• Fantasy post-apocalypse western? Part 1

    I was thinking about the themes of traditional westerns, spaghetti westerns, chanbara, and Red Dead Redemption 2, which I’m playing again, largely because I love the wildlife. I’m not an expert in any of these by any stretch, but I’m interested in the assertion that Dungeons and Dragons is a western in the Manifest Destiny sense, and how or what it might mean to revise it in the same sense as western films were revised with respect to the genre features that give rise to the assertion “Dungeons and Dragons is a western”. I’m reading wikipedia here, not literary criticism. If the idea grows, maybe I’ll look deeper. I’ll assume the the fact that D&D’s core themes drawing from early western films are problematic in similar ways to those films.

    A Fistful of Dollars

    I’ll start by cherry-picking the themes of the evolving revisions to the genre, so from traditional westerns, chanbara (“samurai”) films inspired by them, and spaghetti and zapata westerns that were inspired by them.

    Themes

    • Honour. A personal sense of outlaw honour often conflicts with duty to an employer, patron, government or family.
    • Justice. Played out through feuds, revenge and retribution, and through duels.
    • Seminomadic. Characters are often searching for a home, but are driven on by the mistrust of locals.
    • Found family. Gangs are complex and related.
    • Survival. Characters are most often remnants of a time of violence and lawlessness with few skills to survive in a new order.
    • Anti-capitalist. One category of villain are captains of industry who steal land, livelihood and labour from hard-working folk.
    • Corruption. Another category of villain are family legacies, corrupt authorities, and fallen religious figures; those who gain riches and power through corrupt means.
    • Life is cheap. Life has no intrinsic value. Even the good kill for gold, revenge or politics.
    • Harsh landscapes affect the characters affected and their progress.
    • The Saloon. A place with music, sex, gambling, drinking and brawling is often the only outpost of civilisation.
    • The Gun. A bond with, synonymity with or identification with an iconic weapon. People may recognise them by their weapon.
    • Stories are mainly ones of bounty hunting, revenge or retribution, or liberation.

    These are interesting, and could be codified in a game or a campaign setting with a little thought, but I’m going to segue and talk about Red Dead Redemption 2, because it’s informing my thoughts on Dungeons and Dragons and westerns as well. This is a list of story elements in Red Dead Redemption 2, that I think are important and genre-meaningful, but that aren’t really in the thematic lists of films.

    • Experienced characters, who remember (or misremember) a time where they weren’t misfits.
    • Characters are in the midst of unfamiliar civilisation, having fled, and lack skills or means to legally engage with civilisation.
    • Rival, less honourable and more successful gangs, usually dark reflections of the PC’s gang – more engaged with ‘civilisation’, less engaged with ‘civilisation’, more ideologically driven, less ideologically driven, etc.
    • A moveable camp, of women and children as well as “breadwinners”, who are all sorts: Doctors, lawyers, thieves, fighters, etc.
    • Your role. Contribute to the gang’s finances, and to assist the other characters in the gang with their business, be it train robberies, jailbreaks, collecting debts and bounties, but also simply helping people out if you choose. And always, you have it in for the dishonourable other gang.

    I like Red Dead Redemption 2’s story elements because they are, as Vincent Baker calls it grippy. It is as if you’re generating a Dogs in the Vineyard town and taking it with you everywhere you go. Your enemies are encroaching industry and society that accompanies it, the ever-present threat of starvation and sickness, and yourselves and your rivals, relics of a time where there was no civil society or industry.

    I feel like there’s potential for a fantasy world where you do the kind of things you do in D&D, but your town is your gang and its moveable camp, and you’re driven by maintaining the supply (to steal Errant’s term) of that gang in a circular fashion, with an eventual goal to escape to far away (Australia in Red Dead Redemption 2, symbolic of the uncivilised wilds).

    I think this post is long enough, so I’ll throw this up for your interest and get to working on what kind of set up for a fantasy world featuring these themes might look like in another post. I’m interested in your thoughts here, though, especially on the complex topic of encroaching civilisation and industry in the context of the late west, and the role of protagonists who transitioned from being perceived as parasites against a innocent civilians to heroes against an unstoppable capitalistic empire.

    Idle Cartulary,

    6th December 2022

    , ,

  • Treasure smithing by Magic

    Continuing to muse about oracles and campaign building. Nick started these thoughts, and I’ve done dungeon rooms, hexes and NPCs. What about treasure?

    I think the best take on creating interesting treasure recently was Ty’s Treasure Squares. I’m going to iterate on that here. I want to see if I can get that system to rely on me less.

    I’m going to be explaining with an example. Any card can be drawn reversed, so take the main theme and do the opposite. I’m using the MTG Randomiser, though, so no reversals for me.

    I just looked the card description terminology up on the Magic website, so those are the terms I’m using.

    Draw three cards, to find your origin, theme and twist.

    Origin: Devilish. Theme: Protection. Twist: Duplication.

    Draw two cards to find your binaries.

    Columns: Body/Aura. Rows: Travel/Home.

    Now draw four cards to find the appearance or type of the items.

    Construct, Obelisk, Eye, Tool.

    This gives us a square for four treasures (honestly, I can’t figure out tables in wordpress, so I’m not drawing the square) Let’s smith them!

    Devilish duplicating protection

    Kizgul’s Wings (construct, body, travel): At rest, a cage of interlocking silver webs and blades, that one must manoeuvre through to reach the glowing red gem at its heart. Whe the gem is bonded with, the web unravels, turning into six-winged gossamer armour with a slithering voice.

    Kazgul’s Tomb (obelisk, body, home): A massive, dimly red obelisk, breathing imperceptibly. Thought to hold Kizgul’s soul, rather when bonded with, it holds a clone of the bonded within its walls, released on their death, or perhaps when needed to do Kizgul’s convoluted bidding.

    Kizgul’s Spyglass (eye, aura, travel): A foot-long, ornate, extendable spyglass, with two red gems inset. When the first is pressed, the focus of the spyglass is lit with a demonic aura. When the second is pressed, everything in the aura is instantly teleported to the location of the operator.

    Kizgul’s Pavillion (tool, aura, home): A lace umbrella of red and black thread. When spread, it forms into a large impenetrable tent with no entryway, and no ability to perceive in or out of the tent.

    This is fun! Honestly, this might give me too many ideas, and make it more difficult. I’m not sure off the top of my head how many other areas would benefit from an approach like this. Any ideas?

    Idle Cartulary

    17th July 2022

    , ,

  • Character sketching by Magic

    Continuing to muse about oracles and campaign building. Nick did work on adventures, I’ve done dungeon rooms and hexes. What about NPCs?

    I think of NPCs progressively detailed sketches. Begin with name, description, and catchphrase. Then asset, trait, need or agenda. Then approach, false visage, obsession and weakness. Things at the end are only important if they become major NPCs, but every NPC should have the first few.

    Draw one card for each feature, as you develop the character further. Let’s try it! I’m going to be explaining with an example. Any card can be drawn reversed, so take the main theme and do the opposite. I’m using the MTG Randomiser, though, so no reversals for me.

    I just looked the card description terminology up on the Magic website, so those are the terms I’m using.

    We start with name, description and catchphrase:

    Espen is young, sprung tight like an attacking scorpion. When they doesn’t know what else to say, they says “We gonna keep hiding, or get it over with?”

    Then we add an asset, trait, need and agenda as they become a more regular member of the cast:

    They have a pair of scissors that can remove an elf’s soul. They constantly play with matches, lighting little fires, and burning little slips of paper. They are seeking a gate to the faerie realm to rescue their sister.

    Now if they become major drivers of the story, give them an approach, false visage, obsession and weakness:

    They prefers to earn trust through kindness, but their kindness is false. They are obsessed with the faerie they fear, and rats petrify them, leaving them acting unthinkingly. The fae took guise of rats when they took their sister.

    Anyway, this I think is great for the kind of iteratively built characterisation that I like to use. I couldn’t have come up with this myself. I wonder if I could do this for treasure creation as well?

    Idle Cartulary

    7th July 2022

    , , ,

  • 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

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

rootring: follow the ring from blog to blog, catch up on recent posts, and discover new TTRPG writing without relying on feeds, timelines, or recommendation algorithms.
Prev Next Random Ring

Categories

Archives

April 2026
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  

Recent Posts