The antimander: will eat your torch right as you need it

Monster: the antimander 

HD: 3 (14 HP)

Appearance: big slimy salamander, cute shiny eyes

Voice: guttural screeches, short broken sentences (“Want fire!”)

Wants: to eat fire and light sources

Intelligence: like greedy 10 year old

Morale: 4

Morality: is not eager to kill but places its own desires above any other concerns.

Attack: 1d4 pathetic claw

Abilities:

Tongue snatch: once per encounter, extends its tongue ‘30, usually in order to grab a lit torch. Opposed Dex check to evade. (Treat different stalking events as different encounters for tongue reset purposes.)

Stalking: when stalking, the antimander stays just out of sight, patiently waiting for its chance. Whenever the players are distracted (by traps, by combat) it will attempt to snatch a torch again. Rolls to evade its tongue are performed at a disadvantage of at least -5 while distracted or in melee. 

(The consequences of the antimander eating a lit torch in combat can be grave: in total darkness all checks are performed with a -10 penalty (or whatever your system uses.)

While stalking, roll an opposed WIS check for the players every 3 rounds. On a succes, those players see a glimpse of the antimander (see table). When the antimander is glimpsed a ranged attack roll can be made at a -5 penalty.

Behaviour 

If an antimander has surprise on its side during an encounter, it will go into stalking mode.

Otherwise it will aggressively demand or pathetically beg for the player's lit torch. It the players give a lit torch, it burps loudly; make a reaction roll + the amount of torches fed so far. On less than a 7, it will demand another. 

It will eat other fire sources than torches, but it won't believe the players if they say it just needs to accompany them to the other room (where all the wood is).

If the players deny, it will screech in frustration and attempt to snatch a torch and/or attack. If it fails a morale check in combat, it will flee and go into stalking mode.

1d6 Glimpses when being stalked

1 Eyes glittering wetly in the dark

2 Slimy paws just at the edge of darkness

3 Slithering sounds

4 Wet raspy breathing

5 Wet slimy tail at the edge of darkness 

6 Wet plodding feet sounds

Commentary: I think it's a cool and scary moment when torches go out in a tense situation and it rarely happens. The antimander is a weak foe but one that waits for its time to strike. I can see it adding tension not because of how dangerous IT is, but how it could really complicate other dangerous situations.

Water as healing

Inspired by this post by Arnold K on healing.

 Arnold argues that healing kind of sucks but also is kind of nice. I also think healing is good if it lets players take more risk.

 But how to implement without stacks upon stacks of healing potions making it possible to tank through everything at some point? Here's an idea.

Water as healing 

All players have a waterskin. If you get damaged, you can drink from it to gain 1d6 hp. If you gain 3 or more HP this way, your waterskin is empty. 

This is essentially a free health potion you can use (to good effect) once a day if you get damaged.

(Pouring a bit of water out for other purposes does not drain this, but you can't do it if the skin is empty.)

You can't heal in this manner if: 

• You've emptied a waterskin today.
• This is all the refreshment you can get from hydration; other lost hitpoints represent exhaustion, minor wounds, etc. 
• Your waterskin is empty.
• You need to find water (either outside the dungeon, or some sort of fountain) before you can heal again. 
• You haven't been damaged today.
• The water represents recuperation from immediate harm. Drinking more and more water after the initial harm isn't going to magically get you back to full health.

To keep track of this, write letters next to the waterskin:

• Waterskin == full
• Waterskin E == empty
• Waterskin E T == empty and used today  
• Waterskin T == used today (erase next day, it's full)

Tracking "have I been damaged today" is fiddly, you could write D's next to it or something, but a good rule of thumb is that players can heal with water shortly after suffering damage, and can't heal with water during an uneventful overland travel day. It represents short term bouncing back. It doesn't represent long-term medical care.

PC's can drink from the waterskins of others. But if they've emptied their waterskins that day and/or have not been damaged that day, it does nothing.

It's assumed PC's can refill their waterskin while resting outdoors (unless desert or Mordor or what have you). In dungeons water will have to be found.

 If your waterskin is empty you won't dehydrate if you still have rations (rations are considered to hydrate you, you just can't eat one in combat.)

What I like about it

• It provides an Estus flask-like mechanic of healing that refills when resting at certain area's. It's a controlled resource that players can use once per day, per find, and per damage suffered.
• It's a bit of a gamble to use. You may not get to use it again if you do; but if so, it's because you got healed relatively a lot.
• It somewhat fits in the fiction. Taking a swig of water mid-combat is weird. But HP is the ability to shrug of damage and fighting and suffering is exhausting. You're sweating like a pig. A dungeoneer drinking water while fighting is like a cyclist drinking while sprinting.
• It fits with the low glory low level OSR aesthetic. Desperate poor tomb raiders won't have a magical flask or such shenanigans, but they will have water.
• It puts a limit on potion-like healing. You can't just power through on a stack of potions. I'd probably get rid of healing potions entirely using this system. Or say that healing potions take like an hour or a day to take effect. Reduce their usability to just soak up combat.
• Water is relatively easily available but also easily explained away. If you want players to be able to heal only after they've rested outside a dungeon, simply don't add water to the dungeon or make the water foul (stagnant, poisonous). But if you do want players to be able to heal in a dungeon -- say, when they're really battered, holed up in a barricaded dungeon room -- it's easy and believable to add a trickle of water to a random dungeon room. This allows them to emerge from the room with full waterskins and 1d3 resting HP.

 What I don't like about it

• It might be a bit too much healing. It gives every player a potential max 6 HP healing for basically free. That is A LOT for a system (like OSE) that tells you you heal 1d3 PER FULL DAY of rest! 
• At the same time, I want (limited per day, etc) water to replace health potions in a way. So it should be a lot more useful than resting, and a lot less spammable than health potions. 
• That's why I added "only usable once a day and only if you were damaged since the last time", so that 1d3 per day is still the usual. Drinking water implies second wind in the moment recuperation, you can only do it in response to recent damage, not just whenever. 

Polymorphic dispel

There's this Harry Potter bit where two wizards are fighting each other and at one point a cloud of daggers manifests, flies at the one, and then turns into a swarm of birds, back again into something else, in a back-and-forth of attack and defense. I always thought that was cool shit.

What I'm getting at dovetails with the famous rants by Scrap Princess about shitty spells. "Dispel magic" is something a wizard can do, but it is boring. "Counterspell" is also boring. It's good to have, but turning magic off will never be interesting. 

 So I came up with this instead.

Note how Dumblydore's green fire gets turned into a snake? Now THAT's a way to dispel green fire.

 

 Polymorphic dispel
Range: 200’ whatever      T: magic effect     D: permanent or duration of original spell      reaction
Make an opposed INT check to the caster of the spell you want to dispel. On a success, you may change one word in a spell into any other word as long as it rhymes. The DM will rule if your dispel rhymes and is possible. If it is, the spell is altered in accordance with your wording in some way that changes, lessens, or negates its effect. If it is not, nothing happens and your spell dice are refunded. Rules and restrictions:

• You must invest as many dice as the level of the spell you attempt to dispell
• Components of compounds count as one word ("fire" in fireball is one word)
• You can't use a rhyme dispel that's already been used this session.
• It is not necessary to know the spell’s official name; you may also do this with the description given by the DM.
• The DM decides if a dispel is possible. However if she thinks it's impossible, she may ask "and how do you see that working?" because maybe the players have a better idea.
  
• When cast in combat as a reaction, you can't take too long thinking. You must declare it by saying “Dispel!” immediately after (like, 5 seconds) the DM describing an effect, and from declaring “dispel!” you have 10 seconds to formulate (rhyme) your dispel. (Example: “Fireball, uhh, uhmm, wireball!?”) 

The "dice invested" is of course because I love the GLOG. This is NOT playtested in the slightest.

Effective polymorphic dispels:
Fireball - lyreball    (the fireball turns into a clump of lyres that strike you for 1d6 damage)
Fireball - wireball    (the fireball turns into a clump of wire; roll DEX or be immobilized)
Fireball - briarball    (the fireball turns into a clump of tangled roots, same I guess) 

Wall of Ice - Wall of Mice    (self explanatory)
Wall of Ice - Hall of Ice        (still there but now the opposite of a wall)
Acid Arrow - Aphid Arrow    (you get covered in bugs, maybe they suck your blood a bit for 1d4)
Acid Arrow - Arid Arrow       (you get dehydrated)

Cloud of daggers - Trout of daggers     (daggers clump together in the form of a trout that swims through the air and will fight for you for 1d6 rounds)

What about cloud of naggers? Turn it into faces whining?

Lightning bolt - Lightning colt. A horse made of lightning gallops around the battlefield. Roll reaction to see whose side it's on.

Bad:

Fireball - Higherball (how would that work? Unless it would make you float upward)
Fireball - Shireball (I don't see it)
Fireball - Choirball (Well, maybe. All the examples I wanted to give as "bad" are actually okay).
Wall of Ice - Wall of Thrice (What is this!!! These are all great!!! Projectiles fired into it turn into triples)

Also works in other languages

Vuurbal - glazuurbal - the fireball turns into a glob of cake glazing that smacks you right in the face.
Wolk van messen - Wolk van bessen     (the daggers all turn into berries) 

Why polymorphic dispel?

It allows players to modify magic effects to circumvent or negate them WITHOUT just being an off switch and WITH adding a lot of chaos.

The treasure is behind a forcefield! Ordinarily, you would dispel it. Now you could go uh humm, horsefield? Or would that be worse? Worsefield? No, definitely not. Reimbursefield? And turn the field into a field that gives you 1 GP the first time you walk through it. That doesn't rhyme, actually. Okay, remorsefield. You walk through it and it makes you sad. But you get to walk through it.

This FEELS like magic to me. This is like a cognate to the things we imagine mages to do; study spells, trying to understand them, find a flaw they can exploit. This is Gandalf yelling spells at the Moria door that don't work. This is all MUCH better than just saying "I dispel :) "

ALL of this is more interesting than turning the force field off and it STILL allows you to walk through it.

Why not polymorphic dispel?

There's a couple of spells that definitely would become problematic after a while. Magic missile? Best I can do is Tragic Missile. Cloud of daggers even has only a couple of variations. 

This is why I added "or what the DM said" because that will vary a lot more (as you're not supposed to refer to monsters by name including the spells they cast IMHO). Still, it requires playtesting to figure out if this is viable. Other iterations:

• You get to add one adjective to the spell (it must be a material adjective, not something like "weak" or "ineffective"). So you get fireball - watery fireball. Or heavy fireball, and it falls down. Or slow fireball. It's all not as fun as the unpredictability of the rhymes, but there's more options. However I think a "best" option will soon present itself.
• You get to change (add, remove) one letter in the spell. A lot more limited but not dependent on if a word is good for rhyming.
• You get to change one word into one other word that has some sort of semantic relation to the other (opposite, similar). So fireball - waterball or fireball - firemarble. I kind of like the second one. It's kind of like finding a loophole in a law. Okay, fireball it is, but I get to dictate what kind of ball. Still not as diverse or interesting as the rhyming.
• Alliteration. If it doesn't rhyme, it must start with the same letter and have the same amount of vowels. Fireball - flowerball. Freedomball  (AOE Open). Fishingball. Fragileball. This might actually work to add more variety into the system.

Hopefully it doesn't bog combat down too much. I'm hoping that because it requires spell dice to be invested, players won't be using it all the time.

PS

 It feels weird to post here again. I have a gnome in my brain that makes me intensely interested in DnD about every 2 years for a couple of months. The name of this gnome is secret.

 However he's been pulling at the wires again and here I am again. So.

 

Table of a Thousand Cults

I'm preparing a location for my next foray into actually getting players together. Kogo Hnennis, City of a Thousand Cults, City of a Thousand Rains. It's in a magical disaster zone which has two consequences. Firstly, every house in the city is covered in copper rain-pipes as they strive to collect potable water from the clouds. 

Secondly, the city is home to a thousand different cults. Partly just the temperament of the people, partly because life in Kogo Hnennis *motivates* worship, penance, and beseechment.

So here's a table for a thousand cults.

"Cthulhu Cultists" by Daniel Zrom

It leads to fun names. Here's a couple.

Turning the street, you run into a procession of...

* the Syndicate of the Purging Slaughter

* the Seekers for the Chthonic Swarm

* the Followers of the Blind Judge

* the Association of the Black Blasphemy

* the Temple of the Rotting Star

* the Companions for the Son of Spring

* the Bleached Hunger Mystery

* the Sisterhood of the Silver Birth

* the Mystery of the Lance of the Clouds

* the Order against the Deep Stranger

* the Seekers for the Dwarf and Return

* the Warm Fish Group

* the Covenant for the Sun of Dragons

I can keep making these forever but I'll stop here.

**HOW TO**

Basically, you need a d20, a d6, a d8, and a d10.

The cult name is GROUP + OF THE + X + Y.

For GROUP, roll a d20.

For OF THE, roll a d6. "reverse" here means that instead of the normal word order, the name will be X + Y + GROUP.

For X, roll a d8 + d10. The d8 is the first digit, the d10 the second, with 10 meaning 0. Rolling a 5 and a 5 is 55, rolling a 5 and a 10 is 50. If an X entry is "(of [something])" it comes after Y in the name.

For Y, do the same with the d8 + d10.

Happy culting!

Some thoughts on law in fantasy settings

In this post I'm gonna tell you why you have to chop your player's hands off.

So if you start up Skyrim, you're playing what is called "fantasy". There's a lot of shit here that does not pretend to be real. In fact that's why people play it. There's dragons and trolls and there's magical powers everywhere.

There's strange peoples and customs and histories.

I've written before that "religion" in fantasy kind of shows that we take some things that really are arbitrary - such as the concept of "religion" as being belief in gods - as universal.

I argue that our response to a fictional world shows that we have two kinds of normal. 

The first is VISIBLE NORMALITY. This is the things we find normal but that we understand are arbitrary. For example, the clothing people wear in Skyrim is not something I'd ever wear, and the gods they worship are not gods I'd ever worship. My clothing is normal to me but I understand it is different for other people and *would* be different in an alternate, fictional world.

The second is INVISIBLE NORMALITY. This is things we find normal but we do not even know could be different. They are self-evident, taken-for-granted, hiding-in-plain-sight. So, understanding that fictional people in a fictional world would not worship Christ shows that we consider worshipping Christ a VISIBLE NORMALITY. But, the fact that all fictional religions revolve around worshipping gods shows that we think of "religion" as "worshipping gods" as INVISIBLE NORMALITY. We do not even realize that it does not have to be that way. We think that is universal, necessary. In Skyrim, I can play as a cat-person. But I cannot play as someone who is non-binary, for example. 

These are things that are normal to me and that I *don't* understand are different for other people and *would* be different in an alternate, fictional world.

Religion and gender in Skyrim shows that they are invisible normalities. When constructing the weird fantasy world, the creators just skipped over these because they did not see them, did not consider them candidates for potential difference or fantasy.

Moving on to what I was actually thinking about: law.

Consider now, if you will, the Whiterun Guard. And the Riften Guard. And the Solitude Guard.

I argue, dear reader, that "guards" in fantasy show how the police are an example of invisible normality. These guards function exactly like cops and seem not to have been subject to serious thought at all - they are transplanted wholesale from contemporary society. Of course there are cops. Cops are an inescapable part of reality. Skyrim has gravity, therefore it must have cops.

But the cops have only existed for like 200 years. Before that, law enforcement was entirely different. The town watch, for example, was much more about *watching*. They kept an eye on things and would alert others if necessary. They did not perform arrests, AFAIK. In Medieval law, the cry "stop thief!" was not just a cool thing for people in cartoons to yell. If you did that, every single person in the community had a duty to stop the thief. There were no designated thief-catchers like we imagine the cops to be.

In addition, people were sometimes put in groups of ten. If any of the ten broke the law, it was the responsibility of the other nine to take him to court.

So law enforcement wasn't a profession. It was something everybody did. It was a very social type of phenomenon. Communities policed themselves.

So why are all these fantasy settings crawling with "city guards" who are just modern day cops wearing armour? 

Where am I going with this? Well, obviously the intent here is to imagine more types of fantasy worlds.

Punishment after and trial were different as well. Judges travelled around for serious cases and had their authority from the king, and courts were set up by local lords. So whereas policing is communal, trial can be top-down.

Punishment, again, can be super small scale. Jail time did not exist. Prisons are modern. Sure, some castles had dungeons, but those weren't used for regular old punishment -- you had to be *really* unlucky to end up there. Punishment was either something physically painful or something terribly embarassing (or getting executed). Think about the stocks. The community is punishing you. There's a communal aspect both to the enforcement and punishment.

This is al leading up for a few questions to ask yourself when designing what will happen when your players nick something.

The thing is that there are no quick fixes here. Your law enforcement is related to your power structures and your law. There may be different laws enforced by different hierarchies. Take for example church law versus royal law. Or, different laws may apply to different people. In medieval Muslim societies such as in al-Andalus, Muslims were required to follow aspects of Islamic law that non-Muslims, though they lived under a Muslim state with a Muslim ruler, were not required to follow. But non-Muslims were required to pay a tax, for example.

So ask yourself:

* who is making laws? The king? The city-state? The tribe? The church? The guild? Some people very very long ago?

* why are they making laws? Keeping order? Religious reasons? Enriching themselves? Maintaining their own power?

* who do their laws apply to? Everyone? Their subjects? Only women? Only men? Only guild members?

* what do laws forbid? Crimes against people? Crimes against authority? Crimes against sacred things or persons?
* who are law enforcement? The community itself? Or paid experts, or semi-expert volunteers? Or informal groups, militia-like? Do experts have special status? Do experts of different groups compete?

* what are the duties of law enforcement groups? Do they apprehend; are they the muscle? Do they notify the muscle? Are they mostly deterrent or actually supposed to catch criminals?

* who does law enforcement deliver a criminal to? Informal authority in the community? Or formal village- or city-level authority? Royal authority? Church or temple authority? Guild authority?

* what are trials like? Are they quick and dirty -- "everyone can tell that he did such and such..." or drawn-out affairs with ancient customs like right to trial by combat, etc? Who presides over trials? Mayor, priest, chief, judge, king? Are there maybe oracles or rituals in trials?

* where does the authority of the judge come from? Is it the informal authority of the well-known and respected community member? Is it divine authority? Is it the authority of the king? The authority of the ancestors? Is the judge a political figure, or perhaps someone out of political hierarchies, like a feared and loathed shamanic figure who lives out of town, and whose legal authority derives from being so distant from it himself?

* what are punishments like? Do they emphasize punishment, retribution, safety of the community, or rehabilitation? Depending on these, they can be physical punishments, payments to the aggrieved party, a right to the aggrieved party to punish the criminal themselves, punishments of embarrasment or a decrease in honour, incarceration, exile, slavery, execution. A nomadic society will have no prisons. A clan-based society may seek retribution on members of the criminal's clan, with the punishment designed to prevent that from happening.

This is stuff you can't really do quick and dirty or roll out on a table, because it is so intertwined with whatever political system and cultural values you may already have for your setting. Even if you think you don't, you just have a basic fantasy setting -- there is always the king, the mayor, what have you, and if there is a king he is probably not absent in law. Either he is the judge or the authority of the judge comes from him, or something. Then again, maybe it would be super interesting to have a setting where there is a king, but all legal powers are derived from somewhere else and the king has nothing to do with them. Go wild, I say.

One thing I ask of you. I don't want you to stop using 'city guards'. I do want you to think about why they're there.

BUT let's get to GAMEPLAY.

Of course it's fun to tinker out a world. But eventually people are gonna have to play in it. So what system is most fun to play? WELL. I'll tell you what isn't fun. Jail. Time skips are easily done but also kind of skirt against the fourth wall too much. It's abstract for your players. It doesn't mean anything. Maybe their skills decrease (like in the Elder Scrolls) but even that is just a number.

Here's an idea. What if the punishment for theft is having your hand chopped off. Yeah, your left hand. -5 DEX for life, bro. Oh sorry do you usually use a shield? Well, should have thought of that before stealing that necklace. Now that's punishment. That's something players definitely DON'T want.

Basically, from a gameplay perspective I think good law punishment would be something that attacks the character sheet. Remove a limb. Limit their health. Cripple their inventory. Ban them from buying at shops in that city ever again. Cut out their tongue. Cripple their ability to play the game. 

This has three goals: firstly, it really makes them want to avoid punishment, either by not committing crimes (which ups immersion and decreases murderhoboism) or by having to plan elaborate escapes before sentence is carried out (which is fun). Secondly, if they do get punished and are now missing a hand / tongue / eye, then you have at least put a dent into the player journey into invulnerability, meaning you actually invest in their fun. And finally, they'll have to think creatively how to function without those bodyparts. Making players think creatively is fun. Shit you might even throw in a quest hook about getting a magical artificial hand. 

All SOOO much better than being put in jail.

Sure, it's harsh. But that's the only language these players understand, dammit!

A concept for skills

So I run a heavily disfigured version of the GLOG. Running the GLOG is cool because it's simple and versatile.

But skills are not great in the GLOG.

In the GLOG pdf skills go from 1 to 6 and you roll 2d12 to test them, subtracting the lower from the higher. If the result is smaller or equal to your skill level, the thing happens.

This is not great because playing the GLOG is very improvisational.

If a player with no skill in horses says: I want to try to tame the wild horses, I might let them roll a d20 under their willpower (which is the same as charisma in my mess), maybe with a penalty because the horse is skittish and depending on how they describe their approach.

But if a player with a specific skill in horses in level 1 says, I say: ok roll your skill, which means that in many, many cases, having a skill in level 1 is actually WORSE than not having that skill, because the odds of a level 1 skill succeeding is 8%.

Part of the problem is that the GLOG says: you're adults, there's no skill list, just tell me what you want to be good at. It is improvisational. So if someone says: I want to try juggling this stuff, I can't skim down the list of skills to look up if "juggling" is in there and therefore required.

If I was more on my toes as an improviser, this perhaps wouldn't be a problem. But it is. A level 1 skill should be better than not having any skill, ever.

So here's my solution.

SKILLS
You can pick any skill you want.
Your skill rank cannot exceed your level.
You can have as much skills total as your intelligence / 2.

The skill you want starts out at rank 1. The maximum rank of a skill is 6.

When you want to use your skill, roll a d6. If you roll equal or lower than your skill rank, you succeed. Otherwise you fail.

HOWEVER, any action that can be done by a skill check can also be performed by a (difficult) stat check. 
This means that anybody can try to pick a lock if they have the tools. It's a Dexterity check with a heavy -6 modifier. More, if the lock's intricate.

If you fail in your skill check, you can try the stat check. If you fail in the stat check, bad luck. If you succeed in the stat check, you learn something and make a checkmark next to your skill.

(You can only learn something if you do this check in a real-life situation, not as a consequence-free training attempt).

When you have downtime in a city, roll a d6. If you roll higher than your skill rank, your skill improves by 1.

In this system:

• a skill roll is never worse than an improvised stat roll
• skills improve quickly
• because a skill failure is a prerequisite to improving it
• and because the improvement odds go down as skill goes up
• a mastered skill always succeeds, but
• skills take long to reach their max level
• because a skill failure is a prerequisite to improving it
• and because the improvement odds go down as skill goes up

Say your lockpick skill is 5. You have a 1-in-6 chance of failing to pick the lock. Then you have a random chance of succeeding the stat check. Then you have a 1-in-6 chance of improving your lockpick skill.

The chance of failing and then improving:

From 1 to 2 = 68%

From 2 to 3 = 44%

From 3 to 4 = 25%

From 4 to 5 = 11%

From 5 to 6 = 2% 

Tomb of the Serpent Kings write up 2

Due to life events of myself and some of my players, we couldn't continue our playthrough of Tomb of the Serpent Kings until now.

Almost a year later.

Terrible.

Anyway.

This time I was a little less prepared - I had had less time to go over all the rooms and add "authenticating detail" and stuff. I was tired as well and I missed some things. But overall went well.

THE CHASM

After camping at the edge of the chasm (I chose not to throw a random encounter their way since that would be punishing them from a decision from a year ago, and everybody knows your dog doesn't learn shit if you punish it now for chewing on your shoes five hours ago), the adventurers made their way to the right.

When they came to 22: Stone Door, they recognized that there was likely a trap. (I had recapped the previous session with them). Nobody agreed quite what kind of trap this would be. One Stoneling thief used her species' ability to talk with stone to talk to the door. The door described what room was behind it, but did not know if it was trapped (after all, it wasn't the door but the bar that was trapped, and the trap would destroy the door. Game idea: a friendly sentient door that has dreams and aspirations but that will be obliterated upon opening, knows it, and begs the players not to do it.). They looked at the ceiling, which they concluded probably contained a hammer just like the previous one. They did the same thing as before: people lifting it from the side so that they would not be hit by any swinging hammer. There was some suspicion that something else entirely would happen that would hit EXACTLY from the sides.

When they lifted the bar of the hinges, there was a click and a short interval of silence before the entire door exploded into debris and dust sailing straight into the chasm.

Several of the new RPG players expressed delight at how vivid they saw all the occurences here. Feels good man.

They went in.

23: CEREMONIAL ROOM

They try to see if the wall hangings show something or if there is something behind them. Nothing. They take the gold leaf scraps.

Here they hear the rattling of the basilisk's chain. They found it pretty disconcerting. They found it hard to decide which path to take so mom used a light spell to illuminate the two hallways. They saw one of the petrified snakemen in the guarded hall which spooked them, but they went there anyway.

31: GUARDED HALL

The wizards examined the statues and could figure out that while they weren't under a spell to bring them to life or anything, they weren't ordinary statues. One of them said: "maybe they're turned into stone". The goblin player used his racial biting ability to gnaw a hole in both their heads so if they came to life they wouldn't surprise them. This took a while and in that time a bat flew past them.


32: SUMMONING ROOM

As they pushed open the door, the succubus started shouting for help. Some players were immediately suspicious whereas others wanted to help. Questioning the succubus through the door, they were suspicious about her claim to have been kidnapped by fungus gnomes (I went with gnomes because goblins are an intelligent, playable race in this set-up). The players hadn't actually seen any of those and thought that seemed like a poor lie.
Still some players really wanted to help and the curiosity of the suspicious players won out.
They spent some time clearing the rubble and in the time they did that, they were found by... a party of fungus gnomes. Surprised faces all around.

One of the players immediately wanted to become their king. One of the goblins ran off and came back a while later with the crown. So far, no one has asked what happened to the old king. Only my dad, who wasn't even playing, said: "Yeah he's dead of course", but nobody payed him any attention.

The gnomes said they hadn't kidnapped any woman, and that they never went into that room. They did not want to enter it, they said.

Players, of course, enter it. Goblin woman, innocent, shackled, asks for help. One player (not thinking) approaches. Shackle vanishes. She thanks him, says that actually she just needed him to step over that circle there. She gets closer. What do you do? Uhhh. She gets closer still, what do you do? I say: hey now... She tries to kiss you, what do you do? Uhh, I take a step back. She's really insistent, what do you do? Fuck it, I'll kiss her.

He survived but aged nine years.

Succubus grew big horns, tail, and wings, and flew off, winking at the kissed player.

Writing this I mishandled it in a couple of ways. She didn't try to isolate anyone, dropped the botanist act as soon has her binding was broken, and all in all wasn't as interesting as she could have been. But shit I was so tired running this.

33: SHRINE ALCOVE

The fungus gnomes had run off when the succubus left so the players carried on without them.

They pushed the statue the wrong way first; they all got gassed. Then they pushed it the other way (from a distance with a pole) and the gold came out.

One crow person character, in line with his motivation to hoard shiny things, ran after the shiny coins into the

35: BLADE TRAP AREA

He got hit for only one HP the first time and dodged the second time. After the second time I gave him a hint (get out) by saying that the entire wooden mechanism in the ceiling was starting to shudder and groan. He got the hint and tried to leave, but got hit by the swinging blade on the way back. It reduced him to -4 HP so I made him roll on a death and dismemberment table I got from somewhere (I think I got it from Arnold Kemp's GLOG but he wasn't the author. Should look it up.) and he got a massive slice; gonna be a thick scar, but he'll live.

THEN the whole thing crashed onto him. He had some lucky rolls however and rolling again on the death and dismemberment table, he managed to evade most of the chaos but got hit in the face by a massive bouncing piece of rubble that shattered a part of his beak (broken bone), bleeding, et cetera. The other players immediately got him out and gave him first aid. The nose part of his beak is still broken and dented and will give massive troubles if he is hit with it in combat later, but he can soldier on for now.

They decide to have a little break next to the rubble, eat some rations, get some HP up. As they eat, a fist-sized spider crawls past them. My mom refuses to eat any further.

34: PRIEST REST AREA

They take the eggs. The wizards figure out what their deal is and one of my players immediately cuts his hand open and is disappointed when the egg "only" becomes warm. They still take them.
Then they went to the

38: BASILISK HALL

They were immediately fascinated with the basilisk hall. They wanted to go in and examine those weird statues again.
When they did so, one of the wizards was still carrying the lantern she had cast a strong "light" spell on, so they could see much further into the hall than they otherwise would have. This meant that they actually glimpsed the basilisk in the distance. It's huge crocodilian head sliding out from behind a distant pillar peered at them. They all felt the sense of pressure of its gaze.

The immediately decided to leg it, with the basilisk in pursuit. They were so close to the end of the hall that I let them escape without a roll.

They were absolutely determined to cross the hall, did not want to take the other path. They wanted to know if it ended there or if there was more.

One brave player went in, thinking to stealth it (they had seen the visor and knew its vision was not great). But the sniffing sounds of the basilisk made him reconsider and he came back.

Then, the stoneling player had a bright idea: she was made of stone and therefore smelt of stone!

However, she would have to go without a torch because that would certainly draw the basilisk's attention.

I invented some darkness rules and I said: in total darkness you can only see one square around you, so to know what there is at the end of the hall, you need to actually go there and touch it.

I was reluctant to have her do actual stealth rolls, because this was a weird kind of stealth. It wasn't so much being hidden (as it was total darkness), it was being silent, but more than that: being silent in total darkness while traversing a room covered in rubble. That sounded like a Dexterity roll for me.

She moved from pillar to pillar, deftly stepping beyond the stones. I invented some rules for "random chance that the restless basilisk stumbles upon you" with a d8, an 8 being a direct run-in. I rolled a 7. I described how the feet padded towards her and how the huge bulk of the basilisk shifted just past her in the darkness. I rolled again to see if the tail brushed her, which would have been cool, but it just slided past her.

She was at the fourth pillar when people began to seriously question the wisdom of this idea.
The wizard cast light on one of the ranger's arrows and he shot it through the hall, straight into the hallway beyond (which I liked a lot). The reveal that the hall didn't end changed priorities. The logic was: either the stoneling would have to come back (dangerous) OR everyone would have to cross (dangerous).

Because they were treating the basilisk very much as a monster, I described another basilisk noise and instead of a hiss or growl or sniffing I made something half in-between a dog-like yawn or a cat-like purr. This totally made them reconsider the basilisk. One player said: maybe the stone eggs are the basilisk's eggs.

Another said: I'll go in and offer an egg, and so he did.

He got the basilisk's attention alright. I was quite happy with this creative approach and since the basilisk's hunting method consists of stalking and striking, I decided it would not be immediately aggressive, but be confused and guarded in the face of such open approach. This was not prey but challenge.

It came out from behind a pillar, cautiously, growling, all its spines erect. It roared at him and he had to save against fear.

Here I wasn't quite sure what would happen. Because the basilisk was not attacking and also actually looked at the egg, I did not have this player petrify (although I did have him feel the pressure). Then one of the rangers asked if he, as a ranger, an animal lover, could tell anything about the beast.

I said: it's hungry, it's on the hunt because it is hungry.

One player was so delighted by this news that she immediately threw a ration at the beast.

Unfortunately this was the stoneling player who was still in the hall behind the basilisk.

The sudden surprise of another intruder behind it made the basilisk aggressive. It swept around and roared at the stoneling. She resisted the fear, but she did not resist the petrifying gaze. She could not move. All players decided now was the time for action.

They took a pretty long time thinking things over whereas this was actually combat but they did have some interesting ideas.

Eventually the wizard cast a shield over the basilisk, trapping it, so that they could pass.

Writing this down, I realize I rolled initiative too late into this encounter. But I'm kind of happy about it. When you say "roll intiative", you say "get ready for battle". But with an animal things are more uncertain and unpredictable. So I'm happy I did it so late.

What I'm not happy about is that in doing so I basically gave the wizard free initiative, meaning that everybody started with a head start over the basilisk.

The players started running. I didn't know how to resolve this because whereas a chase is usually solved by rolling two Movement stats against each other, this time one of the chasing parties was trapped under a shield. Perhaps I ought to have let it bash against the shield as a reaction to the players running past? I just took the Movement number as the amount of meters you can run in a full sprint (seems a bit large now).

The basilisk, in its turn, tried to charge the player it had petrified and rammed into the shield, shattering the first layer.

(The way my shield spell works is: it's got two "layers"; the first breaks at any blow, the second has HP equal to the sum of the spell dice used to cast it. This is more of a mechanical thing than an aesthetic thing: I just want a shield to be able to withstand at least one impact no matter how much damage it might inflict.)

This player was no longer being petrified because the shield blocked magic. She could run to safety.
The other players made it past as well as the basilisk swiped at the shield, shattering it. It could not overtake them, however, and as they ran into the hallway to avoid its gaze petrifying them from the hall, it was forced to retreat into the hall.

42: CYLINDER DOOR

They remembered the cylinder trap! They got the gold idol & stuff first, then the gnome warrens, then they got completionist and wanted to know what was on the other side and got stabbed by spear traps.

Some people were too disgusted to go into the warrens. But it was that or go back to the basilisk I guess so they went in. They dregged the guano for the shiny stuff. Then they went into

48: GOBLIN SPAWNING PIT

They realized it was something special and one player said that they used the halberd they found in the upper levels to pierce one of the sacks. I said that it ripped open and that a bunch of gross fluid and a half-formed fungus gnome came sliding out of it. Everybody was grossed out, it was great.

They left and went to

49: GOBLIN THRONE ROOM

Here were 40 gnomes fucking about. They cheered to receive their new king. They found the backscratcher and realized it was from the fountain. They also payed close attention to the mention of the "real crown".

The gnomes offered their king a tour of his domain. He agreed. So they led them across the other rooms, including the secret entrance to the basilisk chamber, which made them go "ahhhhh".

In the gnome farms, they decided to dredge the whole thing and they were very happy to find THE CROWN OF THE SERPENT KINGS. The stoneling player said I PUT IT ON but managed to withstand its effects. A wizard also took some dungeon cucumber but did not use it.

Explaining that the guard goblin pushes skeleton jellies away threw them off because they had not yet encountered one or even realized... what it was. (Yes there is a skeleton jellie in a hallway they passed and yes it should have come there way but this is my lack of super deep preparation showing for this time).

From here they went to

28: DOMED HALL

Here they were attracted to the iron door of the treasure room. A wizard did two attempts at an Open spell, one of which critically failed, with the quicksilver jet of the spell exploding onto the door and splashing her robe in silvery dregs.

Our stoneling thief managed to crack it open.

29: TREASURE ROOM

Here I must confess my failure. Again lack of preparation, I was forced to INVENT a treasure. So I made some shit up about piles of gold and a massive golden kris-dagger (with as of yet unspecified magical effects). I think it made an impact (wow piles of gold and treasure) but it feels like a missed opportunity to add in some truly crazy shit. There's always next time.

Lack of inventory space was becoming a problem!!!

Although I had not prepared the village they set out from, I said: you can just go back to the village and we'll deal with that in a very global way.

They sold a looooot of shit. The wizards both bought a wizard's staff on the market (I think it might be funny to have them break at some point - never buy an alleged wizard's staff on some small-time market!), the thief bought a mysterious package and the crow with the smashed beak went to a healer.

At this point everybody was pretty burned out so we called it a day.

One interesting thing. When they looted the treasure, one player asked: "What kind of treasure did I pick up???"
I, having improvised already 5 different types of treasure there, said: "It's just a 10gp treasure."
She said, "no but what is it?"
I said, "Uh... It's an elaborately shaped perfume holder with a long golden snout"

It was funny. On our first session I added so much nonsense filler to every room, writing them all out in a kind of short-note style. I added fake grave goods to the fake graves, I added glowing algae to one room. I sometimes felt it was a lot of distracting filler, but the players never felt that way. But *now* they did sometimes feel as if it was not really real.

It wasn't like I was telling them how it was, but that I was kind of making it up. Which was true. In the first session, people were ever so slightly more immersed. They totally believed everything. Now, somewhat less - especially at this point. It's time-consuming, but not really a lot of work. If you imagine the room you're making easily gameable short-notes from - something like

17 | Tomb of Xisor the Green
Stench! -> roll CON or vomit
Rich wall-carving -> a great king on the right, a thousand tiny slaves on the left. Snakemen hieroglyphs
Coffin -> black stains dripping from the lid -> stench -> Black Ooze! HD 8 etc...

I stole this organization from some blog, I forgot which (sorry! It was over a year ago).

It works because it is easy: all the things that are immediately noticable are on the left. The arrows pointing right per thing indicates what happens when the players examine it or fuck about with it. This makes describing a room a matter of going from top to bottom, meaning you can easily throw in "huge cobwebs", "still water, it stinks", "wall hanging shows a battle scene against the ancient golden elves", "the skeleton has a baked clay seal with inscriptions on it on its head". I found that my players LOVE that shit.

In literature, they call this authenticating detail. It's the kind of detail that has no critical plot relevance, but it's the kind of detail that gives the whole thing believability. It has to be real. It authenticates it.

I didn't have any of that this time. It's hard to come up with authenticating detail on the spot.

It is very easy to do it when preparing such a layout as above. It basically writes itself. But you have to sit down and write it.

I'm definitely doing that for the final few rooms. I'm going to make Xiximanter the great finale of this dungeon crawl and he and his quarters will get some loving, loving authenticating detail.