• Making hexes with Magic

    I’ve even pondering my and Nick LS Whelan’s thoughts on using Magic the Gathering as an oracle. Nick was saying on twitter that he doesn’t use it anymore because MTG cards skew towards violence. m I’m thinking: What if we didn’t use it to generate adventures, but rather locations.

    I considered generating a county, but honestly, it ended up being too complex for what I’m trying to do here. So, I’m going to test generating a hex. To make a hex, I need to know these things:

    • Terrain
    • Landmarks
    • Random encounters
    • Rumours

    This will work like a tarot draw, and I’m going to be explaining with an example. I just looked the card description terminology up on the Magic website, so those are the terms I’m using. Remember that any card can be drawn reversed, so take the main theme and do the opposite.

    The first card we draw will tell us the terrain and how many landmarks are in it. Land indicates the terrain type (if there are more than one, combine the terrains), and the cost next to it indicates how many landmarks we’ll create. We also want a theme for the hex: Look at art, name, type or flavour.

    Lake or river hex. 3 landmarks. Theme: A bird that sees the future.

    Draw two cards, placed one on the other, for each landmark. Consider both cards for each landmark. There are five types of land that, so let’s assign them a landmark type: White: Mystery or Magic; Blue: Town or Keep; Red: Site of Industry or Camp; Black: Dungeon or Lair; Green: Terrain Feature. Then look at art, name, type or flavour to figure out specifics about the landmark. While we’re here, we’ll use cost of the two cards to tell us how many random encounters and rumours are related to this landmark.

    Elephant women carved from the trunks of living trees create a living cathedral. False prophet Serra, regarded as a demigod by
    soldiers fleeing the front. Random Encounters: 2. Rumours: 2.

    For each of our generated random encounters, we’ll pull draw cards one on the other, one for the type of encounter and one for the twist on the encounter. Use strength for number of people involved in the encounter (if there’s a lower number, that’s the number of them with a special ability derived from the ability text).

    2 waterdwelling elephant cultists both with grenades or wands of fireballs.
    2 elephant zombies, always rise again to tell Serra of their hunts.

    For each of our rumours, we’ll draw one card. We know what the rumour is about, so we’ll look at reversal to indicate truth or misinformation, and then the card itself tells us the nature of the rumour.

    Serra’s informants are everywhere, looking for people to recruit, and for people to disappear.
    Many locals send their children to Serra, to be cultivated, for she is a font of wisdom and generosity.

    In the final version, I’d have two more landmarks, and around 10 rumours and random encounters. Once they’re created as well, I’m going to pull it all together as a revision, because remember the bird who tells the future is our overall theme for the hex. Consider how all three landmarks relate to the future-seeing bird. Is the bird the villain for the hex? Is it a the quest goal, being sought by all the NPCs? Or could we draw out our whole spread for three landmarks, with our theme in the middle, and interpret everything in light of the theme of the first draw?

    Anyway, this I think is great for the kind of modular, iteratively built hexcrawl that I want to be running in Advanced Fantasy Dungeons. It gets me out of my comfort zone. It’s hook galore. I think I could do more with magic cards, to be honest, for NPC characterisation, for treasure creation, I’m kind of excited about this as a very nerdy oracle.

    I just wish I had a deck of MTG cards to do it with instead of the MTG Randomiser.

    Idle Cartulary

    5th July 2022

    , ,

  • Wierd oracles and punnett rooms

    Rory’s Story Cubes

    I’ve been going through my games shelf (honestly, I’m not playing most of what’s on there). and I found a few oracles I haven’t really looked at before. One is Rory’s Story Cubes, which are dice with symbols on them that are freely available in toy stores. I also found these Intuiti Cards, which are like abstract shape tarot without suits?

    Magic: The Gathering Cards

    And then Hy Libre posted some Magic: The Gathering combo’s she liked and I realised MTG cards are honestly great fantasy oracles if you don’t know anything about Magic: The Gathering. Later it was drawn to my attention that Nick LS Whalen does this exact thing to create adventures, although he reports Magic cards lean violent so often he uses it less than he used to. I’ll wait on the Magic cards approach until I can innovate on that approach.

    What’s fun about these is they all oracle completely different things. Story cubes are a set of 54 common concepts. Intuiti has a major and minor arcana that are numbered, and then abstract shapes. Magic cards have a very specific image, a very specific title, often have a quote, and then a bunch of other information like symbol and colour and whatever that subtitle is.

    Now, I’m not going anywhere concrete with this, but the other day I coined the term room set because Frank Mentzer implied dungeons are just groups of rooms with themes. I made a d20 spark table with themes, so I could randomly populate room sets with cool ideas. I didn’t like using the spark table really, but it did the job. The main problem I had with my method was that it didn’t address the issue of layout, which Mentzer was using to drive play.

    And then Warren D reminded me this morning about punnett squares, and treasure is basically the same as a dungeon Ty, right? I started thinking about using punnett squares to combine the spark tables and some type of dungeon layout table. Problem is, I don’t have a d20 list of dungeon layouts. I just use other peoples maps! I hit a barrier with what that table would look like.

    But Intuiti cards are literally a few hundred abstract designs. So what if my punnett square was literally laid on something like this? And rows were people and columns were themes?

    Intuiti Cards

    Inhabitants: 1. Gobliny; 2. Ogrish; 3. Elemental; 4. Corpsy; 5. Demonic; 6. Arcane; 7. Divine; 8. Draconic; 9. Fairy; 10. Beastly; 11. Treeish; 12. Stone; 13. Spectral; 14. Oozing; 15. Shapeshifting; 16. Flesh-eating; 17. Trollish; 18. Simulacra; 19. Dark Mirror; 20. Clockwork.

    Themes: 1. Trapped; 2. Homely; 3. Worshipful; 4. Buried; 5. Drowning; 6. Haunted; 7. Angry; 8. Studious; 9. Searing; 10. Imprisoned; 11. Castoff; 12. Armoured; 13. Painful; 14. Joyful; 15. Homely; 16. Playful; 17. Prepared; 18. Hidden; 19. Seeking; 20. Free.

    So, after rolling elemental, divine and simulacra inhabitants, and haunted, armoured and seeking themes, I end up with a prompt that would look like this for each room:

    • Winding, interlinking haunted labyrinth inhabited by elementals
    • A heavily reinforced vault guarded by elementals
    • Four square rooms in which an elemental search party sets up base
    • A brightly lit broad meeting hall in which a cultists temple takes place
    • A secret room from which the thing guarded in the vault can burst forth, with cultists trying to unlock it
    • Massive plants reach into the darkness in a huge cavern, where the delving cultists do their darker rituals
    • A complex full of crystal cylinders, cloning whoever sleeps within – currently all the same elfin person
    • The highest point of the complex, heavily barred door, built to broadcast whatever is found in the vault, but now living area of the simulacra
    • A deep shaft where all the complex meets; guarded by simulacra, but seeking tentacles grasp whoever enters the shaft.

    This is cooler than a table, and I could literally sketch a dungeon map based on these ideas, but it wouldn’t be quick. I’ll have to think further on story cubes and magic cards, but honestly I haven’t looked at Intuiti cards in years, so this is a boon for me.

    I’d love other ideas for improvising dungeon ups!

    Idle Cartulary,

    3rd July 2022

    ,

  • Combining fast travel and pathcrawling

    Honestly, if you thought I wasn’t going to come back to Advanced Fantasy Dungeons, you were being optimistic. Marcia’s Mosaic Worlds neatly matches with AFD’s counties, and then she wrote about Fast Travel using these counties, which provided me with impetus to trial an option where the words “watch” and “hex” are excised, when they never existed in the original text. And, while I’m at it, let’s incorporate the pathcrawl rules.

    Travelling typically takes place on a trail in the wilderness.

    Each day you travel on a trail in the wilderness, travel one county. Each day you travel on a road or along a river in a boat, travel two counties. If you have directions through impassible or obscuring terrain, but no trail or road, travel one county every two days.

    You cannot travel through impassible terrain without a trail, road, river or directions.

    If you travel through obscuring terrain without a trail, road, river and directions it is both unnavigable and dangerous. When you exit the county, randomly select which county you exit into. Roll twice for each die on the wilderness grid, taking the highest each time.

    Each day you travel, the GM rolls on the wilderness grid. Roll 1d8 for the type of encounter, Roll d100 for what encounter, and 1d6 for when the encounter occurs. An encounter does not necessarily prevent a day of travel from being completed.

    What type of encounter: 1-4. Nothing; 5. Monster Traces; 6. Monster Tracks; 7. Monster Encountered; 8. Monster Lair.

    What encounter: 1-40. Nothing; 41-53. Common; 54-65. Common; 66-74. Uncommon; 75-82. Uncommon; 83-88. Rare; 89-94. Rare; 95-97. Very Rare; 98-100. Very Rare.

    When is the encounter: 1. Dawn, 2. Morning, 3. Noon, 4. Afternoon, 5. Dusk, 6. Night.

    For each day of travel, each character can choose one action to take while they rest, such as heal, memorise spells, prayer, or repair armour, forage or hunt. All characters can choose to force march, forgoing their action to spend 2d6 HP and travel a second county in a single day.

    Using vehicles or mounts does not allow you to travel further, but limits or facilitates your ability to travel on certain terrain and allows an expanded inventory.

    If you are stranded in the wilderness at the end of a session, each PC rolls to return to the nearest settlement. Roll fortune or an appropriate proficiency, against a target equal to the number of days travel to the nearest settlement, plus the number of turns traveled to escape the dungeon. For every point you fail by, choose either to spend that amount in HP or ten times that amount in GP.

    Smush! This is my combined, non-anachronistic, PC-facing wilderness travel for Advanced Fantasy Dungeons! Honestly, it doesn’t appear much more complicated than the previous rules, and it’s definitely faster and has clearer stakes (although may need supplementing with a GMs guide for path rules and generation).

    Paths lead to interesting places. Don’t improvise these places!

    They are sometimes off the path! If they are, there is either a branch that leads to it, or it is perceptible from the path.

    Always signpost paths in some way, be they actual signposts, tourism guides, maps or rumours!

    Interesting things lie along the path! To identify what is along the path, roll 1d6: 1. Ruin; 2. Lair 3. Settlement; 4.Wonder ; 5. Hazardous Landmark; 6. Fortuitous Landmark. To identify whether a path continues, roll 1d6: 1-2. Detour to another path; 3-4. Shortcut to another path; 5-6. New path and new location.

    Some interesting places have no path apparent! Make finding the path for these places a reward or the goal of a quest.

    Look, potentially too many exclamation points, but I really like pithy principles for GMs, I don’t know why. I mightn’t incorporate this straight into AFD 0.2, but maybe I will?

    Idle Cartulary

    1st July 2022

    , ,

  • Pathcrawl revised!

    I invented the pathcrawl yesterday, ten years after Daniel D. invented it, although I didn’t know that until this morning. Daniel’s is more complicated, which I don’t like, but captures some nuance which mine didn’t, which I do like. I’m gonna smush them together.

    Our basic tension is informed decision making versus freedom of movement. So my rules were simple to facilitate communication. Daniel D. adds complexity in his pathcrawl which leans towards freedom of movement, but is also interesting enough to incorporate:

    • Directions
    • Paths always lead places and always have interesting things on them.
    • Interesting thing generator: 1. Ruin; 2. Lair 3. Settlement; 4.Wonder ; 5. Hazardous Landmark; 6. Fortuitous Landmark. This would be even better as a region-specific d36 in my opinion.
    • Things are sometimes off the path! If they are, there is a branch that leads to it.

    So, our new pathcrawl rules:

    Paths always lead to pre-existing places and always have interesting things on them. Things are sometimes off the path! If they are, there is either a branch that leads to it, or it is perceptible from the path.

    To identify what is along the path, roll 1d6: 1. Ruin; 2. Lair 3. Settlement; 4.Wonder ; 5. Hazardous Landmark; 6. Fortuitous Landmark. To identify whether a path continues, roll 1d6: 1-2. Detour to another path; 3-4. Shortcut to another path; 5-6. New path and new location.

    There are four types of path:

    Trails allow you to travel. Roads allow you to travel at speed. Conditions allow you to travel at speed but only with the right equipment. Rivers and scalable climbs are conditions. Directions allow you to travel at half speed, but only with the right skills. Maps and divine guidance are directions.

    There are three types of terrain:

    Impassable terrain cannot be travelled through. Mountains and rivers are impassable terrain. Lakes and oceans are impassable unless you have waterfaring skills and equipment. Obscuring terrain is unnavigable and dangerous. Forests and swamps are obscuring terrain. Deserts are obscuring without view of the sun or stars. Passable terrain allows you to travel freely. Hills and plains are passable terrain.

    Travel is affected by these features:

    Travel through passable terrain at half travel speed, trails at travel speed, and on roads at twice travel speed.

    Conditions are impassable, except with their condition, or where they intersect with another path (for example at a ford). Unnavigable means roll 1d6 and exit via a random hex. Dangerous means random encounters are higher level and twice as frequent. Impassable means no individual can enter, without unique skills and equipment, or magical assistance.

    My pathcrawl is taking shape. Clear, simple information, available to the PCs. Interesting endpoints and detours. Freedom of movement. This is fun!

    Idle Cartulary

    30th June, 2022

    , , ,

  • Wilderness walls and halls: Streamlining hexcrawls

    Joel wrote this, about why he doesn’t prefer hexcrawls. Joel’s got some sense, and it made me think about what I don’t like about hexcrawls. Namely: As anyone who has travelled in the wilderness will tell you, the wilderness has walls and hallways. The wilderness is a dungeon.

    Caradras: They’re taking a path!

    You can’t just climb a mountain. Certainly not in full armour carrying weapons and treasure. You have to take a path. You can’t just cross a river. You have to ford one. Forests are impenetrable to those who don’t know the secret path. You cannot tell your direction when you cannot see the sky and are unfamiliar with the territory, rendering swamps, forests and deserts death traps.

    On the other hand though, rivers and creeks are often easy to follow, given a boat, paths do exist carved by beast or person, and often roads exist paved and suitable for horse and vehicle. Plains are free to wander across, although grasses are usually long if grazing animals aren’t native.

    Joel’s solution is a pointcrawl: Effectively making you choose to take either the Gap of Rohan, the Pass of Caradras or the Mines of Moria if you want to cross the Misty Mountains. You know what you will have t face for each! It’s an informed decision, with positive and negative consequences! Each route is tailored for the party!

    The problem for me with this solution, is that I have to tailor these routes, and that it feels restrictive for the type of open-ended multi-player table I like to run. I’m thinking of a middle way, a pathcrawl.

    When I make a hex, I consider the paths that pass through it, and the type of terrain it is. There are three types of path: Trails, Road or Conditional. Trails allow you to travel, roads allow you to travel at speed, and conditional paths are things like rivers that allow you to travel at speed but only with the right equipment. There are three types of terrain: Impassable, Obscuring, and Passable. You cannot enter impassable terrain, you are immediately lost in obscuring terrain unless you are familiar with the territory or have vision to the sky, and travel in passable terrain is as a trail.

    While we can assume competent way finding from an adventuring party, most terrain is impassible and obscuring, and most paths are trails or conditional. Smart adventurers avoid impassible and obscuring terrain, unless they find or are shown the trail.

    And we can use simple symbols or colours to communicate this information on the map; potentially blue or red borders, or trails being dashed and roads being unbroken lines. Obscuring and impassible could also be colour-coded, especially in a monochrome map, but could also have small accompanying symbols.

    Obscuring and impassible, from the Noun Project

    What this results in, is a map with difficult terrain almost everywhere, and adventurers who are loath to leave the path, and only do so with an ancient map, a guide, or specific directions. This feels more actionable with a simplistic ruleset than a typical hexcrawl, but not as bespoke as Joel’s pointcrawl.

    I guess we need some rules. Lost means roll 1d6 and exit via a random hex. Impassable means no individual can enter, without unique skills and equipment, or magical assistance. Your game of choice should deal with travel speed, but do away with difficult terrain rules, because under these rules, all terrain is difficult. Trails are travel speed, and roads are twice or travel-speed-and-a-half. Conditional paths like rivers are impassable, except with their condition, or where they intersect with another path (a ford).

    So, a five minute sketch reveals a a basic pathcrawl that could look as simple as this, assuming rather than showing that certain terrain is impassable or obscuring:

    Or as complex as this, which with a little better graphic design chops I’m sure could communicate pretty clearly a lot of information very quickly:

    Anyway, this is what I think a pathcrawl should look like. Less bespoke than a pointcrawl, but more wilderness-directed than a hex crawl, and with clearer rules for travel that the adventuring party can more easily understand.

    Late Addition (30th June 2022): Daniel Davis did this ten years ago! His post is here! I prefer my approach, so I amalgamated them for the best of both worlds.

    Idle Cartulary

    29th June, 2022

    , , ,

  • Mentzer’s Dungeon

    Frank Mentzer’s dungeon, remixed by Dyson Logos.

    Sean McCoy recently posted an old perhaps reddit post by Frank Mentzer, talking about how he always improvises the same dungeon. Along with it, Sly Flourish wrote about the concept here. I think Sly Flourish missed the most interesting part though: Mentzer has sketched themes out roughly for the entire dungeon:

    So it looked like this:

    You wouldn’t call it a five-room dungeon, but you can definitely call it a five-theme dungeon. The key is that the themes are linked to the dungeon layout: We have a long hallway with off-shoots and a room for sharpshooters at its far end in the west, a looping, secretly-connected lair in the east. A deceptive pair of rooms ahead, filled with misinformation about what lies ahead, and if we take the long route we reach a temple or meeting room, with hidden treasure rooms and a locked exit to the north leading who knows where? And finally, our entry filled with graffiti hiding clues about what lies ahead. I like this. How can I simplify it? What are our five themes and what are their key nodes?

    Circles are room sets, stars are secret room sets, dotted lines are connections, zig-zags are secret connections.

    This betrays some of the complexity of the original dungeon map (~25 rooms and some Jacquaysing), but is sufficient for the analysis. For this structure to work:

    • There is an exit and entry room, each with one connection to one room set.
    • There are five overt room sets, each with two or three overt connections to other room sets.
    • For three of these overt room sets, one of these overt connections is a secret connections.
    • There are three secret rooms, each secretly connected to an overt room sets.
    • One or two connections link with each other, rather than to room sets.

    So, let’s transmute this analysis into a procedure:

    1. Mark five room sets.
    2. Connect three of them with secret connections.
    3. Connect all of them two or three total times; connections can be with other connections.
    4. Add three secret rooms and connect them anywhere.
    5. Add an exit and entry room, with a connection to a single room set each.

    And then, for each room set, roll once or twice on the theme table (honestly just came up with these without much thought, they could be better, or longer, or more detailed), and describe the set of rooms:

    1. Trap
    2. Home
    3. Worship
    4. Burial
    5. Flooded
    6. Worship
    7. Haunted
    8. Anger
    9. Library
    10. Burning
    11. Prison
    12. Rubbish
    13. Armoury
    14. Pain
    15. Joy
    16. Mundane
    17. Play
    18. Preparation
    19. Hidden
    20. Seeking

    Now we have a dungeon creation procedure for quick pick-up dungeon creation! Shall we give it a spin? Having put no thought into the layout at all, here’s the map:

    And generating up the 10 room set themes we get (once again, I’m not editing here) anger-trash, haunted-library, mundane-armoury, anger-burial, worship-prison, burning-haunted, mundane-joy, hidden-preparation, plus for the entry and exit, burning and trap:

    1. One of two braziers burns with an otherworldly flame, on either side of an etching of a door. Scratched on the rough, white stone wall in charcoal are notes scrawled desperately. …doors must shock…books are alive…Sherman was here…wear a dark cloak! …no weapons…Fireproof clothes! …disturb the bones.
    2. These interlinked rooms are full of the scattered bones of various beasts and people are piled among food scraps, green waste, and rusted metalwork of unclear source. The bones if disturbed will arise into shambling bone-things, raging that they were torn apart and from their resting places.
    3. Deep and spiralling catacombs are stripped here, formed into a makeshift library. Each of the books here are possessed of a spirit, which can communicate via its pages.
    4. A mausoleum, the catacomb is poorly stripped, but stored here are the most ancient texts and the rarest magic. The skeletons of those who brought them here are slumped by the door. One ancient warrior, buried sans skull, rages at any who disturb it, caring not for the books, but rather for its rest.
    5. Fearful weapons, arcane explosives, magic cloaks in large and giant sizes, stored here in case the hulking family needs escape. They are plundered from the catacombs and should be used only in fleeing them, for the spirits of the dead are angry and will pursue those who they find in their belongings.
    6. Worshippers mundane clothing, armour and weaponry is kept in this cloakroom, as the caged darkness does not receive armed visitors well.
    7. The catacombs here feature stone doors, all leading to an amphitheatre gazing down upon a massive copper bird-cage. At the base of the cage is deep, black water. Do not open the cage; it shocks to touch. The seats are full of unarmed worshippers of the caged darkness. Small rooms look down on the amphitheatre, dangerous if the worshippers reach their weapons.
    8. The sound of play and laughter. Draped with curtains, warmed with flames behind grates, and comfortable, a family of hulking creatures dwells here, with rooms for all their needs.
    9. Long, wide, columned halls are illuminated with living flames. They speak and reach out for you. They are not angry, only lonely; the last of those buried to imprison the caged darkness. Alcoves line the walls, yielding refuge and secret walkways.
    10. Giant copper doors shine and offer escape. They are shocking to touch.

    That’s not a bad little dungeon, for 20 minutes work. I think I’d include the entry and exit in the initial connections in retrospect, because there are an excess of overt connections, and potentially add another secret connection to make up for it. But, for a first attempt, this is a lot of fun.

    Idle Cartulary,

    27th June 2022

  • Broader Proceduralisms

    There’s been a lot of talk lately about proceduralism as it relates to various D&D-likes. I’ve written about procedure as it relates to Advanced Fantasy Dungeons here, but informing my views on the topic are these posts by a bunch of luminaries:

    Read the above to wade into the weeds on a definition for procedure. I will simplify for my purposes:

    • A procedure tells you what order you execute the rules in.
    • You may be able to transition between two or more procedures as the narrative or rules guide you.
    • Some rules might be unique to or only impact specific procedures.

    I instead want to talk about what types of procedures I think I’m seeing, how they’re misinterpreted even by designers, and the impact choice and identification of procedures in TTRPGs might have on play.

    I’m going to make a leap that I began with in my post Pillars and Procedures: Historically, D&D’s procedures are space and time oriented. The primary procedures in 0e through 2e could be analysed thusly:

    • Dungeon (turns)
    • Wilderness (watches)
    • Battlefield (rounds)
    • Home (days)

    Home here is used as analogous to “Downtime” in modern terminology, although no such term has been used historically that I can find. I’d go so far as to say historical D&D actually uses non-diagetic or real time for “Home”; Gygax’ infamous maxim “You cannot have a meaningful campaign unless strict time records are kept” implies strongly that early D&D downtime activities such as training and magical research were to happen when your character wasn’t adventuring.

    Having hypothesised that space-time oriented procedures are present in D&D, I’ll assert that procedures are present in many other modern RPGs.

    • Blades in the Dark, for example, breaks its procedures into downtime, score, and freeplay, details order of execution and for downtime and score procedures, and maintains free movement between these procedures.
    • Wanderhome has a single fairly rigid journeying procedure, of creating a place, choosing a month, and creating the kith who live there, but leaves activity once in a place freeform until the travellers leave to go to another place.
    • Kingdom has a repeating crossroad – scene – check – reactions – resolve procedure, with no alternate procedures to transition to. Kingdom is necessarily
    • Microscope has a similar procedure of Focus – history – legacy – explore, but that isn’t necessarily

    I’ve noted these in decreasing similarity to the example of historical D&D. But we can go much less similar, by looking at journaling games.

    • 1000 Year Old Vampire’s procedure of prompt – experience – memory – move forward is anchored in the ever advancing march of time
    • Body//Hack’s procedure is to advance forward through the prompts linearly one real-time day at a time

    Lyric games are even more dissimilar, and conjecturing about the procedural anchoring of the Invitation, Flying Games or I EAT MANTRAS FOR BREAKFAST are each their own post. Suffice it to say that if they do have procedure, they are not anchored necessarily to time and space, but to memory, emotional response, and to physical objects, among other things.

    Why do I care that even the most abstract of games can be analysed to have procedures? Mainly because I’m starting to think that for most TTRPGs, procedure might be a foundation that allows us to improvise and create in a supportive way, and that awareness of the presence of procedures as authors and designers might help us create more supportive and satisfying role playing experiences. But how can I do that? How about some counter-examples? Because since identifying this as a potential design flaw, I’ve been considering some games, some that I love, and some that I do not, in the light of it.

    Let’s start with the big one: The fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons. 5E lays its perceived core principles out as pillars (as good a name in my opinion as anchor or foundation): Combat, social, and exploration. Combat is thoroughly proceduralised in the Player’s Handbook, but means of transitioning between it and the social and exploration pillars are unclear, and there is little procedural or rules support for the other two pillars, certainly little player-facing support in the core two rule books. This is a two-fold problem: Firstly, and I think my experience of playing is not unusual given what I see in APs, the pillars are misidentified; I don’t think there is a social pillar at all, it’s a rule that is dispersed through the game. Secondly, if there is an exploration pillar, it’s not supported by a procedure. This breaks parts of the game intended to leverage off it: The ranger’s skill set and many powers and spells handily break exploitation altogether by eliminating resource management so that the only question becomes “Where do we go next?”. Of course, we can fix these problems, but Im not discussing how to hack 5E to make it better, most designers I know started that way. What I’m saying is that misjudging the procedures renders the game unsatisfying.

    Let’s go to a game I really like then: Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Why have I always found it less than the sum of it’s parts? Let’s look at the core procedure: Intro – take strings – react or pursue – build to a climax – end of session move – debrief. This procedure makes me feel unsupported by the goal of telling an action romance story, because it gives me no indication of what to do next. I can improvise, and because Thirsty Sword Lesbians has stellar playbooks it’s gets by on their strengths, but movement through stories or sessions is completely reliant on the GM pushing certain directions, recognising certain vague cues, or the entire table being psychically in tune with each other all of which are possible, but none of which can be guaranteed. When I play Thirsty Sword Lesbians, the foundation we improvise story off is not sturdy.

    So, how do we recognise a procedure, now that I’ve identified examples both good and not so good? I think we are looking at two things: Our themes, and the foundations that we use to support our roleplay towards that theme.

    So, for (historical) Dungeons and Dragons, I’d argue the primary theme is exploration, and so we need location-based foundations: Dungeon, wilderness, and city procedures The odd foundations are when we’re not exploring: Downtime and combat procedures serve to bridge gaps between explorations, but are optional, and in fact are often avoided or ignored altogether.

    For Thirsty Sword Lesbians, the primary theme is queer action romance (“swords cross and hearts race”), and so location-based foundations don’t make sense. Scene-based foundations make more sense. I’m not rewriting this game, but perhaps considering what types of scenes exist and how they might transition one to another may provide the increased support I feel I need.

    Through this lens, then, perhaps I oversimplified Wanderhome earlier: Wanderhome has nested and interlocking systems, of both place and events, individual events being detailed and providing support I brushed over earlier in the summary.

    Anyway, I think I’ve lingered on this too long, and I’m not sure I’ve come to a satisfying conclusion. I’d be interested to know what your thoughts are on broader procedures, whether this logic does in fact hold, and whether consideration of procedure in the larger TTRPG space is warranted. I limited my analysis of various games significantly largely for space and energy, but I’d be interested in counter examples or interesting examples of foundations I didn’t consider.

    Idle Cartulary,

    23rd June 2022

  • Advanced Fantasy Dungeons: Pre-alpha reflection

    If you’re walking in on the end of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here.

    That’s a wrap! Kind of, anyway, we have our rules sketched out. Advanced Fantasy Dungeons is the broadest, largest game I’ve written. Next, I’ll start laying it out into an alpha document so I can start limited playtesting at home, and with that I imagine will come more posts about how things change during layout, and also during playtesting, but I thought I’d pause a moment and reflect.

    I went into this with a smirk, thinking I’d find a terrible game, full of flaws and failures. A game I loved as a child, but that I recognised was full of needless complexities even then. What I found instead was a challenging text, full of inconsistencies and implications, that lead me to consider that maybe it was more than immediately apparent.

    I found it fascinating subtexts in examples of play, such as the Rath the Fighter examples in the combat chapter of the DMG, which revealed a gap left between the mechanics and the intended play style, and there were new concepts like ethos, that appeared to be intended to play a significant role in replacing older mechanics such as alignment. New proficiencies interacted with downtime in ways reminiscent of modern classics like Blades in the Dark. Planescape incorporated the precursors to inspiration and folded them into ethos; Birthright structured downtime and political play. There were many other surprises and they were side-by-side with legacy features, some half-addressed, leaving it unclear whether they were unimportant to the designers intended play or whether they were assumed knowledge.

    Although I’d joked that I’d make a retroclone of second edition, I realised I really wanted to play this between-the-lines edition of dungeons and dragons, one with dynamic combat, with structured downtime systems, and variegated procedures for different phases of play. I called it a paraclone; the second edition that might have existed in a parallel universe. So I embarked upon writing it.

    The process of writing a game, episodically, online, is one I haven’t tried before. It’s been fascinating developing something outside of a document, because it means revising something is both a finite act and a significant act, and also that it’s clearer what the implications of new developments are on discrete sections of previously developed texts. I’d recommend it, even though there hasn’t been much interaction with the posts.

    The result is a game I’m very keen to play. I’m looking forward to GMing it in alpha, and I’m looking forward to opening it up to other GMs and pre-releasing it for broader feedback and development. I love that I’ve made it compatible with both B/X and AD&D 2e out of the box, I love the preparation tools I’ve drawn out of the OSR blogosphere to give clearer GM guidance.

    More interestingly, it’s not the game the OSR typically plays. Most notably, here, combat is not a fail state, although okay is not super heroic. Random encounters still exist, but secrets develop into plots and the world changes as part of the system. This is more of a super heroic story game than B/X, or AD&D, but less of one than 5e, and on a completely different path than 3 or 4e. It’s exciting!

    I’m still not happy with Advanced Fantasy Dungeons as a name, largely because I don’t feel like it’s “advanced” at all; but I fear that it’ll stick because I want a dull, functional name that befits the game it paraclones and I’m having trouble finding one with a similar vibe. Fantastic Medieval Campaigns, Old School Essentials and Dungeon Crawl Classics are my touchstones, and I feel stymied. Fantasy Dungeon Roleplaying, Ruins and Riches, Fantasy Dungeon Adventures, Second Wave Fantasy Dungeons are all options I’ve considered. Any other, similar names with naming conventions I’ve missed, please help!

    There are a few optional subsystems I don’t want to add until I’ve playtested but are fairly essential to the second edition as a whole: A city pillar, a psionicist, monk and barbarian classes and a psionics magic system, all as examples of how to expand the rules in various ways. And as part of the tail of the alpha, I’m going to work examples of play, and prep throughout, hewing as closely to the ones in the original as I can. I want to work on 5e compatibility as well, at least from the adventure and spell perspective, the latter might end up challenging, though. A lot of my friends have played less with me as I’ve moved away from 5e, and that’s crushing, to be honest. I’d love this to remedy it.

    On a personal level, I think taking a paraclone approach, even to a game so ill-regarded as second edition, has allowed me to build a game that I’m proud of and have been excited to play, in a way unconstrained development could not. I had been toiling at Infinite Hack’s complete edition for six months and three versions when I set it aside for this project, and I think I’m more excited for this weird, wonderful thing, and to a degree one that I’ve discovered and not created. Someone has made Advanced Fantasy Dungeons before: It was just never published, and no trace of it remained until its ghost visited me.

    So now, to google docs, where I’ll start the process of pulling everything together.

    17th June 2022

    Idle Cartulary

  • Rules Sketch: War revised

    If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here.

    I want to increase the tactics and surprise of war without increasing memory or complexity. Here’s our first attempt, where I was mirroring Journeying:

    When you issue an order to a battalion, tell your general. They will report back to you when the order has been resolved. Orders are usually along the lines of “Send Eagle and Falcon Battalions to take Saint Garifods”. The battalion will follow the order as best it can.

    Battalion movements take one real-time week. Each week, roll the movement die and follow the instructions, then resolve battles. The movement die is a 1d6, interpreted as follows:

    1. Supply chain failure. Your battalion is thirsty and starving. If they battle this week, they have –1 power. 2-5. Movement as normal. 6. Beneficial Positioning. Your battalion finds themselves at an advantage. If they battle this week, they have +1 power.

    All battalions can move one county each week, but cannot move over difficult terrain. If at the end of a week, battalions of opposing sides are in the same county, they battle.

    To battle, compare power. If power is equal, the attacker is forced back. If one sides’ power is greater, all battalions on the side with less power is destroyed.

    Battalions tied to some holdings have special features, such as the ability to move through water or difficult terrain, move 2 spaces in a single week, or possess 2 rather than 1 power.

    A strike force refers to an adventuring party participating in operations to give one side in a battle the advantage. A successful strike force provides 1-2 additional power, depending on the nature of the operation.

    A successful battle allows the winner to lay claim to the county as part of their domain once peace has been sued for, along with access to its holdings potential trade routes.

    Firstly, the movement die adds a bunch of unnecessary complexity here without adding anything interesting.

    When you issue an order to a battalion, tell your general. They will report back to you when the order has been resolved. Orders are usually along the lines of “Send Eagle and Falcon Battalions to take Saint Garifods”. The battalion will follow the order as best it can.

    Battalions move every real-time week. If at the end of a week, battalions of opposing sides are in the same county, they battle. Most battalions can’t move through difficult terrain. 1 move for a battalion is one county, and one county is 3-5 hexes as determined by the GMs map.

    To battle, compare power. If power is equal, the attacker is forced back. If one sides’ power is greater, all battalions on the side with less power are destroyed.

    There are several types of battalions: Rabble, Regulars, Elites, Strike Forces and Engines. A battalion of rabble has 1 move, 1 power, but 0 power before any other battalion. These are untrained but armed people. A battalion of regular troops has 1 move, 1 power; these are typically trained and outfitted troops. An elite battalion has 1 move, 2 power; these are things like mounted knights or trained archers. A strike force has 2 move, 1 power, and can move through certain difficult terrain, but unlike other battalions there is a 50% chance of their success, or 75% chance if they have a particular unique advantage. These are dragon-riders, bladesingers or adventuring parties. An engine moves every other week, but has 3 power. These are things like siege trains, olyphant riders or flying fortresses.

    A strike force operation is a great opportunity for a one-shot or for the PCs to be involved in a battle, on the field or behind the scenes, aiming for a particular objective to turn the tide of a battle. This “special episode” can replace the fortune roll associated with a strike force.

    The GM tracks the movement of battalions during downtime, including non-player battalions. If a battle is resolved, a players general reports the results back immediately. If there is an unusual or unforeseen occurrence, consult the players and use a fortune roll on the Reaction Roll table to help guide the outcome.

    A successful battle allows the winner to lay claim to the county as part of their domain once peace has been sued for, along with access to its holdings potential trade routes.

    This is better. It gives room for elites for fighters, for domains to invest in unique holdings and for that to have an affect, and for surprises and interesting adventures to emerge from war.

    This has been a part of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeon Series! Let me know your thoughts on war, whether this is interesting enough to be pursued, or anything of the sort!

    16th June 2022

    Idle Cartulary

  • Rules Sketch: Stocking and creating treasure

    If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here.

    Treasure in second edition is a ridiculously complicated affair. Each creature is assigned a treasure type such as D, M x 100, or Q x 10. Major treasures are in a lair (A-I) minor treasures are on the creatures person (J-Z). Within each treasure type there is a percentage chance that each type of item (coins, gems, art objects, magical items) will appear, and you roll against them. Then, if they appear (apart from for coins, which appears directly on the treasure type table), you generate what they actually are on one of 32 gems, art objects, or magical items tables.

    The complexity of Treasure Type A-E, H or Z are impossible to replicate without the deep network of nested tables, but I’d estimate at 20 rolls, more than that if the magic items you roll are complex. Treasure Types J-P are simplest at 1-4 rolls. It’s a significant variation in complexity, but also in time – I don’t want to spend that much time generating a dragon hoard. There’s a clear simplicity curve, with table H at the top, A through I and Z beneath it, and J through Y in roughly that order.

    I see only two solutions. The first is to refer to the original second edition treasure table (not my preference, as I want to be able to play modules straight from the book as much as possible). The second is to create a less random, but more streamlined subtable for each treasure type, perhaps one d4 roll for the simple types, but a d666 roll for the more complex treasure types. I think the second is what I’ll go with, but maybe I won’t prioritise it for the alpha.

    I want to provide some guidance, though, for adding interest and story to treasure. There is no guidance in the DMG except to do it. I like to add broad strokes descriptors to cultures commonly found in hordes. Describe the coins, a few descriptions of the style and material of common items, how their weapons are unique, and how their potions work.

    Elanren Empire: Platinum coins, describe as asymmetrical items made of mithral, crystal or force, freezing, lightning, or shining blades, potions are needles encased in crystal, to be injected.

    Then I can just describe the horde as a mix of Elanren and Gedwymm treasure. But it doesn’t give me specific stories. For that, we need a story table, inspired by the ones Ty wrote here, but instead of creating items, I want to take the items we have generated on the treasure type table and add a story to them.

    We start with an Origin already, for example Elanren. Then we add a theme and twist to the magic item or art object. You could use a master table, but my gut would be write one for each culture, but only use 6 of each. You could also use this structure for a specific, for example, arcanist who made all the items in her tower.

    So our rule:

    For each origin — typically culture, organisation, or individual — that might have artefacts or items in the hoard or treasure:

    Coins are:

    d3 Aesthetic and materials:

    d3 Weapon effects:

    Potions and scrolls are unique how:

    d12 themes:

    For each item, roll on the lists or modify the description appropriately.

    A theme can be anything: Barricade, Ally, Animal, Light, Places, Enemy, Self, Vegetation, Civilization, Dark, Ruler, Body, Servant, Wilderness, Emotion, Monster, Soul, People, Element, Pathways, Requires sacrifice, Invert, Secretive origin, Specific owner, Subtle, Repurposed, Ugly, Purify the origin, Unease, Precious Metals, Corrupt, Tell a story, Corrupt the origin, Natural materials, Heavy, Recognizable, Purify, Protect, Past, Copy, Create, Exploit, Grow, Strengthen, Curse, Heal, Reveal, Weaken, Harm, Mutate, Destroy, Future, Solitude, Trick, Harvest, Hide, Commune, Isolate, Pride, Displacement, Fate, Betrayal, Empowerment, Communication, Faith, Order, Rebellion, War, Vanity, Beauty, Chaos, Control, Change, Youth, Love, Dreams, Glory.

    Themes are stolen directly from Ty! I’ve simplified a fair bit from the original punnet square and three lists structure.

    This has been a part of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeon Series! Let me know your thoughts on Treasure!

    Idle Cartulary

    15th June 2022

Want to support Playful Void or Bathtub Reviews? Donate to or join my Ko-fi!

I use affiliate links where I can, to keep reviewing sustainable! Please click them if you’re considering buying something I’ve reviewed! Want to know more?

Have a module, adventure or supplement you’d like me to review? Read my review policy here, and then email me at idle dot cartulary at gmail dot com, or direct message me on Discord!

Recent Posts

Threshold of Evil – Dungeon Regular

Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
  1. Threshold of Evil
  2. Secrets of the Towers
  3. Monsterquest
  4. They Also Serve
  5. The Artisan’s Tomb

Categories

Archives

January 2026
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

Recent Posts