These are heroic stories and your adventurers are the leading characters. Let your party's actions provoke how much or how little organized sectarian conflicts become integrated with the story.

3) Make sure the DM has most if not all the information she needs to run each particular dungeon encounter. For my work, that means she should only be looking up spells and perhaps some magic items.

Abyssal Scenario

Abyssal Horror by Youngsta1 on Deviant Art

So my next ambitious foray from Underport:Abyssal Descent will be down into The Abyss itself.

In the Lands of Krull there was not something quite neat and symmetrical as "The Great Wheel" from The World's Most Popular Role Playing Game. Rather, the abyss is something of a mix between Hell and some insane Lovecraftian wilderness where even the demons fear to tread.

I threw a blurb in at the end of Underport: Abyssal Descent for the next scenario, Metropolis of Chaos, for indeed an abyssal city was the next stop on the paths beneath Underport for the gaming groups I ran of yore. However, I intend to expand upon the metropolis with something of a sandbox populated by gargantuan creatures such as the like depicted above, whose actions certainly seem abyssally chaotic and evil. Yet motives are inscrutable, except perhaps in the classic Lovecraft mode of a hunger to break through the planar bounds into the prime material.

Certainly the final level of Underport: Abyssal Descent provides several encounters where the planar boundaries cross in probably an arbitrary fashion. The trick is WHY would player characters ever want to go into The Abyss. Rescue? To seek power? Certainly not mere wealth?

Curiosity might be enough, as players upon the conclusion of Underport: Abyssal Descent ought to end up spying on the metropolis far below the abyssal gate. The timeless realm would certainly hold vast riches and magic, luring a party of adventurers in with "standard" demonic types recognizable to experienced gamers. Once they have entered, though, there becomes the particular need of finding a way out... (Ha, Pirates of the Caribbean set the stage for Underport. Now methinks the Haunted Mansion has infiltrated my brain.)

Basket O' Knights!

Daughter uno is traveling to Costa Rica (Zika be damned) with members of her university Parks, Recreation and Tourism school. The travelers are holding a silent auction to help defray the travel insurance and I donated an "All Mind" bundle.

It's my "White Box" Knights of the All Mind rules set, plus the magic items and judges booklets, and the Underport vintage mega-dungeon adventure. The manila envelope contains Underport and Krull maps, the two free scenarios Chasm of the Drow and Octi-Folk of Spire Lagoon available from the blog here. All in all about a $45 value printed, however the "White Box" rules in the main only went out to friends. Too expensive to find the "precision" Gamescience d20s that are included so I've been using my own stash.

Daughter uno wondered how much might get bid. Ha, I opined zero if no RPG gamers there. But, if one or two grognards visit who knows? I am always on the lookout for odd gaming materials... ($20? Ima cheap bastard!)

*** Oh! P.S. I threw in stickers from my two musical projects, Scratch Elder and Luminous Red Nova, plus a copy of Dark Dungeons Chick Tract that I was giving away at the DunDraCon freebie table.

Wilde Beasties!

Well, well, well. I am finally going to do something about carrying around my last v.3.5 hardbound.

I began work today on the first of probably a half-dozen bestiaries, this one on magical beast found on overland journeys called "Wilde Beasties" (although the cloven-hooved cover could be considered demonic, I will think of it as fey).

Figure to make overland, oversea, airborne, underworld, undead, demonic. Is that it?

My idea is that if you know what class of encounter you'll need, just grab the appropriate booklet.

I'm starting with the SRD, however the Tome of Horrors is completely open source so depending on the length these booklets turn out, I might include some of those. My goal has been, with Underport and the Knights of the All Mind rules variant in general, to reduce stat blocks down to something that resembles days of yore without losing modern developments like segment-by-segment battles, ascending AC, and other little finery. And ultimately carry all the info around in bite-sized books instead of the (literal) SUITCASE full of hardback books that I schlepped around from game to game back in the aughts.

Damn, now I just have one over the shoulder leather bag and a small auxiliary case. Nice. But still that one hardbound monster manual...

Print Copies

My favorite piece of machinery!

I had a couple inquiries about print editions. Many of the All-Mind works available on DriveThruRPG predate DriveThruRPG's "print-on-demand" feature, so they are not set up with the exact formats to get All Mind items in print from DriveThru.

However, each booklet is formatted to print in "Booklet" format in Adobe Reader.

I use a regular HP laser printer (except for color pieces, then I need to use the inkjet), printing the cover on 65 lb card-stock and the interior pages and maps on standard 20 lb paper. Then I use an extended-arm stapler to place 2 staples precisely 5 1/2" (built-in ruler) at the center of the pages. (2 staples are how the old TSR supplements Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, and Gods, Demigods & Heroes were all bound)

Next, I use the press on my manual machine-cutter to compress the spine down to keep the booklet from fanning out so much.

If you do this at home you'll find the middle pages extend out beyond the cover. I use the manual machine-cutter to trip the edges of each booklet for a professional finish.

These "digest-sized" booklets are perfectly sized for the game table and have held up very well over time. These are my original printings of the Knights of the All Mind rules booklets after around 100 hours of play...

For those of you who aren't prepared to do this at home, and until I get things in the proper format to use the print-on-demand feature, I would be happy to send one print edition of any booklet per each booklet purchased of an All Mind PDF product for $3 printing costs plus $2 for 1st class US mail shipping. Only $5 over the PDF price on DriveThru!

Just forward your DriveThruRPG purchase confirmation email to matroxlusch"at"gmail"dot"com and I will send you a PayPal invoice for each print request. The print product should ship within 48 hours after the PayPal payment is received.

Underport: Abyssal Descent is complete!

Finally finished Underport:Abyssal Descent! (click cover for link to purchase at DriveThruRPG) It only took 37 years.

I do have a continuation, Metropolis of Chaos, an Abyssal dungeon that connects up with Underport. But first I believe I will finish rules for psionics and a set of bestiaries.

Rampaging Planar Anemone!

A new piece of art I drew for Underport: Abyssal Descent.
Serious, only one and a half rooms to go.  :~)