Of Map Tiles, Illness, and The Phoenix Children's Hospital Foundation

Recently I started a Patreon to help support me creating modular tile sets that can be printed and assembled in just about any configuration to match the encounter being played. Patreon will also help me to help those who cannot afford to pay for some of the work I do. This has mostly been a labor of love and a way to give back to the hobby I love so much; I enjoy creating art and cartography and you can see my work in many different RPG publications and adventures, some paid and some just for the satisfaction of people telling me how much they like the work I do. 

The Inkling Prepping for our DCC
game while in the hospital

While setting up the Patreon site, my son became ill with an infection and had to spend a few days in the hospital—he has since made a full recovery. One of my goals when I started this project was to give back, so I decided then that I would give a percentage of all proceeds from the Patreon to The Phoenix Children's Hospital Foundation. Phoenix Children's hospital has a "Game Zone" and I hope to eventually run a regular game at the hospital for the kids as a way of helping them escape and forget about their troubles for a time.

Dungeon Tile Set 1

Whether you use tiles, maps or terrain in your tabletop game or VTT, or not, please consider supporting my Patreon as a way of giving back to the RPG Community and giving hope to children and families during a time when it could often seem all hope is lost.

Samples of current and future map tiles printed and mounted on cardboard:

 

Learning From Other Games: Dungeon World

I love to collect RPGs. I can remember buying my first non Dungeons & Dragons RPG, it was 1986 and the game was RuneQuest. I really loved the idea that a character could "build" a class by learning skills and improving on pre-existing skills. Alas, I never was able to convince my gaming group to play it and to this day I have not played any version of the game.

I still collect games that I have yet to play including the latest version of RuneQuest. Some of the games that have caught my attention lately are Fate, both Fate Core and Fate Accelerated Edition, Savage Worlds, and Dungeon World. There are many things about each of these games that appeal to me, for instance Dungeon World has a great approach to adventure building and game play: 

• Portray a fantastic world

• Fill the characters’ lives with adventure

• Play to find out what happens

Everything you say and do at the table (and away from the table, too) exists to accomplish these three goals and no others. Things that aren’t on this list aren’t your goals. You’re not trying to beat the players or test their ability to solve complex traps. You’re not here to give the players a chance to explore your finely crafted setting. You’re not trying to kill the players (though monsters might be). You’re most certainly not here to tell everyone a planned-out story.

This is a great way to approach game and adventure design especially from the perspective of serial adventure design. 

Now I've been blogging about my research for a while now and its time I actually start to get my hands dirty. Can games like Dungeon World and others help to create a better adventure for Dungeons & Dragons, Retro Clones, or DCC? I intend to find out step by step. 

Step 1. Portray a fantastic world.

For centuries there have been legends of a mysterious phantom island in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Europe. Early Mediterranean cultures called it Atlantis, while in Irish myths it was called Saint Brendan's Island, the Isle of Mam, and Hy-Brasil. It is said to be cloaked in mist, except for one day each seven years, when it becomes visible.
Sometime between AD 512–530 Brandaen, a monk from Galway, began a voyage around the world for nine years as a punishment by an angel who had seen that Brendan did not believe in the truth of a book on the miracles of creation and saw Brandaen throw it into the fire. The angel tells him that truth has been destroyed. On his journeys Brandaen encounters the wonders and horrors of the world, such as Judas frozen on one side and burning on the other, people with swine heads, dog legs and wolf teeth carrying bows and arrows, and an enormous fish that encircles the ship by holding its tail in its mouth.
The time time now is 1938 and a prominent Hollywood producer David Zelsnick is making a film about the voyages of  St. Brendan. After reading “Legendary Islands of the Atlantic,” he becomes intrigued by the possibility of filming his blockbuster film on the actual island of Hy-Brasil and hires William Babcock as a location consultant for the film. William Babcock is a geographer with the American Geographical Society of New York who has been trying to fund an expedition to prove a theory that the mythical island of Hy-Brasil does indeed exist.
After a couple of weeks at sea, searching for the phantom island, with supplies and morale running low, and time running out, a mysterious island has materialized out of the mists of the North Atlantic.

Step 2. Fill the characters’ lives with adventure.

This comes in several parts. The first part is the creation of the characters themselves. Since I'm a fan of the 0 level character funnel from DCC, I propose that the characters all be 0 level accidental adventurers—this list in in no way complete, but is a good start.*

	Actor: Member of Ship's Crew	belaying pin (as club)	bottle of whiskey
	Actor: Savage	flint knife (as dagger)	drum
	Ship Captain	knife (as dagger)	spyglass
	Actor: Savage Warrior	shortbow	bamboo armor
	Actor: “little person” Supporting Role (as Halfling)	cane (as club)	emerald tie pin
	Actor: Lead Role	machete (as short sword)	satchel and fedora
	Actor: Supporting Role	prop pistol (as club)	rope 100’
	Director of Photography	camera tripod leg (as club)	film canister (as shield)
	Wardrobe	scissors (as dagger)	fabric,  3 yards
	Best Boy	light stand (as club)	electrical cord, 50’
	Key Grip	wrench (as club)	camera dolly
	Hair Stylist	razor (as dagger)	hair pins and scissors (as fine tools)
	Makeup Artist	makeup brush (as dart)	makeup pigments
	Porter	knife	sack
	Guide	Walking stick ( as staff)	backpack
	Sound Boom Operator	Boom Mic (staff)	20 silver dollars
	Stunt Double	knife (as Dagger)	padded clothing (as padded armor)
	“Little Person” Stunt Double (as halfling)	cane (as club)	prop pistol
	Ship’s Cook	cleaver (as dagger)	metal pot (used as iron helmet)
	Gaffer	hammer (as club)	rope 100'

Part two of this step uses one of the guiding principles of Dungeon World, "Make maps, leave blanks."
Maps come in many shapes, sizes and styles. Sometimes there is a need to create a very detailed map of an encounter and sometimes a post-it note with the location name on it will suffice.  I'll go over how I draw some inspiration for maps, or "zones" from Fate in the next post.

*If you are interested in adding to the 0 level professions list let me know and I'll set up a public spreadsheet.

The Fountain of Youth, or Zen and the Art of Dungeon Creation From a Seven Year Old

What can I learn from a seven year old dungeon master?

My PCs take a heavy toll against
the 11ft tall Six-Armed Goblin 

As I sat working on a few ideas for the serial adventure project, my seven year old son asked me to help him create an adventure. What a great request. He and I have been playing a simplified version of D&D together for about a year and his style of game is very junior high old school. He prefers to set up a dungeon using some homemade dungeon tiles and populate them with dozens of monsters based only what they look like having no regard for why skeletons and orcs would be standing around in the same room or why an Aboleth would be found no where near water. After everything is set up the game can become nothing more than a contest of heroes against monsters.

On this occasion we didn't have minis and tiles, just good old fashioned pencils and paper. Since I was working on my idea of rolling up dungeons and adventures randomly,  I introduced him to the random tables in my Advanced Dungeons & Dragons  Dungeon Masters Guide. After we rolled up a basic dungeon layout he began populating the it. This is when things got interesting. Instead of relying on he box of minis or my monster manual my son started creating his own monsters. First there was the six-armed goblin then a four-armed goblin. Not only did he put those gems out there, he proceeded to create amazing traps and puzzles. I was envious and proud at the same time!

Then it hit me—all my creativity was lost in logic! I needed the zen-like attitude of a seven year old dungeon master.

We decided to write up the adventure and he wants to sell it. As I began to take his notes and write out the adventure, I became more aware of how these seemingly abstract ideas could easily become connected and logically exist within the confines of a small story plot. I have taken much caution to keep from filling in the blanks with my ideas, but I will take this lesson from a 4 foot tall Jedi Master and the experience of creating something very cool with my son and cherish it forever.

Next step random adventure creation for real; no hooks, no backstory, no railroads—3d6 in order for DM's!

Don't Be A Control Freak

"During most of a D&D game, the Dungeon Master leaves the decisions to the players. The DM presents the setting—describing what the characters see, offering choices of actions, and so forth. But the course of the game is determined by the actions of the party as decided by the players." —Dungeons & Dragons Dungeons Masters Rulebook, Revised by Frank Mentzer

As I prepared this week for a nostalgic run through a classic Labyrinth Lord megadungeon, I thought it would be a good Idea to brush up on the classic rules. I not only brought out the Labyrinth Lord rules, but also dug deep in to my Moldvay and Mentzer basic rulebooks. When I got to page 3 of +Frank Mentzer's Dungeons & Dragons Dungeons Masters Rulebook, I was not expecting to find such a great nugget of advice. I must have read it several times 30+ years ago but it didn't have any real meaning until today—present a setting and offer choices; could it be that simple? 

As a DM I'm a bit burned out on adventures that take 3-6 sessions to complete, all the while trying to steer a hapless group of would-be heroes to what has already been determined as the final destination. That is just hard work because players never do what they are "supposed to." Why be such a control freak? Why spend time writing about things that the PCs may never see? +Harley Stroh gave me this advice when I asked how much information is too much and how much is not enough?

A lot of the OSR releases go very loose: no box text, just the details that are necessary to run the encounter area. The extreme example of this are the brilliant one-page dungeons. If you did it right, you could design your sandbox with a dozen one-page "episodes." (Which sounds pretty cool when I think about it.)  

For my part, I am trying to get the judge to fall in love with the adventure. I want him or her to be insanely stoked about unleashing this world upon their players; the more excited the judge is, the better game he or she will run. So I err on the side of a little more information - some back story if the details are cool, more description if the setting calls for it.  

BUT, and this is key, NEVER include information that doesn't impact the PCs. The focus always needs to be on the PCs, never the brilliantly constructed NPCs or villains. As long as the detail is something that the PCs can interact with in a meaningful way, it's not a waste of space. But if the PCs will never discover it, and it has no measurable relation to the dungeon they are exploring, excise the fat. 

"...a dozen one-page 'episodes'" I like that. 

If I take Frank and Harley's advice to heart I have to start looking at adventure design that focuses on the setting and offer choices that impact the PCs. For me the fun is in discovering the story both as a GM and as a player, so perhaps adventures could be like a character that the DM rolls up and plays? 

Getting In Touch With My "Feelies"

Way back in 1980 (showing a bit of age here) a computer game company named Infocom published what I would consider one of the first Computer RPGs—Zork. And I, being a young geek in the 80's, spent many hours typing my way through the "Great Underground Empire." Throughout the 80's Infocom continued to publish 35 other interactive fiction titles such as Zork II, Zork III, Wishbringer, and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy to name a few. One of my favorite parts of these games were the "feelies," the extra content included with the boxed versions of their games. 




For  example, Wishbringer came with a "Magick glowing stone, a book, The Legend of Wishbringer, that explains how the magic stone came to be, and an envelope and letter to be delivered to Ye Olde Magick Shoppe; 

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy came with, a button with "Don't Panic!" printed in large, friendly letters, Pocket Fluff, an Order for destruction of Arthur Dent's house, an Order for destruction of Earth, a Microscopic Space Fleet (an empty plastic bag), "Peril Sensitive Sunglasses" ("glasses" made of opaque black cardboard), and the game also indicates that it comes with "no tea," a key joke and puzzle in the game. The feelies really added a sense of immersion to these games for me and I would often use feelies in my own tabletop RPGs. 



Today we call them hand outs, and like in the 80's, most, if not all immersive handouts are handcrafted by the Game Master. We like these little bits of tangible fantasy in our games; anyone who searches for the perfect themed "Benny" for their Savage Worlds game or uses themed "radioactive" dice for their Mutant Crawl Classics game, or spends hours crafting an aged letter or ancient looking dagger can attest to that! So why don't more RPG publishers and companies include feelies with their products? Sounds like a great stretch goal for a boxed set Kickstarter.

Back To The Basic

Moving along with dungeon design, I have been looking at the structure of the megadungeon. I have been playing in megadungeons since my first game where e explored the East Tower of the Haunted Keep back in 1982. In those early years though dungeon design was random and weird—just the way we liked it. Classic dungeon design was tiered so that the "easier" encounters were on the upper levels and progressively got harder as you descended into the depths of the unknown. I am exploring a similar principle in my overall design for the Serial Adventure Project, but slightly modified. In an interview with +Greg Gillespie on the Save Or Die Podcast, Greg talks about his design of the classic megadungeon Barrowmaze. There were two ideas that stood out in this interview that work well with the goals of the serial adventure project; first, the players always returned to the town that they started in and second Barrowmaze is a "flat" dungeon that sprawls out on a single plane.

By having the players always return to town he avoided the challenge of what to do if a party member was absent from one week to the next and how to add new players or "write out" a player who leaves the group. This may be a little "railroady" to do outside of the traditional dungeon where it would be deadly to camp out over-night, but I may have a good way to deal with that. Always returning to an "A" point in the story is a common device used in Televison and Film serials. I will try hard to use the mission or mystery of the week format, but I will need a unique starting point or starting points that would be the "A" position for the party.

Pretty straightforward:
1. Draw a map of the dungeon
2. Stock the dungeon

Greg also didn't use a typical dungeon level structure where as you go down the difficulty went up. Barrowmaze is essentially a single plane dungeon and the difficulty varies from room to room. I think this is a good good idea when creating a node based dungeon, but in the case of the serial adventure project each node could potentially be located several miles from another which could make for a disastrous couple of hours of game play if a low level party decides to explore a node that is far too high for them and meets with an instant TPK. To help keep some structure of level appropriateness (is that a word?)  I plan to pick a couple of central ground zero points and as the players move up, down or away from them the difficulty of the encounters will rise. Since it will always be the player's choice of where to go, each situation will have a point of invitation, the hook, and at least one point of quick egress.

The megadungeon is perhaps the oldest style of dungeon in RPGs so why not look back to the original works for some inspirational how-to?

Now with 30% more pulp!

Recently I had the opportunity to ask Harley Stroh of Goodman Games some questions about adventure creation and since I respect his time in answering those questions, I wanted to see how I could best use his advice; one piece at a time.

Frank: Hello Harley, Again thank you for agreeing to help me with this project. 

Harley: Awesome. Thanks for inviting me to help. I really think you are on to something with the episodic adventure.

Frank: My First Question is, Where do YOU start when writing an adventure? 

Harley: Usually with an image or scene that I want to create. I'll read something in a historical reference, or comic book, or just see a work of art that fires up my imagination, and then layer on the adventure from there.

Definitely on my must read list!

Ok Step 1: What fires up my imagination? Since I am looking for a very pulp feel reminiscent of Appendix N and 30's film serials, I have built my world around the idea of Vikings living in an inter-dimensional pocket world once ruled by aliens that occasionally "bumps into" other worlds.

I will be using  a Node-Based Megadungeon approach where each node will be a 5 Room Dungeon. I have started to list out some possible nodes and began "layering" the dungeons. So, in my description of the world I have already started a list of node inspiration: Vikings, Aliens, and Other stuff.

I took a few minutes to list out a few possible nodes— as I begin to add more detail I expect changes and additions:

Viking Village of Stonegate: A Possible home base for a party of zero level adventurers.
Alien Crypt: A long lost and forgotten cryo-freeze stasis chamber containing the body of an alien warrior who once lived in this world.
Nazi U-Boat: a Nazi U-Boat from an alternate earth that has been transported to this world when it "bumped into it."
Church of the Unknown Saint: home to a crazy missionary priest who is making it all up as he goes, but has somehow managed to gather a small flock
The Abandoned Wizard's Tower: An ancient tower on the outskirts of the village. The wizard doesn't live in the tower he lives in the hut next to the tower.
Dodd's Inn: An inn on the road to Dodd's Crossing
Dodd's Crossing: A small village at the edge of the river built on the site of a legendary battle from ages past.
The Beyond: A dark and foreboding forest where all sorts of nasties live—every adventure story has one. You don't want to go in there.

rough mind-map of the starting area