D&D Sling Damage vs. Large Targets

In many early editions of D&D, weapons were assigned two damage values: one for small/medium targets (i.e. man-sized) and one for large targets (giants and such).

On the whole, it more or less breaks down like this:

• large piercing/slashing weapons do more damage vs. large targets than they do vs. small/medium targets
• small piercing/slashing weapons do equal or less damage vs. large targets than they do vs. small/medium targets
• blunt force weapons of any size do equal or less damage vs. large targets than they do vs. small/medium targets

This general scheme makes sense to me. If you run a 4' sword through a human's 12" deep abdomen, the sword only rips through 12" of flesh. If that same sword is run through a giant's 24" deep abdomen, that sword rips through 24" of flesh, thereby doing more damage.

Conversely, a small piercing weapon, like an 8" dagger, in either case would only rip through 8" of flesh. For the human, this is 67% of the total depth of the abdomen, while for the giant this is only 33% of the abdomen's depth -- thereby doing proportionally less damage to the large target.

Similarly, a blunt force weapon should do, at most, the same damage to a small/medium or large target, and possibly less to a large target, since the force of the blow is the same in all cases, while the large target would theoretically have a thicker muscle wall protecting its organs and bones against anything that gets around the armor.

Here though, is the conundrum. All the old rules that I'm aware of (including Greyhawk, AD&D and clones like my favorite, Iron Falcon) that use this differentiation of damage between small/medium or large targets list sling projectiles (in AD&D specifically sling bullets) as doing more damage vs. large targets than they do vs. small/medium targets.

I can't get my head around this, since the sling projectile is a blunt force weapon, and a very small one at that. In theory it shouldn't really penetrate per se, and the normal principles of blunt force weapons should apply (i.e. it should do no more than equal damage vs. a large target, possibly less).

Even if I'm mistaken here and it does penetrate, perhaps due to its high speed, I don't see how a small, blunt projectile could possibly go deeper through the thicker hide, thicker muscle, and thicker bones of a large target than it would through those of a smaller target, when the force of impact from a given slinger will be the same in all cases. In short, I can't see any rationale for why the sling projectile would do more damage to the large target than it does to a small/medium one.

I'm inclined to think this is poetic license by Gary to replicate a Biblical David and Goliath situation. But before I house rule this to rectify what I see as a physics error, I am curious to see if anyone out there knows of a solid argument why a sling should do more damage to a large target than it does to a small/medium one. Maybe I'm completely wrong about slings.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Ravensburg Reboot: Streamlined City Map

I mentioned in my last post how I was tweaking and reworking parts of my Ravensburg setting. Today I streamlined the city map. The old map had lots of redundancies in it: two separate market quarters, three run-down "tough" neighborhoods, two or three different artisans quarters, and so on, all of which made it unnecessarily harder to flesh out -- e.g. how's this market district different from that market district? And would that difference actually matter to players? In practice it never did, as far as I know. So I've redone the map, and cut it down, sticking more or less to one quarter per function that was on the old map (city governance, market, scholars and scribes, travelers inns and taverns, church for healing, bad neighborhood to go looking for trouble in, etc.). So Ravensburg now looks like this.

All the NPCs, factions and shops from previous games will all still be there. But I've cut out a bunch of unnecessary fluff separating them all geographically and making my prep tougher.

New Ravensburg Maps and Other Projects

Things have been slow on the gaming front this past year. A new job with tons more work has put a crimp in things. I've managed to keep playing regularly, but have not spent tons of time prepping or DM'ing. That said, I've been slowly, silently chipping away a few things in the background.

Ravensburg Revisions and Maps. Overall I've been happy with my Ravensburg setting. But I've never been quite satisfied with the overall broader world that serves as the setting's background, and I've always thought that the sandbox area around the city and the nearby Black Tower has always been a bit too small and confined. So I've been reworking these, tweaking the world, and expanding the immediate sandbox.

The world -- Ravensburg is in the League of the Five Republics.

A close-up map of the League.

I've intentionally left the scale off of these maps for now. I'll probably create other small sandboxes around the world at some point in the future. Long-distance travel from one sandbox to another will happen "at the speed of plot" to quote Straczynski. 

Ravensburg area map -- each hex is 5 miles. 

At 40 hexes x 30 hexes, the sandbox map is just slightly smaller than Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival map (which was something like 43 x 34). Basically I want now to start thinking up ways of integrating the sandbox and the dungeon below the Black Tower (something like NPCs and/or factions who have agendas simultaneously in and out of the dungeon, so players will have reasons to adventure in both underground and in the wilderness. I was sort of doing this already with the city of Ravensburg and the dungeon, so this would just be an expansion.

Creating a House-Ruled Reference Sheet for OD&D. For this I got inspired by the Zenopus Archives blog, where the author has posted some cool reference sheets for Holmes Basic D&D. So I tried my hand as something similar for the original three booklets, plus my own houserules. I left off the aerial combat and naval combat rules (which I've never needed), and ended up with an 8-page set of reference sheets that contain everything I ever use: character creation, equipment and advancement (2 pages), all magic-user spells, distilled (2 pages), all cleric spells, distilled (1 page), combat, turning, and saving throw tables (1 page), dungeon adventuring, encounters and post-adventure (1 page), wilderness adventuring (1 page). The pages look like this: 

The documents are in 9-point font which is surprisingly still readable when printed out, even with my tired old eyes. 

And just for fun. Just to entertain myself today I made a new banner for the blog right before posting this. It was time for a change.

Next on my gaming to-do list. All the above was done over a period of months chipping a way a bit at a time, a few minutes here, a few minutes there. With summer break finally here, I'm hoping to get some chunks of meaningful prep time. First I want to go back and organize my notes on NPCs and areas the Wednesday night group have interacted with to date. Then the next step is to start fleshing out some more NPC and monster agendas that will link dungeon to wilderness -- things like monsters in the dungeon with NPC allies in the wilderness, monsters/NPCs who have multiple bases both underground and in the wilds, items or allies somewhere in the wilderness needed to defeat threats from the dungeon and vice-versa, etc. 

With luck I may be able to run a session or two of Ravensburg by middle to end of July. 

Character Motivation in OD&D – More Than Murder-Hobos

A fundamental assumption in OD&D is that all player characters want treasure (after all, it's the source of the vast majority of XP awarded). But this does not have to make characters simple murder-hobos. Treasure can be thought of not as the character's goal, but rather as the necessary means to attaining some larger objective. When thinking of our character's motivation – why she or he goes adventuring – we might ask ourselves the question: why would my character need a mountain of gold and magic items?

Here are 1d20 possibilities to use as-is or to inspire more original ideas:

1. Your character is from an impoverished noble family, seeking to regain the family fortune and reestablish the family lands and legacy.
2. A beloved person in your character's life died, and a necromancer has promised to bring him or her back from the afterlife – for a price.
3. You are a devoted member of your religion; every coin you can donate to your church will promote the interest of your god(s).
4. You seek revenge against a powerful lord or lady who did some great wrong to you; but you'll need to buy an army to make that happen.
5. Monster-hunting is a family trade; slaying monsters and taking their treasure is how members of your family have always made their fortune.
6. You're simply ambitious and you seek to become the most powerful / feared / respected warrior / magician / religious leader in the land.
7. You come from a poverty-ravaged region and wish to bring wealth back home to reinvigorate your homeland's economy.
8. You seek a king's ransom – perhaps literally – to secure the release of someone important to you who has been imprisoned or enslaved.
9. You grew up in abject poverty. You watched your parents and grandparents slave away for a lifetime and die scratching a living out of a patch of mud. That life is not for you.
10. A plague is ravaging your homeland; the sages might be able to find a cure if only they had sufficient money to complete their research.
11. Your homeland is the constant victim of raids from surrounding territories. If you could bring back enough money, your people could build fortifications and hire troops to defend them.
12. Your homeland is ruled by a petty tyrant. With enough money and power you could overthrow the despot.
13. Enemy raiders come to your homeland once per year demanding a tribute in gold or slaves. With enough gold, you can keep your people safe by paying them off . . . or even drive the raiders away once and for all.
14. Monsters killed someone dear to you. You won't rest until you've extracted weregeld (or exacted blood revenge) from every monster in the region.
15. Your homelands were conquered and occupied by a neighboring enemy. You need gold to take those lands back.
16. Having seen the injustice of the world, you want to create your own utopian country, and you'll need gold to do it.
17. You are an agent of the king / queen with orders to undermine threats to the region; you are to self-finance with loot, and hand over the rest to fill the royal coffers.
18. An oracle declared you would grow up to be a great and powerful hero / mage / champion of the faith. You are simply fulfilling that destiny.
19. You are obsessed ancient artifacts, books, magic items. No risk is too great to secure these precious items.
20. You fought in a war that recently ended. Apart from adventuring, there's just nothing else to do with your skill set. Getting rich is an added bonus.

Factions in Ravensburg

I've been working on developing Ravensburg some more during my week off for Christmas. So far I've just sketched these out in broad brush strokes (essentially what any average person living in Ravensburg would know). I'll detail them later bit by bit as play develops around them. There are a total of 13 groups, which I think should suffice for now.

1. The Council of Magistrates: the city's governing body.
2. The Black Guard: keepers of law and order in the city.
3. The Church: worshipers of Numina, the one true goddess
4. The Druids: worshipers of the Old Gods; they are not outlawed, but the practice of their religion is scorned and they inhabit the wild lands around the city.
5. The Duality: secret cult that worships Demogorgon; outlawed enemy of the Church and frequently at odds with the Covenant.
6. The Covenant: The secret cult that worships Orcus; outlawed enemy of the Church and frequently at odds with the Duality.
7. The Creed: a company of highly skilled assassins.
8. The Veil: a secret society of spies who can get information on anyone – for a price.
9. The Syndicate: the city's biggest thieves' guild.
10. The University of Ravensburg: a group of scholars with knowledge historical and natural, ancient and current.
11. The Laborer's Guild: serves the interests of those who neither produce nor sell merchandise, e.g. porters, torch-bearers, tavern wenches, lackeys, valets, teamsters, etc.
12. The Artisan's Guild: serves the interests of those who produce physical objects, e.g. black-smiths, gold- and silver-smiths, gem-cutters, leather workers, potters, book-binders, basket-weavers, rope-makers, bakers, etc.)
13. The Merchant's Guild: serves the interests of those who sell goods and services provided by others; e.g. brokers, shop-owners and vendors, traders, peddlers, etc. 

What More or Less Happened in Tonight's Game

After a month without playing due to scheduling conflicts, we got together to play in Tim's Komor Forest game using BX Essentials. At one point it kind of went like this:

Well, maybe not that bad. But close. My character, Brimstone, gets hit by an ochre jelly. Jelly ooze is now eating through Brimstone's clothing and searing his flesh. That same round, Ken's character, Finkas, standing behind Brimstone, tries to throw a torch on the jelly. He misses. With a nat 1. Tim says "Roll again, Ken." How bad is the critical fail? Ken rolls another nat 1. So Finkas' torch strikes Brimstone so hard in the backpack that the impact breaks Brimstone's oil flask. Oil runs out of the seams of the pack, down Brimstone's legs and makes contact with the still lit torch now lying on the ground. So Brimstone finds himself dissolving in jelly acid while simultaneously burning like a roman candle. Miraculously, thanks to some quick action by one of Rob's henchmen, Brimstone survives the calamity. Barely.

Falcon's Gate Map: Color Version

Color version of yesterday's map. Super-easy to do with the layers feature in Hex Kit. Just open the B&W version, save with a new name, and swap things out.

I should add that I still use a photo editing program for my labeling. Once I have all the terrain the way I want it, I generate a png image of the map, then switch programs to label, since that gives me a wider array of fonts, sizes, highlighting, positioning, etc.

Falcon's Gate Map

Another map, this time for the Falcon's Gate idea I came up with some time ago. This time in black and white using the Hex Kit "Classic" tiles.

I have to say, I'm a big fan of Hex Kit because of the very shallow learning curve, variety of tiles, and ease of use.

Birthday Loot

Hit the big 5-0 today.

My wife got me a three-volume French-language edition of all Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.

Oliver (our cat) got me a tribble.

Another Hex Kit Map and a Bit of Zazzle

Another experiment with Hex Kit. I paid closer attention this time to the ends of the road and river tiles, and got them to line up a bit more nicely.

I also just got a new binder with a custom spine from Zazzle. They had a font that passes for a reasonable approximation of the original D&D title font (though alas the "&" is wrong). But with a bright red field and yellow lettering, I think it evokes the Moldvay Basic rule book colors pretty well. I've put my printed-out version of the B/X Essentials rules in it.

Hex Kit Map Experiment

A little experiment with hex kit. The text I added with a photo editing program (Microsoft Picture It).

I may need to play with the roads a bit more, and maybe adjust the highlighting on the text.

BX Combined Rule Book Printed and Bound

Just put this together this morning.

I had printed the pages long ago, but had never bothered to bind them. Talking with +Gothridge Manor  and +Rob Conley  recently about BX Essentials (which I also have now and which I think is a great publication) got me thinking I should get off the pot and bind those pages up.

The sections are integrated (Basic Part 1, followed by Expert Part 1, followed by Basic Part 2, then Expert Part 2, etc.), as per the suggestion on p. B3, though obviously without cutting up my original books!

Compound XP Bonuses: A Viable Alternative to "The Worthless 10"?

I noted in two previous posts that a 10% bonus to earned XP doesn't give you anything.
     See post 1 here.
     See post 2 here.

A follow-up thought I had was to try a compound XP bonus. This would simply be a matter of applying the XP bonus to your XP total each time XP are awarded, rather than only to the just-earned XP.

So it would work like this:

• Session 1: You earn 400 XP. Your XP total is 400. Apply your 10%. That gives you 440 XP.
• Session 2: You earn another 400 XP. Your new XP total is 840. Only now apply your 10% to that number (instead of to the 400 XP you just earned). That gives you 924 XP (instead of the 880 you would have had if you were applying the bonus only to the XP just earned).
• Sessions 3 and beyond: Just keep applying the 10% XP bonus to your total XP each time more XP are awarded.

Again, using the OD&D Fighter XP progression as a baseline, and assuming an increase of one level every five sessions for a character with no bonus, we'd get the chart below. I've included the numbers for "no bonus," the traditional "10% to earned xp" covered previously, and the "10% compound bonus" for comparison. The yellow cells are where a fighter would level up depending on the bonus applied. The word "lap" indicates that the character jumps a full level ahead of a no-bonus character.

What you get is the fighter with the compound bonus advances at an accelerated (perhaps too accelerated) pace relative to one without the bonus. The fighter with the compound bonus "laps" the no-bonus fighter at session 15, hitting level 5 at the same time the no-bonus fighter hits level 4. He then gradually increases his lead as he moves toward lapping the no-bonus fighter a second time at session 35. At the end of that session, the no-bonus fighter rises to level 8, while the compound-bonus fighter hits level 10.

Would the compound bonus work? For a long campaign, I think I would not want to use it. For a short to mid-length campaign, perhaps going to only level 5 or 6 or so, I think it could be an interesting way to handle the XP bonus in a meaningful way. But even then, I don't think it would be a better way than the simple, flat 25-30% bonus to earned XP from my previous posts. I think the higher flat bonus to XP earned might be the cleaner way to achieve the end I'm seeking.

An Idea for an Open Table Game: Falcon's Gate

I've been thinking of starting an open table game in the future.  My job has been getting more and more demanding of late, so the concept of an open table game – sporadic, spontaneous play sessions, whenever time allows, with potentially different groups of players each session and no serious commitment on anyone's part – has been presenting itself in my mind as an increasingly good option.

My best idea for such at game, at the moment, is this one.

******************************************

FALCON'S GATE

The Ancients and Their Underworld Gates

In an age before men and their kin walked the earth, the world was ruled by the Ancients. Little is known of this elder folk, beyond what is gleaned from the underworld complexes in which they dwelt. The underworld realms of the Ancients open out onto the surface world in structures now known as underworld gates.

Falcon's Gate: An Underworld Entry Near the Town of Tercel.

The Curse of the Grey Coast and the Lost King

For almost a decade the Kingdom of the Grey Coast has suffered from misery and misfortune. Many believe the kingdom cursed. In a dream, a vision came to King Peregrin. The key to the land's salvation lay in the recovery of an artifact, the Iron Crown of the Ancients.

The Iron Crown, seen in King Peregrin's Dream.

Peregrin's vision revealed the crown in a chamber deep in the underworld near the city of Tercel. Three years ago the king led his most trusted retainers on an expedition to recover the crown. The party never returned.

Peregrin, the Lost King.

Tercel and Its Underworld Gate

Tercel is a small port town known as the Hope and the Sadness of the Grey Coast. It lies at the foot of a wooded ridge sloping to the sea. At the top of the ridge is an underworld entry known as Falcon's Gate. It is here that King Peregrin was last seen, and it is here that people believe the Iron Crown can still be found.

Tercel, the Hope and Sadness of the Grey Coast.

Adventurers in Tercel

Adventurers from across the kingdom come to Tercel to plumb the underworld depths beneath Falcon's Gate. Some seek only plunder, some hope to rescue the king, and others seek the crown that will heal the land.

******************************************

For an open table game, this concept has some advantages:

1. There would be no group-specific long-term plot lines to complicate things and make group (in-)consistency an issue. There are just three overarching "default goals" that any group could select from when entering the underworld gate: find the king (or clues to his fate), find the crown (or clues to its whereabouts), or just go treasure-hunting. This is a feature of open table gaming that makes it appealing for "pick-up and play."

2. There could still be really short mini-hooks (e.g. the gnomes in room X offer to pay the PCs to deal with the bugbears in room Y that have been harassing them, or similar scenarios) easily resolved in a single session, or else easily ignored.

3. Everything a player would ever need to know about the world is in the text above, which weighs in at fewer than 300 words (less than one page). All the context anyone needs in order to start playing can be absorbed in under 90 seconds.

XP Bonuses Part Deux

A couple readers requested I do the table for 20% and 30% bonuses. So I've done those along with a 50% bonus and a 100% bonus (just to push things to extremes). I did these all with the assumption of a leveling pace of one level every five sessions for an unmodified fighter.

So here's what you get:

At a 20% bonus, the fighter with the bonus levels up consistently one session before the fighter with no bonus.

At a 30% bonus, the fighter with the bonus gets to level 2 one session earlier, then consistently levels up two sessions before the fighter with no bonus. In other words, the fighter with the bonus will be one level ahead of the fighter with no bonus roughly 40% of the time.

At a 50% bonus, the fighter with the bonus gets to level 2 one session earlier, then consistently levels up three sessions before the fighter with no bonus. In other words, the fighter with the bonus will be one level ahead of the fighter with no bonus roughly 60% of the time.

At a 100% bonus, the fighter with the bonus gets to level 2 two sessions earlier, then "laps" the fighter with no bonus on session five, and from that point on remains permanently one level ahead of the fighter with no bonus. Which of course makes sense, since the XP requirements double at each level.

My thought is that to make XP bonuses meaningful, you'd really need to do something like the 30% or 50% bonus, assuming an average progression pace in the ballpark of this model's one level per five sessions.

Regarding XP Bonuses: The Worthless 10%

I've often felt intuitively that a 10% bonus to earned XP doesn't give you much, if anything. I decided to look at some actual numbers to see whether that was true. It is.

I made a series of calculations, using the OD&D Fighter XP progression as a baseline:

Level 1: 0 XP
Level 2: 2,000 XP
Level 3: 4,000 XP
Level 4: 8,000 XP
Level 5: 16,000 XP
Level 6: 32,000 XP
Level 7: 64,000 XP
Level 8: 120,000 XP
Level 9: 240,000 XP

I did my calculations based on the pace (in terms of number of sessions) needed to level up.
I did this for three scenarios:

1) earning enough XP per session for an unmodified fighter to level up once every 20 sessions
2) earning enough XP per session for an unmodified fighter to level up once every 10 sessions
3) earning enough XP per session for an unmodified fighter to level up once every 5 sessions

I then plugged in the numbers for XP per session for a fighter with no XP bonus, and a fighter with a 10% bonus for each of those three scenarios.

This is what I came up with. The yellow cells are where each fighter (bonus and no bonus) levels up.

As you can see, the fighter with the 10% bonus gets no significant edge over the fighter with no bonus at all.

In a campaign with an extremely slow level progression (averaging 20 sessions per level),  the fighter with the 10% bonus starts to pull ahead around session 37 of the campaign – leveling up three sessions before the fighter with no bonus. But of course in this scenario, it's taking 40 (or 37) game sessions to hit level three.

In a campaign where PCs progress at twice that speed  (averaging 10 sessions per level), the fighter with the 10% bonus starts to pull ahead at session 19, but only levels up one session sooner than the fighter with no bonus. The fighter with the bonus stays exactly one session ahead for the next 20 sessions and for some time beyond (though the next scenario suggests he will widen the gap a bit more much later on).

In a campaign with relatively rapid level progression (averaging 5 sessions per level), the fighter with the 10% bonus pulls ahead only at session 35, and only by one session, and then only because the XP requirement to progress suddenly stops doubling. If the XP progression kept doubling, it appears the fighter with the 10% bonus would never pull ahead of the fighter with no bonus.

So it seems that unless a) you play with a really slow level progression or b) you get to higher level play where the XP requirements flatten out, a 10% XP bonus will have no appreciable effect on game play.

Ravensburg Arms

Insane week done. Saturday morning chores complete. Rest of the day to be spent sitting on my butt, just diddling and doodling, like this:

Ravensburg Campaign Character Sheets

Here's a character sheet I designed for my Ravensburg OD&D game.

It's set up to match OD&D plus my house rules (e.g. ability modifiers, encumbrance house rule).

There's a pdf version here for players in my game, if they're interested. 

There's also a word version here for any DMs who think it'd be worth tweaking for their own games.   

Ravensburg: Messin' with Maps

I've tinkered a lot with broader contextual maps for the wider world surrounding Ravensburg. Here's my latest attempt, and the one I'm happiest with so far.

The World of Ravensburg -- latest iteration.

This map was inspired by an ancient world map attributed to Anaximander (610-546 B.C.): 

Map Reconstruction by: Bibi Saint-Pol, on Wikipedia.

OD&D: Ravensburg Session 10

Characters:

Boneswa (Elf-F2/MU2): Tim (+Gothridge Manor)
     Corder (Fighter-2): NPC
     Rosalind (Cleric-1): NPC

The Rumor Mill:

• With the Bugbear menace gone, the market for Grim Forest wolf pelts has picked up again.
• Karl Nobbins and his band of adventurers, regulars at the Surly Dragon Inn, went into the Black Tower three days ago. They haven't come back yet. 
• A green dragon was spotted flying westward from Dankmarsh, over the Sundered Hills, toward the sea. Boneswa the elf and his band were the first to spot the dragon outside of Dankmarsh. A merchant caravan from Mudport spotted it again just days later, confirming Boneswa's observation.
• Creighton (recently entered into Boneswa's service) reports that Durston Lowell has been doing business with gnomes -- greedy, unscrupulous, unprincipled gnomes. 

The Action:

Boneswa and his henchmen head once more for the Black Tower, this time in the hopes of finding Karl and his company. This is their first return since hearing the rumor of rumblings and tremors ("as if stone and earth were being moved") and since hearing the rumors of Simon of Bellamy's return.

Climbing to the top of the hill, Boneswa immediately notices two things:

1. The tower ruin has changed – what once was a round tower ruin no more than knee to waist high is now an octagonal tower ruin, roughly chest to head high.

2. A set of boot prints makes a beeline for a patch of trees and brush just north of the tower proper.

Boneswa follows the trail and comes to the remains of an old cistern, once overgrown, but now cleared away. The trail seems to end here. Corder and he lift the lid, revealing a completely dry cistern with ladder leading down to an iron maintenance hatch. They climb down, open the hatch and find themself inside the dungeons once more.

The dungeons themselves are different. The halls here are dimly illuminated by phosphorescent moss, and the walls are smoother than they had been on Boneswa's previous visits.

The band's exploration leads them mostly eastward.

Encounters of note (numbered above) included:

1. A run-in with two known NPC adventurers of ill-repute: Orthelm and Rathilda (and their seven henchmen). This involved an uncomfortable parley and a rapid parting of ways.

2. The discovery of Karl Nobbins' body along with his henchmen and a host of dead goblins. Examination of the bodies indicates the henchmen and the goblins killed each other off in a fight, while Karl survived with cuts and bruises – but was subsequently killed with his throat slit from behind. The bodies of the adventurers and the goblins had been picked clean. Boneswa picks up Karl's broken shield to take back to Ravensburg.

3. The discovery and liberation of some sort of "creature of light" apparently imprisoned within the masonry of the dungeon itself.

4. The discovery of an area to the east where the phosphorescent mold disappears, only to be replaced by an uncanny green witch-light.

5. A fight in the latter area with an animated statue of Vecna (perhaps a vestige of the dungeon's original builders defeated long ago by Simon of Bellamy and his allies?) resulting in victory and loot in the form of a 500 gp ruby.

Returning to Ravensburg, Boneswa heads to the Surly Dragon and tells the innkeeper, Big Willie, of Karl's demise. He also mentions his suspicion about Orthelm and Rathilda. Big Willie vows to find out ("I know people in this town, people who will talk to me") and, in short, wring Orthelm's and Rathilda's necks if Boneswa's suspicion turns out to be true. Boneswa also hands over Karl's broken shield. Big Willie, an ex-adventurer himself, keeps a "wall of honor" in his place, where he hangs momentos of lost comrades. Willie gently places the shield on the wall, and Bonewsa buys a round for the house before leading a toast to Karl's lost band.

Boneswa then goes to Natalia Stoynich's shop to cash in his ruby, and to let her know of the changes to the Tower. Natalia fears she was wrong and that Simon may well have returned. She says she'll keep buying items from Boneswa but will have to examine them extra carefully to ensure they're not cursed.

And here we ended the session.