Let's Kill Monsters and Take Their Stuff

Existensialism and the dungeon - confessions of a knuckle-dragger

For me, Dungeons & Dragons is all about going into dark holes in the ground, kicking open doors, killing the monsters, and taking their stuff.  I'm here to say, I am a role playing knuckle-dragger.  But go with me here for a bit, because there is a method at work.

Looting places is the default paradigm of most of the golden age modules - check out this list below:

B1 In Search of the Unknown
B2 The Keep on the Borderlands
B4 The Lost City
B5 The Horror on the Hill
X1 The Isle of Dread
T1 The Village of Hommlet
S1 Tomb of Horrors
S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

None of these adventures have over-arching plots or storylines, or intricate plot hooks to get the players started.  They are all simple site-based adventures with not much more to them than "Here's an interesting place to find adventure, ready-set-go".  You may say, "Beedo, when I played that module, we helped so-and-so, or we discovered such-and-such evil plot, it was a great story, it had nothing to do with looting."  Yeah - but it didn't need to turn out that way - that was your choice to make it about something, not the DM's plot.

This is the strength of site-based adventures, of sandbox play, the reason I'm still playing D&D 30+ years later.  Compelling stories emerge through play.  Story and plot isn't forced onto the game from the outset.

When I've played a plotted a game, I've had the experience of leading the players through the story.  It is fundamentally more passive than presenting a locale and turning over decision making authority to the group.  For the players, gaming in a sandbox goes from passive entertainment into an exercise of existential choice.

And this is where the idea of heroism in D&D should really matter - forget about making the premise of the game, "You're a hero".  Make the premise of the game, "You're whatever you want to be", and let the players be heroic or villainous or amoral through their choices.  If they choose selflessness over self-interest in a sandbox game, now you have heroism with meaning.

I've played B2 with multiple groups (mostly younger) where they tried to sack the Keep on the Borderlands.  Or the group attacked the (good) Cynidicean factions in the Lost City to loot their golden masks.  Or they tried to rob Rufus and Byrne in the Village of Hommlet.  And I've played with groups that made heroic choices in the same circumstances.  But the difference in an old school game is the players have that choice to decide.

You'll note that I'm equating old school play with free form dungeons and site based locations (sandboxes).  There's an implicit idea in these adventure structures that the DM presents a location, and the story emerges from player choice and interaction with the setting, and the sum is much greater than the parts.  And this is why D&D is still my game of choice 30 years later, and despite dabbling in scripted, plotted games, I come back to the sandbox and the basic dungeon delve over and over again.

And yes, a corollary statement is you can play a new school style plotted story adventure with old time D&D rules, and I would say it's not an old school game - old school is as much about adventure style as it is about the rules system.

Tying this back to DCC and yesterday's "You're No Hero Post".  The issue I can see with the DCC ad copy is the explicit statement "You're not a hero", as opposed to saying something like, "You could be a hero, or a reaver, or a thief…"  I certainly don't think it's a fatal mistake, people!  Let's read it and discuss the game on its merits.

Note - thanks to Stuart over at Strange Magic (again) for providing the motivation to defending the killing of monsters and taking their loot, and to Limpey for putting the focus on heroic choice.

You're No Hero

"Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe . . . an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast . . . would you do it? Without question?"

"Without question? No." The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. "I'd ask how much."
--Bronn, A Game of Thrones


I just got done reading Tim's nut-kicking of LOTFP over at The Other Side blog, and the statement that he likes to play heroes got me thinking about the role of heroes in D&D.  In old school D&D, folks play heroes despite the system.

On said nut-kicking:  it's pretty entertaining, I don't agree with it, but it's a good read-through and the comments were interesting.

We're going to see a contrast between heroic vs non-heroic gaming come up more in old school discussions because of the hype generated by DCC RPG and their ad copy - "You're a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen slayer, a tight-lipped warlock... you're no hero."  I would put forward this thesis;  games and gaming play styles ultimately emulate their inspirational sources, and the divide between old school and new school gaming has just as much to do with the difference between pre and post 1970's fantasy literature.

Pulp era fantasy featured rogues and ruffians and barbarians that smashed and tricked their way to temporary wealth, and this heavily influenced the original versions of D&D.  Since that time period, we've seen the massive popularity of Tolkien and a sea-change in fantasy that lead to one epic fantasy series after another, followed by the Grim-Dark antiheroes of the 1990's (looking at you, Lestat), and now the popularity of post-modern fantasists like George RR Martin, with their realpolitik grim and gritty approach to fantasy.

Gamers emulate their inspirational sources; D&D was birthed out of the pulp influences in Appendix N and rewards roguish looters, heroes need not apply.  Paladins and Rangers and good vs evil seem a little odd in AD&D 1E because the reward mechanism in the game didn't change, other than people just looted and pillaged "evil" humanoids and didn't worry about their consciences.

I mostly checked out during the Dragonlance and post-Dragonlance period of TSR, but looking back it seems that the heroic influences of mainstream fantasy infected the game, and the focus was on big quests and being heroes.  I'm not very knowledgeable about AD&D 2E, but I'm guessing it introduced alternative XP systems other than XP for gold to support heroic quest styles of play.  After all, Aragorn never stopped to loot Moria - though it would be funny to see the companions figuring out how to get wagon loads of mithril out of the mines.

We seem to be thankfully past the Grim-Dark anti-hero period of game play, but it raises some interesting questions for me about the OSR, the revival of old school dungeons & dragons, and the new emphasis Goodman is placing on the amoral pulp rogues of Appendix N.

Is it the zeitgeist of the time that's making the return to the roots more popular now?  Are there spiritual connections between the pulp "heroes" of old time fantasy that plays well to the violent post-modern fantasy influences we see nowadays?  Or is it because we grew up playing D&D in the 70's and 80's and when you're in your thirties and forties you get nostalgic?

Shield me from the bandwagon!

Musings on the shield debate and the Goodman Games DCC - jumping on two bandwagons in one post.

I've been using a Shields Shall be Splintered house rule for almost a year (you can see the full list on this old house rule blog post).  A shield becomes a portable save vs death for any fighter carrying it, and creates a real difference between the two-handed fighters and the sword-and-board styles.  Since most D&D fighting is either one-on-one or small groups, sacrificing a shield in a duel is meaningful and dramatic.

If I were running a game in the ancient world without heavy knights in plate mail, I'd adapt something like the following chart I saw over on Strange Magic to reflect the importance of shields to pre-plate warriors:

Unarmored: AC 9
Leather: AC 8
Chainmail: AC 7
Shield only: AC 6
Leather + Shield: AC 5
Chain + Shield: AC 4 (same)
Plate: AC 3 (same)
Plate + Shield: AC 2 (same)

One might consider giving legions and phalanxes with advanced shield tactics an even higher AC boost for their shields when in formation.

The DCC Hoopla
Wow - I barely got the Goodman DCC RPG Beta downloaded and onto the tablet and the blogosphere is already flooded with a million "I love the art" posts.

I'm trying to reserve judgment until giving it a good cover-to-cover reading and projecting how it would play at the table (I doubt my group will want to playtest it ahead of time, and Goodman is ignoring GenCon for hosting a playtest).  We still have 6 months before it officially comes out.

I imagine the analysis will be an exercise similar to evaluating retro-games - "Okay, they changed X or Y from traditional D&D, why'd they do it, and is this a better game for it?"  From what I could see on a quick read through, DCC RPG has a lot of swing - critical tables, random spell results tables, and disposable characters.  I like swing, Swing is Fun, but it will need to be experienced to really judge it.

But all the classic D&D art copies made me laugh.  A+ for nostalgia.

The Tower of Pain / The Black City

The Black City is a ruined alien city in the frozen north that I'm building out as a campaign setting for eventual publication.  You can follow the project here.

The Decapitated Oracle

The Tower is area L on the City Map.  It's a lonely ruined spire north of the great glacier in the eastern part of the city ruins.  Whereas much of the Black City blends science fantasy and high adventure with Vikings, the Tower is one of the areas with a horror theme.

When the alien inhabitants of the city died in a mass extinction event, one of the last conscious acts involved turning on the Beacon, a massive radio signal to deep space requesting aid from other Greys.  No rescue ships came, but over the ages, various alien predators and space devils that lived in the void followed the signal back to earth, and some inhabit the ruins of the city even today.  One  group of these invaders is a colony of Mi-Go, alien scientists featured in the Lovecraft story, "The Whisperer in Darkness".

Early in the campaign, the characters might come into contact with rumors from other groups exploring the ruins, and hear how one of their sentries went missing, or other lone members of their expedition disappeared without a trace… as if they were lifted right up into the sky, leaving no tracks.  They've been taken by the Mi-Go.  The Mi-Go range outwards from the tower at night, looking for lone humans or Ape-Men to paralyze with their high tech implements and carry back to the tower.  (This is an ideal fate to inflict on a henchman, hired mercenary, or NPC friend of the players if they camp within 10 hexes of the tower).

Taken

If the characters somehow catch a glimpse of a silhouetted Mi-Go flying against the night sky, or discover the tower on their own, they'll find the tower is guarded by the headless bodies of Ape-Men, altered through Mi-Go surgery to have mouths in their abdomens along with body armor and bio weapons.  Alien symbiotes control the body's nervous systems and serve the Mi-Go.

Fighting their way up the tower to the higher levels, the characters might discover the Mi-Go "project" - an attempt to commune with an alien intelligence deep beneath the city through creation of the Decapitated Oracle.  The missing heads of the Mi-Go victims have been preserved and linked in a psychic circuit to allow the Mi-Go to contact the lingering thoughts and dreams of the dead city.  (In game terms, the Decapitated Oracle can be used to achieve a "Commune" effect for anyone with enough guts and mental toughness to put their hands on the control orb and try to use it… everyone else will be afflicted with Confusion as the various heads of the Oracle shout conflicting messages, prophecies and warnings all at the same time.)

The Mi-Go are one of the more insidious threats in the city, and the risk of a nightly abduction will become greater the more time the characters spend in the city, and the deeper into the ruins they push.  The players could experience some vicarious horror when an abduction happens to an NPC group first, building up the tension and fear of the unknown.  A disquieting sequence would involve one of their henchmen going missing, then battling the henchman's headless corpse sometime in the future if the characters discover the tower and come into contact with the Mi-Go servitors guarding it.  They'd learn the awful truth when the Oracle was finally discovered and the henchman's severed head spouts doom-filled prophecies at them.

Dungeons & Deep Ones, Dagon & Dragons - Musings on Call of Cthulhu as a D&D Game

What makes Call of Cthulhu play differently than Dungeons & Dragons?  Would it be fun to run a D&D game in a Lovecraftian world?

After posting a week or so ago about turning Chaosium's Lovecraft country into a D&D sandbox, I've been giving quite a bit of thought to a future project creating a Lovecraftian sandbox for D&D.  This would be something totally different from the Black City, as it would be more horror investigation than a dungeon delving.

In a Call of Cthulhu adventure, there might be some opponents that can be overcome physically, but there are usually greater horrors that can only be thwarted, delayed, or contained.  In D&D, you can usually kill anything if you have a big enough sword.  Old school game play throws balance out the window, and player skill is required to gauge when to fight, when to run.  The investigative horror game would place more emphasis on those table skills.  "We see evil cultists performing a rite, let's get in there and stop them," versus,   "Oh no, the rite is over and here comes the Elder God, run!"

Chaosium already has published two intriguing historical supplements for CoC  that  cross over into the realms of fantasy - Cthulhu Invictus (for the Roman era) and Cthulhu Dark Ages.  In both games, characters have the chance to strap on some armor, grab a spear or sword, and head into the wilderness.  So a natural first question might be why not just run an Invictus or Dark Ages game?

Here's a quick rundown on how I see some of the differences:

Investigations versus Dungeons
If you ever look at a dungeon map abstractly, it's basically a flow chart where the doors and passages represent player choices.  A plotted investigation game with clues can be drawn up the same way - the rooms are scenes, the clues leading to the next scene are passages.  An investigative game *can* be run as a sandbox, with no need for railroading - many of the "dungeons" will be plotted as investigations.  Once the players reach an actual site-based adventure, you can run the game like a traditional dungeon.

Lethality
Call of Cthulhu is more lethal than D&D.  Experienced Call of Cthulhu characters still have the basic hit points of any human, and are just as easy to kill throughout their whole career.  On the other hand, a high level D&D fighter can take a lot of punishment.  A Lovecraft game run using D&D rules will have a pulp action feel, since the characters will be more willing to hang with a monster and try combat instead of cutting and running as quickly as their CoC brethren.  Folks used to more D&D action will enjoy leveling in lieu of "realism".  Of course, powerful Mythos entities will still crush any group.

Sanity
I'm on record as disliking the CoC sanity system because it discourages investigation, which is what the game is supposed to be about; I like the Trail of Cthulhu approach because it encourages exploration, but I feel that D&D style adventurers don't need extra motivation to expose themselves to awfulness.  I'd leave this out of the game and be happier for it.  (The previous post was 'Does a sanity mechanic belong in D&D?')

If I'm going for horror and can't create a sense of dread without requiring a roll and forcibly telling the players, "You're scared now", it's time to hang up my dice.

Skills
CoC characters have professions, which define their skills.  A fair amount of CoC mechanics are tied up with skill checks.  Old school D&D has only an abbreviated skill system.

I don't think this is much of an issue for an old school DM, as he'll be comfortable with "rulings over rolls".   Game mastering an investigative game requires the DM to understand the important clues that will drive the investigation forward and give the players the opportunity to discover the important clues, regardless of skills or rolls.

Languages and Books
A big component to Call of Cthulhu investigative play involves eldritch tomes, dead languages, and Mythos magic.  The LOTFP game has excellent language rules for a D&D style system, and Realms of Crawling Chaos brought interesting tome rules into D&D - we have this element covered.

Healing and Clerics
In Call of Cthulhu, mental health is more of a long term factor for healing than physical health, and the game uses various sanity healing mechanics.  I'd be ditching sanity, so no need for psychoanalysts.

The cleric, as a wielder of divine power, has no analog in Call of Cthulhu.  There are no higher powers on the same side of humans in the standard Lovecraftian universe.  I tackled my approach to reconciling the cleric and deities for use in a Lovecraftian universe months ago:  Fear and Trembling and Dungeons.

Classes
If you're playing old school D&D, you probably love the roles at the table implicit in classes - fighters fight, clerics protect, magic users cast spells, thieves bring special skills.  It's an instant hook for roleplaying, and part of the game's enduring charm.  In an investigative game, skill and role playing are more important.  With the old school approach to skills, classes shouldn't be an impediment during investigations, and will be familiar ground during combat.

Magic
In Call of Cthulhu, the only magic is bad magic - Mythos magic.  Every spell has a deleterious side effect.  In the standard D&D game, magic is a useful resource.

There are a few approaches I'm considering to reconcile the two approaches - one is to create a whole new class of ritual magic to cover Mythos spells, useable by anyone (or any magic user) with the right eldritch tome.  One could just adapt the Call of Cthulhu spell lists and bolt on the new magic system.

The other option is to convert the most common Lovecraftian spells into actual D&D magic user spells and make them rare and dangerous - they're not part of the commonly known spell lists.  That's the approach in Realms of Crawling Chaos, and it seems it would mesh well with the darker tone of magic in LOTFP.

Experience
D&D characters get most of their experience for treasure, so traditional campaigns often have an element of avarice to them.  Characters are more often rogues than heroes.  By the book play rewards the biggest haul of loot.  Still mulling it over, but XP might be an area to make a change - you want the group investigating the murder at the old mansion, not looting the mansion and ignoring the mystery part of it.  (Call of Cthulhu doesn't use an experience or level-based system; skills improve gradually through use).

Conclusion
I think D&D could work fine to run a Lovecraftian investigative campaign; the group will be tougher than a standard party in Call of Cthulhu, so fights against minions and mooks will go the party's way more easily, but Mythos monsters will still be scary.  The familiarity of the D&D system and class-based roles is a big draw (and the fact that there are a ton of D&D players versus Cthulhu players).  I know I wouldn't have any problems with my own player group trying a Lovecraftian sandbox with D&D mechanics, but their interest in Call of Cthulhu itself has mostly been one-shots.

Oh - and as I mentioned in the Gamer ADD post a few days ago - you'd have the benefit of being able to convert 30 years of Cthulhu campaigns.  Masks of Nyarlathotep or Shadows of Yog Sothoth would be a ton of fun as 16th century horror campaigns played out in post-Renaissance Europe with D&D mechanics.

This project goes in the queue after the Black City!

The Institute, Plaza, and Spire of the Black City

There are three other places on the city map that are bad news for low level characters:

O Institute of the Arcane
The Institute is a long squat rectangular building that was used for testing the magical capabilities of Grey sorcerers.  Magic was taught freely in the city to members of the scientific caste, but only a capable wizard could hope to pass through the gauntlet of magical tests, traps and puzzles, and become a full member of the Institute, with access to the deeper mysteries.  If any PC magic users are capable of clearing the gauntlet, they'll gain the All-Seeing Eye and be able to pass into the abandoned Institute at will.

Near the entrance vestibule are teleport circles only activated by members possessing the Eye.  Entrance to the Institute building itself requires passing a pair of Watchers requiring indigo colored gemstones.

The Institute houses a library of Essential Saltes (the blue dusts to resurrect long dead creatures ala "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward").  The entertainment value of the players resurrecting long dead aliens from distant worlds is terribly exciting to me.  I've got my Random Esoteric Creature Generator all ready to go.

The Institute can also be accessed from level 6 in the dungeons, the Greater Halls of Science.

P The Great Plaza
If someone were to follow the column-lined processional boulevard all the way through the city, they would arrive at a huge plaza, surrounded by religous ziggurats, and towering over the plaza is the Spire of Thaumaturgy.  The only objects on the icy, windswept plaza are a pair of massive fifteen foot high dull iron boulders.

Unfortunately, once someone steps foot into the plaza without violet passkeys, the boulders unroll themselves and stand erect, unfolding into massive 4-armed Iron Golems with misshapen alien heads and bulbous eyes.  They'll smash anyone trying to cross the plaza or step foot on the crooked stairs leading to the Spire of Thaumaturgy.  A kind DM might allow the characters to see the crushed remains of the Golem's last victims out on the plaza, and retreat is certainly allowable.

Q The Spire of Thaumaturgy
"I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness..."
 -From Beyond

The many floors of the spire are dedicated to summoning chambers, magic circles, and libraries of knowledge about beings "From Beyond".  (I'm going with the D&D definition of Thaumaturgy as summoning, and not the historical meaning).  I imagine the tower will be filthy with invisible, floating, amoeba-like monstrosities that leaked through an improper summoning circle somewhere in the tower.

The undead inhabitant of the tower is the ancient alien lich, Kar-Qo (descendant of the Ghost Scientist Xeph-Ka near the Plaza of the Watchers).  Where Xeph-Ka failed to create the lich formula, Kar-Qo succeeded, attaining immortality and severing his connection to the hive mind; he "survived" the mass extinction because of his separateness and has spent untold millennia pursing different agendas, uncaring of the ruined city around him.  However, he'll be upset at being disturbed by fleshy pink bipeds.

Besides the plaza entrance to the tower, there is an elevator available from levels 7 and 8 in the under city that ascends to the Spire of Thaumaturgy.

Black City Decisions

I've made some decisions about the Black City project.  I'm going to go forward with publishing it, of course - it's too much fun to write, and I'd love to see it fully realized in print.  Committing myself to a project should help overcome the gamer attention deficit disorder.   I have MS Publisher on all my PC's, so I'm looking into that as the layout software (if not, I'll go with Scribus).  Felt is on board for drawings, Il Male has volunteered to help with photoshop maps, so we have the makings of a team.  (Probably will need an editor, I'm sure, and will see if anyone else wants some art credits).

The book will cover both a basic campaign setting and megadungeon, so the scope will include the Thule Archipelago detailed as a hex crawl, Trade Town as an adventurer's home base, the surface ruins, the first two dungeon levels (100+ rooms each), and a high level overview of the Viking north lands.

It'll be months of work still - I need to finish mapping and stocking level 2, and sign up my players for some play testing - I'll shoot for July for a run-through with the group.  I need to take all the blog posts that have had Black City content and rewrite them for presenting the setting as a cohesive book (blog posts tend to be repetitive, disjointed, and overly wordy).

I'm pretty sure the stats will be system neutral, and we'll playtest with LOTFP Weird Fantasy Roleplaying (which basically means system neutral, too, if you've seen LOTFP stats); it was a fan favorite in the recent poll, and Viking pirates will work really well with a rules set that favors fighters and weird magic.

One last decision is whether to use Realms of Crawling Chaos for some of the Lovecraftian bits (and psionics) or develop them independently.  So far, the only Lovecraftian things in the ruins include Mi-Go and perhaps some new spells - like the resurrection spell from "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward".  The rest has been inspirational.  (I've mentioned a Lovecraftian D&D setting that would make heavy use of Realms of Crawling Chaos - that's a future project.  Black City is more high adventure than horror).