Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 59 (Part B) of my series on OD&D, with The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Vol. 3.
**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**
Continuing on with dungeons:
There are many things you can do, such as having pools of water that must be waded, rivers running through are sometime I have done from time to time, quicksand, dust puddles, sharp rocks that are hard to walk on and many other things can make some areas difficult to get too. (With just a slight hint that the effort might be worth it.) Up ward and downward mobility is a must, after all dungeons are built to be used. Anticipation of danger is key, so cultivate describing things in a way that will keep your players on their toes and the edge of their seat. Even these days you can keep players off their phone and hold their attention.
Remember that you are a neutral referee/judge, favoring neither the players nor the monsters. Your job is not to kill the characters, your job is to make life challenging and when challenges are overcome rewarding. Death ideally comes from characters doing things that do not make sense, things that are hasty and lack reasonable caution, or engaging when they should be running, etc.
I have used false stairs that go up to a door and through the door go right back down to the same level, but you do not use things like that often, but if you have a lot of new players it is a fun thing to do. If players enter an area that they can not go backwards out of, then I have multiple ways forward from their., I am always careful to avoid a railroad where there is only one choice, I like to have at least two choices as a minimum. If I do present them with an area where the whole area is a trap, I often put graffiti on the walls which can be partially read, this too can generate a lot of thought on the part of the players.
As I mentioned before, I like portals and I also like teleportation. areas. It is good to keep the players off balance, if they get too comfortable, they get over confident and then something simple can kill them that should not. I like to keep them on their guard, to survive they cannot think they are in a safe area.
Illusion is a lot of fun, I personally do not use mind control or geas very much, although I have a few times. Fulling that geas prompted a long journey that lasted in game years. The length of time it took came from them doing something unexpected which had consequences. Otherwise it would have resolved itself in 2-3 months of game time. Random things that are not always there, that appear and disappear (not necessarily doors) will make them question if they are where they think they are. That is a good thing, when they question their map, but there is really nothing wrong with it.
Natural areas have odd and uneven shapes and their maps can get way off and they can get turned around without having a clue that it happened. Space distortion can be used to good effort, as well as, changes in gravity and other such things. I also have passages that pass right through where another passage is shown on the map without intersecting, due to a small inter-dimensional warp in the fabric of space-time.
Remember that uninhabited does not mean empty. Most rooms should have something in them even if it is dry rotted furniture or large piles of dust or piles of bones or etc. ... While most people use random tables, I myself never use random tables. Everything in my dungeons is placed there for a reason when I do so, although in my case I often build dungeons on the fly during game. For me this is one of the most fun parts of being a referee.I still make tables, they are fun to build and I do look at them every now and then, I just do not use them to build the dungeon. Now and then some areas of dungeons can be heavily populated. I remember having a room full of 500+ drunken snoring orcs and the characters having to cross that room without waking them up.
That is a one in three chance of a monster in each room that he is indicating here. While he advocates putting Ochre Jellies, Black Puddings, Green Slime and the like in passages, I have placed them in Caves and Caverns and pools of water, guarding Treasure. Treasure that can be easily damaged, if spells start flying around. Also note that while Gygax says that "as a general rule there will be far more uninhabited space on a level, than there will be space occupied" it is still just over 33% occupied.
So here Gygax is indicating a 50% chance that a room with a monster will have some form of treasure. and approximately 17% of the unoccupied rooms will also have treasure. Arneson is said to have thought Gygax gave out way too much treasure. My dungeons have less treasure than Gygax lays out above relative to the number of rooms. I will go into that more later on.
Tomorrow we will continue with Treasure.
Today is Part 59 (Part B) of my series on OD&D, with The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Vol. 3.
**For those coming in, in the middle of this series I am giving you my take on OD&D during my first exposure starting in Sept of 1975. For this first part it is just the first three books of the original woodgrain box set and prior to obtaining the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and later Supplements.**
Continuing on with dungeons:
There are many things you can do, such as having pools of water that must be waded, rivers running through are sometime I have done from time to time, quicksand, dust puddles, sharp rocks that are hard to walk on and many other things can make some areas difficult to get too. (With just a slight hint that the effort might be worth it.) Up ward and downward mobility is a must, after all dungeons are built to be used. Anticipation of danger is key, so cultivate describing things in a way that will keep your players on their toes and the edge of their seat. Even these days you can keep players off their phone and hold their attention.
Remember that you are a neutral referee/judge, favoring neither the players nor the monsters. Your job is not to kill the characters, your job is to make life challenging and when challenges are overcome rewarding. Death ideally comes from characters doing things that do not make sense, things that are hasty and lack reasonable caution, or engaging when they should be running, etc.
I have used false stairs that go up to a door and through the door go right back down to the same level, but you do not use things like that often, but if you have a lot of new players it is a fun thing to do. If players enter an area that they can not go backwards out of, then I have multiple ways forward from their., I am always careful to avoid a railroad where there is only one choice, I like to have at least two choices as a minimum. If I do present them with an area where the whole area is a trap, I often put graffiti on the walls which can be partially read, this too can generate a lot of thought on the part of the players.
As I mentioned before, I like portals and I also like teleportation. areas. It is good to keep the players off balance, if they get too comfortable, they get over confident and then something simple can kill them that should not. I like to keep them on their guard, to survive they cannot think they are in a safe area.
Illusion is a lot of fun, I personally do not use mind control or geas very much, although I have a few times. Fulling that geas prompted a long journey that lasted in game years. The length of time it took came from them doing something unexpected which had consequences. Otherwise it would have resolved itself in 2-3 months of game time. Random things that are not always there, that appear and disappear (not necessarily doors) will make them question if they are where they think they are. That is a good thing, when they question their map, but there is really nothing wrong with it.
Natural areas have odd and uneven shapes and their maps can get way off and they can get turned around without having a clue that it happened. Space distortion can be used to good effort, as well as, changes in gravity and other such things. I also have passages that pass right through where another passage is shown on the map without intersecting, due to a small inter-dimensional warp in the fabric of space-time.
Remember that uninhabited does not mean empty. Most rooms should have something in them even if it is dry rotted furniture or large piles of dust or piles of bones or etc. ... While most people use random tables, I myself never use random tables. Everything in my dungeons is placed there for a reason when I do so, although in my case I often build dungeons on the fly during game. For me this is one of the most fun parts of being a referee.I still make tables, they are fun to build and I do look at them every now and then, I just do not use them to build the dungeon. Now and then some areas of dungeons can be heavily populated. I remember having a room full of 500+ drunken snoring orcs and the characters having to cross that room without waking them up.
That is a one in three chance of a monster in each room that he is indicating here. While he advocates putting Ochre Jellies, Black Puddings, Green Slime and the like in passages, I have placed them in Caves and Caverns and pools of water, guarding Treasure. Treasure that can be easily damaged, if spells start flying around. Also note that while Gygax says that "as a general rule there will be far more uninhabited space on a level, than there will be space occupied" it is still just over 33% occupied.
So here Gygax is indicating a 50% chance that a room with a monster will have some form of treasure. and approximately 17% of the unoccupied rooms will also have treasure. Arneson is said to have thought Gygax gave out way too much treasure. My dungeons have less treasure than Gygax lays out above relative to the number of rooms. I will go into that more later on.
Tomorrow we will continue with Treasure.
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