Hell's Own Temple

Here's a little treat for folks on a Friday before Halloween.

Hell's Own Temple is a short adventure I penned a couple months back for Prince of Nothing's No Artpunk Contest. Sadly (for my ego), my entry was not among the contest winners (the top eight submissions were pretty darn spectacular), but Prince still had some kind words for my attempt at a high level, one-off adventure.

Since it didn't make the cut for the compilation volume (Prince does plan on including it in a supplemental book along with all the runners-up), I've decided to make the adventure available to my blog readers. It's short (only about 10 pages) and not tarted up for publication, but it should be complete enough to run; you can download the files here:

Hell's Own Temple

Map 1

Map 2

There is no overland map of the island, although my original model for the thing was Easter Island, whose map can be easily found on the internet. My original concept was actually an island assault, but I scaled the whole thing waaaay back in order to meet the contest parameters (this also helped with the time crunch I was under). More background info can be found in this old blog post, for the interested.

An AD&D adventure suitable for six to eight PCs of 10th-14th level. Happy Halloween!

; )

Nostalgia Bias

Recently, I read a retrospective review of adventure module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City over at Reviews from R'lyeh. It was less than complimentary, stating in part:

I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City is a module with a huge number of problems. In terms of its most basic design, it has a split personality between the tournament play elements (with advice how to run the entrance tunnels as a tournament, but not the means, since the module is not part of the part of the ‘C’ or Competition series of scenarios) and the sandbox aspect once the Player Characters are in the Forbidden City. The former is highly detailed where the latter is not, the former has the players pushed in one direction, whereas the latter does not. Now whilst at least one of the encounters in the tunnels makes sense, the actual city is underwritten, with little description as to its current state or background as to its origins or who its original inhabitants were, with only the bases for each of the factions receiving any real attention or detail. And of those factions, the Yuan-ti suffer from the same issue. The module also treats its NPCs badly, few of them being named...Further, even the one named NPC in the scenario who will readily come to the Player Characters’ aid, an Elf Magic-User who is the only survivor from a previous expedition, has an unpleasant manner which will only serve to at least annoy the Player Characters, if not completely drive them off...

Worse, I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City ignores the primary reason for the Player Characters to travel as far south as the Forbidden City—the treasure from the caravans. It is completely omitted from the scenario, leaving a motivation to be unfulfilled. And without that, once the chieftain’s son has been rescued, there remains little motivation for the Player Characters to stay in the city. Now, there are plenty of potential motivations and adventure ideas given at the end of the module, but these are not used in the module as written despite the fact that they are infinitely more interesting than the very basic ones of searching for treasure (which does not exist) and rescuing the chieftain’s son given at the beginning of the module. As a consequence of their not being written into the module, there are no sewer systems filled with jungle-ghouls, no lost temple of Ranet, no temple to tentacular thing from another plane, no spy network, no travel back to explore the city in its prime, and so on. 

The fact is, I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City is begging for all of these—and more...

Long-time readers of this blog may remember me writing of Dwellers with glowing praise...I have said, more than once, that it's one of my favorite adventure modules of all time. On my list of most "inspirational" adventure modules (i.e. inspiring me to play D&D) I ranked it #2, just behind Queen of the Demonweb Pits. I likewise ranked it #2 on my personal Top Ten list of all time D&D adventure modules, just in front of Q1 and just behind White Plume Mountain (though I noted that I "preferred the flavor" of Dwellers to S2). I've run the adventure module probably four or five times AS WRITTEN...i.e. without any further development. Truthfully, I never had any need to develop it further, because every party that braved the thing ended up dead or on the run for safer, greener pastures.

In other words, the way I feel about Dwellers of the Forbidden City could be readily compared to the way many, MANY people feel about I6: Ravenloft. 

Here's the thing: the criticism RfR has of Dwellers is fair. More than fair...it's pretty spot on. When he writes:

Wolfgang Baur is right to suggest that the module is best remembered for its monsters...I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City is neither a classic, nor does not deserve its revered status, and it certainly does not deserve to rate as high as thirteen on the list of greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventures of all time by Dungeon magazine for the thirtieth anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons. As written, it simply is not that good, its tournament versus sandbox style of play giving it a split personality and its sandbox elements severely underwritten and underdeveloped in far too many places for the Dungeon Master to bring to the table and make playable without undertaking a great deal of development work.

...he's not wrong at all. When I've run the thing I had the same complaints: I just pushed hard on the "chief's son" premise, and ignored all the failings of the thing, because the adventure didn't last long enough for those failings to appear. The "competition entrance" is pretty much a linear obstacle course. If you ignore that most of the city is undeveloped, PCs can simply wander the streets until they find one of the (detailed) "faction areas" where the adventure suddenly continues. There is a ton of under-utilized, unrealized potential in the adventure...more, there are a ton of unanswered questions that really demand answers: the yuant-ti, the missing trade goods, timelines of the disparate groups interactions with each other, etc.

Lost cities! Snake people! Killer jungle plants! Hell, there's even an illusionist. I love this sort of thing. But my love of these things undermines my ability to look at the adventure critically and rationally, with the jaded, middle-aged (thus, experienced) eyes that I use for the other adventures I've analyzed (like Ravenloft and Dragonlance). My bias for the adventures I love...and that I have nostalgia for...is just as strong and, yes, irrational as what I see in others.

That's a good thing to realize. It is something I need to be cognizant of.

Anyway, I would disagree with pookie that Dwellers of the Forbidden City should only be considered a "classic" for the new monsters it introduces, or that it should be restricted from such a prestigious designation due to the work a DM needs to put in to make it playable. A classic (when used as a noun) is defined as:

a work of art of recognized and established value

and I think that, with regard to adventure modules, there must be a certain amount of "player mass" (i.e. individuals that have played the adventure) for it to be rightly called a classic. And as an adventure published at the height of the game's popularity...and being present on store shelves for years... I1 probably has that mass in a way that many latter day adventures simply do not. And I think that it has established its value in the entertainment it's provided. 

But I'm biased.

[Ravenloft could also be rightly called a "classic" by the same reasoning and, for the record, I never said Ravenloft was not; I simply said it wasn't a very good adventure based on the rule set for which it was written]

Clallam

A little Friday action that I wasn't expecting to do. What do ya' know: I got a good night's sleep for a change (about eight hours) rather than waking up between 2am and 4am as has been happening the last week or two.

[stress affects everyone different]

Have spent most of my "free" hours the last couple days researching Clallam county, Washington...specifically the geography and history around Port Angeles, which I intend as the site of my "new Ravenloft." Lot of good stuff there, though I will probably end up filing the serial numbers off (or, at least, slightly modifying) many of the proper names. I don't generally bother doing this in my actual "home campaign" but when publishing for others, I don't want to run the risk of offending (for example) the indigenous people of the region who will be taking the place of Ravenloft's menacing gypsies.

Just picture a castle
overlooking the sea...

The more I dig into it, the more I am really enjoying the creation process. My father was born and raised in Port Angeles, his siblings and most of my relatives on that side of the family still live thereabouts. We used to visit the Peninsula once or twice a year when I was a kid, and there's something about the region that still calls to me...the grey, wet, windswept coast, the high bluffs, the dense forests looming over the highways. 

I don't get the opportunity to get out there as much these days (doesn't help the relatives are all estranged, each for a different reason), though we did get out there a couple times over the summer. West of Sequim, it really doesn't appear that much has changed the last 40 years...which is yet another reason the area is GREAT to replace "Barovia." Probably The Wreck Tavern (once owned and operated by my grandfather) is still out there...though I wonder if my uncle is still running it.

Of course, it's not lost on me that Forks, Washington is in county Clallam...I have a second (third?) cousin that lived in Forks and what I heard about the town wasn't...mmm..."complimentary." But that was back in the 20th century (maybe the tourist trade drummed up by the Twilight trade has spruced it up?). Regardless, my population totals and distribution are based on the 1880s and Forks was just a dairy farm in the middle of the woods back then...that's not going to be the site of a castle and town. No vampires out that way in MY world. Werewolves, maybe. Lots of werewolves.

Working on the "math" of the Ravenloft encounters, I become more and more convinced (if I wasn't already) that this was originally designed as a LOW LEVEL adventure...probably for characters levels 3rd to 5th. Run in the B/X system, nearly every encounter circles around 4 hit dice. The "iron golems" in area K78? I'm just substituting Moldvay's Living Statues, Iron (page B37) for the pair. They are *ahem* also four HD creatures. 

The real stinker of an encounter are the four small red dragons, who should absolutely destroy ANY party because of their breath weapons (18 hit points each x four = 36-72 automatic damage, depending on saves). It should probably be viewed more as yet another railroad plot-block (like the mist that auto-kills PCs leaving the town) since they only attack parties trying to leave the castle (*sigh*). Interesting that dividing those little dragons' 18 hit points by 4.5 would give you 4 hit dice. Hmmm...

Even the new "Strahd zombies:" four hit dice. For me, there's no reason to do this: the "severed body part" thing is cool, but it's just color, and one can simply double the number of zombies encountered. What's the problem with normal zombies? Is it just the need to have them "turn as mummies" (in order to FORCE PCs to fight them and thus experience the cool color of severed zombie parts attacking?)? Um...no, that's not necessary. Even the auto-destroy of a 5th level cleric (assuming I'm reworking this for levels 3-5) only affects 2d6 hit dice of zombies.  Make sure there's enough left over (on average) that a few will need to be dispatched in the usual (sword-swinging) fashion. No nerf, everyone wins.

Converting the giant spiders to B/X is a little tricky because (surprise!) the monster is more specific in Moldvay than the abstract version found in the MM. Fortunately, black widow spiders are native to Washington State, so putting giant ones (3 HD, but deadly poison) in Clallam county makes perfect sense.

SO...things are coming together. I *do* want to add a flesh golem to the monster list (because for the horror trifecta there's that need to reference Frankenstein) but the monster as written for AD&D is a little too tough for that 3rd-5th level range in B/X. Dropping it's damage to 2d6 per punch makes it better (though the special defenses are rough) and I'll probably go with that. But then, should I be adding a mummy? A creature from the Black Lagoon? Where does the madness end? 

[probably with the coven of witches in the upper tower]

Nah...it's all fun stuff. My vampire is a countess, not a count. The werewolf in the dungeon is a 5 HD pack leader, desperate to get back to his people. The flesh golem is kind of a Ser Robert Strong bodyguard type, though I haven't decided if he is a former husband, lover, or son (or sons) of the countess. The zombies make for cheap servants and soldiers that don't ask questions about the castle's goings ons. And the people of the town, far from being terrorized by their ruler (and needing to be saved) are in on the secret, feeding outsiders to their monstrous liege lord in exchange for being left in relative peace. 

It's fun. I like it. And (for whatever reason) it feels very Port Angeles to me.

[a quote from my father: when asked why Port Angeles has the...um..."issues" that it does, he responded "Well, what I've observed from most small towns I've visited (in the USA), people are pretty big into their religion. But folks out in Port Angeles, well, they never really took to religion." Personally, I always suspected it might have a little something to do with being a town full of sailors, but whatever. For my purposes, it's vampire country]

All right, that's it. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Beating Up...er, Beefing Up Ravenloft

Was not intending to write a post today (extremely busy today), but hot on the heels of yesterday's post, I started going through Ravenloft to make it a playable, B/X one-shot. 

Oh, boy, is it awful.

And I feel a little bad writing that after giving it some (faint) praise in my prior analysis, specifically I wrote:

There is no way in hell I would ever rank Ravenloft "the second greatest adventure module of all time." I wouldn't even call it the second greatest adventure module written by the Hickmans! But it's not terrible...it's pretty great as a light-hearted one-off played for a spooky theme night. 

Perhaps I wrote that in one of my "come to Jesus" moments of trying to see things in as positive a light as possible. Because it IS terrible...back to front. It's not ALL terrible, but much of its individual parts (and the sum of its whole) is pretty bad.

At least from the perspective of D&D adventure design.

[before I dive any farther, understand there'll be *spoilers* and I will be writing this from a B/X orientation as there is substantial evidence to suggest that the original adventure was written with OD&D as the designers' frame of reference...for an "AD&D" adaptation of an adventure penned in '77, it shows quite a few missteps and misunderstandings of basic PHB/DMG/MM systems. B/X being largely based on OD&D+Greyhawk, I'm fine with using a more lenient view based on its systems]

Let's look at some of the raw data:

Total Number Encountered Areas: 128

Total Monsters Encounters: 25

Total Encounters with Treasure: 16

This does not include Strahd or the random artifacts (the Sunsword, the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, the Tome of Strahd)...none of which have any monetary (x.p.) value...that will be encountered within the castle. 

That's a lot of nothing. Mmm...scratch that. It's a lot of empty padding. Every encounter area has a read-aloud bit of boxed text that will (presumably) help "set the mood" for an atmospheric dungeon crawl. Assuming your players don't get bored and start punching their DM. Even making a list of emptyrooms that had something INTERESTING in them (creaky stairs, hanging skeletons, bronze doors, a bathtub, etc.), I still find upwards of 45 numbered areas that have NOTHING WITH ANY INTERACTION AT ALL. And, I'm not counting the double "nothing" entries as multiples (for example there are two separate encounter areas marked K12 and K13 on the main floor, both with zero going on, but I'm counting those as "2" not "4" despite the potential for a party encountering the same useless box text twice).

Remember your Moldvay instructions on dungeon stocking? Here's a quick refresher: after placing special monsters and treasures in appropriate rooms (for I6, this would include Strahd and the aforementioned artifacts), the ratio should be roughly:

• one-third monsters (half with treasure)
• one-sixth traps (one-third with treasure)
• one-sixth special (one-sixth with treasure)
• one-third "empty" (one-sixth with treasure)

With 128 numbered encounters, I'd be expecting more than 40 areas with monsters (and a similar number with some type of treasure). But maybe such wasn't wanted because of the scope of the adventure (as discussed, meant to completed in a single evening's play). In which case the adventure site may simply be too large for its intended purpose?

Let's work backwards for a moment. Throw out the living tower and guardian portrait (both of which might be considered "traps" or "specials" despite having monster stats being countered with combat), and we've got 23 monsters. Still probably too many for a single evening's play, but let's go with it for the nonce. That would indicate some 69 encounter areas. Throwing out the nothing descriptions of corridors and stairways (i.e. the 45 worthless entries listed above) gets you down to 83. Remove the outer courtyard from the encounter areas (are PCs really going to explore the garden?) and you're down to 76. Toss the closets, smokestacks, slippery roofs, creaky stairs, and "mechanism" rooms (or incorporate them as part of existing encounter areas) and we're down to some 68ish, which would be just about right. Heck, I could probably shave more off (and probably will) but as I said I'm running low on time today. And, anyway, looking at the scale of a number of medieval castles, it's not terribly off, except for its height: the tallest castle tower in the world is 55m (about 180'), and Ravenloft has three that top that (190', 260', and 360'). 

Treasure is awful. A bag of coins here, a coffer of coins there, a scattering of coins under the accountant's paperwork, or a crypt with "three pieces of jewelry valued at 5,000g.p." The magical Icon of Ravenloft in the castle chapel (area K15) is described as "a small statue;" that's it. Statue of what? Doesn't say. The box text tells players that a piercing shaft of light "falls directly on a small statue." The DM text tells us "the small statue is the Icon of Ravenloft." It is carved from "purest silver" (no value given). "It is 12 inches tall and 6 inches across." Gar. Bage.

I already wrote that the total treasure amounts to a bit more than 120,000g.p. total, but I was including the witch's spell book in that total (about 47K worth of spells for the AD&D game). For OD&D or B/X this wouldn't be worth anything and the total monetary value found is very, very low. Too low to justify PCs (of the requisite levels) exploring the cavernous emptiness that is vampire Strahd's castle. And nothing about the stuff here is tempting in any way...it's placement is just an afterthought. 'Oh, here's a bag of platinum coins sitting under a chair on a balcony." Um...is this asking us to risk anything? Is it rewarding PCs for taking the time to sit down? What the hell is this?

The monsters are crappy; here's the list:

4 small (18hp) red dragons that are sometimes statues

8 gargoyles that are sometimes statues

2 "Strahd" zombies (4HD, turn as mummies)

1 vampire "maid" scrubbing floors

2 wraiths

5 giant spiders

3 black cat "familiars"

7 "witches" (2 HD magic-users)

3 normal zombies

10 skeletons

1 shadow demon (immediately attacks)

1 werewolf (befriends and betrays party)

6 "Strahd" zombies

2 iron golems (!!!)

1 ghost (jack-in-the-box)

1 spectre (jack-in-the-box)

15 wights (jack-in-the-box)

1 vampire "wife" (jack-in-the-box)

1 banshee (jack-in-the-box)

3 huge spiders

1 trapper (12 HD)

3 hell hounds

1 nightmare

[a "jack-in-the-box" monster is one that jumps out after the party pops the lid off a crypt. There's a bunch of these in the catacombs]

This is...uh...not great stuff, and it's all over the board. Huge spiders? Black cats? Skeletons? Waaay too weak for the expected character levels. And yet iron golems, ghosts, and banshees are far too powerful. I won't even go into the wandering monsters, but they are fairly ridiculous...in addition to being rather bland.

All right, I really have to go now (I'm actually 30 minutes past were I expected to cut off). I apologize for the bashing of a beloved favorite adventure of many, many folks. I still give a lot of credit to the authors for writing this when they were just kids (and creating a whole franchise from a movie Dracula knock-off)...that's, frankly, amazing. But I6: Ravenloft is bad. Really bad. 

I have my work cut out for me.

He's laughing at me. I can tell.

Treading Old Ground

In preparation for my series on building campaigns, playing campaigns, the importance of campaigns, exploring my own campaigns, I went back over my old posts (some as far back as 2009) and found that a lot of what I wanted to write about...well, I've already blogged it in one form or another. Thoughts I've had recently are the same I've had prior, even such basic ideas as defining "campaigns" and the difference between what the term once meant and what it means to todays (5E) gamer.

And, of course, I'm not the only one to have these thoughts...Maliszewski was writing about this in 2008 (you know, back when 4E was first "a thing"). SO, because I'd rather break new ground than re-tread the old...and because I have to go check in on my mother who just had hand surgery...I'm going to put this series of posts on hold, at least till I've had a chance to think of a new, useful angle from which to attack them. 

Meanwhile: the weather is grey and gloomy, pouring rain. Classic Seattle-in-October weather, in other words; the kind that always inspires me to play Dungeons & Dragons. Really, what else would one rather do? Maybe add a hot toddy on a coaster next to your dice shaker. But it is perfectly lovely for indoor gaming, and I love, love, love it. 

The boy really wants me to run something for his gaming group for Halloween. I have been thinking a LOT about revamping Ravenloft as a low-level, B/X one-off. I don't think it would be that hard to do...which is generally a sign that it would be VERY hard to do. But I might try it, even so. I mean, I basically outlined how to do so already...could I reduce the thing to something that would fit a three-hour one-shot?

Maybe. It would definitely be a challenge...and challenges always fire me up. 

We'll see if anything comes of the idea; if it does, I'll throw out a PDF of the adventure notes for folks interested in using the scenario.

; )

Changing Seasons

The family Blood Bowl season ended over the weekend, with my boy's wood elves triumphing over the ork team (me) 4-3.  He beat me fair and square despite having (in my opinion) a pretty crushing advantage in terms of team. But I had a costly mistake to end the first half, and I got greedy with my fouling (leading to two ejections) leaving me no room for error in the second half. Thus when the double skull roll came up for my star black ork...and the elves were able to take a two TD lead...the game was effectively put away. "Catch up" is just not a game the orks can play, and my third TD was what NFL fans would simply call a "garbage time" score.

On the bright side, that means we'll be getting our dining room table back (finally!), which increases the possibility of OTHER types of gaming.

So, too, does the end of the school soccer season. This coming Saturday will be our final game, and while year round soccer will continue for both my children, my coaching responsibilities will be coming to an end, as will the Tuesday-Thursday practices. The kids are already planning playdates and a Halloween "D&D party" (via zoom) that they expect me to DM.

Should probably prep some sort of adventure for that.

Diego re-started his D&D club at school this week and, surprise-surprise, he has decided to go back to the B/X system, albeit with some modification (specifically: bumping up hit dice to AD&D levels and adding negative HPs to increase player survivability). He is capping his group at six, though he already has kids on a "wait list" to join the game. He is also using my book The Complete B/X Adventurer, which he spent the last couple days reading. "You're a pretty good writer, Pops," he told me. "Reading your book makes me want to play D&D!" That kind of thing is always nice to hear.

Regarding the print copies of the new book: my printer can't do hardcover and couldn't recommend any other local printers. I found a couple via the internet and requested quotes on print costs: no response. It's like people don't want to take my money or something; I really don't get it. Right now, I am strongly considering just doing a Print On Demand thing with DriveThru though I'd prefer not to...it's less money in MY pocket, and I can't exercise any quality control...plus, I get no hard copies on hand to sell to local retailers, etc. On the other hand, it's a lot less hassle to just use their services (assuming I can make the thing work). *sigh* I don't know. At least the PDF has been selling well...gross sales have surpassed my costs, and the thing appears to have driven a resurgence in my other books' sales as well.

SO...gaming stuff. The seasons are changing. We are deep into Autumn. Holidays just around the corner. Conventions are out (for me), but D&D is definitely IN. 

I think I want to talk about campaigns. Let me scribble some notes and I'll come back with a proper post. Dentist appointments today.

D&D: Past & Present

Okay, let's forget all declarations that there's a "true" version of Dungeons & Dragons. I'm still running AD&D, I'm still advocating for folks to try it...and that's about it. Going forward, I intend to use it as my "base template" for discussion, but a lot of what I write will probably apply to other early edition versions of D&D (and they're respective knock-offs...er, "clones") and I hope it will still be useful and/or interesting.

With regard to "D&D theorizing" I find that I've been torn in multiple directions lately...like, three or four. Something about the lack of heroes in B/X. Something-something about alignment. Ideas about running campaigns. And another thing about the push-pull between designing adventures and designing worlds. Other stuff.

These things...these "concepts"...have changed for me over the years. Some have changed based on my experiences. Some have changed because of time spent in contemplating conflicting view points. Some have been...um...thoughts (?) that I've held for a while (years) but that have been too amorphous, tough to pin down and are only just starting to "crystalize."

None of which matters much if you're not playing the game. And just lately (like the last month) I haven't been playing. Not nearly enough.

So let me get back to playing. I'm going to knock-off any hard and fast (or loosey goosey) D&D discussions until I have a chance to ramp up my play. Put some of my ideas into action. Do some experiential research, not just theory-bashing and declarative statements of provocation. 

It's Friday. The kids have the day off from school (they're sleeping in, at the moment). I think we're going to a pumpkin patch today. I believe we will be having out Blood Bowl "World Cup" championship game as well. The goblins beat the wood elves in the semi-finals 5-4 (in overtime) but it was a pyrrhic victory as two star players (including their best offensive weapon) were eaten by a hungry troll in successive turns (a 1-in-1296 chance of occurrence) and half the team ended up with broken hips, bashed skulls, or tomb stones. As such, they've withdrawn and the final will be played between the wood elves and the orks...the same match-up that kicked off the tournament back in August.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

: )