B is for BOOKS
Roll 1d12!
There is a cumulative 1-in-12 chance per dungeon level that a found book has Special Properties.
Random Special Properties of Books
1 The book is CURSED, and reading it activates the curse.
2 Reading the book makes the reader permanently immune to the effect of one random spell. If the spell is beneficial, the character must succeed a saving throw vs. spells in order to allow themselves to be affected by it.
3 Biological monograph on local monster species reveals one heretofore unanticipated combat vulnerability.
4 Extremely extended family trees for ruling families of several demihuman and humanoid races reveals their previously unknown shared evolutionary origins.
5 Field manual with extensive marginalia on a random skill (as thief) provides a +1 (or +17%) bonus to the first 1d6 attempts to use that skill. There is a flat 1-in-12 chance per skill use that this bonus will become permanent. Each skill use requires 1 exploration turn of consultation before the attempt.
6 Encyclopedic volume on a random area of expertise (as a sage) provides answers to the first 1d12 questions on that topic. Due to verbosity and inadequate indexing, each question takes 4 hours to look up an answer.
7 Over-hyped divination manual with ludicrous illustrations of author's cosmic power actually does foretell the future. The first 1d6 readers each gain a random fortune after staying up all night reading it.
8 Ineffectual-looking but surprisingly potent self-help manual provides tips and exercises to be a better person. After 1d6 weeks of use, the reader gains a permanent +1d6 to a random ability score. Subsequent readers spend 1d12 weeks to discover they get no benefit at all, and become convinced that original player character has been duped by a flim-flam author.
9 Extensive theological treatise sufficient to allow a player character to scribe scrolls to banish, bind, dismiss, ensnare, summon, or torment one random demon god of the underworld, plus one such scroll already completed.
10 Schematic allowing the player characters to assemble one random piece of anti-diluvean technology.
11 Pre-apocalyptic novel is a guaranteed best-seller. Every merchant the player character meet is going to want to buy the "rare surface edition" and put it into mass production. Every NPC the characters meet will be reading (or re-reading) the book and will want to talk of nothing else. There is a flat 1 in 6 chance each week that it's finally been replaced by some other underworld FASHION.
12 First-hand historical account of previous apocalypse implicates ancestors of the rulers of the nearest city in unforgivable war crimes. Revelation of this information will topple the regime leading to a week of rioting followed by weekly coups as each new faction temporarily ascends to fill the power vacuum. There is a flat 1 in 6 chance per week that the current leading faction manages to solidify its control of the city to become the new permanent rulers.
Friday, October 18, 2019
Monday, October 14, 2019
Dark Old Miscellany - Black Food, Black Houses, Old Food, Winter Gardens
The Allure of Black-Colored Food
Ligaya Mishan
New York Times
"So what does the color black taste like? More precisely, what do our brains tell us it should taste like? From experience, we might expect the tartness of blackberries or the brininess of black olives or the near-bitterness of charred meat and blistered pizza crusts. Black is the menthol buzz of licorice or the density of rough bread from countries near the Arctic Circle, where the winter months see only a few hours of daylight. It’s marine, like rice blackened by cuttlefish ink in Valencia, Spain, or turfy, like rice blackened by long-soaked djon-djon mushrooms in Haiti. It’s the mineral tang of British blood pudding, Ecuadorian morcilla, Tibetan gyuma, French boudin noir. It’s the funk of huitlacoche, a fungus borne of rotting corn, blossoming like a nuclear cloud out of the dying cob, a delicacy in Mexico. It’s the subtle presence of vanilla, announced by sootlike black spots, scraped from the hard furrowed pod. But even given these associations, when I see a food that’s not naturally black turned that dramatic shade, it strikes me as so discordant that I expect it to taste like nothing I’ve tried before."
New on the Block: The Little Black House
Hayley Krischer
New York Times
"Black represents sadness, anger or grief for many. But that’s not all. Black also evokes a sense of richness and power. Black can be enveloping and warm, and even signify high drama. In medieval times, Ms. Gura said, black was associated with royalty; it was luxurious. Black can be practical too. In northern Europe, where tar was used as a water sealant on exteriors, the color stuck."
"Black is a color of provocation. Nineteenth-century anarchists waved their black flag. Twentieth-century fascists loved it. Beat poets, punks and Goths made it their brand. The Black Panthers wore black leather jackets and black berets. When the fashion designer Rei Kawakubo introduced everyday black clothes in the early 1980s, critics described the collection as 'post-atomic.' Most recently, black is what women in Hollywood and Congress chose to wear to express solidarity with victims of sexual assault."
The Novel Taste of Old Food
Ligaya Mishan
New York Times
"Food past its imagined prime can surprise us, like the 'vintage carrot.' It was a dish borne of scarcity in a cruel winter, carrots that had been left to languish in the earth in iced-over fields, whose skin was as rough as hide. By all appearances they were inedible, but once braised for hours like a côte de boeuf, they turned meaty, mineral and profound."
"Some flavors and textures can only be achieved by pushing foods beyond their limit. Banana bread calls for bananas gone black, verging on mush. Without stale bread, there would be no bread pudding."
"The decline toward rot - arrested at the last minute - is what creates umami, a flavor that defies categorization, that smacks of deep sea and forest floor, animal entrails and sun-gorged tomatoes. Everything that is fermented, too, was en route to death and pulled back from the brink. Pickling is salvation - this was especially true before refrigeration, when we needed to eke out supplies to make it through the winter."
The Barren Charms of a Winter Garden
Ligaya Mishan
New York Times
"To flower, literally and figuratively, is to reach the peak of one’s possibility, from which there is no direction but down. Or so we have been taught: that lushness equals splendor, that when a blossom wilts and fails, the plant that bore it is finished, returned to drabness, spent of purpose. Spring is a pageant, winter a graveyard."
"Edney embraces a plant’s full life cycle, in flower and in death - where others dismiss winter as a dormant, liminal season, he insists that vitality may be found all year. For a seed head is no drab aftermath. Like a flower, it adds color to a landscape, from russets and umbers to flaring golds to lunar whites. One of Edney’s favorites, Veronicastrum virginicum 'Lavendelturm,' retains its spikes in winter, upright, skinnier, with a blush of purple deepening into brown. In lieu of ripeness, seed heads throughout the gardens present an eerie, ossified architecture: tight-mouthed trumpets of Iris sibirica, alliums like exploding stars. Flat-topped sedum might reach barely 10 inches, while miscanthus (silver grass) towers eight feet high, with long woolly tapers of seeds drifting down."
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Landmark, Hidden, Secret
There are three ways I think about information in roleplaying games. Information can be landmark, or hidden, or it can be secret.
This division can apply to locations on an overland maps, objects within dungeon rooms, and even to details about locations and objects that the players encounter.
Landmark information is automatic and free. Players hear landmark information the first time without asking, and if they ask, they can be reminded of it as freely as they heard it at first. Learning landmark information doesn't take up any fictional time and doesn't pose any risks.
In a hexcrawl, the keyed encounter is a landmark, but so is the type of terrain. In a dungeon, the main contents of the room is free information, but also the shape of the room and its dimensions. You don't have to ask to be told these things - being told them is what defines a context in which you can ask meaningful questions. It's what defines the start of the turn, what sets the stage where the next act of the game will take place. If your adventure includes read-aloud text, that's landmark information.
An ordinary exit door is an example of a landmark. The judge tells the players the door is there during the initial description of the room. Later, if a player asks, the judge can describe the door in detail again, as though the character is glancing across the room, or recalling it from memory.
Hidden information isn't automatic - players have to ask to learn it. And it often isn't free - there is often some fictional cost that must be paid to learn hidden information. However, unlike secret information, there is no chance of failure. If the players ask the question and pay the cost, they will learn the hidden information.
Landmark information is free because the characters can learn it from a distance, simply by looking at the surface of a thing. Hidden information is more expensive because it's more intimate. To learn it, a character must be close enough to touch the thing, must interact with it directly. Landmark information is received passively. Hidden information is actively obtained.
There are two costs to learning hidden information. The first cost, which is possible but not mandatory, is time. If your game keeps track of time, then it's possible that learning hidden information will require allowing some to pass. A turn passes, a clock moves one tick, wandering monsters are checked for, the encounter dice rolls.
The second cost is risk. What's hidden might not be beneficial, or might include both benefits and harms. What's hidden might be a hazard, an ambush, a trap. Discovering what's hidden doesn't always mean being harmed, but it does always mean making your character vulnerable to harm. There's no way to learn what's hidden without taking that risk.
The contents of every treasure chest are hidden information, every cabinet, every closet, every safe. Everything under or behind or inside is hidden. Seeking out and finding hidden information is one of the main goals of the game. Our characters don't simply look at the most obvious features of each room before moving on to the next. They explore.
A door concealed behind a curtain is an example of something hidden. The curtains themselves are a landmark, but the judge doesn't announce what's behind them. To find the door, a player must ask what's behind the curtains, must place their character at risk to push them aside.
Secret information has no guarantees at all. It is the opposite of automatic, and it's always expensive. It's not just that players have to ask for secret information, as they do with hidden; there is also a chance the judge will continue to withhold the information, unlike any previous type. To learn secret information, players must roll the dice and win. That extra risk, not just of injury but of failure, is what makes secret information more costly than hidden.
Whether players can even learn the existence of secret information is something I think judges disagree about. Some judges would say that proving the existence of a secret and revealing the information should be accomplished as a single step - if you can't reveal the information, then you can't know if there even is a secret there to be revealed. Other judges would say that proving there's a secret and learning what the secret is are two separate steps requiring two different skills. Both those approaches seem to agree on one thing though - the existence of a secret is a secret itself.
I would say that the existence of a secret should be hidden information. I would say that players should be able to prove there is a secret by asking a question and taking a risk. Actually learning the secret should require rolling the dice, but discovering that there IS a secret there to be learned should not be a secret unto itself.
One thing that's useful about this hierarchy I've established is that it helps me think about how players should learn information. You discover hidden information by examining landmarks. You learn secrets by examining hidden information.
There is one comfort for players whose judges make the existence of a secret a secret itself. A player can always suspect the existence of secret information, even if their character can't prove it. This is more or less what some judges mean when they talk about "player skill".
A device that causes a bookshelf to rotate out of the way, revealing a doorway when a particular combination of books are tilted at specific angles, is an example of a secret. The bookshelf is a landmark. The existence of the device is hidden, but any character who inspects it closely will notice that the bookshelf is perfectly flush with the wall, and that the floor is scratched and scuffed in a half-circle in front of it. The operation of the device, however, is a secret. It's not enough to spend time trying to activate the device. There is a chance the characters will try but still fail.
I think there are two benefits to thinking about information this way. Thinking about the difference between landmarks and hidden information helps write and tell better descriptions. Thinking about the difference between hidden information and secrets helps decide how to resolve player actions.
The difference between landmark information and hidden information isn't just the difference between what you say when players first enter a room and what they have to ask you to find out. It's also the difference between information that is free and information that comes at a cost.
You actually don't have to give a detailed description of everything the characters can see when they first enter a room. In fact, you probably shouldn't. Down that road lies madness, and ten-minute long read-aloud text. It's probably better if your initial description is short and evocative, if it sets the mood and lists the items available to investigate, and then gets out of the way. That doesn't mean all the other information is hidden. For many items on that list, your additional description should be free, and should be as detailed as the player would like. But it does mean that some information is hidden, and you should know which information is free, and which information takes time or involves risk to learn.
It also helps to think about those occasions when information shouldn't be free. When a character is unfamiliar with a work of technology or magic, they should get a description that makes what's familiar to the player strange to the character. When it's dark, perhaps all that characters can learn for free is the shape and size of objects, perhaps under those conditions more information should be hidden and risky. Total darkness is boring. But instead, think of those moments in children's books about not being afraid of the dark, the moments when you realize the "intruder" is just a hat atop a coatrack, or the "monster" is just a pile of clothes in a chair. Those moments happen all the time in fiction, and hardly ever in games. If applied to more interesting objects than coatracks and laundry, they might add a certain feeling of wonder and mystery to experience of exploring in the dark. Total darkness is a total lack of information. Not everything should be hidden. But having some information require extra effort to collect makes that information stand out. Its very difficulty highlights it, and makes it dear.
The difference between hidden information and secret information is that hidden information only requires getting close and only requires that the character spend time on the task. Secret information requires something more, something extra. Ideally, it requires applying a skill that can't - or can't easily - be modeled by player description. In my example of the secret door earlier, if it was just one tilted book that activated the device instead of a combination, it would probably only be a hidden door. All that takes is time, and there's no chance of failure. To guess a combination though, takes too much time, more time than the characters have, and there's plenty of opportunity to guess wrong. So it makes sense to roll the dice.
If all a search requires is time, and the characters have enough time, then what they're searching for is simply hidden, and they can find it without needing to roll the dice. Checking all the burial niches in a funerary crypt where the dead are interred as though in a vault of unlocked safety deposit boxes, digging up a grave, breaking down a false wall or a bricked-over doorway: these all take time - and sometimes make noise - but they require no particular skill, involve no particular risk of making a mistake or overlooking something.
Something can become secret simply because there's not enough time to find it. A methodical all-day search might be certain to turn up what you're looking for - but to uncover it in a single, 10 minute exploration turn requires luck or insight or skill. It requires rolling the dice. For there to be not enough time there has to be some kind of time pressure, some kind of countdown or deadline, either narrative or mechanical, some kind of reason the characters can't just spend all day. Remember, for the players, that search only takes as long as they need to say they agree to it.
There can also be not enough time because of the skill required to make the search. Not all problems have easy solutions. Trying to solve them just by spending time might require, not hours, but years, centuries. Knowing how to solve a problem like that quickly is a skill. It's special knowledge that not everyone - not every character - possesses. And even if a character has the right skill, there's still a chance that they'll fail. So roll the dice. Roll the dice, because the alternative is to make the players try to act out their characters' searches. Roll the dice because while the characters might have all day, the players don't, and their time, your time, is worth more than trying to devise and explain the correct search algorithm.
Again, not everything that isn't a landmark should be a secret. Some things can simply be hidden. Having to explicitly request to look closer is already a barrier to discovery. The additional barrier of a dice roll is appropriate in some situations, but not every situation.. But before rolling the dice, decide if the information is secret or just hidden - decide what it would mean for the characters to be able to fail in their search. If you don't think they even could fail, then it's not really a secret, and you don't need to roll the dice.
Some games include conditional information that is halfway between hidden and secret. Like secret information, it can't simply be found by every character who looks. But under the right conditions, it can be found, with no chance of failure, like hidden information. Skills in Trail of Cthulhu and its sister games work like that. If you have the right skill and you search for a clue, you will find it. But if you don't have the skill, you simply can't find it. Equipment in a lot of video games works this way. In A Link to the Past, if Link has the right magic gloves, he can lift boulders to clear a path, but without them, the path remains blocked. In Super Metroid, Samus needs specific ammunition to shoot down specific doors; without the right ammo, the doors remain closed.
A final note is that some games have only secrets, with no hidden information that can be learned without making a skill test. In the earliest dungeons, you can't even open a door without passing a skill test. I think how difficult it is to gain information should be based on its importance to the game.
If the players have to know some information, it should be landmark. This is true of all the visual description needed to create a shared image of the game world in everyone's imagination.
If information is really important, it should probably be landmark or hidden. No player wants their judge to "fudge" and lie about the result of a dice roll, or to "railroad" and seize control of the characters to make them do something ... but no one wants to cancel their expedition and spend the rest of the session hastily putting together a back-up delve just because they couldn't find the one secret door that revealed the rest of the dungeon either.
Information can safely be made secret under one of two conditions. The first is if that information is truly optional. It might be very nice for the players to find it, but the game won't come to a complete halt if they can't. The second condition is if there are a variety of ways to learn the information. If there are at least three ways to learn a piece of information, and the characters botch every attempt, then perhaps it's okay to let them fail. No one wants the entire group's game to end for the night because of one bad dice roll, but three bad dice rolls, accompanied by three rounds of planning and three narrative descriptions of the attempt mean that failure hasn't stopped the game - watching the characters fail has become the game, at least for this night and this secret.
This division can apply to locations on an overland maps, objects within dungeon rooms, and even to details about locations and objects that the players encounter.
 |
| A landmark in Super Metroid Closer inspection reveals something, hidden or secret, underneath |
Landmark information is automatic and free. Players hear landmark information the first time without asking, and if they ask, they can be reminded of it as freely as they heard it at first. Learning landmark information doesn't take up any fictional time and doesn't pose any risks.
In a hexcrawl, the keyed encounter is a landmark, but so is the type of terrain. In a dungeon, the main contents of the room is free information, but also the shape of the room and its dimensions. You don't have to ask to be told these things - being told them is what defines a context in which you can ask meaningful questions. It's what defines the start of the turn, what sets the stage where the next act of the game will take place. If your adventure includes read-aloud text, that's landmark information.
An ordinary exit door is an example of a landmark. The judge tells the players the door is there during the initial description of the room. Later, if a player asks, the judge can describe the door in detail again, as though the character is glancing across the room, or recalling it from memory.
 |
| Most chozo statues holds a treasure, but to collect, you must risk approaching One statue will carry you to safety, another will fight you to the death |
Hidden information isn't automatic - players have to ask to learn it. And it often isn't free - there is often some fictional cost that must be paid to learn hidden information. However, unlike secret information, there is no chance of failure. If the players ask the question and pay the cost, they will learn the hidden information.
Landmark information is free because the characters can learn it from a distance, simply by looking at the surface of a thing. Hidden information is more expensive because it's more intimate. To learn it, a character must be close enough to touch the thing, must interact with it directly. Landmark information is received passively. Hidden information is actively obtained.
There are two costs to learning hidden information. The first cost, which is possible but not mandatory, is time. If your game keeps track of time, then it's possible that learning hidden information will require allowing some to pass. A turn passes, a clock moves one tick, wandering monsters are checked for, the encounter dice rolls.
The second cost is risk. What's hidden might not be beneficial, or might include both benefits and harms. What's hidden might be a hazard, an ambush, a trap. Discovering what's hidden doesn't always mean being harmed, but it does always mean making your character vulnerable to harm. There's no way to learn what's hidden without taking that risk.
The contents of every treasure chest are hidden information, every cabinet, every closet, every safe. Everything under or behind or inside is hidden. Seeking out and finding hidden information is one of the main goals of the game. Our characters don't simply look at the most obvious features of each room before moving on to the next. They explore.
A door concealed behind a curtain is an example of something hidden. The curtains themselves are a landmark, but the judge doesn't announce what's behind them. To find the door, a player must ask what's behind the curtains, must place their character at risk to push them aside.
 |
| Samus Aran's x-ray scope reveals secrets, if she makes the choice to use it Some walls can be destroyed with the correct weapon ... |
Secret information has no guarantees at all. It is the opposite of automatic, and it's always expensive. It's not just that players have to ask for secret information, as they do with hidden; there is also a chance the judge will continue to withhold the information, unlike any previous type. To learn secret information, players must roll the dice and win. That extra risk, not just of injury but of failure, is what makes secret information more costly than hidden.
Whether players can even learn the existence of secret information is something I think judges disagree about. Some judges would say that proving the existence of a secret and revealing the information should be accomplished as a single step - if you can't reveal the information, then you can't know if there even is a secret there to be revealed. Other judges would say that proving there's a secret and learning what the secret is are two separate steps requiring two different skills. Both those approaches seem to agree on one thing though - the existence of a secret is a secret itself.
I would say that the existence of a secret should be hidden information. I would say that players should be able to prove there is a secret by asking a question and taking a risk. Actually learning the secret should require rolling the dice, but discovering that there IS a secret there to be learned should not be a secret unto itself.
One thing that's useful about this hierarchy I've established is that it helps me think about how players should learn information. You discover hidden information by examining landmarks. You learn secrets by examining hidden information.
There is one comfort for players whose judges make the existence of a secret a secret itself. A player can always suspect the existence of secret information, even if their character can't prove it. This is more or less what some judges mean when they talk about "player skill".
A device that causes a bookshelf to rotate out of the way, revealing a doorway when a particular combination of books are tilted at specific angles, is an example of a secret. The bookshelf is a landmark. The existence of the device is hidden, but any character who inspects it closely will notice that the bookshelf is perfectly flush with the wall, and that the floor is scratched and scuffed in a half-circle in front of it. The operation of the device, however, is a secret. It's not enough to spend time trying to activate the device. There is a chance the characters will try but still fail.
 |
| ... some floors destroy themselves at the slightest touch The most dangerous secrets are the ones you never thought to look for |
I think there are two benefits to thinking about information this way. Thinking about the difference between landmarks and hidden information helps write and tell better descriptions. Thinking about the difference between hidden information and secrets helps decide how to resolve player actions.
The difference between landmark information and hidden information isn't just the difference between what you say when players first enter a room and what they have to ask you to find out. It's also the difference between information that is free and information that comes at a cost.
You actually don't have to give a detailed description of everything the characters can see when they first enter a room. In fact, you probably shouldn't. Down that road lies madness, and ten-minute long read-aloud text. It's probably better if your initial description is short and evocative, if it sets the mood and lists the items available to investigate, and then gets out of the way. That doesn't mean all the other information is hidden. For many items on that list, your additional description should be free, and should be as detailed as the player would like. But it does mean that some information is hidden, and you should know which information is free, and which information takes time or involves risk to learn.
It also helps to think about those occasions when information shouldn't be free. When a character is unfamiliar with a work of technology or magic, they should get a description that makes what's familiar to the player strange to the character. When it's dark, perhaps all that characters can learn for free is the shape and size of objects, perhaps under those conditions more information should be hidden and risky. Total darkness is boring. But instead, think of those moments in children's books about not being afraid of the dark, the moments when you realize the "intruder" is just a hat atop a coatrack, or the "monster" is just a pile of clothes in a chair. Those moments happen all the time in fiction, and hardly ever in games. If applied to more interesting objects than coatracks and laundry, they might add a certain feeling of wonder and mystery to experience of exploring in the dark. Total darkness is a total lack of information. Not everything should be hidden. But having some information require extra effort to collect makes that information stand out. Its very difficulty highlights it, and makes it dear.
The difference between hidden information and secret information is that hidden information only requires getting close and only requires that the character spend time on the task. Secret information requires something more, something extra. Ideally, it requires applying a skill that can't - or can't easily - be modeled by player description. In my example of the secret door earlier, if it was just one tilted book that activated the device instead of a combination, it would probably only be a hidden door. All that takes is time, and there's no chance of failure. To guess a combination though, takes too much time, more time than the characters have, and there's plenty of opportunity to guess wrong. So it makes sense to roll the dice.
If all a search requires is time, and the characters have enough time, then what they're searching for is simply hidden, and they can find it without needing to roll the dice. Checking all the burial niches in a funerary crypt where the dead are interred as though in a vault of unlocked safety deposit boxes, digging up a grave, breaking down a false wall or a bricked-over doorway: these all take time - and sometimes make noise - but they require no particular skill, involve no particular risk of making a mistake or overlooking something.
Something can become secret simply because there's not enough time to find it. A methodical all-day search might be certain to turn up what you're looking for - but to uncover it in a single, 10 minute exploration turn requires luck or insight or skill. It requires rolling the dice. For there to be not enough time there has to be some kind of time pressure, some kind of countdown or deadline, either narrative or mechanical, some kind of reason the characters can't just spend all day. Remember, for the players, that search only takes as long as they need to say they agree to it.
There can also be not enough time because of the skill required to make the search. Not all problems have easy solutions. Trying to solve them just by spending time might require, not hours, but years, centuries. Knowing how to solve a problem like that quickly is a skill. It's special knowledge that not everyone - not every character - possesses. And even if a character has the right skill, there's still a chance that they'll fail. So roll the dice. Roll the dice, because the alternative is to make the players try to act out their characters' searches. Roll the dice because while the characters might have all day, the players don't, and their time, your time, is worth more than trying to devise and explain the correct search algorithm.
Again, not everything that isn't a landmark should be a secret. Some things can simply be hidden. Having to explicitly request to look closer is already a barrier to discovery. The additional barrier of a dice roll is appropriate in some situations, but not every situation.. But before rolling the dice, decide if the information is secret or just hidden - decide what it would mean for the characters to be able to fail in their search. If you don't think they even could fail, then it's not really a secret, and you don't need to roll the dice.
Some games include conditional information that is halfway between hidden and secret. Like secret information, it can't simply be found by every character who looks. But under the right conditions, it can be found, with no chance of failure, like hidden information. Skills in Trail of Cthulhu and its sister games work like that. If you have the right skill and you search for a clue, you will find it. But if you don't have the skill, you simply can't find it. Equipment in a lot of video games works this way. In A Link to the Past, if Link has the right magic gloves, he can lift boulders to clear a path, but without them, the path remains blocked. In Super Metroid, Samus needs specific ammunition to shoot down specific doors; without the right ammo, the doors remain closed.
A final note is that some games have only secrets, with no hidden information that can be learned without making a skill test. In the earliest dungeons, you can't even open a door without passing a skill test. I think how difficult it is to gain information should be based on its importance to the game.
If the players have to know some information, it should be landmark. This is true of all the visual description needed to create a shared image of the game world in everyone's imagination.
If information is really important, it should probably be landmark or hidden. No player wants their judge to "fudge" and lie about the result of a dice roll, or to "railroad" and seize control of the characters to make them do something ... but no one wants to cancel their expedition and spend the rest of the session hastily putting together a back-up delve just because they couldn't find the one secret door that revealed the rest of the dungeon either.
Information can safely be made secret under one of two conditions. The first is if that information is truly optional. It might be very nice for the players to find it, but the game won't come to a complete halt if they can't. The second condition is if there are a variety of ways to learn the information. If there are at least three ways to learn a piece of information, and the characters botch every attempt, then perhaps it's okay to let them fail. No one wants the entire group's game to end for the night because of one bad dice roll, but three bad dice rolls, accompanied by three rounds of planning and three narrative descriptions of the attempt mean that failure hasn't stopped the game - watching the characters fail has become the game, at least for this night and this secret.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Environmental Miscellany - Hideous Forest, Underland, Speculative Evolution
The Lessons of a Hideous Forest
William Bryant Logan & Damon Winter
New York Times
"The deeper we walked, the uglier the woods got. The invasive oriental bittersweet and porcelain berry, along with the native grape and the poison ivy, fought it out to win the game of overtopping trees, bringing them down in a heap. The carnage looked like Mathew Brady’s photos of Civil War corpses, piled along hillsides and behind walls, in leafless, lifeless winter, as dead as dead can be. But unlike the soldiers, the trees were not going to perish."
"The vines moved on in search of new upstanding hosts. Noticing that their tormentors were gone, the trees had sprouted. A few lateral branches on a black cherry, now standing straight up from its fallen trunk, were rising as new trees into the sky. Most would die as the old roots rotted, but some would put down their own. One hollow mulberry had been dangling root filaments from inside its trunk into the soil, so when the mother went down, a youngster was already arising. This is called phoenix regeneration. There couldn’t be a better name."
What Lies Beneath
Rebecca Giggs
The Atlantic
"Of all the earth’s terrestrial vertebrates, humans make the deepest incursions into the underground. The farthest that any animal, other than us, is known to burrow from the surface of the planet is 13 yards - the feat of, unbelievably, the Nile crocodile. Below this level live permanent troglodytes, organisms that never see the sunlight. Microbes and minuscule stygofauna - glassy snails, shrimplike creatures - bob in groundwater systems, and pale amphibians furl in the murkiest reaches of caves. A species of roundworm has been detected more than two miles belowground. Yet humans go even farther. Aided by excavating machines, people have delved to a record depth of 7.7 miles, straight into the rock off the Russian island of Sakhalin, and deeper (as far as we know) than the most cavernous marine trench."
Wild Speculation: Evolution After Humans
Lucy Jakub
New York Review of Books
"It’s an almost nostalgic vision: the megafauna that were driven extinct during the 'Age of Man' have been replaced by new species that bear an uncanny resemblance to their predecessors. Humanity’s enduring legacy is not its alteration of the environment - but that the extinctions we have precipitated will have left behind an array of empty niches, to be filled by whatever adaptable species are able to take advantage of them. Imagine a game of biogeographical musical chairs in which penguins have evolved comb-like beaks to sieve plankton as whales do, rats have replaced the big cats as dominant carnivores, cats swing through the tropical canopy chasing monkeys, and monkeys glide on flaps of skin like flying squirrels. The book’s central idea is convergent evolution: that similar traits arise independently in different species, to perform similar functions in similar environments."
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Dungeon Alphabet Dozen - A is also for ADVENTURERS
A is also for ADVENTURERS
Roll 1d12!
Rival adventuring parties usually have a leader plus 1d6 additional members. Whenever the player characters encounter a rival party, there is a cumulative 2-in-6 chance per party that they've re-encountered a rival they've met before. (As a result, there are never more than three rival teams at one time, but if one team dies...)
When first encountered, each member of a rival party is a random level. Roll 1d12: 1 Two levels lower than player characters, 2-3 One level lower than player characters, 4-9 Same level as player characters, 10-11 One level higher than player characters, 12 Two levels higher than player characters. Each time a rival party is re-encountered, there is a flat 1-in-12 chance that they've leveled up since the last encounter.
When determining reactions, roll 2d6, modified by Charisma: 2 worst, 3-6 bad, 7-11 good, 12 best. (Reactions are listed in best-to-worst order below for added inconvenience.)
Random Rival Adventuring Parties
1 A fantastically wealthy and idiotically foppish 0th-level dilettante is escorted through the underworld by a hyper-competent team of seasoned adventurers he's hired as "porters" and "torch-bearers" to show him around.
2 Handsome but generally clueless and romantically oblivious young man followed by entourage of wide-eyed and exceptionally talented young women in a variety of military and school uniforms who are obviously in love with him. The women will consider any female player characters or retainers to be dangerous rivals for the young man's affection, but some of them might develop competing crushes on a high-Charisma male character or retainer. Despite his general obliviousness, the young man is an unbelievably effective monster hunter, capable of hitting seemingly invulnerable opponents for massive amounts of damage.
3 A genius inventor leads his extended family of plucky adventurers. There's a cumulative 1-in-12 chance each per encounter that they've been transformed into anthropomorphic ducks by an experiment gone wrong. Each time they're encountered, they're out testing a new invention and insist on demonstrating it to/on the player characters. Depending on the reaction roll, the invention might be beneficial to the test subject, a random piece of anti-diluvean technology that the inventor will offer to sell to the player characters because he considers it a failure due to its lack of originality, completely ineffectual, or a dangerous weapon. (The inventor and his family are always friendly and affable - the reaction roll merely determines what kind of device they are friendly and affably trying to test on the player characters.)
4 A family of master criminals wearing black-and-white striped jumpsuits and black domino masks. Depending on the reaction roll, they might ask the characters to hold some treasure for them "until the heat dies down", open some locked doors and disarm some traps for the player characters as a demonstration of their skill, ask the player characters to join them on a "heist" before inevitably betraying them, or target the characters for a stick-up. When unloading goods from the characters during a betrayal or stick-up robbery, the criminals will prove to be far more interested in one random type of mundane object than in coinage or other treasure.
5 A team of adorable woodland creatures with whimsical names bearing miniature adventuring gear made from twigs, leaves, and acorns. They tend to like druids and elves and to dislike any other "giants" they encounter. Each time they're encountered, they're on a "mission" to rescue the victim of a kidnapping. Depending on the reaction roll, they might ask the player characters for help, attempt to detain them for questioning, believe that the characters are trying to thwart their rescue, or believe that one random character is the "victim" and attempt to return them to the nearest city the next time the party is asleep. They prefer to lay traps (pits, snares, deadfalls) and ambush the characters in their sleep rather than initiating direct combat. They have few hit points, but are hard to hit due to their small size and use of cover.
6 A hyper-intelligent talking dog leads a team of under-qualified amateur detectives. Each time they're encountered, they're searching for "clues" to solve a mystery. Depending on the reaction roll, they might ask the player characters for help, attempt to detain them for questioning, demand random items of mundane equipment as "clues", or be certain that the characters are guilty of the crime at the center of their "mystery".
7 A team of outcast mutant superheroes. Each has a garish spandex costume, a silly code-name, and a single MAGIC power they can use at will. Each time they're encountered, they're on a new "mission" to defeat a different "villain". Depending on the reaction roll, they might see the player characters as potential victims in need of protecting, as potential allies in their fight, as an unnecessary distraction from their "mission", or as their "villain" of the week.
8 Self-aggrandizing and belligerent "captain" wearing a yellow jumpsuit is accompanied by 1d3-1 intelligent and reasonable scientist advisors in blue jumpsuits and 1d12+1 security personnel in red jumpsuits. A reaction roll is only possible if advisors are present, otherwise the "captain" is unerringly hostile. The security personnel have only 1 hit point each and are incompetent combatants. When they're all defeated, the "captain" will teleport to safety. He always possesses a random piece of anti-diluvean technology that he drops on any roll of natural 1.
9 Mysterious figure in a space suit leads a team of technicolor plant- and fungus-humanoids. If the player character have lost a character or retainer to olive slime, purple moss, russet mold, or the like, that character's transformed body will definitely be present. Depending on the reaction roll, the figure may be willing to trade unique MATERIAL COMPONENTS for a proprietary medicine that cures the effects of such transformative threats, or may attempt to "recruit" player characters by transforming them.
10 A bright yellow giant is accompanied by technicolor spectral undead. If a player character or retainer has recently died, they will definitely be present. The giant is insane, always hungry, and utterly paranoid about the "ghosts" he claims follow him everywhere. Depending on the reaction roll, he may believe the player characters are "ghosts" and be terrified of them, warn the characters about the nearest actual undead threat, demand to eat all the characters' rations, or believe himself to be temporarily invulnerable and attempt to eat the player characters whole.
11 An angsty human barbarian with a random magic SWORD leads a group of half-animal, half-mineral monsters. Each creature has a natural attack that mimics the effect of a random spell, and makes a single weird alien sound that is nonetheless intelligible as conversation to the barbarian. He is determined to slay any "evil wizards" and destroy an "unholy magic items" he encounters, with predictable results for the player characters.
12 An undead anti-cleric with the power to "turn" living humans leads a party of undead crusaders to recover unholy relics for the glory of Hell. If a player character or retainer has recently died, they will definitely be present. The crusaders will demand the destruction of any holy symbols or divine magic items the characters posses, and will attempt to "convert" living characters and "recruit" recently dead ones to their anti-religion. Happily, they are also eager to trade to acquire any CURSED items in the characters' possession.
Roll 1d12!
Rival adventuring parties usually have a leader plus 1d6 additional members. Whenever the player characters encounter a rival party, there is a cumulative 2-in-6 chance per party that they've re-encountered a rival they've met before. (As a result, there are never more than three rival teams at one time, but if one team dies...)
When first encountered, each member of a rival party is a random level. Roll 1d12: 1 Two levels lower than player characters, 2-3 One level lower than player characters, 4-9 Same level as player characters, 10-11 One level higher than player characters, 12 Two levels higher than player characters. Each time a rival party is re-encountered, there is a flat 1-in-12 chance that they've leveled up since the last encounter.
When determining reactions, roll 2d6, modified by Charisma: 2 worst, 3-6 bad, 7-11 good, 12 best. (Reactions are listed in best-to-worst order below for added inconvenience.)
Random Rival Adventuring Parties
1 A fantastically wealthy and idiotically foppish 0th-level dilettante is escorted through the underworld by a hyper-competent team of seasoned adventurers he's hired as "porters" and "torch-bearers" to show him around.
2 Handsome but generally clueless and romantically oblivious young man followed by entourage of wide-eyed and exceptionally talented young women in a variety of military and school uniforms who are obviously in love with him. The women will consider any female player characters or retainers to be dangerous rivals for the young man's affection, but some of them might develop competing crushes on a high-Charisma male character or retainer. Despite his general obliviousness, the young man is an unbelievably effective monster hunter, capable of hitting seemingly invulnerable opponents for massive amounts of damage.
3 A genius inventor leads his extended family of plucky adventurers. There's a cumulative 1-in-12 chance each per encounter that they've been transformed into anthropomorphic ducks by an experiment gone wrong. Each time they're encountered, they're out testing a new invention and insist on demonstrating it to/on the player characters. Depending on the reaction roll, the invention might be beneficial to the test subject, a random piece of anti-diluvean technology that the inventor will offer to sell to the player characters because he considers it a failure due to its lack of originality, completely ineffectual, or a dangerous weapon. (The inventor and his family are always friendly and affable - the reaction roll merely determines what kind of device they are friendly and affably trying to test on the player characters.)
4 A family of master criminals wearing black-and-white striped jumpsuits and black domino masks. Depending on the reaction roll, they might ask the characters to hold some treasure for them "until the heat dies down", open some locked doors and disarm some traps for the player characters as a demonstration of their skill, ask the player characters to join them on a "heist" before inevitably betraying them, or target the characters for a stick-up. When unloading goods from the characters during a betrayal or stick-up robbery, the criminals will prove to be far more interested in one random type of mundane object than in coinage or other treasure.
5 A team of adorable woodland creatures with whimsical names bearing miniature adventuring gear made from twigs, leaves, and acorns. They tend to like druids and elves and to dislike any other "giants" they encounter. Each time they're encountered, they're on a "mission" to rescue the victim of a kidnapping. Depending on the reaction roll, they might ask the player characters for help, attempt to detain them for questioning, believe that the characters are trying to thwart their rescue, or believe that one random character is the "victim" and attempt to return them to the nearest city the next time the party is asleep. They prefer to lay traps (pits, snares, deadfalls) and ambush the characters in their sleep rather than initiating direct combat. They have few hit points, but are hard to hit due to their small size and use of cover.
6 A hyper-intelligent talking dog leads a team of under-qualified amateur detectives. Each time they're encountered, they're searching for "clues" to solve a mystery. Depending on the reaction roll, they might ask the player characters for help, attempt to detain them for questioning, demand random items of mundane equipment as "clues", or be certain that the characters are guilty of the crime at the center of their "mystery".
7 A team of outcast mutant superheroes. Each has a garish spandex costume, a silly code-name, and a single MAGIC power they can use at will. Each time they're encountered, they're on a new "mission" to defeat a different "villain". Depending on the reaction roll, they might see the player characters as potential victims in need of protecting, as potential allies in their fight, as an unnecessary distraction from their "mission", or as their "villain" of the week.
8 Self-aggrandizing and belligerent "captain" wearing a yellow jumpsuit is accompanied by 1d3-1 intelligent and reasonable scientist advisors in blue jumpsuits and 1d12+1 security personnel in red jumpsuits. A reaction roll is only possible if advisors are present, otherwise the "captain" is unerringly hostile. The security personnel have only 1 hit point each and are incompetent combatants. When they're all defeated, the "captain" will teleport to safety. He always possesses a random piece of anti-diluvean technology that he drops on any roll of natural 1.
9 Mysterious figure in a space suit leads a team of technicolor plant- and fungus-humanoids. If the player character have lost a character or retainer to olive slime, purple moss, russet mold, or the like, that character's transformed body will definitely be present. Depending on the reaction roll, the figure may be willing to trade unique MATERIAL COMPONENTS for a proprietary medicine that cures the effects of such transformative threats, or may attempt to "recruit" player characters by transforming them.
10 A bright yellow giant is accompanied by technicolor spectral undead. If a player character or retainer has recently died, they will definitely be present. The giant is insane, always hungry, and utterly paranoid about the "ghosts" he claims follow him everywhere. Depending on the reaction roll, he may believe the player characters are "ghosts" and be terrified of them, warn the characters about the nearest actual undead threat, demand to eat all the characters' rations, or believe himself to be temporarily invulnerable and attempt to eat the player characters whole.
11 An angsty human barbarian with a random magic SWORD leads a group of half-animal, half-mineral monsters. Each creature has a natural attack that mimics the effect of a random spell, and makes a single weird alien sound that is nonetheless intelligible as conversation to the barbarian. He is determined to slay any "evil wizards" and destroy an "unholy magic items" he encounters, with predictable results for the player characters.
12 An undead anti-cleric with the power to "turn" living humans leads a party of undead crusaders to recover unholy relics for the glory of Hell. If a player character or retainer has recently died, they will definitely be present. The crusaders will demand the destruction of any holy symbols or divine magic items the characters posses, and will attempt to "convert" living characters and "recruit" recently dead ones to their anti-religion. Happily, they are also eager to trade to acquire any CURSED items in the characters' possession.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Three Alternate Monster Lists
Brother Juniper from Goblin Flowers recently asked a question about alternate monster lists that jogged my memory for a few classic ones.
Roger G-S from Roles, Rules, and Rolls made Varlets & Vermin, 28 pages of low HD monsters and a smattering of public domain woodcuts that are exactly what you'd expect from the author of the Pergamino Barocco.
"Demi-Real Monster - When a summoning goes partly wrong, or an illusion of a living thing takes on existence, a demi-real creature is created. The monster starts out half-transparent and shaky in form. The monster gains hit dice by leaving its mark on the world - most often this means scoring damage in combat. Once it has its full hit dice it is permanently real. If killed before then, its body will waver and wink out of existence. A demi-real creature that is aware of its existential condition, and able to communicate, may very well try to negotiate a different way to gain full reality than fighting a dangerous group of adventurers."
Zenopus Archives wrote One Hit Point Monsters, which is 20 entries of exactly what it sounds like. I've admired this blog's creativity before, so I'm not surprised I enjoy these.
"Danse Macabre - Finely-dressed skeletons emerge from the ground. One plays the violin while the others try to dance with characters for 2d6 turns. Only attack if resisted. If danced with for the entire time, skeletons sink back into ground leaving a reward. Entire group turns as ghouls."
Al Krombach from Beyond the Black Gate made 6 tables of 20 monsters as Alternative Wandering Monster Tables. There are no descriptions here, so the evocative names do all the heavy listing. Al is coauthor of Warlords of Mars (which really would have looked lovely in a color edition), and his collaborator Thomas Denmark wrote his own OD&D monster book called Beasties.
"Level One - Beetle, Nuclear; Level Two - Ooze, Stop Motion; Level Three - Obsidian Judge; Level Four through Five - Wereslugs; Level Six through Seven - Spiderbear; Level Eight - Toad of the Abyss."
Roger G-S from Roles, Rules, and Rolls made Varlets & Vermin, 28 pages of low HD monsters and a smattering of public domain woodcuts that are exactly what you'd expect from the author of the Pergamino Barocco.
"Demi-Real Monster - When a summoning goes partly wrong, or an illusion of a living thing takes on existence, a demi-real creature is created. The monster starts out half-transparent and shaky in form. The monster gains hit dice by leaving its mark on the world - most often this means scoring damage in combat. Once it has its full hit dice it is permanently real. If killed before then, its body will waver and wink out of existence. A demi-real creature that is aware of its existential condition, and able to communicate, may very well try to negotiate a different way to gain full reality than fighting a dangerous group of adventurers."
Zenopus Archives wrote One Hit Point Monsters, which is 20 entries of exactly what it sounds like. I've admired this blog's creativity before, so I'm not surprised I enjoy these.
"Danse Macabre - Finely-dressed skeletons emerge from the ground. One plays the violin while the others try to dance with characters for 2d6 turns. Only attack if resisted. If danced with for the entire time, skeletons sink back into ground leaving a reward. Entire group turns as ghouls."
Al Krombach from Beyond the Black Gate made 6 tables of 20 monsters as Alternative Wandering Monster Tables. There are no descriptions here, so the evocative names do all the heavy listing. Al is coauthor of Warlords of Mars (which really would have looked lovely in a color edition), and his collaborator Thomas Denmark wrote his own OD&D monster book called Beasties.
"Level One - Beetle, Nuclear; Level Two - Ooze, Stop Motion; Level Three - Obsidian Judge; Level Four through Five - Wereslugs; Level Six through Seven - Spiderbear; Level Eight - Toad of the Abyss."
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Dungeon Alphabet Dozen - E is for ECHOES
E is for ECHOES
Roll 1d12!
Random Inexplicable Echoes of the Underworld
1 Everything player characters say is repeated back in Igpay Atinlay.
2 Echo has a horribly unconvincing French accent.
3 Second character to speak (and ONLY that character) has no echo.
4 Second character to speak (and ONLY that character) receives an addendum to their echo, making it sound like they're insulting the other player characters under their breath.
5 Rude echo repeats everything the characters say, but in a really mocking and sarcastic tone of voice.
6 Menacing echo repeats everything the characters say, but somehow makes it sound like a threat.
7 Immature echo inserts as many sexual and scatological references and Freudian slips into repeats as possible.
8 Annoying echo repeats everything the characters say, but replaces the original subject of every sentence with "Your mama..."
9 Searching the area for any purpose reveals that the "echo" is actually a KOBOLD hiding in the shadows.
10 Echo definitely sounds like a parrot, beginning every sentence with "Awk!", ending with a whistle, replacing every instance of the word "I" with "Polly" and any mention of a desired object with "a cracker". No amount of searching can find the bird though.
11 Echo repeats only the last word of each sentence, and repeats it three times times times.
12 Echo repeats everything the characters say, and every time there's a break in the conversation, also repeats the words of a party of rival ADVENTURERS who have heard every word the player characters have been saying.
Roll 1d12!
Random Inexplicable Echoes of the Underworld
1 Everything player characters say is repeated back in Igpay Atinlay.
2 Echo has a horribly unconvincing French accent.
3 Second character to speak (and ONLY that character) has no echo.
4 Second character to speak (and ONLY that character) receives an addendum to their echo, making it sound like they're insulting the other player characters under their breath.
5 Rude echo repeats everything the characters say, but in a really mocking and sarcastic tone of voice.
6 Menacing echo repeats everything the characters say, but somehow makes it sound like a threat.
7 Immature echo inserts as many sexual and scatological references and Freudian slips into repeats as possible.
8 Annoying echo repeats everything the characters say, but replaces the original subject of every sentence with "Your mama..."
9 Searching the area for any purpose reveals that the "echo" is actually a KOBOLD hiding in the shadows.
10 Echo definitely sounds like a parrot, beginning every sentence with "Awk!", ending with a whistle, replacing every instance of the word "I" with "Polly" and any mention of a desired object with "a cracker". No amount of searching can find the bird though.
11 Echo repeats only the last word of each sentence, and repeats it three times times times.
12 Echo repeats everything the characters say, and every time there's a break in the conversation, also repeats the words of a party of rival ADVENTURERS who have heard every word the player characters have been saying.
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