Artillery battery at Youghal.

For a long while I’ve wanted to use Papers & Pencils as a means to share dungeon stuff, but I’ve never quite been able to figure out how I wanted to do it. The first Deadly Dungeons post was my attempt to convert the World of Warcraft dungeon Scholomance into a tabletop dungeon. Aside from the fact that I never finished the project due to the overwhelming amount of work I created for myself, I now view even the results I did produce to be undesirable. My second, much more recent attempt to make the Deadly Dungeons series work was just last month, when I posted the GM notes for The Ironbone Tower. Ultimately I don’t think that was a very good post either.

Unsure of how to post this kind of content in a useful way, I set the Deadly Dungeons series aside again until I could figure something better out. Then, while reviewing my archives to find things I could build upon, I stumbled upon to some unexpected inspiration while reviewing one of my least favorite posts ever. Instead of trying to post entire dungeons, like a moron, why wasn’t I simply posting modular dungeon rooms like a smart person would?

So that’s what I’m doing now. Deadly Dungeons will be joining Colorful Characters, Magical Marvels, Merciless Monsters, and Lively Locals as one of the regular Friday posts. I hope you enjoy!

The Blastdoor Room is a circular stone room, which the players enter via an archway. A multitude of doors are spaced around the rooms outside edge. Each door is of simple wooden construction, but is sturdy, mounted on excellent hinges, and banded with iron. The stone floor of the room slopes slightly towards the room’s center, where an 18″ diameter hole is placed. It is dark within, but if the players bring a light source to bear, they will discover that the interior of the hole is very smooth, and less than 2ft down it turns off to the side. They are unable to see further.

Upon closer inspection, the players may notice that between the doors, there are areas of the wall which seem much more dilapidated than the rest of the room. They are cracked and dented, with bits of gravel on the floor beneath them. These damaged areas of wall are only about 3ft square, while the walls around them appears to be in much better condition.

Behind every door in the room is a cannon, which is loaded and prepared by a sophisticated mechanism behind the walls. The doors each hold down a spring mechanism mounted on the door’s frame. A moment after a door is opened–even if it is only opened an inch–the cannon will fire. The cannonball will travel along the dotted lines indicated, and smash into the wall directly opposite the door. The walls are extremely sturdy and will not break, but observant players will notice that each of the damaged sections of wall mentioned above has a corresponding door on the opposite side of the room. After striking the wall, and perhaps bouncing on the floor a bit, the ball will gradually roll along the slope of the floor, and fall into the hole at the center of the room, where it will be returned to the loading mechanism behind the walls.

Characters standing in the path of the cannonball will take an amount of damage appropriate to the game being played. (OD&D: 2d6, Pathfinder: 6d6). If the door was not fully opened, then it may be destroyed by the cannon’s fire. If this is the case, characters within 5ft of the door are subject to damage from the wooden shrapnel. (OD&D Save V. Breath, 1d6 damage; Pathfinder Reflex save DC: 18, 2d6 damage). Note that the cannon will not fire continuously if the door is destroyed. The spring switch must be depressed between the cannon’s firings.

If the characters take the time to match sections of damaged wall to doors, then they will discover that every single area of damaged wall is directly opposite from a door. However, there is one door which is not opposite from a section of damaged wall. This section of wall is constructed of the same materials as the rest of the room, but lacks the special reinforcement that the other walls have. If the door opposite this section of wall is opened, then the cannonball will blast through the wall, revealing a secret hallway.

Depending on the dungeon, there may or may not be creatures who will replace broken doors and broken walls. Players who enter the secret hallway may return to find their way back has been bricked up!

The very talented ‘hibbary of DeviantArt graciously allowed me to share this short comic with you all. She has some fantastic artwork available for viewing, and I strongly encourage anyone who enjoys fantasy art to check out her gallery. Much of what she has posted there is actually much more technically impressive than this. Colors, shading, all of that jazz. But I thought this comic (one of several exploring the relationship between LotR’s Gimli and Legolas) was a particularly good fit for Picture Thursday, because it eloquently demonstrates a point which I myself have tried to express before. Albeit with a less elegant approach.

Namely, that every fantasy race is going to have a unique and profoundly different worldview from that of humans.

‘hibbary makes the same point earlier in Cultural Misunderstandings 1, but I preferred this piece. Maybe it’s because the joke is better executed.

Or…ya know. Maybe it’s something else.

No art in this selection, so here’s the cover art by David C. Sutherland III

This is the tenth installment of my continuing series on the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, written by Gary Gygax. This post begins with the section “Economics” on page 90, and continues through “Peasants, Serfs, and Slaves” on page 94. My purpose is not to review the DMG, but to go through it as a modern gamer, learning about the roots of Dungeons and Dragons, and making note when I see something surprising or interesting, or something which could be adapted for a modern game.

You can read all posts in this series under the Gary Gygax’s DMG tag.

Economics: According to this section, the prices of items used in the game reflect an economy which has been inflated by the presence of gold-carting adventurers. Reading this was elucidating for me, as I was always curious why a ten foot stick of wood cost a whopping 1 gold piece. (I still think that’s a little extreme)! Being aware of this underlying rationale behind the pricing methodology raises interesting possibilities in my mind of a campaign where prices start out at the much more reasonable ‘handfull of coppers,’ and only gradually do prices begin to rise as the players find greater and greater treasures, inflating whatever local economy they’re operating in.

Even if I never act on that idea (it would probably be a great deal of work for relatively little reward), it’s nice to gain a fuller understanding of why things are the way they are. This is the kind of flavor I wish was more present in Pathfinder.

Duties, Excises, Fees, Tariffs, Taxes, Tithes, and Tolls: Taxes in the game are an idea which have always intrigued me, but I’ve never seriously considered including them. Despite recognizing their worth as a drain on player resources and an impetus to adventure, I’ve never personally found that either of those things is really needed in my games. So I’ve seen no reason to add them. And with the multitude of taxes Gygax describes in this section, I think my players might revolt if I implemented them all. Though I don’t think Gygax actually intends for all to be used at once.

None the less, this subsection makes a compelling case. There are a lot of interesting ways the government might extract money from the player, which might encourage players to be a little more hungry for treasure just so they can maintain a posh style of living. Something as simple as a toll for entering a city, or a magistrate appearing and demanding back taxes on the player’s home, could make for an interesting game obstacle.

Monster Populations and Placement: Like many recent sections, I wish something like this were included in the D&D 3.5 DMG. Having read something like this, I think I would have been better prepared for running a world. As it stands, it took me some time before I determined that random charts of monsters ought to be populated with monsters relevant to an area, rather than forcing planned encounters or using completely random charts. In the past I’ve often made the mistake of assuming a monster population will always be refilled, rather than letting players gradually alter the environment around them by clearing monsters.

I also find it an interesting point of view that the players would see clearing an area of dangers to be a bad thing, because their opportunities for treasure are now lessened. “The frontier moves, and bold adventurers must move with it,” he writes.

Placement of Monetary Treasure: More solid advice on GMing which I wish I had encountered earlier in my GMing career. I particularly like the way Gary explains that part of the challenge of finding treasure is recognizing it when you see it. Anybody can grab a pile of coins or jewels or finely crafted jewelry, and haul it to the surface seeking a reward. But what of something less obvious? Fine clothes, a well crafted chair, or the history of a forgotten royal lineage. Taken together, these parts of the treasure horde may be worth even more than the gold and jewels.

Placement of Magic Items: While it is, ultimately, relevant to the placement of magic items, this section is mostly just a tirade about the dangers of adding too many magic items to a game. There’s some repetition of what was written in the section on placement of treasure as well. Really this section just comes off as unnecessary, or at least its placement is strange. Perhaps a section could have been added a page or so back titled “Balancing Treasure” which covered the issues of over and under rewarding your players, allowing this section to offer advice more specific to magic items.

Territory Development by Player Characters, AND Peasants, Serfs, and Slaves: Many years ago, when I was a wee game master looking for a D&D 3.5 group, I was very interested in the concept of strongholds. I thought this idea was fascinating, but it wasn’t really covered all that much in the D&D 3.5 core rulebooks. Looking for more information, I purchased the D&D 3.0 Stronghold Builder’s Guide. Upon reading it, however, I found myself disappointed. I couldn’t put my finger on why, because the book had a ton of information on building strongholds. Materials costs, and room types which could be purchased, and a litany of special options players could invest in while planning their headquarters. But none the less, I found the product lacking.

I haven’t thought about Strongholds much in the last few years. I still think they’re a wicked awesome thing to spend money on, but since I largely play low level campaigns, players have never really had the money necessary to build one. Now though, reading this section of the DMG, I recognize what the Stronghold Builder’s Guide was missing: challenge. The entire guide is all about how many options players have, and all the marvelous things they can do. But since there’s no obstacles in the way of accomplishing those goals (save the gold piece value for materials and labor) the entire creation feels ultimately meaningless.

It’s alot like another game I played as a youth: “Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings.” It was a real time strategy game where the player was tasked with controlling villagers to expand and advance their medieval fiefdom, while using soldiers to defend it, or to assault the fiefdoms of others. The game provided me with many happy hours, but I always found it frustrating that I never had the time or the resources to construct a truly marvelous city, with double-deep walls, dozens of watch towers, etc. Occasionally, I would enter the game’s map editing mode and work on building my perfect city. Only to quickly grow bored of the task, and go back to playing the game. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the source of my boredom was that the task had no challenge, nor any meaningful reward. And thus all I was doing was creating a make-believe city with no purpose in mind.

These two subsections have given me an important insight into this area of the game.

Favorite Quotes from this Section

“DUTIES, EXCISES, FEES, TARIFFS, TAXES, TITHES, AND TOLLS

What society can exist without revenues? What better means of assuring revenues than taxation, and all of the names used in the title of this section are synonymous with taxes–but if it is called something different perhaps the populace won’t take too much umbrage at having to pay and pay and pay…” -Gygax, DMG, Page 90

“But hold! This is not a signal to begin throwing heaps of treasure at players as if you were some mad Midas hating what he created by his touch.” -Gygax, DMG, Page 92