Urban Encounters

I talked about the wandering monster charts in OD&D a while back and today I want to revisit this topic. Specifically, I want to look again at the subject of wandering monsters in the city. As I pointed out back in that old post, the OD&D wandering monster charts only allow for two different kinds of monster to be encountered randomly in urban environments: Undead and Men. The Men subchart lists the following types of humans: Bandits, Brigands, Berserkers, Necromancer, Wizard, Superhero, Lord, Evil High Priest, Patriarch. All that boils down to two real possibilities: a big gang of cheap thugs or a high level character and their retinue.

Clearly, cities are chock full of people besides the Hell's Angels, Conan and his homeboys or Count Dracula. A lot of great work has been done in expanding the random encounter possibilities in cities. My favorites include the encounter chart in the front of Judges Guild's Ready Ref Sheets, Uncle Gary's city encounter chart from the 1st edition DMG (home of the original Random Harlot Sub-Table), Midkemia Press's Cities, Matt Finch's City Encounters, and James Mishler's 100 Street Vendors of the City State.

Later non-Advanced editions of D&D expanded the possible encounters by a bit. '81 Expert D&D greatly reduces the chance of encountering undead and adds a possibility of humanoid/demi-human encounters. I like that Pixies and Hill Giants are just as likely to show up as Elves on that chart. The '81 Expert charts also incorporate more human types, particularly the human "monsters" from Moldvay Basic: Traders, Acolytes, Nobles and Veterans. The loss of those entries from the monster sections of later D&D editions was unfortunate in my opinion, but probably another post for another day. The Rules Cyclopedia adds a 1 in 8 chance of being sent to SubTable: 11. City Encounters, which has 160 entries of the butcher, baker, candlestick maker variety. That subchart looks inspired by the Judges Guild chart I mentioned above.

While I like all the expanded post-OD&D options for city encounters, I can't help but feel that there is a lesson to be learned from the simplicity of the OD&D chart. The original version, where the only encounters in cities were undead, name level people, and bands of rowdies, suggests something to me about the original conception of the game terminology "encounter". I think the OD&D version, by omitting encounters like "chamberpot accidentally dumped on you" and "bump into angry muleskinner" and concentrating instead on uber NPCs puts player negotiation and/or the NPC reaction charts front and center. Your party spends a day in the big city and the dice say that something involving a Necromancer goes down. Unless your PCs are already ultimate badasses, they may want to talk their way out of that situation.

Now obviously some things were omitted from OD&D due to simple lack of space, so one shouldn't read too much into something not attested in the text. But plugging the holes in moldy oldy D&D yourself instead of letting later editions do it for you can be a lot of fun. In this case what I find juicy about the stark OD&D charts is that at the end of the day, (assuming everyone makes it out of the encounter alive) some very interesting NPCs will be fast friends, sworn enemies or at least passing acquaintances of the party. That beats the pants off of dealing with pesky beggars, brawling drunkards or hassling city guards, which is how I've seen a lot of city encounters play out.

Also, we went to the big city looking to blow money on ale and wenches and instead we ended up fighting some mummies?!? How cool is that?

Sandboxes & Dragons

Here's something that I found interesting as I've been working on the Blitzkrieg Peninsula of my World of Cinder: placing dragons. According to the chart on page 16 of OD&D volume 2, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, dragons can fly 24 five mile hexes per day. That's a 12 hex round trip. So assuming that dragons are territorial apex predators (which I do), that places a hard limit on how many flying dragons you can fit on any particular sandbox map. And looking over my particular map I can eyeball maybe three good places for dragon lairs. So from the moment this sandbox is put onto the table I'll be able to tell the players likely places they could hunt for dragon hoards. "Yeah, the Draco Mountains are called that for a reason." Stuff like that.

Of course those three lairs don't include long-hibernating wyrms forgotten by the races with shorter memories, dragons that have burrowed deep into the bowels of the earth or the Common Purple Land-dragon.

Bill Shatner with unidentified filker

fabulous prizes

So I mailed out the prizes for the Easy Peasy EC PC contest this morning. Phil Eckert, for 2nd place, is getting a hardcopy of my Asteroid 1618 and one of my homemade bootleg copies of Encounter Critical. The first place winner, Tom Livak, gets Jeff's Crazy Gaming Grab-Bag, containing the following:

• my other hardcopy of Asteroid 1618
• a brand new copy of Mutant Future, donated by an anonymous benefactor
• another of my homemade bootleg copies of Encounter Critical
• an '81 D&D Basic rulebook (edited by Tom Moldvay, cover by Erol Otus)
• an '81 D&D Expert rulebook (Cook/Otus)
• Ley Sector, one of the goofy old Judges Guild sector books for Traveller
• GW3 Cleansing War of Gareth Blackhand, a module for Gamma World
• Evil Ruins, a Mayfair Games module from their line of Role Aids AD&D supplements
• The Dungeoneer, issue 18
• Dragon issues 71, 86, 170
• Best of Dragon, volume IV
• G-1-2-3 Against the Giants

Hopefully you'll get a kick out of some of that stuff, Tom. The rest of you may now officially start being jealous of him.

Incidentally, the Grab-Bag started out as a pile of game books I've got doubles of. I was trying to figure out something cooler to do with this stuff than offering it up on the eBay. That's what led me to the idea of having a contest.

a bit of a confession

So this post started out as the report on last night's Mutant Future session, but it went off the rails along the way.

Last night I was all set for my players to locate and explore Death Heart, the high level Arduin dungeon that was teased at the end of the previous session. Lord Brain (imagine the Spider-Man foe Myserio, but with a brain-in-a-jar instead of that weird fishbowl, and powers akin to a Thundarr style wizard) had promised the group riches and power in exchange for the spellbook purportedly hidden in the dungeons of Death Heart. Carl, who missed the last session, asked for more details on this proposed adventure. When the rumoured "scorpions the size of your house" were mentioned he argued vehemently for going back to the Howling Tower and continuing to plunder that dungeon. The regulars at my game are usually a pretty easy going bunch, so whenever one person feels passionate about a course of action the rest tend to follow that lead. So I put away Death Heart and got the Howling Tower back out.

I've got to say that running Dave Hargave's The Howling Tower has been a real eye-opener for me. His Arduin Grimoire and the first two or three follow-up books are some of my favorite books from the early years of the hobby. So when I got a chance to snag some of his modules I jumped at the opportunity, assuming I would really dig on 'em.

Turns out I like Hargave's dungeons a lot less than many of his other works. The maps drive me crazy. They're crowded with way too many oddly shaped rooms that are a pain-in-the-ass to describe and almost as hard to draw. The number of utterly pointless secret doors is very high. And only rooms with monsters and treasure are keyed. So if there's a skorpadillo and some magic boots in a room I can tell you the lighting, what the walls and floors are made of, what the air quality is like, etc. But the sixteen empty rooms next door have no descriptors whatsoever. So I end up busting my ass to trick out all the other rooms, because the last thing I want is for a player to say "Uh oh. This room actually has a description, watch out for monsters."

And while I appreciate funhouse dungeons a lot more than some people, I think it's a little weak that none of the stocked rooms have anything to do with one another. The text gives no clues as to how the Priest of Cthulhu in room 16 and the ogre in room 18 interact. Furthermore, it feels weird not having the least idea where either of them go in the dungeon to get something to drink or take a dump. Every serious dungeon I build has at least on crapper and one place where the monsters can go to get a drink of water. Is that crazy?

All the Hargrave dungeons I've looked at are mostly empty time-wasting labyrinths with nothing but monsters dutifully guarding treasure chests. I can't believe I'm complaining about that fact, but I am. Something about his presentation sucks all the fun out of funhouse dungeons for me. So I spend a lot of each session putting that fun back in on the fly. Which can be a great way to spend a few hours twice a month, but at the end of the night I feel tired from all that swimming against the current. I might as well be working off an empty map and some randomly generated monsters and treasures.

Note that I'm not casting aspersions here on Hargrave's skills as a DM. I have no reason to doubt these dungeons were a hoot to play at his table. What I feel is probably at work here is a recurring problem with adventure modules: module writers have to work hard to figure out the difference between writing for themselves and writing for another DM. Maybe Hargrave assumed that I would figure out that of course all the undead on level one are under the control of the evil cleric, etc. On the other hand, if there's a unifying theme to the Howling Tower I'm not finding it. Jamie Mal finds Tegel Manor too funhouse for his tastes, but there's a lot more rhyme (and some reason) to that dungeon compared to Hargave's work.

Billy & Mandy in Beasts & Barbarians

I love the arrival to the dungeon dimension at 1:55 or so and entering the giant castle of evil (reminiscent of the badguy's lair in Time Bandits) at 2:21 or thereabouts. And I totally need a control room manned by a demon pig in my next dungeon!

What's up with those crazy nobles, anyway?

I've decided that for my next non-mutated D&D outing I want more Excalibur/You Know Who & The Holy Grail/Princess Bride style knights, castles, princesses with pointy hats and such. That's why I'm drawing up a list of all the major noble houses of the realm and giving them coats of arms. I want to make sure that arriving at the Thane of Mno's castle isn't just a cookie cutter duplicate of a visit to the castle of the Baron of Kishur. Obviously, a big random chart is in order.

Random Castle Shenanigans (d20)

1. Romance - A member of the household is interested in one of the PCs. One night stand? Stupid crush? Eternal love?

2. Haunting - The unquiet ghost of an ancestor prowls the halls on certain nights.

3. Hidden Catacombs - The place is built over a dungeon.

4. Knight Errancy - One or more of the younger sons are wandering adventurers, possibly off on a crusade.

5. Widow - A higher ranked noble is adjudicating the disposition of the dead lord's affairs, possibly to his own advantage.

6. Damaged Castle - Wreckage caused by last year's siege/monster attack/earthquake still being repaired.

7. Sibling Rivalry - Brothers and/or sisters engaged in petty mischief, may boil over to outright violence.

8. Amazons - The ladies wear the platemail in this family.

9. Family Curse - Lycanthropy? Innsmouth taint?

10. Keepers of the Flame - Protectors of the secret hiding spot of some artifact of the Old Kingdom.

11. Heretics - One or more members of the household not orthodox in their religious views.

12. Festival - Celebration of a wedding, birth, knighting or perhaps a fair or tourney.

13. Rowdy Lads - The lords younger sons and/or bastards are a rough and tumble bunch. Hard to control, but would make for brave adventuring companions.

14. Lurking Monster - Some mankiller has made a lair in the same hex.

15. Black Magic - Someone in the family secretly studies sorcery.

16. Secret Society - One or more members of the household belong to a secret political party, witches coven, etc.

17. Petty War - The barony down the road is getting too uppity, I tells you.

18. Blood Feud - A random noble house are mortal enemies.

19. Strong Ally - Another noble house? A wizard? Some creature?

20. Prisoner - either a member of the household is being held elsewhere or the locals are holding someone of note, awaiting ransom