Housekeeping 2024

Coactus Illustration © Heather Gwinn. A gift she gave me in 2013 for an edition of Miscreated Creatures which I hope exists someday. Coloring by me.

I am abysmal at keeping you folk in the loop. Here’s some stuff you might want to know:

On January 10 2024 we lost Jennell Jaquays. The hobby owes her a debt for a lifetime of contributions to our artform. One way we can pay that debt is by ensuring her medical bills don’t leave a burden on her family in their time of grief. There’s a GoFundMe to attend to that. Another way is to continue attributing her work to her, and not to a man who is ghoulishly attempting to claim credit for himself.

The Sanctimonious Slimes Versus Expired Epicures kickstarter was a success! I am immensely grateful to my Kill Jester compatriots: Ava Islam and Ty Pitre, and to everyone who contributed. I spent most of December and early January making final revisions, refining the layout, and sneaking in a bit of extra content at my own expense. Our printer has accepted the files, and I’m currently awaiting the first physical proofs before we give the green light to a full production run.

Flux Space, my only blog post of 2023, has won the Bronze Bloggie award in the gameable category! I am honored to be recognized two years in a row, and also grateful I didn’t end up winning the event overall, since the winner is obligated to take over for Zedeck next year! In seriousness though: I have become convinced that the bloggies are more meaningful than the silly game I originally took them for. I’m also fully aware that “now that I’ve won an award I see how valuable awards are” is a cliché, but here we are. Blogs are an important part of our little art scene, yet the work can be demoralizing. It’s worthwhile for us to take time to recognize one another’s work, to gas one another up. The bloggies are one way of doing that, and for the past two years my self image has benefited from your accolades. It feels great, and there are a lot of other bloggers who deserve this kind of attention. There are still two more categories being voted on, so be sure to check out Zedeck’s twitter to participate.

Season 6 of Blogs on Tape is coming! I had intended for episodes to start dropping in late December, but right in the middle of doing my recordings I was struck down by an illness that robbed me of my speaking voice for nearly a month. By the time I was recovered enough to work again, time had moved forward. I couldn’t resume recording without breaking our printing deadline for SSvEE, or abusing the timetables of other colleagues I had agreed to do work for. Rest assured, the project is not dead.

Some of you may have noticed that for the first time in several years there was no D&D Christmas Carol here on December 25th. I’m sad about that, but in addition to the cramped scheduling I’ve been navigating, I’ve had a…psychologically taxing six months. I faced a sad choice: allow my holiday traditions to become burdensome obligations which bring me no joy, or let a few of them slip by this year. Hopefully the songs—and a number of other traditions that are part of my personal observance of the holiday—will resume next year.

I hope this post finds you all safe, warm, and healthy. I’ll try to get at least one or two good blog posts out to you by the end of the year (I do have ideas.) Until then, hang in there everybody.

Go back my first Kickstarter!

Slime drips from the top, and a glass of wine and grapes rests at the bottom. Text reads "Sanctimonious Slimes! vs Expired Epicures! a dungeon delve adventure for Errant" On the right, a medusa with head cracked open and snakes emerging from within has been partially covered by a banner that reads "Funded in under 2 hours!"

Sanctimonious Slimes Versus Expired Epicures is the first adventure module written for Errant. It will also be my first properly printed book. The kind with an inventory that needs to go in a warehouse somewhere! We’re running a short campaign for this one, and there are only 6 days left until it’s over, so get over to Kickstarter and back it!

Not only can you get a copy of my book through this campaign, this will also be your only opportunity—ever—to purchase a print edition of Gus L.’s adventure Ganshoggr. The PDF edition is available for free, but we’re only producing 100 print copies of this one. As of this writing there are fewer than 30 copies remaining left to claim, so don’t miss out!

If you’d like to learn a bit more about SSvEE, you can check out the livestream session I ran for the good folks at Plus One EXP. Or you could read the much more thorough play report from when I playtested the adventure in my Dangerous Neighbors campaign. Additionally, I wrote a little about how the dungeon map developed over on my personal home page website.

And of course there’s this very important link I ought to end the post with: go get yourself a copy of this book! And Ganshoggr! Hurry!

Flux Space

A pixelated image with figures out of proportion to one another. The main feature of the image is a circular maze made of stone, open at the top. Someone enters the maze. To the side, two figures (a soldier and a woman in a flowing gown) stand next to one another. In the background are cliffs which drop off to the ocean.

Update January 15, 2024: This post has won the Bronze Bloggie in the Gameable category! My thanks to everyone involved. It’s easy to feel like blog posts disappear into the past, forgotten a few days after they are written. Having my work recognized by my peers is encouraging. Thank you for running this year, Zedeck. Also, neener neener, so long as I don’t win I don’t gotta put any work in next year!

I’ve been inspired by my time working with Gus on Tombrobbers of the Crystal Frontier, and want to play at making something similar: a big intro adventure for Dungeon Moon. Something that sells the vibe of the setting, and will allow me an opportunity to think with modes of play that aren’t accommodated by my current campaigns.

Returning to Dungeon Moon will mean returning to Flux Space. It’s an idea that has had a lot of time to percolate in the 6 years since I last discussed it, so let’s begin at the beginning. What is Flux Space?

The Problem

Classic exploration play is great. The referee describes an environment, the players describe how their characters interact with that environment, and the referee tells them how the environment changes. Rinse and repeat until the player’s characters are either wealthy, or dead.

This simple conversational back-and-forth is a good engine for producing fun, but it falters when the characters are exploring spaces which are Large, Samey, and Confusing. The paradigm example is a maze. Mazes work so poorly with classic exploration play¹ that they’ve become shorthand for jokes about bad dungeon design. Yet bad as they are, mazes stick around because they’re romantic. They beg to be explored, even if our tools for imaginative exploration don’t suit them. It’s why kids love solving them on paper, and why people line up for corn mazes every October. The labyrinth of the Minotaur was a maze, and it’s arguably the most fundamental example of a dungeon we have.

Other examples of large, samey, and confusing environments would be a winding network of caves, a dark and dense forest, or a dungeon which fills the entire interior space of an artificial moon created by an inscrutable warlock.

¹ I do actually think this could be fun with a certain set of conditions. You’d need a group of players who were highly engaged in the process of mapping and exploration, as well as some significant pressure to discourage boring-yet-safe play, such as following the left hand wall. So it’s possible, but not suitable for my game or my players.

The Solution

Flux Space is a way of representing large, samey, and confusing environments without mapping and keying them. No maps or keys are needed, because while the characters must trudge through a Flux making meticulous notes and backtracking from dead ends, the players will be “zoomed out.” Time passes very quickly since the players need only make broad administrative decisions. When the characters encounter something interesting the players “zoom in” to engage with it.

Traversing through Flux Space can be regarded as a type of Point Crawl, with the distinction that moving between each point is especially arduous. Once a Flux is solved it can be peregrinated through more swiftly, but solving it will be taxing.

Flux Space is a mix of overland travel and dungeon exploration. It’s for those situations where an environment exists primarily as an obstacle to forward progress, rather than a rewarding location to explore in its own right. Charting the flux gives space for our imaginations to percolate in these environments, and for them to feel as imposing as they ought to, but does so without straining the players’ patience.

System Assumptions

This new Dungeon Moon adventure is intended for use with Errant, so Flux Space must be built to fit into Errant’s mechanics. Because of that, this post will include more system-specific terminology than has been typical for Papers & Pencils. The free, no-art edition of Errant may be a useful reference. What I will call a Flux Turn is a specialized form of Travel Turn, and if you’d like context for all that entails the chapter describing Travel Turns begins on page 120.

Though I’m using a specific system here, I will avoid jargon where possible. Where it isn’t possible, I will endeavor towards clarity. It should not be difficult to adapt the Flux Turn described here to whatever style of adventure play you practice.

A city in an underground cavern. In the background is a mountain which is on fire, and the fire is spreading out into the city.

Flux Space Procedure of Play

Upon entering a Flux, play shifts to Flux Turns, of which there are 6 each day.² During Flux Turns, the party/company generally acts as a group. Their goal³ will be to find a path through the Flux, which they do by Charting.

Each turn spent Charting represents hours of the company moving carefully, dropping breadcrumbs, taking measurements, making notes, and backtracking from dead ends. All this hard work depletes their resources and requires them to roll the Event Die.⁴ At the end of a successful Charting action the company will discover a Point of Interest within the Flux. Play zooms in for classic-style Exploration to resolve the Point of Interest, after which the company chooses how to spend their next Flux Turn. Thus the basic play loop is:

Chart → Deplete Resources → Resolve Event Die →Point of Interest → Choose next action

Each Flux has only a finite number of Points of Interest. Once all have been discovered the Flux is fully charted, and may be moved through more easily.

² Thus a Flux Turn lasts roughly 4 hours, though it’s important not to let that relationship become rigid in your mind. Turns at all scales are abstractions which cannot correlate one-to-one to certain distances traveled by the hands of a clock.

³ Presumably, anyway. Players have strange motivations sometimes, and far be it from me to dictate what their goals are.

⁴ As per normal for Errant, each member of the company who has an encumbrance greater than 4 adds +1 negative event die to the roll.

Depleting Resources

A Flux is generally a dark place which requires the company to carry portable illumination. Each Flux Turn applies 4 Burn⁵ to all light sources. (Thus if the company are using candles, each candle bearer will go through 4 per Flux Turn. If using torches they’ll go through 2. If using lanterns they’ll go through 1 bottle of oil.)

Additionally, some Fluxes may have special resources the company is required to spend in order to chart them. For example, a Flux defined by cliffs or other vertical traversal challenges may require the company to deplete a length of rope each time they Chart, since they must strategically leave ropes behind in order to create pathways for themselves. Likewise a Flux that is filled with water might require potions of water breathing to be consumed for each Charting Action, etc.

⁵ Errant’s Burn mechanic is designed to create interesting lighting situations for exploration play, but does not mesh with the hella-time cost of Flux Turns. I’ve opted for 4 Burn/Turn because it translates into full resource units: 4 candles, 2 torches, 1 lantern oil. Nothing is ever spent partially. As a happy coincidence, this *also* scales to the average amount of Burn players would experience if they played 24 Exploration Turns (the length of a Flux Turn).

Resolve Event Die

If using Errant’s player roles, the referee calls on the Timekeeper to roll a d6. If not, I like to call on a different player each Turn to make the roll:

  1. Encounter
  2. Rest (+1 Negative Event Die) or gain 1 Exhaustion
  3. Deplete all rations or lower all Supply by 1.
  4. Local Effect
  5. Encounter Sign
  6. NPC Chatter

Encounter — While the company is in the midst of their declared action they meet a creature. Determine surprise and disposition for this encounter as you normally would. Play zooms in until the encounter is resolved.

Rest — The company is fatigued, and must make a choice: do they rest, or force themselves to press on? Resting means the company is unable to perform the action they declared for this Flux Turn, and on the next Turn they gain 1 Negative Event Die.⁶ Forcing themselves to press on causes everyone in the company to gain 1 Exhaustion.⁷

Deplete — Everybody needs to eat! Deplete rations and animal feed by 1 for every member of the company. If there are no rations to deplete, or if food sources are plentiful, instead reduce Supply⁸ by 1 for every member of the company. Any ongoing effects or conditions, and perhaps other intangible resources such as an NPC’s patience, dwindle.

Local Effect — An effect occurs that is particular to this Flux. This is discussed in greater detail below under the heading “Construction of a Flux.”

Encounter Sign — The company receives some clue as to what their next encounter might be. Footprints, the sound of beating wings, a figure spotted at the end of a long corridor, etc. The company might want to track this creature down, or they might wish to take special effort to avoid it. Otherwise, the next time an Encounter or Encounter Sign is rolled, it will be an encounter with the creature pressaged by this sign.

NPC Chatter — Nothing of note happens, which means that any NPCs currently traveling with the party get bored and express themselves in some way. Perhaps they talk with one another, sing a little work song, or try to wrangle better wages for themselves out of their employers.

⁶ In Errant, having a Negative Event Die means that your next Event Die Roll is made with 2d6, taking the lower of the two result. Having a Positive Event Die means the reverse. Both types of event die can stack (2 Negative event die = roll 3d6 take lowest), and if the company has both types they cancel each other out. (1 Negative + 1 Positive = roll the Event Die normally)

⁷ In Errant, 1 Exhaustion fills 1 Item Slot. It acts as an extra burden weighing the character down. Exhaustion can only be removed by resting in a comfortable location, which players are not guaranteed to find outside of a settlement.

⁸ In Errant, Supply is a resource that the company will always want to keep well stocked of. If you’re not playing Errant, the important thing to note is that rolling Depletion always causes something to be depleted, even if the party is in a situation where they don’t need to worry about food.

Point of Interest

A notable location within a Flux, comparable to a dungeon room. A Point of Interest might be as simple as a statue the company can choose to ignore, or it might be as involved as a small series of challenges that must be overcome in order for the company to reach the far exit.

Each Flux has two sets of Points of Interest: Shallow Rooms and Deep Rooms.

At the end of each Charting action, after the Event Die is resolved, the referee rolls on a table of the Flux’s Shallow Rooms. These are closer to the entrance, and thus are much more likely to be encountered early. After each room is found it can be crossed off the list.

As the company continues to chart, eventually the referee’s roll will point to one of those crossed out rooms, and the party will discover a Deep Room instead. Deep Rooms are not rolled. They are encountered in order from first to last.

Once all Points of Interest have been discovered, the Flux is solved, and need not be charted any further.

Choose Next Action

Aside from Charting, there are a few other things the party might consider using a Flux Turn for:

Peregrinate⁹ — The company moves from any space within the Flux to any previously discovered Point of Interest. Even from the entrance to the very deepest of the Deep Rooms, if it has been found. Their meticulous charting allows them to travel more efficiently, so they do not need to Deplete Resources on this trip. They still have to roll the Event Die, though.

Make Camp — Spending more than 4 Flux Turns per day on heavy activity causes each character in the company to gain 1 point of Exhaustion per extra turn. When the company makes camp one of the players¹⁰ makes a navigation check to find a suitable campsite¹¹. Each individual member of the company then decides if they will Sleep or Take Watch.

Take Watch — If no characters keep watch, all Event Die rolls of 5 (encounter sign) are instead treated as rolls of 1 (encounter). If only one character keeps watch they gain a point of Exhaustion. If two characters keep watch together, no Exhaustion is incurred by either.

Sleep — Characters who spend two full travel turns sleeping may remove a point of Exhaustion.

⁹ Note that, due to the nature of Flux Space, the Peregrinate action functions a bit differently than it does in Errant’s Travel Turns. Likewise the Explore and Orient actions are not available. Foraging within a Flux is possible, though the DV might be quite high!

¹⁰ If using Errant’s player roles, this should be The Navigator.

¹¹ If the check fails the party must choose between an exposed campsite where encounters are more likely, or an uncomfortable campsite where their rest does not remove points of Exhaustion.

Maps & Local Knowledge

A Flux would not be a Flux if it were well understood. Any few who might know the space’s secrets and byways will guard their knowledge jealously. If a Flux has inhabitants, then keeping outsiders ignorant will be a vital matter of home defense. Even so, it may happen that the company acquires knowledge of the Flux second hand.

Maps reveal some of a Flux’s Points of Interest, which are treated as having already been discovered. Thus the party gets a head start on their own Charting. A complete map, revealing all Points of Interest, should be an object of exceeding rarity.

Peregrinating to locations the company only knows via the map incurs a negative event die, since they lack firsthand knowledge.

Advice from someone who has traveled in the Flux before grants the party a positive event die for a number of Flux Turns equivalent to the quality of the advice. (Someone who has been there once before can give the party a positive event die for 1 Turn, while a native inhabitant of the Flux could give them advice that’d last 10 Turns or more).

Guides may insist the party wear blindfolds, since they want to protect the secrets of the Flux. If the party then loses their guide, they’ll need to begin Charting from wherever they’re at, and the Flux entrance should be added to the Deep Rooms. (How far down the Deep Room list it is should depend on how far the company was led.)

If the guide doesn’t insist on blindfolds, the party can retrace their steps, but must endure a negative event die. They’re much more likely to take a wrong turn than if they had charted the area themselves.

A screenshot of Castlevania for the NES. It shows the level near the end of the game where Simon must traverse the inside of a giant clock, leaping between cogwheels.

Construction of a Flux

At minimum a Flux needs a Theme which describes the space the characters are moving through; NPCs for the company to Encounter; along with some Local Effects that can occur; and Points of Interest to discover. As with any aspect of play, it’s worth looking for opportunities for Special considerations, though these are not obligatory.

Theme

Hopefully your Flux is not simply a series of grey corridors. Perhaps it’s a maze of stairs which zig zag up and down, or abandoned mines dripping with acidic slime deposits, or a massive clockwork mechanism built by the gods which controls the movement of the stars in the sky. The theme will inform everything else you develop for your Flux, and give you something to riff off of at the table. Instead of saying “After hours mapping corridors and dead ends you find…,” you can more easily come up with stuff like “After hours of climbing spokes and avoiding being crushed by the teeth of titanic cogwheels, you find…” It’s a little thing, but it’s one of the little things that makes moment-to-moment play enjoyable.

Encounter

I would not use the full 2d6 encounter table method for a Flux. The company won’t be in one long enough to make the effort worthwhile. Even if it takes 16 rolls of the Event Die for a Flux to be solved (6 Shallow Rooms + 3 Deep Rooms + 4 Turns of Sleep + 3 Rest results), there’s a good chance they’ll only experience 3 encounters. Instead I will opt for 2d4 encounters per Flux. With a Dragon and Wizard at the two extreme ends of the table, this leaves only 5 unique encounters to concoct.

Because encounters will occur in a nonspecific environment, it may be useful to include a location along with the encounter. (i.e. “d6 skeletons on a narrow staircase”). Alternatively you could write a small table of such environments to be rolled on when an encounter occurs. For myself, I will rely on the theme, and use it to invent an appropriate encounter environment in the moment.

Local Effect

This is how the theme is expressed most directly, and how the environment resists the company’s attempt to control it. Because Flux Space is explored from a zoomed out perspective, local effects must have clear zoomed out consequences. I’ve been able to come up with 4 different types of local effect that will work well in a Flux:

  • Altered Circumstances — A change that effects all future Turns. It might alter what resources are depleted after a Charting Action, impose a negative or positive event die, or prompt the party to adjust their marching order. For example: “A fierce wind begins to blow, strong enough to send someone tumbling over the cliffs. Anyone who doesn’t tie themselves to the rest of the party will need to make a DV: 2 Phys Check each Turn to avoid falling to their death. Will the scout rejoin the main body of the company, or will they risk it?” Altered circumstances will usually end the next time a Local Effect is rolled. (Instead of, rather than in addition to another Local Effect).
  • Minor Choice — Some sort of obstacle which requires the company to choose between two or more costs. For example: “The corridor ahead is filled with noisemaking traps. If you set them off a creature encounter is rolled immediately. The company can avoid them all by moving carefully, but this will slow you down and you’ll get a Negative Event Die on your next turn. Alternatively, one character can attempt a DV 8 Skill check to quickly and silently disable all the traps—though failure will count as setting the traps off!”
  • Attrition — The Flux takes an extra toll on the company. For example: “A flame trap goes off! Everyone in the vanguard of the party takes 2d6 damage, but can make a DV 6 Skill save for half.”
  • Flavor/Hint — Something about the environment draws the company’s attention without doing them any harm. What they learn may or may not be useful. For example: “Everyone in the company hears a mysterious voice inside their head. It mumbles something about how red is the color of vitality, then fades away.”

Local effects ought to be reusable, so 1~3 is plenty for a Flux.

Points of Interest

For my purposes, d6 Shallow Rooms and 3 Deep Rooms will usually (if not always) be adequate. This is large enough for a Flux to pose a significant obstacle, without wearing out its welcome. Any bigger and it feels to me like all these rooms would be put to better use in a traditional dungeon.

When constructing the Points of Interest themselves…they’re just dungeon rooms. They ought perhaps have a higher conceptual density than standard, since the Flux itself serves in place of the empty rooms. All Points of Interest could easily accommodate monsters, tricks, traps, treasure, and/or special contents if you so desire.

Special

Does Charting this Flux deplete any special resources? Is there anyone outside the Flux who might want the party to do something for them in there? Is there any danger in this Flux which might follow the company when they leave? Do any of the creatures on the encounter table constitute a faction? If so, which Point of Interest do they live in, and what do they want? Is one of the Flux’s Points of Interest a bottleneck, which the company will need to deal with every time they peregrinate through the Flux?

Two women speak to one another, sitting on either side of a circular maze. At the center of the maze, a knight in armor defeats a creature which appears to be human from the waist up. Beneath the waist is perhaps a horse? It is mostly obscured by the maze.

Example Flux: The Zig Zag Staircase Maze

Theme: An Escher painting hewn in stone. Bottomless pits abound, and there is a dearth of safety railings. Gravity reorients itself at fixed spots. As the company charts they may find themselves traversing the same set of stairs several times with a different “up” on each pass. True Up can always be determined by throwing something into a pit and seeing which way it falls. The pits are not truly bottomless. After 900’ there is a wall of magical darkness, followed by a final 100’ in which space loops back on itself. Anything dropped will be stuck looping through the final 100’ forever.

Encounters

  1. Dragon
  2. 2d6 Zippity Gloobs: Eyeballs with four razor talons protruding from around their retina. Fly by screaming, though they have no mouths. They gather in wasplike nests seen frequently around the bottomless pits.
  3. 1d6+1 Cow Creature raiders. They are collecting loot from the bodies of three dead surface dwellers. Cow creatures can go up stairs, but not down them.
  4. 1d6+1 Cow Creature raiders. They’re on the hunt for intruders. Cow creatures can go up stairs, but not down them.
  5. A sludgebelly which wandered out of the Slime Mines, and is now lost. Reaction roll determines how long it has been lost and how hungry & frustrated it is.
  6. Animated suit of armor left behind by a wizard with a bad disposition.
  7. Wizard

Local Effects¹²

  1. (Attrition): The magical gravity doesn’t work properly on this next flight of stairs. In order to Chart it, each character will need to have a kit of Climbing gear with them. Anyone who lacks it must peregrinate to the Flux entrance, buy a climbing kit somewhere, then peregrinate back here in order to continue charting. The climbing gear remains necessary until the next time a Local Effect is rolled.
  2. (Minor Choice): The party comes upon a gap where the stairs have crumbled away. Jumping would be easy to do, but exceedingly dangerous (DV 0 Skill check, but any who fail fall to their death). If the party brought a ladder, or a plank of wood they can use it to cross the gap easily. Improvising a safe way across without proper tools can be done, but will take a long time, and the Company will suffer a Negative Event Die on the following Turn.
  3. (Attrition): The stairs transform into a slide beneath the company’s feet! Each character must make a DV 2 Skill Saving Throw or drop one item of their choice from a Hand or Handy slot. It tumbles away into a bottomless pit.
  4. (Flavor/Hint): The party comes upon a gap where the stairs crumbled away at one point. It has been bridged by a sturdy mat woven from coarse hair, and pinned firmly in place at each end. It will take everyone’s weight easily. (The Cow Creatures placed this here.)

¹² To be clear: There’s no need for each flux to have one of each type of Local Effect. I’m just using this to further illustrate how each type might be used.

Points of Interest

Shallow Rooms (d6)

  1. A tangle of stairs converge into an amphithatre where 16 ghosts are staging King Lear. The ghost playing Kent keeps forgetting his lines during Act 2 Scene 4. Each time, the rest of the ghosts throw up their hands in frustration and begin the scene again from the start. If someone were to stage whisper the correct lines to Kent, the play will finally be able to end. The ghosts will be at peace, and everyone in the audience will receive a blessing: 2 Positive Event Dice for 3 Turns.
  2. A staircase landing, on which there is a gurgling fountain with coins at the bottom. If a penny is dropped into the fountain then the water is supremely refreshing. Anyone who drinks from it can ignore the next Deplete result on the Event Die. Anyone who attempts to drink from it without paying will get stomach cramps and diarrhea. If anyone takes money from the fountain, the water will pull them in and attempt to drown them.
  3. A circular room 100’ across, enclosed by a low wall, and pillars which support a vaulted ceiling. Four broad staircases connect to this room at right angles from each other. Any staircase other than the one the company entered from is a valid exit. At the center of the room is a 9 foot tall marble statue. It will animate and attempt to destroy anyone who enters this room, but will not pursue them beyond it.
  4. Room #3 again, but this time you’re approaching it from a different set of stairs, and must exit using the final set. The statue remembers your behavior from your last visit, and has learned from it.
  5. In the middle of the stairway ahead of the company is an iron gate with a face on it. It’s surrounded by a barrier which extends 5’ out over the edge above a bottomless pit. Dagger blades protrude from the end of the barrier to discourage attempts to climb around the gate. The face animates to ask a riddle of all who approach: “I rise and I fall without ever moving. You may stand on me, though I am neither the ground nor a floor! Though one of me is helpful, you need many of me to accomplish anything. What am I?” If the correct answer is given (“Stairs,” obviously) the door will open. If someone attempts to climb around the outside the door’s face will be offended. It will wait until the climber is in a vulnerable position, then wiggle the dagger blades that protrude from its barrier to try and make them fall.
  6. In a stretch of stairs which spiral around a column, the company comes upon a door with a shingle hanging above it, proclaiming it to be the site of The World’s Greatest Salesperson. Within is a shop filled with models of stairs, diagrams of stairs, and materials for constructing stairs. The woman inside has a big creepy grin on her face, and is convinced the company look like a group who could really use some stairs. It may seem like her services are completely useless. However, if the party pay her a retainer of 50 pennies she will accompany them through this Flux. If they come upon the Local Effect of a crumbled staircase she can quickly build stairs to bridge the gap. After that if the party wish for her continued services they must pay another 50 pennies.

Deep Rooms

  1. The stairs brush up against a rough stone wall unlike any other in this Flux. There’s a hole in the wall: round, four feet across, dripping with acrid slime. Beyond this hole are the Slime Mines, a completely different Flux!
  2. Village of the Cow Creatures, constructed upon the flat top of a column both broad and tall. 35 adult Cow Creatures live here, and are belligerent towards outsiders. One set of stairs leads up into the village, and another leads up out of the village, and because Cow Creatures can only go up stairs one of these is how they enter the village and the other is how they leave it. The company must get through the village by charm, guile, or force in order to explore further.
  3. A great curved arch leading into The Pleasure Palace of Zanator the Opulent! This is a traditional dungeon, and presumably the goal which led the company to enter this Flux in the first place.
An illustration of The Lord of the Rings. Gollum is leading Frodo and Sam along treacherous pathways in Mordor.

Example of Play

Referee: After your harsh overland journey the company reaches the passage which leads down into the stair maze you’ve heard about. Before you enter, are you going to use any scouts?

Moss: Nobody is sneaky, so we oughtta stick together. I’ll be in the front, Ajmira you take the rear, everyone else can be in the middle.

Referee: If that works for everyone, I’ll just need to know what light sources you’re using. Including hirelings there are 6 characters in the group, so you’ll need 6 Burn worth of illumination if you want to stay in bright light. That means everyone carrying a candle, three people carrying torches, or two people carrying lanterns.

Suzan: Torches is what we’ve got, and we’ve got plenty of ’em! You said this place was gonna eat through them, so we hired a whole extra guy to carry supply. I’ll carry one of the torches, and Torgul and Erin will carry the other two like usual.

Flux Turn 1

Referee: If anybody wants to discuss further, or make any additional arrangements before descending the stairs, please speak up. Otherwise, Ajmira, I’ll have you roll the Event Die for the first few hours of exploration. D6, please.

Ajmira: I got a 6.

Referee: Torchie—the hireling you employed just to carry extra supply—tries to strike up a conversation with Torgul, Erin’s bodyguard. Torgul responds with grunts. They clearly regard this weakling as beneath their notice, and Torchie eventually gives up trying to make friends.

Erin: I chastise Torchie for distracting my employee while they’re supposed to be keeping an eye out for threats.

Referee: Torchie looks distressed. This is a rough first day at work for her. Time passes in awkward silence as the party climbs up stairs and down again, working to chart a path through this labyrinth. By the end of the Turn all your torchbearers have gone through 2 Torches, so mark those off. Suzan, can you roll a d6 to determine what Point of Interest the party finds?

Suzan: I got a 2.

[The referee describes the fountain. The party argue about whether they should put money into it or drink from it. Eventually they decide to ignore it and just move on.]

Flux Turn 2

Referee: Alright, you spend a second Turn charting. Erin, can you roll the next Event die?

Erin: That’s a 5.

Referee: Encounter sign. I’mma just roll 2d4 real quick…I got a 3 so…um. A screaming sound rises in pitch from somewhere in the darkness behind you, reaching a crechendo just outside the range of your torchlight and fading gradually into silence. Something has passed you by very closely, and moving very fast.

Moss: Well I move to look at it!

Referee: You go back up the stairs that you just came down, towards where you heard the scream. You don’t find anything. Whatever made the sound is gone.

Moss: And NOBODY glanced over their shoulder to see it?

Referee: I assume everybody turned, but it’s dark, and torchlight only goes so far. Whatever made the sound was too far away to be illuminated.

Ajmira: Where did it sound like it was going? It came down the stairs until it was close to us, then turned around and went back up the stairs again?

Referee: No, the sound was coming from off the stairs. Like it was flying straight up out of the bottomless pit beside you, then continued to fly up after it passed.

Suzan: So it’s very fast and it flies. Fuck.

Referee: Are there any preparations you’d like to take against encountering whatever this creature was?

Moss: While we’re moving, everyone remember to keep watch on the pits and the air above us, not just the path ahead and behind.

Referee: I’ll take that into consideration, but remember you’re a bright spot of light in a dark place. You’ll be visible to a lot of things which you won’t be able to see no matter where you look.

Moss: It’s the best we can do. Let’s get a move on.

Referee: Okie dokie. You continue to map your way through the stair maze. Suzan, Erin, and Torgul, each of you mark off another 2 torches from your inventory, or from Torchie’s inventory if you need to get them from her. Moss, give me a d6 to see what the party finds!

[Moss rolls a 4. The referee describes the circular room, statue, and four sets of stairs. When the statue comes to life the party attempts to fight it, but it injures Moss’s character severely, and the party flees down the nearest staircase.]

Flux Turn 3

Referee: You’ve escaped the terrible marble statue with your lives, and can resume your charting. Ajmira could you roll the Event Die for the next Flux Turn?

Ajmira: Thassa 4.

Referee: Local effect! The stairs the company is walking down suddenly snap flat beneath your feet, transforming into a slide! Everyone is sent careening downward at uncontrollable speeds. Everyone roll a DV 2 Skill check for themselves and their hirelings to see if you drop anything as you try to steady yourselves.

Erin: How does this work again?

Moss: Roll a d20. You gotta get higher than the DV, and lower than or equal to whatever your Skill is.

Erin: My Skill is 12, and I rolled an 8. That’s a pass, right?

Referee: Yup!

Suzan: My Deviant has expertise in Fitness. That should reduce this DV by 2.

Referee: That tracks. You can roll this as a DV 0 check.

Suzan: I make it.

Referee: Does anyone fail?

Erin: Torgul and I both did.

Referee: You both have to choose one item from your Hand or Handy slots which has been fumbled into a bottomless pit, and lost forever.

Erin: Both of us were holding torches, so we’ll drop those. Those are cheap.

Referee: It’s time to deplete torches anyway, so you two go through 3 torches for this Flux Turn, Suzan you only mark off the usual 2. How’s Torchie’s supply going?

Suzan: I kinda wish we’d brought two spare torch hirelings, but we’ve got enough to keep going for awhile if these two clumsy oafs stop dropping them.

Erin: Torgul and I glare at you, and will begin plotting revenge as soon as you’re out of earshot.

Ajmira: It’s time to determine our Point of Interest, right? I got a 2.

Referee: Okay! We already rolled 2 earlier—that was the fountain—so instead you discover one of this Flux’s deep rooms…

[The referee describes the village of the Cow Creatures. The party haven’t encountered them before this, and manages to work out a deal with them: for a 10 penny toll per person, they will be allowed to pass through the Cow Creature village in peace.]

Flux Turn 4

Referee: The Cow Creatures seem happy enough to accept your coins, but they glare daggers at you the whole time you’re moving through their village. It looks like some of them would much prefer to just kill you and take all your coins, but they’re obeying the headwoman’s command for now. You put some distance between yourselves and the village. Now between 3 Flux Turns of charting and the 1 Travel Turn it took for you to reach the entrance to the stair maze, you’re all feeling wiped out. If you don’t bed down for the night you’re going to start taking points of Exhaustion.

Suzan: I don’t suppose we could convince the Cow Creatures to take us in for the night.

Moss: I like my skin attached to my body, thank you very much.

Ajmira: Yeah those guys were assholes. Let’s just find a dead end or something where we can make camp.

Referee: I think Suzan has the highest Skill score, so I’ll have you make the navigator check to find a suitable campsite.

Suzan: Well I got a fucking 20, so that’s a failure.

Referee: That sucks bro. You’ve got a choice between an Uncomrotable campsite where you won’t be able to heal, or an Open campsite where you’re more likely to face encounters.

Moss: I’m the only one injured, but it’s not too bad. I’d rather avoid encounters.

Referee: Unless anyone objects, you can all bed down in an uncomfortable campsite. It’s a secluded little landing that’s enclosed on 3 sides, but there’s heaps of loose stone that make it unpleasant to sleep on. In order to avoid penalties 4 characters will need to take a watch—2 for each turn spent resting. Nobody can get the benefits of a Full Night’s Rest, so it doesn’t matter much who sleeps and who doesn’t.

Ajmira: It doesn’t matter so we’ll let the hirelings sleep while the four of us keep watch. Then they won’t be able to complain when we find a comfortable campsite and make them keep watch.

Suzan: Oh yeah! I like the way you think.

Referee: Alright, I’ll assume Ajmira and Suzan are the first pair to watch. Ajmira, can you roll the Event Die?

Ajmira: I got a 3.

Referee: Depletion! Everyone in the party needs to eat something. Everyone make sure a ration gets taken out of the inventory for themselves and their hirelings please.

Ajmira: Hah, so far the Event Die has rolled each result in descending order. Almost like this is a fictionalized account of a game session constructed to demonstrate how each result would be handled in this mode of play.

Suzan: Lawl.

Flux Turn 5

Referee: The watch changes to Erin and Moss. Erin, can you roll the Event Die?

Erin: I got a 5! Darn it, we broke our streak.

Referee: A result of 2 would normally be handwaved away if it occurred while the company is sleeping, so the dice probably wanted to save that for later. Anyway, you’ve rolled an Encounter Sign! Since this is your second one it would normally result in an encounter with that screaming creature you got sign for back on the stairs. However, since you opted to avoid having an open campsite, I will rule that you simply hear a distant screaming. It’s clearly that same creature, but it isn’t too close. You also notice an additional detail on this second occurrence: it’s not one voice, but many small screams in chorus with one another.

And with that it is the next morning! Would you like to get back to exploring this Flux?

Flux Turn 6

Moss: We gotta get this place cleared, let’s get to it. I’ll roll the Event Die…that’s a 2.

Referee: Apparently that uncomfortable campsite was pretty rough on everybody. The company needs to spend some extra time resting. You can choose to push on and everybody will gain 1 point of Exhaustion, or you can stop for awhile and use this Turn to recover and take a Negative Event Die next turn.

Moss: Let’s just push on, c’mon.

Erin: With a point of exhaustion I’ll have 5 encumbrance, and we’ll need to roll a Negative Event die every single Turn.

Ajmira: We should just take the hit and rest.

Moss: Alright, if we have to, but we can rest in the dark, right? No need to waste torches.

Referee: Sure, you can do that. And if anyone wants to use an armor repair kit they can do that. Otherwise I’ll assume everyone takes some time to sit and catch their breath, then you get right back to charting. Ajmira, I think it’s your turn to roll the Event Die. Remember to roll 2d6 and take the lowest, since resting incurs a negative event die.

Flux Turn 7

Ajmira: Aw shit I got a 1.

Referee: That’s an encounter, and since you’ve had two encounter signs it’s definitely going to be with that screaming thing. You don’t have any chance to surprise it because of your light, but since it is a noisy enemy and because you took some precautions against it I’ll reduce its surprise chance to 1-in-6, annd…no surprise!

[Initiative is rolled, and the party does battle with a swarm of Zippity Gloobs. They emerge victorious with minor injuries. Unfortunately the creatures carry no treasure at all.]

Referee: With your foes all dead the group continues to trudge up stairs and down, making notes as you go. That’s 2 more torches used by each torchbearer, and Erin can you roll a d6 for the next Point of Interest?

Erin: I got a 6.

Referee: While the company is heading up a set of spiral stairs around a massive column, you spot a shingle hanging from the wall up ahead, as if there’s a shop in here…

Alternative

If all that is too much, I do have another method for running large, samey, and confusing spaces: Draw a map on a sheet of paper. Give the sheet to your player group, and start a timer at the same time. For every 10 seconds it takes for them to solve the maze, that’s 1 Exploration Turn their characters must spend inside of it. Once the maze is solved and you know how long they’ll be stuck there, you can resolve the resulting Event Dice one by one.

Additional Reading

Pointcrawling Ruins Revisited, by Chris Kutalik
tbh a lot of stuff in the Pointcrawling Series Index, by Chris Kutalik
An Incomplete History of Mazes in RPGs, by Dwiz
How Do You Handle the “Inside” of a Hex?, by Dwiz
Bite-Sized Dungeons, by marcia
Hexcrawls ARE Pathcrawls, by Ava Islam

D&D Christmas Carols: Hark! I Am a Hireling

I found these old cards at a thrift store a few years back, and sent out the very last of them this year. Inside it says “I hope yule log on for the holidays,” which is just delightfully corny. In the ’90s I would have found it gauche, but with 30 years of hindsight it charms me.

I’m fond of Christmas, and if you are as well, then I hope you’re having a very merry morning today! And for everyone else, I hope you’re also having a merry morning for reasons entirely separate from the holiday.

As is tradition on this day, I’ve crafted a song for you to cringe at! This year I’ve taken the melody of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and replaced the lyrics with a little story from the perspective of a hireling. One that I think reflects a common experience for these ill-fated NPCs in many OSR games. Sadly, neither my singing voice nor my dance moves have improved at all over the years. (Perhaps one day of practice each year is not enough?) I’m pretty happy with these lyrics, though. Fr fr. No cap. ^_^

If you’re a new reader, this is the ninth time I’ve done this, so there’s a significant back-catalogue of songs by now.

This year I’ve also discovered that’s it’s fairly affordable to license background music when you’re using public domain melodies on small personal projects. My respect to Ben Dransfield of bdProductions for performing the music and making it available royalty free for just a few bucks.

Hark! I Am a Hireling — Lyrics

Mom don’t fret about a thing,
I am now a hireling.
Holding torches, hauling loot,
no doubt gen’rous tips to boot.
Orcs looking at us cock-eyed.
“Where should noncombatants hide?”
Dagger shoved into my hand:
“Fight or Die” is the command.

Mom don’t fret about a thing,
I am now a hireling.

Dungeon law is sink or swim.
Fate for those who fail is grim.
“What contract?” the boss man asks,
“want to find your own way back?”
Traps rend comrades to my right,
on our left the skel’tons fight.
Treasure found: from gold is wrought;
wage in copper been forgot.

Mom pray for my homecoming,
life’s bad for a hireling.

Pressing onward caution thrown,
gold lust in the bosses’ bones.
Spy a flagstone raised slightly.
Press my lips shut tightly.
Lancing fire and scything blade!
Boss-man skewered and sauteed!
With his helm atop my head,
no more will we be misled.

Mom I bring wealth fit for kings,
I’m no more a hireling.

Fantastic Medieval Campaigns

The Original Dungeons & Dragons published in the Three Little Brown Books is a delightful and frustrating game. It’s good simple fun, with some real virtues that had already been diluted or lost by the time of Holmes, Moldvay, and the Advanced edition of the game. OD&D was my introduction to the OSR, through Brendan’s Pahvelorn campaign, and I’ve retained an abiding love for it. But it’s clunky, inconsistently written, requires the players to reference entirely different games for combat and wilderness travel rules. It has desperately needed an update since the day it was published, and the only problem is that every heretofore existing update has made OD&D worse in some way.

My friend Marcia, of Traverse Fantasy, has spent over a year studying OD&D. She’s been working to unpack its mysteries for nearly as long as I’ve known her. Applying her mathematical skills to teasing out all the hidden implications of its mechanics. She has weighed each oddity to identify whether it’s suggestive of interesting worldbuilding, or if it’s simply a mistake. She has collected the external material from Chainmail and Outdoor Survival and performed the same rigorous examination there. She’s worked to clarify the game from top to bottom.

And because she’s dedicated to engaging with this hobby as a hobby, she doesn’t even want any of your money for it. This invaluable work of love and sweat is yours to play for free.

Blogs on Tape Season 5 Has Begun!

It’s happening right now! 26 episodes! 8 hours of RPG thoughts, theories, and flavor for your listening enjoyment!

Back up, what is this about?

Blogs on Tape is a podcast with a very simple purpose: we find good blog posts from the OSR and adjacent RPG scenes, and we perform readings of them. Each episode is just one post. Our aim is to make the scene easier for people to dip their toe into. Listen to D&D blogs on your commute, or while you do the dishes, or while you exercise.

When do new episodes come out?

Every weekday (Monday-Friday) a new episode will drop at 8AM (PST). This will continue until all Season 5 episodes have aired. (Last episode will be on November 24th). After that, Blogs on Tape will go back into hibernation until some point in 2023.

Where can I find these episodes?

The Blogs on Tape website is where they will first appear. After that, sandestins carry the episodes off to add them to Apple Podcasts, Podbay, and Spotify. (Though, as anyone who deals with sandestins can tell you, these creatures are sometimes lazy and may not do their job as quickly as you’d like.)

I’ve also got a thread on twitter that I’m updating each morning as new episodes get added. If you’re on twitter, that thread is worth following.

How can I help?

A Ko-Fi donation to help pay our hosting costs would be a big help. As Blogs on Tape grows (134 episodes at the end of this season! A total of 26 hours of audio!) hosting fees may become a greater concern. Getting some or all of it covered by community support would be a load off.

Aside from that, I really appreciate suggestions for which blog posts are worth reading. I also accept recordings from guest readers. In either event please contact me directly at my business email address.

Lastly, you can do all the same sorts of algorithm-feeding stuff that helps any creative project: retweet that thread I linked above. Post about episodes you enjoyed on your social media of choice. Tell a friend. Rate and review the podcast on Apple/Podbay/Spotify.

Honestly though, you don’t owe me anything. I do this because I care about this scene and enjoy feeling like I’m contributing to it. More than anything I’m just happy to have found a project that folks enjoy.

Thank you, very much, for listening!

Proceduralism On a Red World Alone

Pixel art of a group of adventurers looking out over mars, towards the city in the dome beneath a starry sky. Adapted from the splash screen at the start of Final Fantasy on the NES.

The current incarnation of On a Red World Alone has been an experiment with a novel procedure of play. The primary aim is to compress the traditional adventurer-to-conqueror campaign structure, so domain play can occur from the first session without ever displacing adventure play.

For those unfamiliar with the (so-called) traditional structure, it is typically presented thus: characters begin as grubby dungeon delvers scrabbling in filth to survive. Through the accumulation of levels, power, wealth, and influence, they become monarchs (or warlords, kingpins, archmages, & popes). In addition to delving dungeons or exploring wilderness, players at this exalted level will engage in ‘domain play.’ How domain play is done has always been vague. Presumably it involves managing large numbers of people and resources rather than only a single character and their personal resources. The idea is compelling, but I’ve never been certain how to approach it. Given how infrequently domain play is discussed, and how incomplete those discussions are, I suspect I am not alone. This post describes my attempt to solve that problem.

Two notes before we dive in:

  • This post will necessarily get deep into the nitty gritty of my game’s setting. I worry that the quirks of the setting may be more distracting in this post than they normally are, so here’s a quick primer for those not familiar with On a Red World Alone. ORWA is set in a densely packed city inside a biodome on Mars. The earth was obliterated shortly after this colony was established, before it had achieved self-sufficiency. The scant few survivors of the human species, traumatized by loss and the struggle for survival, descended into barbarism for centuries. The game is set 500 years after the destruction of Earth. It is the dawning of a new period of enlightenment. Within living memory (Session 1) the Dome was culturally and technologically medieval, but over the past 12 years (176 Sessions) a great deal of cultural progress has been made, and lost knowledge rediscovered.
  • What I describe below remains experimental. Every week I discover new ways to improve on it: develop new tools, discard vestigial mechanics, make key refinements to phrasing. Even the act of articulating my current procedures in this essay has highlighted areas which needed adjustment, so that in places this is now a step ahead of anything my players have seen.

Procedure Outline

Each time we gather to play On a Red World Alone, we start with the Domain Phase. When that’s over we shift to the Adventure Phase until the end of the session.

Domain Phase

  1. Determine Consequences
  2. World Events
  3. Update Progress Bars
  4. Faction Actions
  5. Player Actions

Adventure Phase

  1. Choose a Mission
  2. Preparation
  3. Travel
    • Through the Dome
    • Through the Sewers
    • Into Space
    • Over the Surface of Mars
  4. Exploration
    • Dungeon
    • Neighborhood
  5. Return Home
  6. Haven Turn

Post-Session

  1. Write Recap
  2. Review The Questions
  3. Prepare for next session
Lizard men gather around a wizard, paying great attention to the robed figure as they stare into their orb. Taken from Thundarr the Barbarian.

Domain Phase

The Domain Phase represents one month of game time, and is played through in its entirety each session. With a fair degree of consistency, it takes between 40 and 60 minutes to get through the whole thing. I’m fairly strict about ending sessions 3 hours after start time, so the Domain Phase represents roughly one third of an evening of play.

1 — Determine Consequences

One player is called on to roll a consequence for this session. A riff off Arnold’s “Potential Drama” idea. I maintain a table of consequences that will result from the player’s actions, or from the baggage they rolled randomly during character creation. These can influence any part of the session, which is why I roll them first thing. Some consequences can only occur if a specific player is present, while others apply to the whole party. It’s rare to have a session with everyone in it, so before I announce which die the group needs to roll, I do some quick mental shuffling to figure out which entries on the table are possible today. Everything on the table is specific and prepared in advance. Examples might include:

  • (Only if The Wizard Player is present.) A consequence of the time the Wizard had a spell failure which created a contagious meme about how they smell bad. There’s a bad flare-up today. Everyone the party meets will React at -1 because they think the party are stinky.
  • A consequence of that time the party rescued an artist from a monster that collects artist hands. She has sent the party a gift! A painting that would make an excellent poster, and could serve as a huge boost to a propaganda campaign action. The art may be held in reserve until the party wishes to use it.
  • A consequence of that time the party broke into a mercenary’s apartment, robbed him and then killed him. His crew figured out who did it, and the first encounter that occurs during this session’s Adventure Phase will be an ambush.

2 — World Events

Another player is called on to roll a 2d6 on the table below. Like Consequences, each of these has specific results prepared in advance. I’ve actually got 3 prepped for each, though that’s a bit of excess on my part. Regardless of what is rolled, the prepared results are meant either to create an opportunity for the players to exploit, or a crisis they need to respond to. Whether the opportunity or crisis is better dealt with during the Domain or Adventure phase is often open to interpretation.

  1. Natural Disaster (Example: The Dome’s water systems hit a serious snag. Low areas of the Dome are under 2d12 inches of water. This goes up by 2d12 each week until fixed. Every faction’s Food is reduced by 2 for every foot of water.)
  2. Major Figure Exits Public Life (Usually deaths, but occasionally exile or imprisonment) (Example: Susan Quar, narcotics dealer of note and longtime supplier for all the party’s needs, has been killed. The party will need to make new arrangements.)
  3. Opposed Faction Receives Unexpected Boon (Example: A randomly determined enemy faction discovers an abandoned missile silo in their territory. They keep this very hush-hush, but whispers of excited activity in the area reach the party’s ears. Check upcoming faction actions for that faction. Could any of them be enhanced with a missile?)
  4. Wizard or Dragon Shit (Example: Madam Crucifixion attempted to ambush Dr. Guillotine. She knew just where to go. The battle was brutal. Both survived, and both retreated severely depleted in resources to places where they could hunker down. You could easily identify a few locations to raid while they’re laid up, though if they are able to divine who did it they’d certainly retaliate. Alternatively, you could attempt to destroy one of them in their weakened state. The two are probably the most powerful wizards still living in the Dome (excluding inscrutable Penelope).)
  5. Sub-Faction Action (While the Dome’s major factions all regularly get opportunities to act, this result allows smaller groups to occasionally be at the center of Domewide issues.) (Example: Happy Worm Cultists scavenge food from the players faction. 1 Fewer food this Domain turn. They are well-liked by those who know them, so using force to stop them from eating in order to maintain your taxes would require a roll on the bad reputation table.)
  6. One Additional Faction Action This Session (See Factions Actions below)
  7. Public Need Arises in the Party’s Territory (Example: d4 of the party’s Weorods have been taking undue liberties. Stealing, getting drunk and violent, that sorta thing. Tensions are rising to the point that there are murmurings that large scale violence may break out.)
  8. Public Discovery Made (Example: An archive of “I can haz cheezeburger” memes is discovered online, and spreads rapidly around the Dome. People are quoting it constantly, and it will briefly serve as a sort of universal language of friendliness, allowing the communication of basic ideas outside normal language bounds. After the next Haven Turn everyone will be sick of it and uttering them will probably be regarded as a hostile action.)
  9. Party’s Alliances or Experts are Threatened (Example: The party’s chief engineer recently refused a strange offer to leave your employ and go work for someone else. Now she’s receiving extortionate texts demanding she leak secrets. She won’t reveal what she’s being extorted with, but if you don’t do something about it she’s going to have to give in to the extortion.)
  10. Party’s Tools or Programs are Threatened (Example: Ace Reporter Willie Kypho (formerly of Cult Quarterly) drops the story that the party controls the majority of the Dome’s weather control systems. Why hasn’t this information been shared, or this resource been put to the public good? The party needs to make some response or roll on the bad reputation table.)
  11. Factionogenesis (Example: Duck Folk seize 2d6 blocks of territory in a random location. Call it Duckburg.)

3 — Update Progress Bars

“Progress Bars” being my cheeky re-naming of Clocks. This somewhat tedious-yet-vital activity goes between two more interesting activities in the hopes the players don’t drift too far while I do a bit of bookkeeping. On occasion, clocks will reach a hiccup that I secretly scheduled when the clock was set. It still advances by 1 for this session, but won’t be able to progress any further until some issue is resolved. Thus, if the party are on the ball and get it resolved during this session, they won’t lose any time.

Robed cultists hold a platform on their shoulders, on which rests a large head with a domineering expression. Robots flank the cultists on either side. Taken from Thundarr the Barbarian.

4 — Faction Actions

At present there are 10 major factions in ORWA, aside from the players’ own. Each has their own agenda, and a secret schedule of 3 prepared actions they will take in pursuit of it. When the session reaches this point I call on two players (or three, if a 7 was rolled for the World Event) to roll a d10 to determine which factions advance their agendas this month. Like the World Events these are meant to either create an opportunity for the players to exploit, or a crisis they need to respond to, though sometimes they’re just clues about something big that’s coming in the future that the party may wish to prepare for.

Some examples of recent Faction Actions in ORWA:

  • Pamphlets are distributed to the Akiovashan Faithful, who are set the task of scouring the Dome for a certain room. The pamphlet is very general and mostly pictorial. (Literacy isn’t widespread). For those in-the-know, they’re clearly looking for the Dome’s environmental control systems. Secretly, the party is in possession of several of these. Handing one or more over to the Akiovashans would be massively beneficial to your relationship with that faction. If you don’t want them to find it, you may want to take steps to hinder their search.
  • A large number of “former” soldiers of The Redstone Lords request safe passage through the party’s territory. They’re traveling to the Lords of Light territory to “learn the LoL’s advanced farming techniques, so they can use their strength to feed their people.” Your intelligence reports suggest the Redstone Lords’ disarmament is a ruse, but refusing passage outright would be a very bad move from a public relations perspective.
  • The Hell’s Tenants performed a major raid in Team Gopher’s territory. A hole opened up in the ground, and dozens of mangled horn-headed people emerged, dragging dozens more back down the hole with them. Pursuit was attempted, but failed. The tunnels are too labyrinthine. What are they doing with all of these captives?

5 — Player Actions

Finally, the group takes on the role of their faction’s leadership, with all its resources at their disposal. Between the World Events, the Faction Actions, and any hiccups in the party’s Progress Bars, there ought to be a number of fresh hooks for the party to respond to. I also maintain a list of open hooks left over from previous sessions in case additional prompts are needed, though my aim is that some space is left in most sessions for the group to seize the initiative for themselves.

The group is allowed to pursue a number of goals equal to the number of players present, with each player acting as caller in turn. They do not control any particular characters at this stage. Their own PCs are currently low-level grunts who aren’t important enough to be consulted on matters of policy.

I’ve adopted this unusual form because the mode of play is unfamiliar. There was a tendency early in the experiment for players to use the Domain Phase to support their characters in the Adventure Phase, whereas my goal is to encourage the exact opposite behavior. I want to foster a group who approaches the game as a domain-level problem, and wields their adventuring PCs as tools in pursuit of domain-level goals. Additionally, positioning each player as a caller has been helpful for supporting players who aren’t able to play consistently and don’t fully grok what’s going on. Each player can cede as much or as little control as they want to the rest of the group during their turn at caller.

The group’s faction has a character sheet listing its resources, and there are mechanics for 8 codified actions:

  • Recruit (Gain Human Resources, so long as the faction has enough food to support them.)
  • Diplomacy (Make requests of another faction. What is possible depends greatly on existing diplomatic relations.)
  • Propagandize (Attempt to influence public opinion.)
  • R&D (Set a team of experts to solving a complicated problem, or developing something new.)
  • Public Works (Set a team of workers to solve a simple problem, or build something standard.)
  • Establish Institution (Create an ongoing program, which will be an ongoing drain on resources)
  • Military (Direct the faction’s armies.)
  • Give Quest (Send spies, assassins, and adventurers to accomplish specific goals.)

The breadth of action allowed by “pursing a goal” is left intentionally vague at the moment. I’m searching for a balance between giving each player a satisfying turn at the helm, without allowing the scope of everyone’s turns to balloon into something unmanageable. Most of the time a single action is sufficient for pursuing a goal. There are cases, though, where one action leads directly into another so smoothly that it would be disruptive to cut off the turn. For example, there was a recent turn in which a player organized a counter-attack to reclaim some seized territory [Military], then used footage of the event to convince several other factions [Diplomacy] to join them in issuing a public condemnation of the original attack [Propaganda].

What I may do in the future is create a mechanic whereby the length of each action can be determined, then allow each player to serve as caller for one month’s worth of actions.

A burning sun dominates the frame, looming over a ruined city. A trio of youths stand together in the foreground, the city far behind them. Cover of the novel "Dhalgren."

Adventure Phase

Unlike the Domain Phase, the Adventure Phase is not played in its entirety each session. On average it takes between two and four sessions to get all the way through the Adventure Phase’s procedure. The action pauses when it’s time for the session to end, then picks up where we left off once the Adventure Phase resumes in the next session. This means the Domain and Adventure Phases are usually a little out of sync with one another, existing on a floating timescale where one advances rigidly 1 month each session, and the other phase can spend half a dozen sessions getting through a single day. This may initially seem confusing, but the solution is simple: just don’t think about it. Strict time records must not be kept.

1 — Choose a Mission

When starting a fresh Adventure Phase, the group needs to decide what they’re going to do. They can personally address any of the issues raised during the Domain Phase, acting as a commando team or diplomatic delegation for their faction. Alternately, they can ignore the hooks and attempt to take the initiative on behalf of their domain, perhaps by raiding a faction they dislike, or doing a favor for one of their allies. They can also ignore domain level concerns entirely, and spend this Adventure Phase selfishly seeking personal wealth and power. Experience points in ORWA can only be earned by donating money into the faction’s coffers (1 donated credit card = 1 experience point / 1 level gained = 1 unit of funds usable in the Domain Phase), so even this purely selfish pursuit has the party acting in their faction’s interests.

Generally I will reiterate the most obvious hooks that are on the table here, and ask the party what they want to do. If there isn’t a clear consensus, I’ll randomly appoint one of the players as Party Leader, and ask them to set the goal. (I then note who has been party leader, and they won’t be in the running again unless everyone else present has been leader an equal number of times.)

2 — Preparation

Before setting out from the safety of the walled citadel of their faction, the party has an opportunity to alter their equipment loadout, recruit hirelings, make arrangements with allies, or pursue information. Because this is a setting in which cell phones are ubiquitous, the party can accomplish quite a bit by calling ahead to some friendly NPCs.

3 — Travel

Regardless of what goal the party is pursuing, part of that pursuit will involve travel. ORWA has four entirely different mechanics for handling this, though each share a single procedure:

  1. The destination is set.
  2. The referee determines how many hours (or days, or weeks) the journey will take, and how many encounter checks will result. (# of encounter checks is rounded up!)
  3. The players are called upon one by one to roll a d6, with results determined according to which mode of travel they’re in.
  4. The players resolve the encounter to their satisfaction.
  5. If this mode of travel depends on resources, check to see if they ought to be depleted.
  6. Return to c, and repeat the process from there until the party reaches their destination.

The various forms of travel available to the party are:

Over the surface of Mars. Encounters are rolled less frequently and occur less often in this sprawling red desert. There are locations to find and creatures to contend with, but the greatest danger is the environment. Within the Dome there’s food vendors on every other street, and a climate automatically controlled for human comfort. Outside, the characters must carry enough food to get wherever they’re going and back again, and be prepared for the extreme heat of the day and extreme cold of the night. Note that before traveling over the surface, the party would need to travel through the Dome to one of its exits.

Into Space. One of the party’s key resources is a fixed portal between their walled citadel inside the Dome, and a space station in geosynchronous orbit above the Dome. There’s a space ship docked at the station which the party can use to travel into space. The thing is a 500 year old freight hauling vessel which moves about as quickly as our own modern space ships do. It also runs on a form of solid fuel which the party currently has no means of acquiring more of, so resource management is critically important. Encounters are quite rare in space, though. It’s even more barren than the surface of mars.

Through the Sewers. A labyrinth accessible from manhole covers in the Dome’s streets. The sewers extend further down into the interior of Mars than any player has yet ventured. This is not a mapped space, but rather a Flux which connects both to mapped spaces and to other Fluxes. (Flux Space is another idea I must revisit soon!) I allow players to use the sewers to travel between any two points on the surface. It requires 1 encounter roll more than if they’d taken the direct path through the Dome’s streets, but by traveling in the sewers the players are able to avoid dense crowds of people and factional authorities. Sewer encounters are a couple notches weirder and more deadly than the ones typically faced on the surface.

Through the Dome. By far the most common mode of getting where the party needs to go, since the Dome is where people live and thus where most things happen. There’s no supply-based resource depletion to worry about when traveling through the Dome, since the party is presumably never far from a vendor that sells any basic material they might need. However the Dome is dense with encounters and impediments of every sort, which will tax the party’s less easily replenished resources, like their hit points and saving throws. Of course they can always find somewhere that’ll rent them a bed for a day or two, but such rest gives their goal time to become more complicated.

4 — Exploration

Depending on the player’s goals, the destination they’re traveling to is probably either a Dungeon, or a Neighborhood.

Two explorers have just walked into an apartment, only to find the floor split, the furniture askew, and a deadly hole in the floor. Taken from the Cowboy Bebop anime.

Dungeon Exploration

My dungeon exploration procedure is pretty standard.

  1. The referee describes the party’s current environment.
  2. The party, acting as a group, uses one Exploration Turn to investigate the space they’re in, or move to a different space. If one member announces their intent to take individual action (i.e., hacking a computer), I check in with everyone else in the group to see how their characters spend that same block of time.
  3. The referee relays new information to the party, such as the results of their investigation, or the success/failure of their actions.
  4. After a-c have cycled 3 times, the referee calls on one player to roll the Encounter Die:
    1. Encounter surprises the party.
    2. Party gets the drop on an encounter.
    3. Impediment (i.e., a minor collapse occurs)
    4. Local Effect (i.e., if the dungeon has a unique function, that function occurs.)
    5. Clue. (Either for the next encounter, or to the location of some treasure, etc.)
    6. NPC Chatter
  5. The party resolves the results of the encounter roll, after which the procedure resets. Repeat until the party escapes the dungeon.
An explorer of the apocalyptic wasteland comes across a medium-sized town. A wall of junked cars blocks easy entrance. A hazy smoke lies low over the town. Taken from Fallout 1, the video game.

Neighborhood Exploration

Neighborhoods are not inherently hostile to being navigated the way dungeons are. By definition they are inhabited by large groups of people who have some reasonable expectation of moving around their neighborhood with relative safety. The party doesn’t need to worry about traps, doesn’t need maps, and can’t solve their problems with violence so easily. Rather, the challenge of adventuring in a neighborhood is social. Can you strike up a conversation with a shopkeep and convince her to tell you about the local tough’s watering hole? Can you impress the toughs enough that they’ll tell you where you can find the mercenary you’re after? (Credit to Ava of Errant & Permanent Cranial Damage for this idea!)

Neighborhoods ARE inherently hostile to outsiders, and so it’s important to determine whether or not the party will be clocked as outsiders. Do they speak the local dialect? Are their clothes within the range of fashions that are normal here? Are their hands as calloused, or as soft, as other folks? Each neighborhood has a few key features common to its residents. If most of the party shares these features, the neighborhood will yield to them. If most of the party looks like they don’t belong here, the neighborhood will resist them. (Credit to Ty of Mindstorm for this idea!)

My neighborhood procedure goes like this:

  1. Does the majority of the party share the key features of this community?
  2. Where do they want to begin their inquiry?
    • Going to a local official opens the party to greater scrutiny, but could provide them with greater resources.
    • Merchants are always willing to talk with outsiders, but you’ve got to spend money to get their attention.
    • Bar patrons are often open to striking up a conversation with someone who buys them a drink.
    • Random people on the street are always an option, but most folk don’t love being approached by randos.
  3. After the conversation is resolved, where does the party go next? (Did they learn something they can act on, or do they need to continue searching for their first clue?)
  4. As they travel to their next neighborhood location, the referee calls on one player to roll the Encounter Die:
Party Obviously OutsidersEncounter RollParty Blends In
Locals watch you face danger.1. Encounter Unusual DangerPeople try to help you.
Party shaken down or threatened.2. Encounter a Local ToughThe toughs nod, and pass by.
Your plight is ignored.3. Physical ImpedimentPeople let you know how to bypass it.
4. Local Effect
5. Clue
Your own hirelings.6. NPC ChatterA helpful local appears.
  1. The party arrives at their destination and may continue their inquiry in a new location. Repeat c, d, & e until the adventure is complete.

5 — Return Home

Ideally this should be handled with exactly the same travel procedure as before. Usually I enforce this. Occasionally, doing so would create an awkward break in the Adventure Phrase. One where the Session needs to end in 10 minutes, and the journey home will take 40 minutes. Too long to extend the session for, but an annoyingly short amount of play to resolve next session. When this happens I often handwave the travel home. I do very much prefer to play through it properly most of the time, though.

A visually-busy scene. Outdoors, with a staircase and structures built entirely out of garbage. A photograph of the Cathedral of Trash in Austin Texas.

6 — Haven Turn

The length of a Haven Turn is “however long is necessary for the Adventure Phase to catch up with the Domain Phase on the calendar.” Most of the stuff I once used Haven Turns for has been subsumed into the Domain Phase, with the exception of character downtime. The procedure is fairly brisk:

  1. Hit Points & Saving Throws return to their baseline values. Magic Users may swap their memorized spells. Characters who sacrificed their armor may replace it.
  2. Players may donate as much of their money as they like into their faction’s coffers, gaining xp equal to that amount. (Characters with debt must pay equal amounts towards their debt)
  3. Each player is asked in turn how their character spends the downtime. A non-exhaustive list of options:
    • Relaxation. The character starts next adventure with 1 Temporary Hit Point per level.
    • Research. The character does a deep dive, and may uncover the answers to 3 questions. (Some information may require them to have a specific source of knowledge to dive into.)
    • Relationship Development. Make a social roll to improve your relationship with a certain NPC.
    • Crafting. Describe an object you’d like to make, and make a skill check to build it.
    • Spell Creation. The player writes the first draft of the spell. The referee writes the final draft.
    • Solo Quest. The character pursues a personal goal which would perhaps be too much of a distraction for them to drag the rest of the party along for. The player sets one specific goal which must be approved by the referee, then rolls 2d6:
      • 2. Failure, begin the next Adventure Phase with half HP and a Saving Throw of 15.
      • 3-5. Failure, begin next Adventure with -1hp per level, and a Saving Throw of 13.
      • 6-8. Success, begin next Adventure with -1hp per level, and a Saving Throw of 13
      • 9-11. Success, begin next adventure with -1hp.
      • 12. Success, no injuries, and you also brought home cash treasure worth 200cc per level!

Post Session

Before each session starts I make a copy of my session report template, which I fill out as we play. After the session (immediately if possible) I flesh out the details into a full session report. My goal with these is not to write compelling reading—I’ve never enjoyed reading session reports, and only started sharing mine by request. The purpose of my play reports is as reference material. It’s handy to be able to type in the name of an NPC and immediately see all their appearances in the game. Frequently I’m able to use it when one of the players can’t find their notes about how one of their magic items works. Just recently it was useful when I started keeping a list of open hooks for Domain Actions. That wasn’t something I had been tracking, but it was simple to look over all the hooks I’d given out and write down the ones that would still be open.

One great failing of my approach is that I over-write my session reports. They don’t need to be anywhere near as long and detailed as they are. This is a failing in my technique that I’ve never quite managed to fix, but I’m sure others could get the same benefits with less effort.

At the bottom of my recap template are a set of questions to consider. I use these to write out a list of everything I want to accomplish before the next session:

  • What needs to be restocked? (At a minimum, one of the world events and two of the Faction Actions. Usually there will be encounters that got used up as well.)
  • Does anyone need to be added to Recurring Characters? (Per my Encounter Table method. Were any NPCs fun enough that I want to see them again?)
  • Who did the characters wrong? (And more importantly: what are they going to do about it? Should they be added to the consequences table, or should a whole adventure be planned around their revenge?)
  • Does anyone owe the party a favor? (Similar to the above: what are they going to do about it?)
  • What Hooks should be added for player actions during the domain phase? (Did anything crop up during this session that players may want to be reminded of?)
  • What tools would help the rough parts of this session work better? (Were the players confused at any point? Was I unable to adjudicate a situation gracefully? Could it be smoothed out with a new procedure, mechanic, or table?)

Over the course of the two weeks between each session I work my way through the list, restocking and revising what is needed.

As of today, those are the procedures I use for running On a Red World Alone. Though, the next session is coming up very shortly now, so by the time you read this it’s very likely something will have changed somewhere.

Photo of my ORWA to-do list. Many items are scratched out, but the ones which haven't yet been crossed off are: Dungeon Impediments, Local Effects, Codify Haven Turn Procedures Generally Better, Weorod How Many Can be used in a battle? Progress bar what does "talk to Needletooth jack" spell mean? What are all 27 of the space hulks in orbit? Reactions to the party's domain actions? Domain level PCs? How do the akiovashans alter their plans? Review domain phases past: what should be different in the world and encounter tables? Are consequences working well? Occurring often enough? World events: review! Neighborhood generator. Movement ought to be reorganized into PROCEDURE! 

A hammer and a pen laying across the paper obscure the rest of the text.

Additional Reading About Procedures

Proceduralism, by Brendan S.
Doctrines of Proceduralism, by Brendan S.
Proceduralism, by Gus L.
Errant Design Deep Dive #2: Core Procedures, by Ava Islam
The Rhythm of Procedure, by Retired Adventurer
Theoretical & Practical Proceduralism, by Marcia
Loops, by Emmy
What Even Is a “Procedure”? by Prismatic Wasteland
The Basic Procedure of the OSR, by Prismatic Wasteland

Miscellaneous References

Meet the New Boss: Some Thoughts on Domain Level Play, by Joseph Manola. (Also recorded as Episode 108 of Blogs on Tape)
A Fracture in Old School Philosophy: Barbarian or King?, by Dwiz
I’m Getting Too High Level For This Shit, by Nick LS Whelan (A short post which may add some additional useful context to the ideas discussed above).
Running Domain Play as a Carousing Table, by Scrap Princess
AD&D’s Domain Game, by Chris Kutalik

Better Not Die, ‘cuz PCs Don’t Go To Heaven

Oversaturated screenshot of Meryl Strife from the Playstation 1 Metal Gear Solid game, lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Text over the image reads "Time to roll a new character. Unless…?"

When your character drops to 0 hit points1 in On A Red World Alone, two things happen:

  1. You must roll on the permanent injury table.
  2. I remind you that the next hit will kill you dead.

That’s it. The character’s ability to take actions is not inhibited in any way beyond their specific injury, and their own desire to avoid character death. This always surprises and slightly confuses new players, who expect having no hit points to restrict their options more severely. It even surprises and confuses old players who haven’t been at 0 hit points in awhile. (Which, as an inattentive player myself, I totally understand.)

I’ve been running games this way for many years now, because it creates an interesting choice: What risks are you willing to take when you’re one knuckle sandwich away from certain death? To me that choice is made so much less interesting if you’re also inhibited by moving at half speed, or rolling with disadvantage, or especially if the only action you’re allowed to take is “roll to stop bleeding.”

If the injured character escapes immediate danger, they are faced with another interesting choice: do they move to the back rank of the party and continue on their quest, or do they find somewhere to hunker down and heal? Healing requires 8 hours of rest2, in which time whatever task they’re pursuing will definitely become more challenging in some way. Doors will be locked, traps will be laid, their enemies will be reinforced, or rival bands of plunderers will arrive to compete for loot.

1 I don’t fuck with negative hit points. If you’ve got 3hp, taking 3 damage and taking 30 damage have identical results. I have toyed with the idea of a catastrophic injury rule where damage that would reduce you to -10 is instantly lethal, but at present I’m not doing that.

2 You can restore 1hp by finding a corner to hide in for 8 hours. Or, if you’re fortunate enough to rest somewhere with a bed, food, and leisure activities, you may roll your hit die to determine how many hp you recover.

Roll on the Permanent Injury Table

My permanent injury table is more bark than bite, since only half its results are permanent.

  1. Gain a cool scar. Roll a new Boon. (In games other than ORWA, I replace this with +1 to a random Ability Score.)
  2. In shock. Automatically fail saving throws for the rest of the session.
  3. The most precious item the character has with them is destroyed.
  4. Roll a die type equal to half your HD (d6 HD -> roll d3). Reduce your maximum HP by the result.
  5. A randomly determined skill is reduced by 1 rank. (In games other than ORWA, I replace this with -1 to a random Ability Score.)
  6. Severe bodily trauma. Your (1-2: arm, 3-4: leg, 5: eye, 6: lung, 7: kidney, 8: face) is destroyed.

I believe these entries are fairly clear, though the last one may require a bit of additional explanation.

Losing an arm prevents a character from holding two things, losing a leg prevents them from standing or moving normally. In both cases I’d roll a d% to see how much of the limb was destroyed. Losing an eye penalizes their ability to aim. Losing a lung penalizes endurance. Losing a kidney is my catch-all for digestive organs and makes them vulnerable to poisons. Lungs and kidneys are both particularly bad if you happen to lose them twice, since you can’t be alive anymore. Having one’s face destroyed penalizes social rolls.

You could get a lot more granular with different bits of the body, and the disabilities that would result from their destruction. For many years I used a huge table with over 200 grisly entries, and enjoyed it very much. I only switched to this because a smaller table is easier to keep at hand and thus faster to use. And until recently I included the possibility for characters to lose their ability to talk, smell, or hear, but I personally find those conditions challenging to enforce at the table, and so have opted to remove them.

In all cases, the nature of the injury can be tailored to whatever caused it. A swinging sword, a falling rock, a venomous bite, and a blast of fire can all destroy a person’s arm, but the particulars will differ.

Death

A character at 0 who takes another point of damage is dead. Depending on the method of death I may allow them some brave last words, or a spiteful final riposte, but then it’s time to roll a new character. Unless…?

On a Red World Alone is set in what I call a Saturday Morning SciFi milieu. Characters returning from the dead in some horrible altered form is a genre staple that I cannot deny to my players. So long as a dead character’s body isn’t completely obliterated, and their friends are able to recover it, then the player may opt to revive their character as either a Cyborg, an Undead, or a Mutant.

Cyborg resurrection has the fewest strings attached if you happen to be absurdly wealthy. For the low-low price of 9000cc + 1000cc/level, the finest scientific minds on apocalyptic mars will replace your most mangled body parts with chrome. If you don’t happen to be absurdly wealthy, worry not! The billing department has already filed the paperwork to garnish half your XP gain until the debt is paid.

Undead resurrection is a bit of a melodramatic term. Sure, your soul was forced back into its fleshy husk by the power of eldritch sorcery which makes you repellent in the eyes of God. But your heart pumps blood, your lungs pull in air, and you don’t smell any worse than you used to. To all appearances you look as good as if you’d never died at all, but necromancers must be paid—and they place little value on plastic. Choosing Undead resurrection places the resurrected under a Geas they must complete. The nature of the Geas will depend on the goals of the magician who performed the resurrection. A wizard’s goals are rarely wholesome.

Mutant resurrection is a gamble. Somewhat less than the finest scientific minds on apocalyptic mars will blast your corpse with strange radiation, pump it full of neon colored goop, and allow stray animals to bite it. On the upside: it does bring you back to life on the cheap. On the downside: you’ve developed a disadvantageous mutation. The process by which I manage this in my own game involves a d1000 table and a series of mental filters, neither of which can reasonably be shared here. Instead, here’s a table of d12 examples:

  1. Allergic to Silver. Can’t touch it, and takes extra damage from it.
  2. A gross little face is growing from where the wound was. It says rude things to people.
  3. Skin glows very slightly. Not enough to see by, but enough to make it impossible to hide in darkness.
  4. Mutant grows tight strands between fingers, hindering their manual dexterity. Reduce a finger-dependent skill by 1 rank.
  5. Nose becomes large and hypersensitive. Must make a saving throw to avoid fleeing from strong smells.
  6. Legs shrink. Normal movement rate is reduced by 25%.
  7. If this mutant touches a wounded person, they absorb that person’s damage. They cannot control this ability, and cloth clothing isn’t enough to prevent touching.
  8. The mutant’s body produces a stone which, if destroyed, instantly kills the mutant. The inverse is not true: the stone being secure does not prevent the mutant from any harm.
  9. The mutant has absolutely no sense of direction. They cannot “go back the way they came” if they’re alone, and will fail any navigation checks.
  10. The mutant is profoundly unpleasant to talk to. Try as they might, they’re always going to say stuff that’s boring, mean, or offensive. -1 on social checks.
  11. Skin flakes off constantly, leaving an easy-to-follow trail wherever they go.
  12. Weak little baby lungs prevent this mutant from holding their breath at all, for any reason.

In conclusion

A stranger once told me that they’d heard of my games through one of my players, and reported that this player’s favorite thing about playing with me is that death feels like an ever-present risk. This surprised me. It is lovely to know my players speak well of me, but I don’t think of my games as being particularly deadly. Certainly I don’t intervene to prevent death from happening if that’s how the player’s choices and the luck of the dice land, but in practice PC death doesn’t happen often. Most of this post has been about the ways players can survive when they ought to have died!

I think the operative word in this second-hand performance review is “feels.” Death feels like an ever-present risk in my games, because when players get close to it the game changes. They’re faced with decisions that have clear life-or-death stakes, and if they manage to survive the experience still leaves its mark on them.

Structuring Encounter Tables, Amended & Restated

A screenshot from Final Fantasy VIII/8. Quistis, Squall, and Rinoa face a mechanized lizard creature in a random battle. The words "SO RANDOM" are printed on top of the image.

This post is an update to my 2017 essay “Structuring Encounter Tables.” It’s intended to replace that earlier version, and thus includes a bit of self-plagiarism.

In order for an environment to feel dangerously alive it must intrude on the player’s desired activities. For any activity in my game, there are increments of fictional time which require the players to roll the Event Die. Each face of the Event Die corresponds to something, but the most complex and important result is an Encounter, which then calls for a roll on my Encounter Table.

All my encounter tables are 2d6 tables1. The bell curve allows me to vary the likelihood of different encounters. The ones that are most likely can be a little mundane, so that even as they intrude on the player’s desires they also serve to establish what is normal in this place. The less frequent encounters can be the zanier stuff that’s fun to write, but would make the game feel disjointed if they were omnipresent.

1 The methods I describe here could easily be adapted for use a 2d4 or a 2d8. I have occasionally used 2d4 myself when I was running smaller campaigns with fewer expected sessions. In general, though, I find that 2d4 doesn’t give me enough room for all the variety I like to pack into a table. Conversely, 2d8 tables are too big. They take too much effort to write, and the odds of uncommon results occurring are too diminishingly remote for my preference.

2 is always a dragon

Because all of our games could use more dragons in them. The game is called “Dungeons & Dragons,” yet in my experience, the appearances of dragons end up being exceedingly rare when contrasted with how often dungeons show up. They don’t need to be these hulking colossal beasts capable of stepping on PCs as though they were ants. They don’t need to be impossible to defeat, so long as they’re scary. A lizard the size of a car with 8 more hit dice than that party’s average, multiple attacks each around, and a big breath weapon is more than enough.

When my players encounter a dragon there’s a 1-in-3 chance that it’s hungry and wants to gobble them up. In this mood a dragon can’t be reasoned with, you’ve got to fight or flee. The other 2/3rds of the time the dragon will simply demand tribute from anyone who crosses its path. Anyone who refuses to pay tribute is gobbled up on principal as a warning to people who think they’re allowed to say ‘no’ to a dragon. Each of my dragons has a preferred form of tribute (perhaps unique books or fancy bottles of booze) but will also accept money of a certain amount per person.

12 is always a wizard

Because all of our games could use more wizards in them. Because wizards are the coolest, fuck you wizard haters. A wizard doesn’t need a complete spell list and inventory of magic items. All they need is the ability to do something really weird and scary, and an escape plan. Wizards know they’ve got a d4 hit die, so they’ve always got an escape plan.

Wizards, being a few steps closer to humanity than dragons, are slightly less likely to want to eat people. Like all my encounters, they’ll be pursuing some specific activity when the party meets them—though because they’re wizards that activity may be completely inscrutable. Capable-looking passers by may find themselves press-ganged into doing something strange, and a lucky party may earn a boon. Though, it’s just as likely that what a wizard wants is something the party would never willingly give up. “The foot of a traveler” is a desirable component for certain spells.

My private rule is that it’s not possible for the party to become friends with a wizard, because wizards do not have friends. Wizards divide people into three categories: people they hate, people who are useful, and people who are beneath their notice. That third group is definitely the safest one to be in.

Wizards and Dragons are each factions of one. They’re individuals with enough personal power that they don’t have to worry about rules or territories. They usually have a few minions, but they control them at their whims rather than by any formalized structure. When encountering either of these creatures the party should be in great personal danger, but clever play could also bring them great advantage. If a wizard or dragon is slain, there are consequences. Allegiances shift, power vacuums appear and are filled, and valuable treasure hoards are left without their most powerful guardians.

7 is usually Recurring Characters.

I maintain a separate list of these, populated with NPCs the party has had some fun dealings with but who would not otherwise have any reason to recur. I rotate people off that list whenever this result causes them to appear, then rotate them back on if the list ever gets too small. In most other circumstances I prefer the purer randomness of a creature that can appear over and over again while some other creatures never do. For recurring characters though, who are mostly friendly to the party, that has often felt tedious to me. It’s fun bumping into an old friend in the grocery store. It’s awkward when you keep bumping into them in every aisle.

The Major Half of the table

8, 9, 10, and 11 are for universal threats. Stuff that could appear anywhere and any time without being out of place. The further they get from 7, the more wild they can be. So while 8 might be a rabid dog or a hungry bandit, 11 is going to be something like a void vampire or a spell-starved lich.

The Minor Half of the table

6, 5, 4, and 3 are for threats tied to specific locations. In On a Red World Alone that usually refers to the factional territories the party must travel through in order to get anywhere in the Dome, but it might also mean levels of a dungeon, regional biomes, depth beneath the surface of the sea, etc. Whatever boundaries are important for the players to understand in your setting, you can help emphasize them with this. On one side of a boundary the players fight goblins, on the other they fight flying devil sharks with tornado breath weapons.

Thus my encounter table ends up looking like this:

  1. Roll a Dragon
  2. [Territory]
  3. [Territory]
  4. [Territory]
  5. [Territory]
  6. Roll a Recurring Character
  7. Six giant slugs demanding taxes in the name of the slug king. Who the hell is the slug king?
  8. Starving Dire Bear, recently escaped from an abandoned moleman zoo deep underground.
  9. 21 Gnomes (the ideal number). A numerological cult. They’re insulted by the number of buckles on the party’s clothes.
  10. A talking book that is horny to be read from. It makes things weird right away. (The text is about the history of obelisks).
  11. Roll a Wizard

Kobold Territory

  1. The party spots a pit trap. They’re supposed to spot it. There are 7 kobolds waiting to ambush them as they edge around it.
  2. 17 goblins in full armor, here to raid their kobold foes, and willing to raid anyone else they meet.
  3. A kobold merchant traveling to the lands of the slug king to trade. Has a minotaur bodyguard, and doesn’t trust outsiders.
  4. 4 young Kobold bravos, all drunk, looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness.

Boneboy Territory

  1. A great big rolling skull that can shoot fire out its eyes. Trying to win a marathon race. Would be furious if anyone delayed them even a moment.
  2. A giant serpent. Unseen are 3 boneboy hunters stalking the serpent, who may ambush the party if their encounter with the serpent presents a useful advantage.
  3. A whole company of boneboys (24!) out on marching maneuvers. They’re raw recruits. This is their first day. All but their commander will panic at first sight of the enemy.
  4. 2 boneboy warriors sitting in a small camp, polishing one another’s bones. They will be angry and embarrassed to be discovered.

By breaking the table down this way, generating 11 options becomes a much more manageable task. And adding a new location only requires generating 4 new options, rather than a whole new table. So the only task left is to actually fill the table, and the question becomes: what makes a good encounter table entry? First I ought to specify that for my purposes, an encounter is (almost) always an agent of some sort. An NPC, animal, or monster. I’ve got other tools for managing random locations or environmental hazards. Encounters are things that have their own desires and the ability to pursue them.

The first step is just to come up with something that feels cool to me. It’s easier to turn a weak encounter into a strong encounter than it is to conjure a strong encounter fully formed in my imagination. I pull ideas from anywhere. If I’m on the Minor Half of the table I try to stick to something that represents the factions and situations of the region, but otherwise I let my imagination roam widely and trust that I’ll figure out how to make it fit during play. Sometimes I’m fired by the sort of creative energy that drives me to invent a unique monster, other times I just flip through one of the monster manuals I’ve got on my shelves and pick out the first thing that looks fun. Once I’ve got everything down in a way that interests me, then I can go back over the table to figure out if the entries meet the criteria of being a good encounter. There are two wrinkles that each encounter needs in order for me to be satisfied that I’ll be able to run it quickly at the table.

Wrinkle 1

All of my Encounters are doing something specific. Even if they’re a group of 2d6 generic mooks, they need to be up to something when the party encounter them. For this I wrote a “What is the Encounter Doing” table. My original intent was to roll during play, in conjunction with rolling the encounter. In practice that slowed down play too much, so I’ve taken to using it during session prep, and its been a delight having those details at my fingertips when I run. Roll a d30 for intelligent creatures, and a d12 for animal creatures.

  1. Lost
  2. Hurt
  3. Trapped
  4. Sleeping
  5. Eating
  6. Sick
  7. Tracking Prey
  8. Lying in Ambush
  9. Mating Behavior
  10. Starving
  11. Returning Home
  12. Fleeing
  13. Plotting
  14. Holding Captives
  15. Scavenging
  16. Building a Camp
  17. Demolishing
  18. Doing drugs or drinking
  19. Artistic pursuits
  20. Spying
  21. Committing a crime
  22. Searching
  23. Religious ritual
  24. Setting, putting out, or fleeing a fire
  25. Weeping
  26. Excreting2
  27. Bathing
  28. Socializing
  29. Gloating
  30. Something that isn’t on this table.3

2 “Why is this in the intelligent creatures only part of the table?” I hear you ask. Because excreting NPCs are only interesting if it means they can experience shame.
3 For a table that is meant to be re-used over and over again, it’s nice to have something that forces me to reexamine it from time to time.

Wrinkle 2

At this point an encounter often doesn’t need further tweaking. However, I’ve noticed a bad tendency in myself towards encounters that don’t demand the party’s attention. I construct something that I’d be interested in engaging with for its own sake, but when I describe it to my players they just say “Alright, we keep going.” And that’s…fine. Ignoring an encounter ought to be possible sometimes, but it shouldn’t be quite so simple. Encounters ought to intrude on the players attentions more than that. Ignoring them is possible, but doing so ought to be an interesting choice with interesting consequences.

So in my final pass over an encounter I ensure that the majority of them will make some undesirable demand on the player’s attention. This can mean defending themselves from violence, or slander; figuring out how to soothe an aggrieved person, how to cope with a stolen item, or even just deciding whether or not they want to stand by while those things are happening to a sympathetic victim right in front of them.

One exception to this guideline are the Recurring Characters, because their purpose is different. Most encounters are meant to give the party little problems to solve. Recurring characters are meant to give the world a sense of history and interconnectivity. When you meet someone interesting, you might bump into them again. Usually these are friendly characters, since antagonistic character recur in other ways that will present themselves more forcefully. (i.e. plotting elaborate revenges against the party). That being said, recurring characters still ought to invite the party’s attention in some other way. Maybe they need money, or they have a quest to offer, or they’re running a shop and have something to sell. They may even have a gift for the party.

Restocking

Restocking is an essential and constant process when each entry is as specific as I’ve described. I don’t want to understate how burdensome that can be: it does mean I spend time between every single session going back to these tables and adding to them. I’ve managed to make that practice into a routine which I have not yet fallen behind on. I genuinely find it to be the easiest form of inter-session prep I’ve ever committed myself to, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for preferring somewhat more generic and reusable encounters in order to save themselves that constant effort.

Two things make Restocking easier. The first is that, on occasions when I have more ideas than I need, I make sure to record those ideas under the encounter table, where the extra entry will be ready to sub-in when an old one gets sliced out. Second, and much more important, is that restocking rarely means coming up with a new idea from scratch. If the party encounters “4 young kobold bravos, all drunk, looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness,” then all I need to do to freshen it up is create a variation on that basic theme. This time it’ll be 8 kobolds of various ages. I roll on the table above and discover they’re building a camp. So I mash those ideas together and restock the entry with “7 kobold bravos erecting tents, while an elderly kobold sits on a nearby rock and criticizes their work ethic. None have their weapons immediately to hand.”

The way I run the game, the encounter die is the primary driver of play. It’s how I introduce adventure hooks to the players. It’s how I communicate the details of the world, big and small. It’s how I give weight to the passage of time, which in turn enables me to run a game where the players really can go anywhere and do anything, because rolling encounters gives me a chance to gather my notes and prepare details. It’s a multifaceted tool, and I happily put this much effort and thought into my Encounter Tables because the dividends they pay as play aids makes it worth the effort.

Additional Reading

My original post from 2017
Hazard System v0.3 on Necropraxis (Any post under the Hazard System tag is worth a look!)
Combined Encounter Checks & Tables Using d% on Traverse Fantasy
Encounter Checklist on Prismatic Wasteland
Impact on Goblin Punch
In Search of Better Travel Rules on Rise Up Comus
Monster Design and Necessity on Dungeon of Signs
Sticky Goblins on False Machine

Text Folding Tool for Referee Notes

Organizing campaign notes is frustrating. My preference would be to keep all my hobby material in an analog format, but it’s not practical. A campaign is a constantly evolving mesh of interconnected ideas. A referee can never know which parts of their notes will need to be removed, or expanded wildly beyond their original scope. I’ve tried a bunch of methods: binders, notebooks, recipe boxes full of index cards, stacks of paper with bespoke organizational symbols in the upper corner. In the end, all of them required too much paper shuffling in order to find anything. Digital tools are too useful not to take advantage of here.

But my experience with digital tools has been fraught. In part that’s due to my own general Ludditism: I don’t own a smartphone, and I refuse to even consider relying on web based tools. “Sorry guys, we can’t play today, the website is down.” is an absolutely unacceptable possibility for me. Then there’s all the effort that will be involved to extract my game’s data when the web tool inevitably goes belly up, or gets bought out by some VC firm who makes it unusable. I have a strong preference for software that can be run locally, with a minimum of bloat.

I’ll say it again: organizing campaign notes is frustrating. But I did recently find an option that I’m reasonably happy with, and would like to share.

(Sorry I couldn’t unfold any of the interesting text. My players might be spying on this blog even as we speak >.>)

Libre Office is an open source suite of office software. It replaced the old OpenOffice project, and is currently the primary Free Software alternative to Microsoft Office. It’s a nice piece of software that I recommend in general, but is specifically useful for this hidden feature demonstrated in the video. The ability to to treat header text as a folder for all the body text written beneath, which can then be revealed or hidden with a click of the mouse.

To enable this feature you’ll need a reasonably recent version of LibreOffice. Navigate to Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced. On that tab, under “Optional Features,” check the box next to “Enable experimental features.” This will require restarting the application. Now you can navigate to Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOfficeWriter ▸ View, and check the box next to “Show outline-folding buttons.” Optionally, I also recommend navigating to View ▸ Web for the best effect. Page breaks are an unnecessary complication when your text is going to be expanding and contracting.

Once that’s done you’re good to go. To set text as a foldable heading, use the dropdown menu in the upper left to make it a heading. A little button should appear beside the text (you may need to hover to see it). If you click this, all the text beneath the heading (down to the next heading) will disappear. Clicking it again will cause the text to reappear. Fill the spaces beneath headings with all the tables, keys, and background information you like! I should point out that I’ve had the best luck using “Default Paragraph Text” here. For whatever reason, selecting “Body Text” has sometimes caused the folding function to stop working properly. I’m not sure why, except that this is an experimental feature and not yet fully developed.

There’s a lot I love about this method. It keeps my notes tidy, no matter how voluminous they get. It’s easy to use at the table since all the headings fit on about two digital pages. The fact that it’s built into a word processor means there’s a minimum of barrier between USING the tool (folding and unfolding it) and MAKING the tool (adding new text, removing old text.) No need to interrupt my writing process to reference special syntax any time I want to add a new header.

No solution is perfect, of course. The way you need to carefully select the way your body text is tagged is irritatingly fiddly. The feature also doesn’t seem to be well optimized. Scrolling through a large document causes the application to chug, and there’s often quite a bit of lag when folding and unfolding text. (Both issues visible in the video above). Some of that’s just down to word processors being kinda bloated pieces of software, which is why I usually write in text editors. None the less, I haven’t found any quicker or easier alternatives yet.

I should note that Microsoft Office does have a similar tool, which presumably works just as well (or better) than LibreOffice’s unfinished feature. My friend Chris H. also swears by a piece of software called Scrivener. From the looks of it, I think Scrivener would be an ideal solution to my campaign note organization needs. I’d happily pay their $50 fee to use the software. Sadly they have no linux compatible version, so I must do without. Thus I can only pass on a second-hand recommendation from Chris H.

BTW, while I’ve got you here: my friend Ava is a SuperCoolLady™ and needs some help funding her transition. If you’ve got a few dollars to spare, that’d be a very SuperCoolLady™ thing for you to spend them on.

Additional Reading

A New Writer Outline Folding Mode on the LibreOffice Dev Blog
Resources For Playing Online on The Retired Adventurer
Hexcrawl Dashboards on Rise Up Comus
Hexcrawls and Computers on Save Vs. Total Party Kill
DM Screen V1 on I Cast Light!