Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - zombie overkill and the founding of Las Vegas

Last night's game in the Dungeon of Voorand Campaign is sadly enough going to be the penultimate session. One more Thursday, and then I will pack up my stuff and leave Kingston. I feels a bit numbing to having to end this very enjoyable run, but at least we ends while having fun and still pumped up about everything cool we all want to do in the game.

More than once my dear players have realized that there are more to find even at places they thought had "cleared out", or just left for more challenging levels. I once got to hear that the dungeon felt big and like there was a lot still to explore. I loved that I had managed to capture that part of the Megadungeon concept.

Last night they decided to poke around some dark corners of level one. Naturally, not everything was like when they last were there, and they found a secret little "sublevel" that I had hidden. Not even this time did they explore everything, but they did find a ogre guarding a statue decorated with magical items like a helmet, belt, sword and other trinkets. Since they broke down the door and made a lot of noise, they woke the guardian up. They later found that others had taken his offer of using a bribe, and had plundered the statue somewhat. They did away with the guardian by a very dirty manoeuvrer, and grabbed themselves some magic. Now they have realized that all permanent items come with drawbacks, so it will be fun to see if that makes them vary.

As I have been telling before, we have had an explosion of building lately. We have had a tavern built by a PC outside the dungeon, and today a school for special education (firstly outdoorsmanship) and a casino was built. As you might have surmised from the subject, they are on their way to build Las Vegas out in the wilderness by the foot of the mountain. I think inventive players are the best gift a GM can get. Just imagine the possibilities for conflict, or ways to use this to have them pour out their hard earned money!

In a information gathering pause, shopping around for workers for their projects, they also bought a treasure map! I love these items. They are a good way to give small nudges to players, or to pace the game, or to siphon off some funds, or lead the into traps, or... you get the picture. They decided they wanted to see the Lost City, and the Crystal Forest and managed to find a delver who had been there and draw them a map. The best part of that was that when they entered level three on their way to the edge of their new map, they went in another direction and got themselves into trouble! If I say barracks full of zombies, what do you say? One dead PC later, and they retreated. I thought I said they saw a room full of tripple bunks from which stiff legged creatures shambled. Sometimes having the best armour in the game will make you to brave. Learn when to run.

It was a fun night, and even though we had a death we still play with stables so nobody is running out of clones yet. Next week will be the last, and from experience I think that my players will make it a good finale without me making it any special. We just play games and have fun. Fight on!

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - fighting spellcasters

Tonight's game was a fairly simple affair. We had few players, but one of them was a new recruit. I'm trying to spread the love of old school delving.

They did some fooling around in Khazan, and tried to make the wizards at the Wizard's Guild create some specialized items for them. One character had heard the rumour that dragons was crazy about avocados, and since they dragon-man in the party eyed him often enough he wanted a box that always would keep some avocados fresh. I have heard of some players trying to "invent" gunpowder in a fantasy game, but having someone trying to invent a magical fridge was new to me.

When they got down to the dungeon, they went purposefully to the most overpowered site they had yet found. I was impressed. Since I had put a very intriguing puzzle there (which have caused some physical discomfort to some poor dwarf) they keep coming back. Once again the hypercube of doom delivered. Now I have mutilated yet another player character.

The big fight then started with three lich kings, or something to that effect. I guess if you dangle enough bling in front of delvers they will bite sooner or later, against better judgement. After two rounds and the effects of protective magic they retreated down to a deeper level, since stairs just happened to be nearby. Later they sneaked out with bleeding and barely conscious party members. Fun was had.

One lesson was had by me. I have not had much opportunity to test the Kremm Resistance rules, and now it confirmed my suspicions. If they spellcaster is more powerful than you it doesn't mean much, and if he is less powerful he can't do much. The rules as written are way to binary.

Playing the Dunegon of Voorand - the restless dead

The gamestore where I run my weekly gave have changed their open gaming day, and after some scrambling to get the news to some of the players I was wondering if anyone who had played the game before but wasn't a regular would be able to show up, with a new day. At least it was at the same spot! We had good attendance though, and the game could go on.

Tonight was the first major assault on level three. While the first level was too small, level two have taken the players a lot of time to explore. I think my design changed and the game became less like a linear video game with a boss at the end, before the stairs to the next level. There's still a lot of stuff to explore and I have managed to make the dungeon feel big. I like that. Now it was time, though, to push on into deeper realms. They have heard rumours of undead and a city of goblins, and off they went.

As usual I design from a sketchy idea of what I want in the dungeon. I put down some of that on paper and try to fill in the blanks in between. I will shamelessly admit that one strong inspiration for level three is the three piece dungeon by Necromancer Games, Rappan Athuk. It's the only published megadungeon that I know of by the way. Since Bill Webb and Clark Peterson are serious fans of Orcus it's a dungeon with a lot of undead. My sketchy idea this time was undead.

So, after taking it really careful the players managed to do just one big fight, and to explore a lot of corridor and one big cavern with zombies. The zombies would keep coming and coming, as they are wont to do, until they figured out that they had to hit them in the head. Some nice attacks like spinning around with the blade plain dive bomb attacks were done. One missed save, and the party fairy was kind of squashed, though. Having fought those mindless undead they decided to desecrate the mausoleums they found in the underground graveyard, and opening them up they released one wailing banshee which managed to paralyse and chill them to the bone. I had nine of those lined up, but they had quite enough after one! I think that monster which didn't even tried a physical attack was the most threatening thing they've encountered in a long time!

After half the session I remembered to ask the players to keep track of AP gained. I'm going to collect some data about the speed of advancement for later. More about that when I have analyzed some of it and thought about it some.

As I have reported the game have also expanded a bit through the aims and goals that are being developed by the individual characters. Now we spent some time in Khazan planning and researching, made diplomatic missions to the cattle rustling orcs living in the woods outside the dungeon, and business ventures are being planned! I love it when players decide to build something in the game world. Some players might start a religion, found a dynasty or build a castle. Others start a tavern, in the dungeon. Me like. I open the possibilities for people to dream, and they take the opportunity and run with it. That is cool. Building permits, taxes, procurement of food supplies and suddenly the dungeon crawling game have grown. Idiotically enough I actually totally forgot that one character had unwittingly acquired a girlfriend last time. Well, we did have some character development anyway.

Other cool stuff done tonight was the new operating procedure with rope tied to a mountain climbing harness to keep the delvers together. Also, scouting ahead for an exit route when the party was going to try something potentially dangerous. I think fun was had by all.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - undead and romance!

Tonight we had a new recruit (my game is a walk-in game, so if you're in downtown Kingston (ON) on a Wednesday night, visit us at The Minotaur and join in!) and he made a splash at once.

I had very vague plans when I inspired by the megadungeon thread on Dragonsfoot decided to draw some sketches for a dungeon and let it grow in play. Now we have a city of Khazan which I'm evolving based on what's been written about it before, a wilderness around the dungeon, and relations between the characters and NPCs. Thanks to Jeff Rients magnificent Carousing Mishaps table in Fight On! #4, more and more hilarious events keep happening. Tonight our dwarf, who was turned into a eunuch by a trap a few weeks back, suddenly got himself a very insisting girlfriend. A draconian girlfriend. He has a CHA of 1, and is now almost engaged! I never could have planned that.

Before I have always introduced the game fairly quickly, and tossed the new players in the deep end for them to "play the game" from stage one. Today I went for a more involved introduction and since one of the other players was curious about what had happened to him after his carousing, we had two threads that could be fun to entwine. It worked out marvellously well. The chutzpah shown by that new lady rogue when she faced a dark elf wizard of far superior stats and skill, charmed more than just the characters. Add to that the fact that I got to introduce (fleetingly) some pirates, makes it even better. My daughter is crazy about pirates, so no ninjas in my game. Only pirates. Arr.

Those of you who read my musings about how to make undead scary, might be satisfied to know that they were indeed scary. A bunch of skeletons never last long when you've left the first tier of delving, but they at least made an impression. I really liked how the players reacted to the special attacks of the skeletons and made smart adjustments to their tactics. Abstract combat or not, there's still tactics. They took one claw attack to the eyes, and then realized if these guys go for close combat brutality, we'd better hit them hard and from afar. For those who have been reading my posts about combat smarts might want to head over and take a peek at the Combat Trick discussion on the Bridge.

All in all it was a fun session where both the world and the characters evolved a bit in new and organic ways. What I really like about this campaign is that it's never solidifying to much, since we seem to get a nice shakeup once in a while. Fight On!

How to make undead scary again

I've been thinking about undead lately. Since I started my campaign before I really had planned much, I just wanted to get going, I never had much of a theme to my dungeon levels. Now I have started to think more of that. I know that we have had much fun, and I have actually imposed some sort of overreaching feel to what I've designed so far, even if the theme is not so strong. Now I have decided upon a theme for level three. Undead.

For those of you who have played D&D and know what to expect from undead monsters, let me tell you that there are no clerics in T&T. No turning. None. Scary enough?

So, how do you make undead scary anyway? Think about it. They are the very essence of a world of wrong. You know what is cold and what is warm, what is day and what is night. The undead challenge all that and cross the most definite border of all, i.e. death. I remember how I once read a scenario for Chill, about a small Caribbean island overrun with zombies when it hit home. Suddenly the very idea of a dead person walking again overpowered me and I felt a deep sense of dread. The reality of "undeadness" had kind of sunk in. I really which I could get that feeling again, and even better if I could convey it in gaming.

Since T&T isn't primarily a horror game, and I don't play it deadpan serious, I'm not going to aim for that kind of effect. But, it would be nice to break out of the 1 HD skeleton trap.

• Skeletons - These undead are very mindless, but also kind of vulnerable, so I think they should probably go for the soft spot at once. Every combat round they try to grab hold of you and them rake you with their clawlike hands, tearing out your eyes. Make a SR on SPD to avoid being grabbed. MR 20, 2/claws out an eye.
• Zombies - Zombies are most known for their resilience, since they keep coming until you make a head shot. Let them come in hordes, and allow a SR DEX of twice the PC level to use a ranged weapon and take one zombie out flat. MR 35
• Wights - These are undead that are only half corporeal so they need soul stuff to maintain their existence and not fade into the void where they belong. MR 60 and can Drain Life for each 2 Spite. They drain 1d6 of primarily STR, secondary CON, etc. Immune to non-magical weapons unless they are made of silver.

What do you say? Nasty enough? If I can't accomplish anything like real dread in the player I can at least aim to make them respect the undead as dangerous opponents.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - The lure of liches

Today's game was interesting. It was not very heavy on fighting, none at all in fact, but the threat of it hung in there all the time. I dangled the carrot while wielding a big stick.

They decided to stay on level two a while longer, since they knew now that it was far bigger than previously thought. Going down through a "back door", they avoided paying for their entrance. A while back they encountered a bunch of scalykin (a term from our playtest of Vincent Bakers Storming the Wizard's Tower, basically kobolds) and bargained for passage down the stairs to level two. They now have few free passes and they decided to take another route this time.

Down at level two, they went mapping some areas formerly explored and found some interesting stuff. This is where the design of the dungeon becomes interesting. I have drawn two corridors on parallel, and as they go east-west they are connected by passages going north-south. In between those were a space where I fit a bunch of small rooms, all with wooden doors. Basically it was a bunch of "a maze of twisty passages, all alike", but more interesting. Now, they were empty (since I actually try to keep a decent amount of the dungeon open for improvisation) but the doors were interesting. I had planned it so that if you were mapping carefully you would at last notice that the last room was bordering one of the parallel corridors, and the door in that wall couldn't lead to those since there was no door on the other side. One way doors, and false doors, are things I use sparingly but it was my homage to Rob Kuntz and Gary Gygax. For some reason one way doors or false doors for me is a Kuntz thing. I really have to study more of Rob's dungeons one of those days. Suggestions welcome.

Well, they mapped closely, and realized that this was a dead end. What I really liked, though, was that one player decided to bash it with with warhammer to prove a point. Intelligent playing to map and realize it was a dead end, and a sense for when brute force is just plain fun.

They main event for the night, though, was the tomb. I had decided to place not only a jungle environment, a magic shop and a tavern on this level, but also a tomb of a high level wizard/knight. They entered it, scouted around and looked really longingly at the skeletal guardians of the tomb, sitting in their niches with rotting robes bedecked by jewelry and crowns of silver and items of magic. Two things were really fun here. One of my players was really torn. He would have loved to plunder the magical riches, but his fear of fighting powerful undead was tangible. Seeing the player and the character become one, roleplaying at its best, was the kind of sweet moment of indecision which makes it so fun to be the DM. I was very curious myself what this could lead to! I was as much in the dark as they! Throw in some cool stuff and watch the players run with it. I love it.

The second thing was more gritty. In the tomb there was this altar, a magical Rubik's Cube, which was set up to refold itself and open up a small compartment when someone put an offering on the table. In a moment which sits up there with some of the most hilarious and funny stuff I've read in campaign journals, one of my players decided to - wait for it - sit! on the altar! So, it folder into itself while he was sitting on it. I had never imagined anything like that to happen, and had to scramble for an idea of what would happen when an altar was chewing on someones arse! The poor dwarf was castrated and the he not only managed to roll 2,1 on his SPD save, but also roll a 6,6 (spite, of course) on damage inflicted! The image of his misery and the clash of mental images people got from him with a squeaky voice and the full dwarven bearded manliness caused a -10 CHA reduction. He is at 1 CHA right now. Poor sod.

So, they feared undead more that they were greedy, and after s short peek down some stairways to another level, they got back to town and got their 200 AP for surviving 2nd level! They did defuse a couple of other traps as well, and talked somewhat to some other delvers they found but for me the Tomb was the funniest.

So, once again the idea of exploring as central part of the game was proving fruitful for fun. Also, the idea of weird and unscaled encounters proved it's worth. Seeing delvers really fear undead brings back to me the image of Conan, followed by wolves and seeking shelter in a cave which turns out to be an ancient tomb filled with creepy feeling. Sword and sorcery at its most atmospheric. I love this game!