Saturday, May 28, 2022

Delvers in Dark Places

 I made a tiny little game. Take a look at it!

Click here to get it!

Alternatively here is the full text of the game in Blog form: 

Player Rules


Your Role

Your job in Delvers in Dark Places (DiDP) is to take on the role of an adventurer in a fantastical world, deciding what actions they will take based on situations presented by the referee. As you continue to explore the fantasy world, your character will slowly become tougher and more skilled. Your character is mortal, and poor decisions or just plain bad luck could result in their demise. If this happens, simply make a new character and move on with the story.

Character Creation

Write down a short description of the type of character you will play (example: Elvish Knight). Then write down three skills that your character has. Start with 6 Hit Points (HP). Choose 6 pieces of starting equipment. Finally, name your character.

Skill Rolls

If there is a decent chance of failure, roll a six sided die (d6). The referee decides how high you must roll, usually a 4 or higher is sufficient. If you have a relevant skill, add 1. If the action seems especially difficult for your character type, subtract 1. It is up to the referee to decide what requires skill rolls and what doesn't, as well as what things are possible for characters to attempt.

Combat

A die is rolled for each participant in a combat. Those who roll higher go first, with players breaking ties. Skill rolls are made to attack. The difficulty to hit something is its Defense (DEF). Unarmored is DEF 3, light armor is 4, medium armor is 5, and heavy armor is 6. Weapons usually do 1d6 damage (DMG), subtracted from the target's HP. Heavy weapons add 1 to the roll. At 0 HP, characters are dead or unconscious. HP cannot go below 0. Resting for one hour recovers 1 HP.

Magic

Spellcasting characters must dedicate at least one of their skills at character creation to a specific kind of magic (example: Necromancy). If you don't have a skill devoted to a certain kind of magic, it will either be difficult or impossible for your character to perform spells of that type. Describe the spell you'd like your character to perform, and the referee decides how high of a skill roll is required, and how many hit points must be spent if the spell is successful. Very minor effects may not cost any hit points, powerful spells cost many.

Character Advancement

Characters gain more hit points and skills over time, though the exact rate at which is occurs is up to the referee. For example; 1 hit point could be added to one's total after an adventure to a maximum of 18, and every other adventure a character could learn a new skill.

Referee Rules


Your Role

As the referee, you arguably have a much tougher job than the players. You must create a world for the player's characters to explore, keeping things dangerous enough to be exciting but not so punishing as to be discouraging to the players. Start small, with a village or two and a nearby adventuring site, and build up from there. Nobody expects you to have a whole world mapped out from day one.

Creating Monsters

Monsters have HP, DEF, and DMG values. Some monsters may have skills. A normal human armed with a simple weapon has 1d6 HP, DEF 3, and 1d6 DMG. Smaller monsters may have 1/2 a hit die (roll a die and divide by 2) and do less damage, while larger monsters have proportionally more hit dice and do more damage.

Creating an Adventuring Site

As a general rule, a small adventuring location will have 10 keyed areas. Of these, there will generally be 3 empty areas, 3 monster encounters, 2 traps/hazards, 1 weird thing to interact with, and 1 non-player character to talk to. There should be some treasure around, and generally one or two magical items should be present in said treasure. Note that empty areas are not literally empty, they just don't contain any traps, weird things, monsters, or non-player characters.

Creating Magic Items

Magic items in general should be useful tools with a wide range of applications. For example; a ring which turns the wearer invisible. They shouldn't be foolproof, and they shouldn't be simple "I win" buttons. Due to the relatively low amount of actual rules in DiDP, it is usually best to create magic items which do not provide a direct mechanical bonus.

The Most Important Rule

The referee makes any final decisions as to what is and isn't possible in their world. When in doubt, roll 1d6, higher rolls mean things are better for the players, lower means things are worse.

Converting Adventures

The main things that must be converted are monsters and magic items, most other things can be determined on the fly. For monsters, simply use your best judgment to determine HP, DEF, and DMG, using the original statistics as general guidelines. Most special abilities can be converted to the game by simplifying them and stripping them of irrelevant mechanics. Keep in mind that compared to many systems, DiDP has less powerful characters, so scaling things down is generally a good idea. Magic items should be simplified, and mechanical benefits should be left relatively minor. A +1 sword, +3 vs undead, would instead merely be a normal sword which deals an additional point of damage against the undead. 

Licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0
Special thanks to Loki Oberon 

Monday, May 23, 2022

How To Make A Ten Room/"30 Minute" Dungeon In 2022

What Is This?

Way back in 2018 when I started my blog, the main thing I made were "30 minute dungeons". I made several posts on the subject and a couple that had tutorials on how to make them yourselves. The goal was to produce a relatively usable adventure, sans map/statistics, in only 30 minutes.

I've moved past the "30 minute" aspect a bit, and what I usually do now is simply make a dungeon in about 10 minutes on a single sheet of notebook paper and then elaborate it later into something proper at my leisure. That is how I made my last two posts.

What I aim to do in this post is to consolidate all of the information from my previous dungeon design posts into one big post here, for the convenience of everyone. For the convenience of everyone I will be referring to this concept as the Ten Room Dungeon for the rest of this article.

I've recently tried out the OD&D style of art, that is to say heavily using a reference and adding slight changes. This goblin is based on an illustration of an elf from English Folk and Fairy Tales drawn by John Dickson Batten

The Basics

The average Ten Room Dungeon should have the following:

  • 3 combat/monster encounters
  • 2 traps/hazards
  • 1 weird thing for players to interact/experiment with
  • 1 non-player character who is not immediately hostile to the party 
  • 3 areas devoid of combat, non-player characters, hazards, or weird things  

Typically I find this balance allows for a fun, 1.5 to 2 hour session if run using a quick system, but obviously it will depend on your own style of play.

These are only guidelines, not every Ten Room Dungeon will necessarily look like this. For example, the Forbidden Maze of the Trapmaker may have 4 traps, 2 weird things, 1 NPC, 1 safe area, and 2 monster encounters. 

In terms of treasure, a rule of thumb is that 4 areas should have treasure of some kind, and usually amongst the treasure there should be 1 magic item of some kind. Again though, this is only a guideline, and honestly probably the easiest one to bend. It would make sense, for example, that the Forbidden Maze of the Trapmaker would only have treasure at the very end, past all the traps which protect it.

This Chaos knight is based off of a drawing by Henry Macbeth-Raeburn for the book Castle Dangerous

 

Area Prompts

A while back I made an article containing d6 tables with which one could generate more specific prompts for traps, empty rooms, NPCs, special rooms, and combat encounters. I have copied them here in their entirety.
 
Empty
1. Something that points the characters to an NPC
2. Something that tells the characters about the dungeon's history
3. Something that alerts the characters to a combat encounter
4. Something that alerts the characters to a special room
5. Something that alerts the characters to a trap
6. Something useful to the characters

Special
1. Something that changes the characters who interact with it
2. Something physically impossible
3. Something that provides a boon for a sacrifice
4. Something that can result in great reward or terrible disaster
5. Something that seems ordinary but isn't
6. Something weird to witness/experience

Non-Player Character
1. An ally
2. A villain
3. A victim
4. A rival explorer
5. A quest-giver
6. A weirdo

Combat

1. A horde of weak opponents
2. One tough opponent
3. A weak opponent and their guards
4. A pair of tough opponents
5. A tough opponent and their underlings
6. A group of competent opponents, worthy adversaries to the characters

Trap
1. Something that will inconvenience the characters
2. Something that will kill the characters
3. Something that will incapacitate the characters
4. Something that will trap the characters
5. Something that will alert/summon enemies
6. Something that will separate the characters

 

This fungus from Yuggoth is mainly based off of a photo of a crab I found on google images.


Why Did You Make This Post?

This is mainly a rehash of previous posts, but its primary purpose is so that I have a consolidated Thing to show people whenever the subject of Ten Room Dungeons gets brought up. This also doubles as a statement of my current philosophy towards short adventures as of 2022. Ten Room Dungeons are back and they are here to stay. Yes they are formulaic, but I am realizing more and more that I need structure in my life, otherwise I just get too lost.

Saturday, May 7, 2022

10 Room Dungeon: Blasphemous Swamp Temple of the Mosquito Goddess

 Background/Hook

The local chieftain, Ulfrik the Unconquerable, comes to the party in tears. His daughter, Deanna the Swift, was captured by the swamp dwelling "Sisterhood of Buzzing Wings". The player characters will be rewarded handsomely if they can retrieve her. If pressed as to why he doesn't lead his own warriors to reacquire Deanna, Ulfrik will shamefully admit that he has a terrible fear of mosquitoes. As a boy he nearly died after being bitten by one which infected him with the Purple Pestilence.

GIF SAFE

GIF SAFE

 Description of the Dungeon

The temple itself is located deep within the Swamp of Suffering, taking a day's ride by canoe. Along the way, the party may encounter giant leeches, alligators, or human-sized murderous crawdads. The temple is a semi-submerged ruin covered in vines and moss. The air is buzzing with hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes within the vicinity of the building. It appears to have once been a place of worship for some more conventional faith, but all the holy symbols and relics have been crudely defiled, replaced with the silhouette of a mosquito.
 

Monster Encounters

A group of monstrous, dog-sized mosquitoes crowd around the nearly desiccated corpse of a deer. They lumber towards the party somewhat sluggishly upon noticing them, still thirsting for blood even after their previous meal. If one is killed it will explode into a shower of warm deer's blood.

A group of masked and robed cultists take communion of blood from a golden goblet. Upon drinking, each one manifests a new mosquito trait, such as a compound eye, chitinous clawed hand, long proboscis, etc. They are armed with daggers made to resemble the face and proboscis of a mosquito. 

A cult priestess adorned with ornate jewelry is preparing a ritual chamber for a human sacrifice. She is accompanied by a number of lesser cultists who she is directing to arrange optics and clean the room. The priestess wears a golden diadem which allows her to control swarms of mosquitoes, and is mutated to possess a pair of wings and compound eyes

Traps/Hazards

A pool of murky water fills the room, though through the muck one can see a shiny gold necklace in the water's center. Disturbing the stagnant water attracts hundreds of bloodthirsty leeches which will swiftly drain the life out of any foolhardy adventurer.

The wall of a long hallway contains a recently constructed mural depicting a swarm of oncoming mosquitoes. Each mosquito's proboscis is actually a spring loaded poison dart, and stepping on the pressure plate firing mechanism causes it to launch towards the unfortunate viewer.

"Empty" Rooms

A stagnant fountain contains thousands of harmless mosquito larvae, along with a few handfuls of gold coins.

This room smells awful, the stench originating from under a tarp in the corner. Removing the tarp reveals an unceremonious pile of corpses, the blood drained from their veins.

A statue depicts what used to be an angel, but it has been crudely modified to sport a set of compound eyes and a mosquito's proboscis. 

Special

A large cask swarms with mosquitoes. Uncorking it causes blood to come pouring out of it. This is the same blood used by the cultists for ritual purposes, and drinking it causes one to gain a mosquito mutation (roll 1d6 below)
1. Compound eye
2. Chitinous, clawed hand
3. Wings
4. Blood sucking proboscis
5. Ability to climb on sheer surfaces
6. Antennae 

Non-Player Character

A young woman wearing chain mail hides in the corner of a locked cell, avoiding sight. She is Deanna the Swift, but will be hesitant to interact with the party, thinking them to be cultists playing some trick. Deanna has been forced to partake in the tainted blood, and has a compound eye as a result. The key to her cell is on a nearby table.