Review: Cabin in the Woods

Yes, you had "Zombies" (in the office pool).  But this is "Zombie Redneck Torture Family." Entirely separate thing. It's like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal.

In order to discuss how this movie would be applicable to gaming, some spoilers may come up - go ahead and skip this one if you haven't seen the movie yet.

I recently had the chance to see Cabin in the Woods, and I enjoyed it immensely.  It's a well written script, and pokes quite a bit of fun at the horror genre - it's a meta-horror movie in much the same way as the 'Scream' series, but is perhaps even more deconstructionist.  The movie involves an archetypal group of young people, lured to a remote cabin in the wilderness on a weekend getaway, and unleashes a monster on them (the zombie redneck torture family) after they read an incantation from a journal in the cellar.  In the meantime, a facility full of government type workers are watching all the action on video screens, placing bets on the monsters and cheering for the kills.

While Cabin in the Woods is not terribly scary, the movie is interesting, funny, and full of twists and surprises.  It's chock full of easter eggs for long time fans of the genre.  It reminded me thematically of the old The Wicker Man, with the theme of luring in a willing sacrifice, as well as another horror-comedy movie, the old David Warner Waxwork movie from the late 80's, where the victims choose their own monster deaths.

The movie uses the institution and the workers at the operations center to underline the ridiculous plots of many horror movies - real characters would only make the kind of unintelligent choices made by characters in a typical slasher movie, if they were chemically altered and drugged, to impair their judgment and lower their inhibitions.  Furthermore, the corporate stooges running the office pool and belittling the efforts of the protagonists are stand-ins for anyone who gets a little bit too excited during torture porn movies.

Inspiration for Gaming
The first thought I had was to draw inspiration directly from the movie, and subvert the tropes of a typical dungeon.  We already see a bit of this in games like ACKS; the reason the world is full of dungeons is because wizards build dungeons to attract monsters, and then hire adventurers to go clear them out so they can harvest monster parts for their experiments.  The game master could take it even further, and have a dungeon that's been built to harvest adventurers.  Consider this quote from the movie where one of the corporate workers explains why the victims need to be lured to their deaths:

They have to make the choice of their own free will. Otherwise, the system doesn't work. Like the harbinger: creepy old fuck practically wears a sign saying "YOU WILL DIE". Why would we put him there? The system. They have to choose to ignore him. They have to choose what happens in the cellar. Yeah, we write the game as much as we have to, but in the end, if they don't transgress, they can't be punished. 

It wouldn't take much more than rumors of easy coin to lure in the typical greedy adventurer.  The DM could put together a killer dungeon that exists purely to kill dungeon crawlers, whose greed and lust for wealth draws them beneath the ground so they can be sacrificed for the greater good.  It'd be especially funny if the masterminds behind the dungeon consider themselves to be the real heroes.  I'll just point out, Jim Flame Princess pretty much hit this target already with The Grinding Gear adventure module a few years ago, but you could have fun doing you're own version and work in the supernatural sacrifice angle.

The other bit that is pure gold is the cellar full of dire artifacts.  Each artifact is tied to a different monster (once again, similar to the old Waxwork movie), so the victims inadvertently choose the nature of their own deaths when they mess with items in the cellar.  A dungeon location where the characters unknowingly select their own opponents would hit a similar note.

Survival Horror in D&D

Wahoo.  The new season of Walking Dead is back, and thoughts turn to Halloween.  Has anyone done a survival horror scenario or campaign in their game?  The core elements are limited resources, overwhelming or seemingly endless opponents, and one of two objectives - holding out until help arrives, or escaping to somewhere safe.  In campaign mode, no place is safe... for long.

Here's a simple one-shot scenario:
The dungeon is at the old ruined wizard's tower, where an attacking army met it's demise in ages past at the hands of the wizard's curse.  When character's return from the dungeon beneath the tower with the cursed book, the dead rise from the ground around the tower and swarm over the rubble.  Can the characters find a defensive position and hold out until dawn?

Plenty of published D&D and OSR scenarios have danced around the edges, touching on themes of resource scarcity while the characters maintain a precarious position.  Only a few of these are actually horror themed, but they're all good inspirations for how other writers have created memorable resource tests:

I6 Ravenloft
The players are trapped in a vampire's castle, and hunted until they either kill or get killed.  Level drain slowly whittles the party away.

B10 Night's Dark Terror
There's a fantastic siege sequence, where the players arrive at a remote homestead tower as night falls and multiple goblin tribes attack; the players have to plan a defense with limited defenders and repel varied attacks over the long night.

A4 In the Dungeons of the Slavelords
The players have to escape the Slave Lord's dungeons without any equipment, scavenging gear along the way.

WG4 Lost Temple of Tharizdun
Although not technically a defensive siege, the entrance hall fight throws wave after wave of well-organized defenders after the party, testing the resolve and draining the resources of even the most prepared groups.  (G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King presents a similar tactical tour de force - Gygax loved those challenging tactical puzzles and really knew how to build them).

Here are a few OSR scenarios I've reviewed that put characters in similarly desperate situations:  The God That Crawls traps characters in a labyrinth where they're hunted by an implacable monster; Death Frost Doom potentially unleashes 13,000 undead; The Grinding Gear traps characters in a dungeon with a time limit; Inn of Lost Heroes shifts the characters into a dark otherworld inspired by Silent Hill.

Seems like we should be able to borrow ideas from all these scenarios for building a Halloween survival horror adventure.

What other elements (mechanical or otherwise) would you put in a survival horror piece?  How do games explicitly set in a zombie apocalypse, like All Flesh Must Be Eaten, do it?

Review: F3 Many Gates of the Gann

I had the opportunity this weekend to read Many Gates of the Gann.  The adventure is a 34 page PDF published by Chaotic Henchman, available at the usual suspects like RPGnow link: (F3 Many Gates of the Gann).  The book uses a simple 2 page layout, very easy to read, with maps in the back.  It's meant to be compatible with the 1st edition of the world's most popular RPG, although you could play it seamlessly with any retro clone, too.  It's suggested for adventurers level 3-5.

The premise of the adventure is simple; a portal exists in the nearby wilds, a dungeon door flanked by giant ape-heads, and local legends warned that those who have approached the gates are either destroyed or devoured.  That all changed a few months ago when the portals opened from the inside, and hyena-men raiders started boiling out of the dungeon into the countryside.  Other adventurers have tried to enter the place, and never returned.  A number of suggested plot hooks and rumors are provided to give the players a reason to come and investigate it for themselves.

The complex itself was created as a laboratory and vault by an interloper from elsewhere, the titular Gann.  The three dungeon levels describe the servitors, traps, and defenses left behind by The Gann to guard a nuke-like super weapon, the Apocalypse Seed.  Furthermore, the dungeons have been breached from below, introducing other factions besides the servitors.

The module uses a blend of unusual monsters that complement the labs and defenses to give the complex a weird science vibe; trained servitor apes are the backbone of the work force, along with ape variants (like flesh golems made of misshapen stitched ape parts).  Additional atypical monsters are culled from the various AD&D monster books like the Grell, Cifal, or Sandman, and they are situated in the environment rationally and logically.  There is a fantastic new monster, the Zerpanax, which merges symbiotically with a human thrall, that will be sure to unnerve players, and an old classic from the Monster Manual makes a well-conceived appearance as a mastermind and major boss monster.

I'm predisposed to like a module like this, with all those lumbering ape servants in a mad wizard's laboratory calling to mind Hellboy and the kriegsaffe working for the Nazi scientist brain-in-a-jar (never mind Red Ghost, Monsieur Mallah, Gorilla Grodd, or any number of enhanced simians in the comics).  Apes and weird science mix like chocolate and peanut butter.  Giant ape-head stone guardians with disintegrator eye beams hit the sweet spot.  I could see filing off the serial numbers and using this in one of the lower levels of the Black City campaign, which shares a bit of a weird science vibe, replacing The Gann with one of the ancient Greys.

Otherwise, this is a three level dungeon that can fit into just about any campaign. The challenges require a crisp level of play and take advantage of AD&D's baroque complexity to address factors such as ethereality, the use of unseen servants, and various wizard locked doors.  If the players are lucky enough to persevere to the end, they might gain possession of a devastating weapon, capable of laying waste to a kingdom, and creating some ongoing messiness for the campaign - always a good thing.

Monstrous Monday: Nukekubi

If you're like me, you first saw these freaky creatures of Japanese folklore in the pages of Mike Mignola's Hellboy - they're featured in the short story "Heads", and also in the animated piece, Hellboy: Storm of Swords (pictured).  Mignola loves classic folklore and the pages of Hellboy are full of unusual creatures.

Like many supernatural creatures in Japanese folklore, it's ambiguous whether Nukekubi are demons, cursed humans, a kind of undead, or spirits.  They appear almost entirely like normal humans during the day, and often live in a family group of 2-5 members, somewhere remote.  When night falls, their heads separate cleanly from their bodies and fly off in search of human prey.  In human form, a Nukekubi can be identified by a thin red line along the seam where the head cleanly separates from the body each night.

In the Hellboy story, the Nukekubi offer Hellboy hospitality at their remote villa; when he wakes in the night, he sees all the headless bodies sitting in the parlor, grumbles in the usual fashion, and then the heads start hunting him.

Nukekubi
AC as leather, HD 4, attack 1 bite,  damage 1-6, MV 12, ML 10, AL Chaotic.

Nukekubi emit a frightening scream when they fly into combat, causing Fear (as the spell), to panic their victims and break a group apart.  They'll track a target into the night, biting, rending, and tearing the flesh.

A Nukekubi head takes damage from normal weapons, but isn't destroyed when it reaches zero hit points; instead, the head is forced to flee and return to it's body.   The only way to destroy a Nukekubi is to prevent the head from rejoining the body by dawn, by hiding the body or locking it someplace secure.

Nukekubi are another cool monster for the future Spirit Island campaign, and also a contribution to Tim's weekly Monstrous Monday in honor of Halloween:

Buccaneers in the Time of Dragons

Lately my reading into colonial history has taken me to the 17th century Caribbean basin, and the rise of buccaneers, and later pirates.  One striking component, as you read about the life stories of notorious buccaneers and pirates, is how their rise to glory or infamy parallels the murder hobo career of characters from D&D or your favorite retro clone™.  They start out as poor fighting men, usually ex-hunters or military, who turn to raiding to earn a better life.  Early success wins them a ship, and as their name grows, more and more men flock to their banner and they become capable of launching larger raids - sometimes with multiple ships or small armies of buccaneers, eventually sacking major towns and forts.  In the twilight of their career, they take their fortunes and retire to governorships,  plantations, or high stations in the military - or they're killed in action.  It's a 50-50 proposition.

The issue I see with such a campaign arc in D&D is that it doesn't handle large scale combats very well, and certainly not if characters are just low level participants.  I imagine smaller raiding and boarding actions can be handled tactically, using the standard rules, but it would become unwieldy once more than 50 or so combatants per side are engaged.

If you were to go outside of D&D to borrow ideas from a system that handled ship-to-ship combat, chases, boarding actions, and similar aspects of high seas action, what would it be?  I also think it beneficial to shift the scale as appropriate; perhaps the distance-based combat ship-to-ship starts abstract, but when the ships reach boarding range, play moves from a strategic scale to a tactical scale and the players resolve the remainder of the combat using standard rules.

I'm not averse to looking at Sci Fi either, I imagine a starship-based game could have similar issues where the combat needs to shift from ship-to-ship combat to personal combat.  Not everyone can be the captain, after all.  I might be missing some game approaches that handled transitions and troupe play.

Incidentally, following the muse a bit, I've been sketching notes for a short horror scenario in colonial waters that involves a derelict Spanish vessel drifting along the coast.  Was it part of one of the famed treasure fleets, lost in a storm, or is something else at play?  The adventure hook is being asked to join a merchant's expedition, either out of Jamestown (to the north) or up from the Bahamas, to find and recover the derelict after it was spotted by a vessel just making port; adventurers are needed for the kind of fighting and exploration of which the regular sailors are ill-prepared.  Although it's free form, some of the potential encounters involves French pirates, native villages along the coast, and a dark horror from the Mesoamerican hinterland.  It's shaping up to be great fun. But it's got me thinking again how an actual saltbox type campaign might be played out.

Lessons of the Black City

Today you get some cool maps!  Following yesterday's topic around running an effective megadungeon or sandbox game, I promised some reflections on the Black City campaign so far.  Let's talk about information, first.

When players arrived on Thule, they got a brief introduction, akin to what was posted here (the italics section, on starting out on board The Isgerd's Fury).  That kind of "new arrival orientation speech" gave them enough information to decide to head to Trade Town, do some rumor gathering, visit the ruined city, and use the Well of Woe entrance to enter the dungeons.  Bluenose, leader of a guard detachment at the Well of Woe, has also been a regular source of information.  For instance, the players learned about 'The Killers in the Mist', one of the tougher upcoming encounters, from Bluenose, tavern rumors, and even an encounter with other adventurers, before some NPC's approached them with a job offer to take care of The Killers.  The information flow has been firing on all cylinders.

Another item that paid off in dividends was including a "subway style schematic" near the entrance.  Check out this picture:

The players found the basic diagram etched into the wall immediately on entering the Well of Woe; they've since been able to verify the nodes correspond to junctions beneath the city where the major tunnels join.  Rather than fill up an endless sheet of graph paper with rooms, I felt monotony could be best avoided (for both me and them) by having smaller dungeons, geographically distinct.  I'm not a fan of endless rooms packed on a single sheet.  Yes, that means there are 9 dungeons, just on level 1 of the under city.  I put some notes on the diagram for folks reading the game reports, so you have a sense on where the Dokkalvir (evil elves) guided the party after the last game session.  The schematic has been invaluable in allowing the group to plan excursions and take control of the game.

Here's a quick peek at the Well of Woe dungeon (cleared and bypassed by the players now).  The individual dungeons represented by notes aren't exactly big, just large enough.

Other elements that are working well include the wide number of factions.  Other humans make up some of the more dangerous and interesting encounters, from berserkers suffering from 'Dungeon Madness', to crews from other ships (filling the BX roles of bandits, veterans, nobles, traders, and NPC parties).  That means I have some large charts, so when bandits are encountered, they're not bandits; they're ill-equipped raiders wearing black raven cloaks, using a Russian accent - they came on the ship Hugin, from the Kiev area.  And they’re trying to kill you and loot the bodies.

There have been some mild rivalries, and numerous showdowns - reaction rolls are always dicey, I am a strong proponent of randomization.  The group is starting to understand there are some monster factions, too, but for the most part, the city seems to be haunted by the living dead, mutated beasts, and strange automaton servants left by the ancients.

I'm a prophet of keeping a consistent campaign calendar and planning worldly events in advance, so the DM can continue to advance the larger world when the players get lost in dungeon time.  After last game session, where a character was restored after spending time in the fairy realm, it's a snap to look ahead at some of the events and see what dire visions were revealed by the fairy queen.  I have a piece on building a calendar here: Happy New Year, Greyhawk, if you'd like pointers, and here is an earlier list of sample events for the Black City that can happen while on the island for the summer:  Campaign Events.  It's probably best if my players skip the Campaign Events page, assuming they didn't read it in the past.

Problems
I promised problems!  The Well of Woe entrance is meant to generate resource concerns - mainly time management, but a bit of water, light, and encumbrance as well.  The players need to pay a tax to the guard detachment, to descend rope ladders through a hole in the street to enter.  That's interesting and a little different.  But the distances involved in tromping to some of the remote dungeons chew up time, encouraging longer stays in the dungeon.  This runs head-to-head with another worthy goal, which is episodic play; the players should leave the dungeon every session, so we can have a rotating cast every week.  Similarly, the chasm in the tunnel between the Well of Woe and the First Junction has encouraged the group to seek alternate entrances.

Distance also means greater opportunities for wandering monsters, though I have tweaked the frequency of checks in the larger tunnels so it's not a constant beatdown.  There's a fine balance between enough wandering monsters so the group makes meaningful decisons about when and where to search, versus too much wandering monster noise.

I took all that advice to heart around "treasure shouldn't be just another bag of coins…"  Many of the treasures the group has found have been things like rare oxide powders in huge clay jars, giant furry snake hides, or large metal boxes.  Unusual treasures, and difficult to transport.  More often than not, the group makes a note on their map, leaves the unwieldy loot for later, and continues exploration (often losing the opportunity when some other party stumbles along - "So long, and thanks for killing the monsters".).  The decision *not* to engage in logistics planning to get non-standard loot out of the dungeon is a valid choice, especially when exploration is more interesting, but the net is that we've played 9 sessions, and no one has leveled up to level 2.  A few guys are between 1,500 and 2,000xp, very close.

Furthermore, a few major treasures have been well-hidden, and were completely bypassed, making some of the levels seem poor in wealth.  I'm not a miser, really!  I still think a less even distribution, aggregated in a few larger hoards, is more interesting, but there is that risk the group misses the hoards if they're not really thorough.

Finally, I built level 1 so that it becomes more dangerous as you go north and east (with the north east dungeon really suited for level 2 characters).  However, there are easily available passages down to the next deepest level, the Warrens of Decay, a sprawling cavern system representing dungeon levels 3 and 4.  There have been a few times the unprepared group, with resource depleted 1st level guys, considered going down to check things out, nearly precipitating a tragedy.   So I've fretted about so many available entrances to the next major level, even though we'll be thankful for them when the group is ready to delve a bit deeper.

Those are my major concerns, otherwise this has been generally successful, as far as putting theory into practice.  I have asked a few times if the players are enjoying the campaign, the responses are fairly positive, and they show up the next week.  The largest player-facing complaint seems to be rules-based (preferring the higher powered default BX approach, or ACKS, to LOTFP).  We'll try the game using ACKS at some point and see how much it changes the default assumptions - I'm working with ACKS as I work on the next big thing, the Spirit Island setting (a feudal Japan, warring samurai thing).

Lessons from Running Mega Dungeons

A few years ago, I ran a summer-long campaign using the Stonehell dungeon.  The lessons learned were invaluable, and heavily influenced some of my decisions in structuring my current campaign, The Black City.  Some of the things I got right; there are plenty of things that still need refinement.  Running your campaign using a megadungeon, campaign dungeon, or tentpole dungeon (pick your term) as the centerpiece offers a lot of benefits, but it's not a risk free proposition.  There are a couple of basic things you have to absolutely get right, or it's going to crash and burn on you.

Feed the Player Choice Engine
Choice (or agency,as the cool kids call it) is the magic engine that makes the mega dungeon work.  Information is the fuel.  The megadungeon needs an interesting background to engage the players, and they need to learn enough about the dungeon to plan their own capers.  Making blind decisions is no better than a coin flip, and when the players don't have the right information, they're choices are meaningless.  OSR luminary Matt Finch said it much better than I could on a comment here at the Lich House:  Running a better sandbox game.  Read and gain 1 point of Wisdom.

Information tools include things like campaign background, rumors in town, clues picked up within the dungeon, rumors from other adventuring parties or dungeon inhabitants, treasure maps, and so forth.  These tools are tried and true.  The players need to be able to plan, and their plan needs inputs.

I would elevate this as the # 1 reason, bar none, mega dungeons fail - failure to feed the engine.

Engagement
Interesting environments develop engagement.  You've all heard the advice - make sure your megadungeon has some distinct levels and areas, to limit repetition and monotony.  Design set piece areas, that are intricate, tactical, or otherwise very cool.  Add factions to the dungeon so the group can engage in non-combat roleplaying, or a bit of politics.  Make sure the rooms have interesting encounters that provide a challenge, or the chance to learn something (even if its an empty room).  This is all common advice, good advice.  My list is not exhaustive, and one can certainly argue more or less special ingredients need to be in that sauce.

But engagement requires information, first and foremost, and that means feeding the engine.  Putting in a wicked cool 'Fountain of Serpents' as a major set-piece location is less valuable when the player characters don't hear about it, learn why it's cool, and get enough information to plan a mission to try and find it.  Multiple competing factions are irrelevant if the group doesn't discover how to take advantage of the rivalries.

The Dwimmermount Controversy
Tenkar over at Tenkar's Tavern recently ran his crew through a level of Dwimmermount (Closing the door on Dwimmermount) and it spawned discussion there, and on TheRPGSite.  The players didn't like it - and ink has been spilt.  Dwimmermount discussions always seem to have popcorn value, since it's a high profile project that has veered off the road a bit.  James Mal has one of the largest pools of OSR readership, perhaps encouraging a bit of schadenfreude - I just know, mention Dwimmermount, and folks come out swinging hatchets.

However, if players aren't excited to step foot into the dungeon or plan a targeted excursion, they clearly don't have the right information.   I can't say if the drafts are to blame - I'm a project backer for Dwimmermount, but haven't bothered with the downloads yet.  Tenkar's group did explicitly set out to run the levels they used "as is", without heavy improvisation or enhancement by the DM.  It's spawned lively discussion about empty rooms, evenly distributed copper coins hidden in rat poo, and nothing less than the very death of the megadungeon format!

No published megadungeon can capture the magic of the campaign that birthed it.  Running a game session is performance art, and the more sparse are the published notes, the more improvisation is required to bring it to life.  The manuscript needs to fire the imagination and give the DM something to work with, too.  Keep your popcorn handy, where will this saga go next?  I should I probably get off my keister and actually download some of the evidence, experience the drama firsthand.  I'm still a popcorn muncher.

I had expected to spend time talking about what's going wrong and right with the Black City, but I'll have to save that for tomorrow.  My soapbox is about to collapse under the weight of self-importance, and I've got enough bruises this week already.