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Showing posts with label Swearing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swearing. Show all posts

Tuesday, 5 May 2020

The Mystery of Backstory Castle

And the readaloud maze

The osr diaspora is now successful enough and dispersed enough that no-one is in any danger of perceiving me as a leader and I can slink back to my comfortable position of cackling goblin irritant

anyway, watching everyone talk about what lessons do we teach about doing dungeons

and whats the principals of a trap

and we have to teach people how to think for themselves and not be dorks

for without the TEACHING DUNGEON - HOW SHALT ANYONE KNOW HOW TO DUNGEON AT ALL??

actually I was pretty jelly about all the attention everyone elses teaching dungeons were getting
and wanted onto that bandwagon

but then I thought about it for a second and realised


  • firstly that would be a lot of work
  • second I'm not that good at dungeon design anyway
  • thirdly isn;t the very nature of a teaching dungeon slightly boring anyway?


if you want to instil principals in people, isn't it a lot more fun to make...





THE WORST FUCKING DUNGEON EVER!!!



And so it was that I conceived the idea for Backstory Castle, home of the Readaloud Maze, created by the Wizard Bocht Techt purely to be some kind of fucking catastrophe that no-one ever went to

Or to be more precise I had the idea to have the idea of Backstory Castle. I didn't have any of the useful detail-like ideas about how it would work, instead I just thought of a dungeon that was just exactly and precisely the WORST in every possible way

as in, it taught exactly the wrong lessons, both to anyone reading it, anyone running it, and anyone playing in it

lets see if I can have any interesting ideas

I wonder how exquisitely bad we can make something




THE PATHETIC PRODUCTION



The Handout


There is a 128 page handout with full color pages so it prints horribly. It contains a long rambling history of the locality, with multiple generations of unmemorable characters who have ruled for generations. Make sure you spot the clue on page 37!



Compulsary Tie-In Novels


I expect there would be a novella's worth of flavor text about Goblin Boss Gloob's early life and how he came to serve Orc Boss Gark. So that when the climactic battle finally comes, we can see the fruition of this tale as Gloob stealthily fucks off while the PCs carve away Gark's 12hp.

Just like the RoS released important info through Fortnight, there are a series of Tie-In Novels about minor characters and (despite the insane lore dumps) you cannot understand the actions of major characters without buying and reading those novels.


Loathesome Layout


Id suggest moving even further into the depths of meta-contrition: perverse layout decisions, pictures with text encroaching their borders, broken links, nested indicies scattered throughout the text, random font switch 60% through, all printed/laid out horizontally in tabloid/broadhsheet format

Awful Index 



What about an index? Misspeled of course, and sourced from an earlier draft so that only 25% of the page numbers actually align with the topics? Sorted by page number so looking anything up involves starting at the top and working your way down.


Malefic Map


There's a beautiful, full-color, high rez map of the hidden gardens, crystal trees, grottos, glimmering pools, with twist and turns- but its really just one long hallway stacked on top of itself like an intestinal diagram. Nothing out side of the "rooms" (which are just circular areas) are labeled because you can't really do anything with them (e.g. the colored pools are just that).


I think we can definitely combine these - so a giant, 100+ page handout. Its longer than the adventure,

Lets say its formatted for neither US Letter OR A4 size, but could be easily mistaken for either. And if you print it in the wrong format important information is lost.

Full colour - hi rez. Full family and legendary history of everything. Vital hidden clue.


Foul Font


Print the whole thing in red ink on gray paper, in Fraktur font.




THE AWFUL AESTHETIC





Terrible Text Tone



  • "Uh, hey guys" rambling convesational gamer dad text
  • Daidacticly autistic hyperdense voice
  • LORE DUMPS



Fraternizing tone, something like "You surely know, oh gentle reader..."
Old memes or slang in writing.
introduce new, 'cool' words to address the readers or the process of play ("Playzzers" for simplest example); rename DM into something long and difficult to pronounce (Galactic Viceroy of Research Excellence, for the quick example) and never use any abbreviation, only the full title, in the text.


ONLY BEIGE OR VIRID PUKE


The only aesthetic tones in the adventure can be the most beige as fuck 5E-bait multiply-photocopied fantasy archetypes OR 'fuck you' low level but atavistic edgelord foultext - IT SUBVERTS YOUR EXPECTATIONS

"The Wizard Bocht Techt rises before you through a pillar of silvery smoke, silvery because it springs from the fountains of the feywild where Boch Techt learned this spell from his Elfen Maiden betrothed before the sad tragedy which seperated them in the Brown Eons many Oolthars (an orcish measure of time) ago. Techt is truly a hoary and sad figure with a long grey beard a tall conical cap upon which stars are ebroidered with a floppy brim. His robes are of the most midnight blue and flow around him like clothes hanging off an old man. They are also embroidered with mysteroius sigils of cryptic design [DC 15 Lore check to realise these sigils are in the language of the Eld Castle folk]. He wears fabulous but worn turkish slippers as if he came recently from his smokey study and smokes a DOUBLE BARRLED pile carved from old oak in the shape of a Griffons Claw (in memory of his defeat of such a beast during the Adventure of the Sleeping Ape), twin curls of silvery smoke as slivery as his sigils and his silver beard wind up from the griffin-clawed pipe his face smiles in a winsome yet also sad way as if weighted down by his many years of thinking about stuff but he has a mischevous gleam in his clever eye and carries a staff with a COCK ON IT BECAUSE THIS WIZARD FFFUUUUUUCCCCKS

"Greetings Adventurers" chuckles Bocht Techt, "hast though come to test mine maze?"

The wyzard wynks saucily.

"Or art thou down to fuck?"


POINTLESSLY RE-NAMED BUT STILL BEIGE AS FUCK MONSTERS!!


Orcs and goblins? No, this castle has Skri'therzm and Mocron-Reiru, which are a race of brutish, chaotic humanoids and race of shorter, brutish, chaotic humanoids. And the skeletons are called "darkbone haunters".

Yes! Glark is no longer a Goblin but a Mocron-Reiru!

'Darkbone Hunters' is too perfect - this wins Bocht Techts most flavourful award.






THE INANE INFORMATION DESIGN






BAD BOXED TEXT has to be an absolute must on every page


this is a big deal - Jason Cordova is trying to bring this stuff back and ONLY I IN MY LONELY GENIUS stand in his way

someone has to destroy boxed text forever and that someone is me

so, every major element has to have readaloud boxed text and that text has to introduce every element with its deep historical and thematic meaning FIRST, and at LENGTH, with any useful elements last, and also totally hidden in the huge block of spoken text

"This abyssal chamber was not included on the original plans for Backstory Castle due to the Time God Oct spilling a cuppa Hot Joe onto the plans during his meaningful tussle with the Sorcerer Bocht Techt during the Ovulation Wars of the Nightmare Age, a period forgotten by all. Nevertheless the architect Moongold, (lover of the Elf Queen Hyacinth) used meaningful magic to uncover the room plans during a Sorrowing Moon. The light of that moon impregnated the structure of the ten by ten room giving it a deep and sorrowful cast, something unknown to its current goblin occupant (absent on a d6 roll of 1+) as the sorcery has leeched away over the eons leaving only stone which holds up the ivory plinth on which the goblin sleeps. The plinth was stolen and is missing, leaving no trace and the goblin is out searching for it. The theives of the plinth used a mind eating magic to disguise its theft and any attempt to scry its location leads to instant level drain. This room has doors which lead both in and out."

hmm, what else is terrible?


Rancid Room Keys



we're going to need room keys after the read aloud text, right? Each room in the dungeon should take up four to five pages in the book. The room keys need to be hyper detailed to the point that they become useless as keys.

Also, why not key 25% of the rooms in pseudo-hexadecimal.

Room 9A2E. Mocron-Reiru living quarters.
7 beds.
→ bed 1. Not made.
→ → old blanket.
→ → → red, made of torn cotton.
→ → → → tear in left hand corner.
→ bed 2. Made, not well though, as if the goblin-reiru was in a hurry to make it. Probably had about 2 minutes to make the bed, with a deviation allowance of 45 seconds.
→ → blanket of blue, cotton. Pillow is straw stuffed into a bag.
→ → → straw bag was made 6 months ago by the farmer Gusa'gel'del'tonathon. The More-Reigru stole the bag from the farmer while he was milking a cow named [cow #1, page xx]
→ Bed 6. Not a bed, actually a chest.
→ → made of water logged wood.
→ → → wood was soaked 2 days ago, swollen.
→ → → → hinges made of steel. lock clasp made of iron. Chest weighs 12 lbs and 40 grams when lifted.
→ → → → → inside is 8 kg of gold.


"we're going to need room keys after the read aloud text, right?"
Ok, but consider, what if we didn't have room keys at all?

But alright, assuming room keys:
-Rooms missing a key entirely. It's not even 31. Tenth Kitchen, just Tenth Kitchen. (Yes we need a lot of kitchens, all similar and described in exquisite detail)
-Map keys referring to nonexistent rooms, obviously
-Skip a number, or a few. There is no room 52 on the map or in the entire adventure.
-There should be at least three different versions of room 51, all contradictory. (Was contradictory DM text mentioned already? A room needs to have a lich in it, and no lich in it at the same time.)

A few other ideas:
-NPC descriptions and NPC stats need to be at least 100 pages apart.
-This cannot use a gold or silver standard. It needs to have an electrum standard (a fact never mentioned anywhere), and a very elaborate money conversion system, with e.g. bronze coins worth 1/7th electrum. They're not referred as electrum or bronze of course, but with made-up names like "Third Dynasty grucats" and "sifs".
-Rename stats and classes for no reasons.
-Use a mix of multiple measurements. Feet and meters, lbs and kg and stones and slots.
-Somewhere in the dungeon there should be a portal to a whole world the DM must improvise out of thin air. What's the Grobulon Dimension? Fuck if I know, but it leads there. Or maybe a portal to literally anywhere. Take your setting's planet's map (you have a painfully detailed world map, right?) and roll coordinates at random! Oh, and 1d1000 years back in the past. Hope you have a detailed setting timeline.
-A magic item that mind controls the characters to railroad them into following The Plot.
-The big baddies use odiously powerful magic items (or tantalizing, really interesting items used in horrendously boring ways), which explicitly don't work (or outright disintegrate) if PCs use them, justified with obscure bullshit backstory reasons (if at all).
-OOOOH I FORGOT. Very important: the adventure needs a NPC that hires the party, then inevitably betrays them.
-(Also lots of traitorous monsters, and doppelgangers, so your players become paranoid forever.)



Every detail of any room has a separate DC to notice any particular detail, and a further DC to a history or knowledge check to determine in universe connections. Despite ostensibly a beginner dungeon, the challenge of the checks seem to have been calculated to be impossible for all but a maxxed-out optimised build level 20 character.

"The room has a stone flagged floor coloured dark grey (DC 15 perception to notice floor) laid out in the pattern of the sacred circles of Glarenthil (DC 30 arcana check to recognise this), it is a different stone from the walls (DC 20, Dwarf characters who took the stonemason background from appendix C may add 3 to their check) showing that the floor was added later and belies the history told to the characters by the hidden scroll from room 1_C (DC 17 intelligence check to make this connection). A rusted chandelier swings from the ceiling (DC 35 perception to notice chandelier), the trap on the chandelier (8d6 lightning damage, dexterity save 20 for half) will immediately be triggered unless the chandelier is noticed, and power word to disarm it is spoken (DC 25 Arcana Check to recognise the trap is disarmed by a code word DC 40 History (Backstory Castle) needed to recognise the disarm word is the name of the Elf Queen Hyacinth). Across the room is a bookcase (DC 18 Perception to notice bookcase) filled with dusty tomes (DC 20 arcana check to notice that there is nothing of value in the books which contain 19 cp worth of paper each). Glathnark the Mocron-Reiru Assassin is hiding behind the bookcase (looking behind the bookcase and succeeding in a dc 50 spot check will reveal the assassin) and will spring out and assassinate (Death attack auto hit, crit on 3+) the last in marching order if the characters pass through the room to the door on the other side (DC 15 perception to notice other door)."



Tortuous Tables


Tables are;

Boring; result Orc. Result Two = Two Orcs. Result Three = Three Orcs

To be properly boring tables have to have a lot of the same *kind* of thing in them, differeing only in absract numbering and in no other way;

So;

result A - "Fifteen Leather-Clad Orcs accompanied to two goblin scouts. The Orcs are loyal to the Orc Boss Gark and are searching the halls for intruders."

Result B - "twelve goblins accompanied by five ferocious orcs clad in leather armour. The Goblins are loyal to the Goblin Boss Gloob, who serves the Orc Boss Gark faithfully out of fear. The Orcs serve Gark directly and think themselves better than the Goblins. All are armed with random weapons. Damage - by weapon."


Tables must be split over multiple spreads, either extended laterally with columns going partially onto the next spread, or vertically with rows going onto the next spread, or BOTH!

Tables must be extremely recursive, that is, to complete the roll of any particualr result, you must have to roll on another table, in a different part of the book, which also requires you to roll on ANOTHER table.

The more immedaiately necessary the result is the more recursive the table must be. And even better, some tables have multiple PATHS of recursion - to complete them you have to go to two differnt places in the book and reassemble the results!

So, result B, "twelve goblins accompanied by five ferocious orcs clad in leather armour. The Goblins are loyal to the Goblin Boss Gloob, who serves the Orc Boss Gark failthfully out of fear. The Orcs serve Gark directly and think themselves better than the Goblins*. All are armed with random weapons*. Damage - by weapon."

*See - Orc Motivation Table
*See - Random Weapon table pages 302 to 305 [Obviously this is satire, in the real adventure, no page numbers would be mentioned, you would just have to flip until you find stuff


Vague, Undifferentiated and Uninventive Content


Table results have to be totally uninventive, nothing you couldn't have come up with yourself, and they must be vague enough that they bring no solid diagetically concepts to mind. They should be useless for immediate purposes, badly wieghted so they produce incoherent results over long-term play, and also be very boring to read as a matter of game prep.

An example of Vague Results below

ORC MOTIVATIONS; (two column)

This Orc feels;
1 Angry
2 Wrathful
3 Raging
4 Frustrated
5 Aggressive
6 Hateful
7 Like fighting
8 In a Dark Mood

About
1 Resources
2 Starvation
3 Greed
4 lack of food
5 The Orc is hungry
6 The orc is frustrated
7 The Orc wants something
8 What it doesn't have


That's all I got right now. Feel free to do my work for me add your own ideas below, or in a blog post of your own, in the popular longrunning gygaxian democracy experiment - The Mystery of Backstory Castle!


Half of the tables' results are some form of "dm choice" or "pick other two". Especially the most important treasures are not defined.



Mind-Crushing Monster Stats!


I realise this is much too late, but an addition that would do wonders is if all the monster boxes vary by rule editions too. Darkbone Haunters are 3rd edition d&d, mocron-reiru are written with OD&D notation, each monster has an AC value, but you don't know if it's ascending ac or descending, some monsters use Target20 and some use THAC0 to attack. Some monsters have attack matrices (but not the same monsters that have OD&D notation).






THE APOCALYPTIC ADVENTURE DESIGN!





Nasty Nerfs!


The only thing that is easy to find is a full page near the front of the adventure explaining all of the spells which are NOT ALLOWED in the dungeon. "Techt has enchanted the area so that teleporting instead does 2d8/2 damage to the caster. Techt has enchanted the area so that divination give incorrect information most of the time."

Souless Subsystems!



In the adventure, or maybe a hangout, add a few new rule subsystem that emulate/simulate something in very minute and unnecessary details (such as mass breathing or camp-building, for example), and then insist that these rules variations are mandatory for this adventure, so players will have to learn and master them. Add one or two places in the adventure where these rules are absolutely essential for the victory, and then never bring them up ever again so at the end players will waste time learning and memorizing them.
Subsystems, of course, are either very bland or exceptionally intertwined or both.


Trash Traps!


The logic of traps and how they interact with the investigation of the imagined world is actually surprisingly subtle, with each version of doctrine having a different interaction with the players and DM and reaching its own meta-stasis over continued play - which actually makes forming a truly, exactly, nightmarishly BAD trap quite a complex equation

lets see what we can consider

Inconsistency - not only must the methodology of the traps be inconsistent *within the diagesis* i.e. it must make no sense when considering the structure of the imagined world

but it must also be inconstant as a matter of design

Types of Traps

the gygaxian tomb of horrors trap - something designed specifically for *adventureres* and to fuck over people who do stuff like D&D players, like HA HA HA YOU THOUGHT AHEAD YOU TWATS!!

the naturalistic vietcong trap - something designed in-world in exactly the way taht an in world agent would make it for in-world reasons - genuinely very hard to find and genuinely potentially deadly but since it follows the logic of that reality, something that can be learnt and ultimately accounted for

the chris mcdowall trap - potentially dangerous but always signalled in some form. The trap as 'problem' primarily, its danger only serving to force investigation and thought, a potential killer but not truly designed to kill

the storygames trap - a trap which is actually an 'event', like a bottle episode of a tv series set in a dungeon. potentially somewhat dangerous but primarily created to prompt complex DRAMA - I hope you wrote an EXTENSIVE BACKSTORY because now you will be reading it out at length to each other.

the NUMBERS trap - like that guy, I forget his name but he makes everything numbers? The torchbearer guy. This trap reduces one particular rules factor on your character sheet by a SPECIFIC NUMEBR oh fuck I hope you don't have to calibrate the equations in the excel sheet you are using to work out who the fuck you are!!

the "dick or dog" Raggi Trap - the trap which puts the pcs and the players into a dirtbag-spiderman style MORAL QUANDRY - do you release the RAPE VAMPIRE? or RAPE the MEAT BUYER? well you have to do ONE OR OTHE OTHER  or the WORLD WILL END!! BECAUSE OF YOU! ITS YOUR OWN FAULT FOR GOING ON AN ADVENTURE YOU FOOOOOOLS


Troubling Trap warnings and Stupid Expectation Setting


There have to be warnings about what kinds of trap you will be facing in Backstory Castle, and those warnings have to be (long and boring and readaloud boxed text of course) and probably also in riddle form, but they also have to be just useful enough that its worth listening to them - they will actially predict something about the traps.

And then they will fail totally because soemthing utterly incoherent will happen and none of it will make any sense.




Moronic Mono-Motivated Monsters


Only Orcs, Goblins, Skelingtons and RAPE ENGINES exist in Backstory Castle and there are sure as fuck no warnings about the last one.

And there are lots of Orcs and Goblins and Skeletons.

And the Goblins sure as fuck don't do anything interesting.

No monster in Backstory Castle wants anything except to stop you going through its room and they all wait in their rooms doing nothing but waiting until you arrive. No monster has any relation with any other. The Goblins have no tricks.

They do have backstory though. Individual and in-depth backstories.




Awful Encounters


Untill they aren't.

Half of the place has careful encounter balance to ensure there's no actual risk of permanent player consequences (the horror!), and then the other half is full of "fuck you, you die instantly with no countermeasure" challenges, and there's no way to tell which is which amidst all the complex backstory and wording.


Many encounters have notes about adjusting the "difficulty", like "if you think your player are steamrolling the dungeon you can add 1d6 goblins in room 2B and 3d6 Mocron-Reiru in room XII"

No matter what the players are doing, no matter how innocuous the situation is, randomly stop and ask them to detail their actions and locations exactly like they're about to be ambushed.
Sometimes they are. Sometimes it's a really bad trap. Sometimes you just let out a sigh and say "ok, let's move on". There is no pattern.
Also, combat is officially played out on a grid but the DM must ignore the grid and run it as theater of the mind without telling players. Or vice versa. Lots of "how long are your arms" questions and wankery involving what exactly a flail does to a shield in 1400's Brittany, France.


Turgid Treasures! 


What about treasures? There ought to be just enough gold to make it feel like someone is making fun of you. 1d6 electrum pieces (electrum because it's a pain to manage) in a trapped chest?
A chest in every room with the same trap and the same reward perhaps?

I am reluctant to allow any meaningful treasures but I will accept - random piles of copper coins five meters deep. Half of the coins are actually a 3/4 copper/electrum mix (so you have to calculate the precise value. They have been painted to look like the copper coins which they are mixed in with. They have also been enchanted to explode if examined. The coins are also cursed.



Empty Rooms!


Room after room after room after room after room after room after room after room after room after room after room after BOOM CAMOFLAUGED RAPE ENGINE -

"I gotcha!" Chuckels Bocht Techt emerging from a hidden hole, "now thou are porke'd fore sure, unless thou answerest my mine riddles three!"


Evil Encumbrance!


What's the most fun part of dungeons? Tracking encumbrance. So this book will have it covered. It should go above and beyond and require the player to track their calorie intake, fatigue and hydration because all those things will impact how much they can carry.

Not sure how to track it? There will be maths equations the player has to use to track what their encumbrance level is. Half the rules are in the main book with the remaining rules in a supplement. The importance of tracking encumbrance is inconsistently linked to how some traps function. Progress is impossible without the excruciatingly detailed encumbrance rules.




YOU LIVE YOU DIE YOU LIVE AGAIN!




There is no escape from Backstory Castle! He he heeee

the Wizard Bocht Techt made a sorcery on it so that if you die in the Readaloud Maze you come back to life in a random place in the maze - just like Doom and the year 2020AD; the only way out is through!


Specifically detailed ending script, maybe with multiple options. But they're shitty, like a video game "which of these three levers do you pull" ending.

A long-winded and overly detailed explanation of What Happens Next that expects you to build your entire campaign around this dungeon. Intricate details about the plans of the various NPCs that leave no room for player interaction. The adventure railroads the GM.

Similarly long-winded "where to place this dungeon" section that covers where, exactly, down to the hex or grid coordinate, where you are SUPPOSED to place this dungeon in fifteen different published settings including specific NPCs who have But Thou Must'ed the PCs into entering the dungeon. Absolutely no advice on integrating it with a homebrew setting.

Sunday, 16 September 2012

The Verbs Of Madness

(I wrote this in E.Prime for reasons even I do not understand.)

Isle of the Unknown presents some problems. 

I need to make a random generator so my players know what their Dark Lord wants them to do.

But the things presented by the Isle and the things that grew through play do not go together well. 

We find each monster alone and in the centre of a ten mile hex, and encounter each Zodiacal Mage in one particualr position. They do not move.

Some clerics have a place.

We find some clerics and lesser mages in a state of movement, but always in the same place for the first time, after that we can find them anywhere.

Lesser NPC's have a town where they live and once found they can move between towns. I don't think it likely the players will find them anywhere else.

High level NPC's lock into particular positions. The story will only find them elsewhere for important reasons

I made an elegant and simple chart. The elegant chart did not do what I need it to. I made this ugly chart instead. I tried to use only evil verbs. Below I talk about how it works.

I used a D7 because, in the words of James Raggi 'fuck you, that's why'.

IN A PLACE 1 HEX# PASSIRISK WANTS YOU TO 1 MINDFUCK IN ORDER TO 1 MINDFUCK 1 HEX#
2 KILL 2 KILL
3 TAKE 3 TAKE
2 TOWN# 4 STEAL 4 STEAL 2 TOWN#
5 CORRUPT 5 CORRUPT
6 TERRORIZE 6 TERRORIZE
3 OOG 7 DISCOVER 7 DISCOVER 3 OOG
8 HIDE 8 HIDE
9 IMPLICATE 9 IMPLICATE
THERE IS A PERSON 4 MAGE 10 SEDUCE/PERSUADE 10 SEDUCE/PERSUADE 4 MAGE
11 BURN 11 BURN
12 DESTROY 12 DESTROY
5 CLERIC 13 BURN 13 BURN 5 CLERIC
14 MUTILATE 14 MUTILATE
15 RETREIVE 15 RETREIVE
6 MONSTER 16 ASSASINATE 16 ASSASINATE 6 MONSTER
17 CONTROL 17 CONTROL
18 KIDNAP 18 KIDNAP
7 NPC 19 MOCK AND SNEER AT 19 MOCK AND SNEER AT 7 NPC
20 EXPOSE 20 EXPOSE

HEX# Use description, or roll bandits, or add dungeon.
TOWN# Roll district/then profession/then person
OOG# The Capital. Roll Strata/then Mystery/Profession/Person
MAGE# Roll Mage/assign name if neccessary
CLERIC# Random roll/assign name
MONSTER# Roll HD/Roll Monster/Assign name if cool or very big/possibly roll lair, dungeon, caves, ruin.
NPC# use big list of people met so far. 

Roll a d7 and a d20 to find someone/something and what Passirisk wants you to do to them. Choose whatever makes sense. The roll a d7 and d20 again to find out what he intends to achieve by this.

Things needed. Monster Name List. plan of Oog. Master NPC name list.

Questions - Will this get them into enough dungeons? Have I trigger-warining'd myself with too many bad verbs? Can I see some of this shit through? Should I?

Tuesday, 27 December 2011

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

is a bit like old-school D&D. The makers finally realised that technology is more interesting when it goes wrong.

A lot of Spy films are about the thrill of watching people think very quickly in difficult situations. They are also about the pleasures of technology. Smooth, powerful toys that no-one else has.

But the toys are in conflict with the thinking. They erode each other. The writers need to go from one place to another very quickly, or they need a plot problem solved. So they invent a nice piece of technology to get it out of the way. Over time these pieces of technology add up until eventually no problems require thought or creative action, only tech.

In between doing the washing up I remember catching parts of an episode of Terra Nova. Terra Nova is Brannon Braga's boring 'Homesteaders in Prehistory' show. I was surprised because it looked like it was about to become interesting. A rock fell from the sky and with the power of bad science it destroyed all the technology in the settlement.

I was convinced that this would lead to some embodied dramatic actions on the part of the cast. Without their bullshit future-science they would have to think creatively and intelligently and make tough decisions.

Instead of this it turned out there was one machine left and it could fix all the other machines. So the whole show became about the cast waiting for a machine to work.

The makers of the Mission Impossible series (probably Brad Bird the director) have realised that technology is more interesting when it goes wrong, and that's what it does all through the film. Things are taken away from the cast and we get at least the illusion of interesting choices.


The gap between new and old editions of D&D is a little like this. People like toys. So they add more and more toys to the game. Eventually it becomes like a box of shiny plastic objects. It becomes unsatisfying and feels empty. So we take the toys away and begin again.


If we extend the lessons learnt from MI: Ghost Protocol to D&D we find two things.


One - Bullshit is more interesting when it doesn't work that when it does. It's also more interesting for the bullshit to be there in the first place and then to go wrong than for it to be taken away entirely. So maybe 5th edition should have exactly as much bullshit but more ways for it to go wrong.

Two - There is only one Mission Impossible film in which Tom Cruise is not either disavowed, turned against, betrayed by or excluded from his own agency. Its also the least interesting one of the films. So maybe games of D&D should begin with the players already having a lot of money and status and it being taken away from them*. Or being bodyguards for a Dragon and it going wrong. Of being thrown out of a dungeon. Or trying to escape a magical destiny in order to become a lowly swineherd.

(*I did have the idea that one of the starting options for a single player for my D&D game would be to have no skills, no equipment and no spells but to have about a million gold pieces on a cart and nothing else. It would change the whole nature of the game.)

This might be another example of the counter-stream, like in cyberpunk. In D&D (Old School) players are supposed to be greedy bastards. The game supports this. But if they are only greedy bastards and nothing else the game is quite uninteresting. So the game assumes there is a human element to the play that is not, and cannot be, covered by the rules. People will want to be heroes, not all the time, but a little. And this will naturally bring them into conflict with the games mechanic and that is part of what makes the game interesting.


I really need to think of a word or a term that describes the invisible unseen part of a game that assumes you will play against the described part of the rules, not by breaking them, or subverting them to win the game, but in that your natural humaness sort of pushes against the way the game makes you play and that this is a natural and expected part of play.


'Invisirules' is not a good name.


Someone German has probably already thought of this. But its probably one of those horrendous epic compound words. If any of my invisible non-existent readers know of it, please let me know.

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

A Review of 'Quest of the Mist Golem, Module QMG1, Mist Hold'

Zack S requested reviews for free adventures here.

So I have reviewed 'Quest of the Mist Golem from the Delvers Dungeon 


A Review of 'Quest of the Mist Golem, Module QMG1, Mist Hold'

  1. 1. What kind of adventure is it? (Location based? Dungeon? Town? Etc.)
It's a standard break-and-entry on an abandoned wizards tower.

So there's a lot of political bullshit at the beginning. Then the good stuff, a guy who guards his home with evil mists, kidnaps children and turns them into little demonic Frankenstein dopplegangers. An evil guy who is being evil mainly because he's a prick, and not for any other reasons.

He wants to create a Golem that's intelligent and 'utterly loyal'? Presumably because he's never seen an episode of 'The Outer Limits'. He also traded with an Ice Demon for the ability to make Doll Golems and intends to create a city-destroying Golem of Mist. I like that he is using the most impractical methods possible to fuck with peoples shit.

People found out he was up to bad stuff when he sent back children he'd stolen from the city after turning them into possessed doll-golems and they ended up killing their parents and doing surgery on pets.

The city sent some guys to investigate. They found a doll thing that killed some of them and told them the boss was gone. The tower was locked, they couldn’t get in. Considering the matter closed, they went home.

It's now 'many years later.' There's some magnificent DM bullshit where the heads of the city under threat have received 'prophetic dreams' from their god Rao telling them exactly what the threat is and who is behind it but forbidding them to leave the city to do anything about it. Which is an elegant touch of divine perversity. They send the PC's to find the evil wizard.

2. How long is it?

Not very long at all is you just count the interesting stuff. If you want to drag through all the finding-the-key, searching for traps, oh-look-another-abandoned-room stuff then its about a session long. Possibly two.

3. Were there any particularly noteworthy things in it? (Monsters, traps, plot ideas, mechanics, etc.)

There is a mini hex map with nothing on it. For a journey which we've already been told only takes a day and which will be 'uneventful'.

Every night mist rises from the ground near the tower and kills everything in it. So you can only gain access during the day. You are also safe from the mist in the tower, so no time limit there.

There is some rather boring treasure, except that some of it is black coral. I would just dump the rest and have the evil wizard paying his Gnolls in Black Coral. It's vaguely poetic.

Almost every door is warded. The wizards wards stop you going anywhere the designer doesn't want you to go until you get the key. But the game doesn't tell you there is a key. On the plus side, they also act as a magical fire extinguisher, which is pleasingly practical and common sense-like. Don't want your tower burning down after all.

The Evil wizard had a visitors book to sign if you came to his tower. What the fucking fuck? Who visits Murq of the Mists the child killer with the Gnoll army and signs their name? He uses the signatures for evil scrying. I am keeping this as it is mental.

Examining the book will not reveal any names of note.” Why not? That would be incredibly cool.

Names of all the books, some nice paintings of very particular bogs, a nature or knowledge check tells you exactly which bogs they are, which sounds boring now I come to write it down but which was vaguely thrilling when I read it. “Wait! I know that bog!” Adventure gives you exact details of each bog and the time of day the painting represents. For no apparent reason. I like that. One named book has a GP value given if sold to 'a Sage'.

Correspondence with other evil wizards! But no details given, still useful though. Module tells you exactly how many sheets of parchment, paper, vellum and papyrus the wizard left behind?

He also left his diary in which he explains his entire motivation and describes his plans. So there goes any sense of mystery.

A shelf of random dungeon maps!

An ever-full inkwell that never empties is worth 400 XP for picking it up off a desk? Take it home and set up an ink business?

A quill that magically transcribes any voice in 30 feet? Even if you can't hear it?

The wizard also left a memo on his desk detailing his future plans and possible new security systems. Can't really blame him for that one. I carry my banking login number in my wallet with my card, where else are you going to keep it?

Chest in the Wizards bedroom is a DM's fuck-you trap, try to take his stuff and rust-gas ruins your stuff. Strongbox in the chest is full of fools gold, also ruins your gold if you place it inside. (Why would you?) Wizard also left lots of magic items for killing trolls. Trolls are his guards. This is a bit less forgiveable. Like hiding your key under the mat.

There are two kitchens in this tower BUT NO TOILET ANYWHERE. Upper kitchen has a waste disposal chute, 'ah-ha' I think, time for some innovative lateral thinking, and sure enough, it comes out in an area below and can be climbed by “any creature of Dwarf or Halfling size” but then I read “however, they will find it too slippery to maintain a grip and will slide the length of it to land in the water four levels belowfor 2d6 damage." So that was totally, totally pointless.

There are some more paintings of bogs and an awesome painting of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Smart players will simply cut these out and sell them. No values are given.

The best things aout this are the child-golems that twitch and slur. When they attack they scream things like 'I don't want to hurt you!' and 'I'm a good boy!' When you kill them they turn back into children. If they bite you then you laugh yourself to death.

The top floor makes it all worth it. A huge, ruined magical lab. An innocent doll-golem locked in a trunk, a trunk full of miniturised monsters that wake up and grow if you touch them. A bell jar with a crazy, violent time-frozen doll golem in it. The bones of the Wizards girlfriend (he dissolved her!) Her ghost can info-dump about the rest of the stuff in the tower. A scrying pool with some wierd rules. Some crazy rancid potions with fun and unpredictable side effects. A summoning circle that doesnt work. Why not?

The miniturised monsters can regenerate. If given a moment to think, they will simply jump out of the tower, smash onto the ground below, wait to regenerate, and run off into the woods. I like that, tactical thinking.

The advenure says to treat each corner of the room seperately and take it all slowly. No way am I doing that. All at once!

Finally, at the very end of the adventure you come to the part you have to do first. This is stupid. It should be at the beginning.

In the basement there are rats. The rats have stats. The rats won't fight unless cornered and there is no reason to corner them. So why do they have stats?

The wizard fed his Gnolls renewable meat. There is a slab of troll steak on a table. Remove it and the troll grows back! If you ignore or forget about it then the troll slowly regenerates, eats the rats in the room and silently hunts you through the tower. That is nice work.

There is a basement room with deadly (giant) spiders and a message and a flooded room with deadly (giant) water beetles and the key you need to access the rest of the tower. Deadly water beetles sound much more fun. They swin on bubbles of air. Can you pop the bubbles? I hope so.

"The trip back to Veluna City should be uneventful." Why?

"The more complete a report given to the High Priest of Veluna, the faster he will be able to divine Murq’s exact present location on Oerth." Why can't the players figure it out themselves?

"As a final point, the empty premises of Murq’s forest tower, Mist Hold, could become a DM’s nightmare if handled improperly. Allowing mid-level players permanent access to a mage’s warded stronghold as a base can take much of the danger (and fun) out of later, high-level play."

And make it MORE AWESOME, you have a WIZARDS TOWER

4. What sort of vibe is going on in it? (Creepy? Gonzo? Sword and sorcery? Chivalry? Etc.)

The vibe is pure standard D&D with a bit of child-killing horror thrown in. You could play the empty rooms of the wizards tower for slow-burn stress-horror if you played it right.

5. Would you run it? Why or why not?

If I were running this I would strongly infer that the rulers of the city were corrupt cowards, too scared to deal with it themselves.

The adventure begins with the party waiting two minutes to speak to a High Priest. Why begin in a fucking waiting room? In fact, since the interaction is totally scripted, why not just info dump the players and drop them straight in?

My mistake, there is one paragraph about what happens if the PC's refuse the mission. They hear about the city falling three months later.

I would throw out the overarching plot points. Just have it as a random tower. The paintings, letters, books, random dungeon maps and visitors ledger in the tower make it very good for connecting to any other adventure. You can run information both too and from the encounter if you wish.

The tower is meant to be partially ruined, you can dig in through the rubble. But it starts re-building itself once the PC's enter, trapping them inside? Kind of boring and illogical. I wouldn't bother with that, or with most of the warded doors and simply have them enter through the caverns in the basement. Actually, you could link the whole thing up to a dungeon or megadungeon that way.

There is an invisible chef in the kitchen that does nothing but clean and cook food. I would probably have it get violent if the PC's leave a mess.

If the PC's take over the tower, the nightly death-mist is meant to disperse. I would leave it as it makes the whole thing a bit more interesting. You are safe (but trapped) during the night and unsafe (but free) during the day.

6. Does it resemble anything we might've seen before?

I suspect it closely resembles every single wizards-tower adventure anyone has ever seen. Traps, locks, a few monsters, hastily written notes a convenient diary and a ghost.

Note – THERE IS NO MIST GOLEM IN THIS ADVENTURE, THAT WAS THE ONLY REASON I READ THE DAMMN THING.

The Mist Golem is meant to turn up later on when you track the guy down in his all-new bog fortress with the Trolls. I really wanted there to be one.