Haven't posted in a while, here's a thing. Crossposted from a 1e group on the Book of Faces:

I dig my little subsystems, and random encounters are no exception - randos are great because I get to be surprised by the events that transpire in play, same as the players are. Here's my formula(e).

For wilderness encounters, I use the check frequency and dice described in the DMG (frequency depending on terrain, die type depending on proximity to "civilizing influences," and 25% of encounters in patrolled areas "converted" to a patrol encounter), but I roll randomly (on my trusty d24) for the actual hour when any encounters occur. In dungeons, I'll default to the "1 in 6, every two turns" frequency from Basic, more or less depending on the location.

In addition to the normal "Monster Manual encounter" on a result of "1," I have further possibilities for encounters on the die - I don't have the actual table in front of me, but it's something like "hunting/animal encounters on a 2, "interesting flora" on a 3, noteworthy natural scenery on a 4, trail/wagon/animal "incidents" on a 5, a new "Ravaged Ruins" result from the Wilderlands tables on a 6, so on and so forth. (These really help the druids and rangers come to the fore in wilderness travel, I find.) Plant and animal encounters rolled from CDD#4 Old School Encounters Reference.

Encounters on roads are a special case - I roll an extra chance every hour (1 in d6 on an actual Roman-style road, 1 in d10 on a trail) for a "road encounter" (I use the list from CDD#4, but there's a great list in Dragon #105, published as "Travel Works Both Ways"), in addition to the normal wilderness roll.

On top of all this, for ANY encounter, once I've determined one is occurring, I roll the same chance to see if there's already an encounter with another party (monster, NPCs, etc.) in progress. If so, I'll roll some quick reaction rolls to see whether it's a fight, ongoing negotiation, or what. (Note that on the wilderness rolls, with the expanded stuff I'm using, this could totally end up being "ogres picking daisies for pret-ty ogress" or something, haha.) This extra roll can result in some really interesting situations, for what it's worth, I recommend you try it in your game - the "situation in progress" stuff can be a great opportunity for interesting roleplaying.

Finally, if I'm not using an existing local table, I'll throw a quick d6 to decide which book I'm rolling out of (1-2 is using the table from the DMG, 3-4 the tables from Fiend Folio, and 5-6 the tables from MMII), and, generally speaking, if the first result doesn't really blow my skirt up I'll do a quick scan of my notes/maps to see if there's a "locally-sourced" encounter to use in its place. (This is where those monster grudge matches come up - "Soooo, remember last time you came this way, and you webbed the hill giant chieftain in place while the thief braided his toe hair? Well, so does he.")

- DYA

Hahaha... So, every once in a while, dredging through the open sewer that is RPG.net yields a nugget of wisdom, nestled gently amongst the turds. This is pretty great:

ENTER THE VANGUARD OF ROLEPLAYING *snort* *snigger*

It's a discussion of old-school saving throws, and the perceived reasoning behind them. I've seen this kind of thing on Dragonsfoot here and there, but not with this level of thought and illustration. Worthwhile reading, I'll have this in the back of my mind next time I pull an, "ok, save vs. [THING]" out of my ass in-game.

Hahahaha... Stupid Google tries to show me "D&D" results instead of "AD&D" when I ask for them, and then begrudgingly tells me, if I insist, "Oh OK, I SUPPOSE I can show you this "AD&D" you speak of." It's only one more click, but I don't have time to sit around clicking on websites all day, I HAVE CRAP TO DO, JACK.

LOL

-DYA

From the DF general forum (in a thread about a) Frank Frazetta claiming never to have read any Conan stories (and that nobody else read them either), and b) some new Conan collection where the guy writing the intro bashes REH):

Man, speaking of - this picture just says "friggin' D&D" to me all over. There's a big raging fighter-type (who appears to be flying, or at least leaping for somebody's throat), a cultist with a censer and an altar and the nekkid sacrificial girl with teh bewbs and everything, some kind of magic brazier spewing eerie smoke, demons or gargoyles or something in the background, and then for some reason there's an alligator and an octopus. If I was playing this session I'd think my GM was either on powerful hallucinogenics or a goddamn genius. :lol:

-DYA

Just stumbled across this nifty little beginner's primer on Oerth's creation myth. lulzy.

-DYA


P.S.: Going to see Until the Light Takes Us tonight at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence. I'll let you know if it sucks.
P.P.S.: It didn't suck. I enjoyed it; can't wait until there's a DVD version (hopefully with some unedited interview footage).

Tuesday's game was an interesting session.

Last time, the PCs were on a map-and-loot jaunt through the Storerooms (level 1 of the Castle Greyhawk dungeons). Near the end of the night, they managed to discover a long-hidden secret chamber. Shortly after, a nasty skirmish with a band of goblins left them pretty banged up, and they retreated to the secret bolthole for a rest.

Now, they were careful to cover their tracks and leave no obvious trace of their passage, so I allowed that they'd be pretty safe there, as long as they Anne Franked it. Usually I've encouraged a trip back to town at the end of a session (since you never know who's gonna be around for the next session, and I try to avoid having un-played PCs in the game), but here at least the players who turned up could operate out of the secret room, with the inactive PCs hiding out. Well, next session we ended up with 3 players.

There was some discussion of turning back to town and assembling some hirelings, but instead the 3 PCs mounted a scouting expedition. They spent a few turns double-checking the party map (there've been a handful of mappers working on it, which tends to make things nice and confusing), and then headed off to the quarter they hadn't hit, yet. And met the Old Guard Kobolds.

If you're an adherent of the Lake Geneva Campaign, you've heard the stories, if not - well, just suffice it to say that these are some Very Burly Kobolds (who've been taking out PC parties for decades, now). The party as it stood was about as tough as a 3-member low-level party can be (two tanky fighters and a fighter/cleric), but right off the players knew something was up. The little bastards were falling like so much wheat (or at least the ones in the front were), but only due to some fancy rolling on the players' part - and they weren't falling fast enough, since the ones in back were tossing oil - and then some of them turn out to be capable swordsmen - and that one's wearing fucking PLATE MAIL - and here come two more units of'em - SHIT SHIT SHIT LET'S GET OUT OF HERE - and I laughed very much.

To their credit, they just exactly pulled it out of the fire, with only one fatality and a handful of hit points left, but (by at least one of my players' admission) their reluctance to flee was almost the death of them. I'd like to say the lesson was learned, but of course they're already plotting out bloody vengeance against the kobs. I suspect it won't be as easy as they're imagining. [EVIL DM GRIN] Their early realization that these weren't "just kobolds" was downright heart-warming, however; if they can at least take away from this that they can't always rely on their knowledge of the Monster Manual to gauge encounters, I'll consider us ahead of the game.


After that fiasco, the party hoofed it back to the Free City of Greyhawk. This was the first time I broke out the map (I'm using Joe Bloch's maps - Joe Bloch of the Greyhawk Grognard blog and the thoroughly awesome WG13 - for my City of Hawks and so far they're eminently suitable), and the first time I plotted the party's course to their destination, with encounters every few thousand feet courtesy of the Midkemia Cities book (I'm loving this supplement so far - read on).

The first encounter I rolled up, as the party was traversing the main drag north towards the Old City, was a prostitute. Consulting the sub-table, I learn that this is exactly (*roll*) one prostitute, who is (*roll*) approaching one of the characters for (*roll*) help. Off the top of my head, it becomes apparent that this is a street girl, and that some bruisers from the bawdy house nearby have been trying to run her and her co-workers off of their corner (nobody likes competition). The players bite and we're off on our first city adventure of the campaign.

This ends up being an interesting exercise in on-the-spot content creation. They head to the spot, the party leader gets the girls to point out their antagonists, and the PCs go to "straighten out the situation". After a few tough words are exchanged, they demand to speak to the thugs' boss; the thugs are only too happy to show the PCs in so that they can fall in behind and bash their collective brains out in private. A close-quarters melee follows (in the foyer next to the coatroom), and, with the thugs realizing the futility of direct attacks (one fighter in plate mail, and we're using weapons VS. AC, they'd be hitting on 20) I got to break out the pummeling and overbearing rules from UA. (Lesson learned here being that you really need multiple bodies for the overbearing thing to work well.) With the largest of the three doormen downed, and the other two wounded and fled, the party leader relays his message to some newly-arriving bravos (that the girls ought not be messed with from here on out), and they take off. Being smart enough to have the hookers show them through the back alley, they even avoid the watch patrol that's headed to investigate the disturbance. The girls are brought to the Green Dragon (where the regular working girls shoot them dirty looks), and it is decided at that these will now be two of our PCs' hos, and that they will now look after the ladies.

So now my PCs have some hos. I'm still figuring out how to handle this. Gary Gygax's Canting Crew book has some amazingly detailed thieves' guild info (that I'm using pretty much as-is for my City), and from here I learn that not only is prostitution a guild-run activity, but that there's even different branches for different types (high-class girls, house girls, street girls, etc.). So not only are they horning in on one branch's racket, they're interfering with another's. I suspect they'll find that pimpin' ain't easy, even in the City of Greyhawk. LOL

All in all, out of one random encounter I got a new city location, the name of its owner (and an idea of what its foyer looks like), two new slightly-detailed NPC enemies (the escaped doormen), a potential in-town conflict for the PCs to deal with (the guild), and a rather interesting and potentially hilarious campaign complication (i.e., "How the shit do I handle PC ho income?")("And do they gain XP for it?")

Hell of a session.

-DYA


PS: This post at Old Guard Gaming Accoutrements is awesome.)

LOL - I just stumbled across this tidbit on tvtropes.org - from the article on "Annoying Arrows" (i.e., the tendency for characters in media to get stuck full of arrows and keep on fighting) (yeah, D&D gets namechecked here):

300 in a way both overstated and understated the effectiveness of Persian arrows. The arrows were actually very light, like most weapons used by the Persians, and would bounce off Greek shields and armor instead of sticking into them like in the film. But the Persian army was renowned less for its ground archers and more for its mounted archers, who would ride close to the enemy and harass them with targeted arrow fire, which the Greeks at the time had no defense against. After the war, the Spartans actually invented the "hoplite run," in which a soldier would have to sprint the better part of a mile in their armor to train for running down enemy cavalry.

Seriously, Sparta? When presented with deadly enemy horse archers, your response is "JUST RUN THE HORSES DOWN AND PWN THEM YOU PUSSIES"?

Holy fuck - quite a run to the local game pit this afternoon. Check it out:

JG88 Dark Tower (Paul Jaquays' legendary "upside-down dungeon", set in Judges Guild's Wilderlands setting.)
FR5 The Savage Frontier (Also by Jaquays - a classic sandboxing/expansion of Ed Greenwood's FR1 Waterdeep and the North. It's like Forgotten Wilderlands; been meaning to pick up a hard copy of this for years now.)
9031 The Rogues Gallery (Random NPC generation guidelines and stats for TSR employees' PCs - some of them included under protest, while Blume was forced to make up others when the players wouldn't cooperate. 1980 edition, B+W with Erol Otus art on the front and bogus Mordenkainen and Robilar stats inside.)
9047 Monster & Treasure Assortment (Dungeon level-appropriate encounters and treasures, 100 a piece for 9 levels, and trap/trick tables. I already have one of these, but this is useful enough to keep a copy in each campaign binder - I'm up to maybe four at this point.) (!!!)
B1-9 In Search of Adventure (Compilation of the first 9 modules in the B series, loosely tied together in a campaign. I've got maybe half of these already - from what I hear, the half that matter - and by all accounts this compilation contains heavily-expurgated and hacked-together versions of these modules, but I'm curious to check it out, and from a completist's point of view - well, it was missing from the collection. What can I say? LOL)

All of these for $5 or less. FUCKING SCORE. Dark Tower goes with the JG pile - the Wilderlands is my "someday maybe" setting, as I'm working on the GH stuff first. Savage Frontier was a must before I restarted my Realms campaign, so maybe that'll get going a little sooner. (This would be the PCs from my rather long-running (now defunct) d20/1e hybrid Realms game, only converted over to Hackmaster/1e hybrid stats and thrown some 30 years back in time to the Grey Box era. They keep requesting this, and I keep not having it done. It'll likely involve a lot of Hacking in Undermountain, so once I've got Castle Greyhawk out of my system and my megadungeon legs under me, that'll be a prime candidate. One of these days.) M&T and the Rogues Gallery are just great all-around table aids. (Although I should mention that Kellri's Encounter Netbook is a more-than-suitable replacement for both products, plus a whole shit-ton more. Worth checking out for any pre-2000 D&D edition.)

Damn this collector bug. Hahaha...

-DYA

Poking through the archive of Amityville Mike's frequently-awesome blog, and I dug up a neat little morsel of FUCKING AWESOME. Check it out.

The Wandering Chamber Table

This is SO going in my DM pack. Hell, after I run out to this interview, I may just sit down at home and whip up some plug-and-play random dungeon nodes.*

DYA

EDIT: * I did.

Oh yeah, I am running a game tomorrow. LOL Suppose I should at least pretend to get ready...

A big part of the design philosophy with Zent-Mer is doing some design work on the front end (lots of customized random charts, cheat-sheets, etc.) to let me run on the fly with next-to-no prep. There's still a ton to do in that department, but let's look at what I actually did do so far.

- Master encounter table, encompassing encounters with nearby monsters (i.e., "LOOK AT THE MAP, DUMMY"), encounters with "cleanup crew"-type monsters (vermin/nuisance encounters), and references to the level-specific tables, as well as calls to "event/dungeon dressing" tables.
- Level-specific wandering monster tables (with a B/X-modified version of the "DUNGEON RANDOM MONSTER LEVEL DETERMINATION MATRIX" table from the 1e DMG attached). Most intelligent entries here have at least one possible faction listed, common encounters(like goblins) have more than one.
- Compiled dungeon dressing tables (mostly C+P'ed out of the DMG). The tables here encompass lost items, inscriptions/graffiti (big nod to Nethack, here), sounds, air, and "weirdness".
- Master rumor table and example rumors. (These are in an extremely embrionic state, but there's enough there I could run a few sessions before using them all.)
- Faction "cheat sheet" done up in Excel. This contains any and all human, demihuman, and intelligent monster factions, and their relationships to each other. Knowing from the get-go that goblin tribe A hates goblin tribe B but pays tribute to Bugbear gang C while hiding from Gnoll band D can be super hella mega useful. Also helps immeasurably with city intrigue adventures. This sheet is also where I flesh out a lot of my random encounters - a nameless group of thieves has a guild to belong to, a group of acolytes becomes cultists of [EXPUNGED BY THE INQUISITION], etc.
- Random leftover stuff, like the "quest/geas" generator from JG's Ready Ref Sheets - great little mission generator, there.

And, of course,

- Dungeon levels. Originally drawn up in 5' scale (because I apparently hate trees and slim binders), now being transferred to "One Page Dungeon Template" format (see the link on the right side of this page) in 10' scale. Big props to everyone involved in this project, BTW - it's really helped me boil down my dungeons to what needs to be on the page.

I actually only have the "rat-whomping newbie level" and a few pages' worth of levels 1 and 2 mapped out so far, but there's enough there to occupy tomorrow's group (nobody who'll be there has been past Level 0 yet). Anybody falls down a chute, I'll pull out Appendix A from the DMG, no worries. The nice part is that the upper levels are nice and familiar to me, now (I've run several parties through them at this point), so they run pretty smooth in my head. Not having to refer to the key when describing a room is a cool feeling - I haven't been able to do that since I was a kid, when I used to run the example dungeon from the 1e Realms set again and again. (I still know the Halls of the Beast-Tamers pretty much by heart.)

So what I'll do in my spare time over the next day or so is to organize what I've got into a "DM's packet" where it's all in one place, and (in theory) that, the B/X booklets and my map binder should be all we need. I'll have a post-game up at some point on Wednesday. (Probably.)

- DYA

Now that I've abandoned the Known World map as a home for Zent-Mer, I have the happy task of creating a new wilderness map.  I'm weighing how much I want to plan out now, and how much I want to leave to random chance and/or development during play.

On the one hand, planning in advance lets me do an awful lot of "stocking" ahead of time.  Starting play with a fully-detailed wilderness area is certainly an attractive proposition.

On the other, it's a lot of work up front.  It's possible that a more organic approach, like generating "unlocated" hex contents and assigning them as the party travels, could be a good compromise.  Maybe with a few large hand-placed landmarks (like oceans, the big mountain ranges and forests, etc.).

I'm also trolling around trying to round up as many random terrain / hex contents / inhabitation generation methods as I can, in order to compare them and arrive at a solution for my campaign.  So far, the 1e DMG, Kellri's (completely indispensable) CDD#4 Old School Encounters Reference, the JG Wilderlands of High Fantasy and Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign are the main sources.  (If you know of any others, hook it up!)  I also have a copy of the 2e-era "Worldbuilder's Guidebook", which takes a slightly more "top-down" approach than I had initially planned, but still could be worth another look.  (One of the better supplements from this era, for my money.)

Once I come up with an overall system I like, the real fun of actually generating this sucker comes in.  Me and the Ravaged Ruins tables are gonna get very cozy for a few minutes.

DYA