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?

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.

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.

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 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.   

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.

OD&D: Ravensburg Session 9 (with rough sketch of Sessions 7 & 8)

I ran an OD&D session last night in which Tim (+Gothridge Manor) braved the environs of Ravensburg alone. We picked up more or less where we left off about seven months ago. Since I never posted about Sessions 7 and 8 from the last time we played, I've tried to cobble together events there as best I could from my fairly sketchy notes. The report on last night's session (Session 9) follows below that.

Sketch of Ravensburg Sessions 7-8 (more or less): 

Characters:
Boneswa (Elf-F1/MU2): Tim (+Gothridge Manor)
     Corder (Fighter-2): NPC
     Rosalind (Cleric-1): NPC
Roghan (Fighter-2): Rob (+Rob Conley)
     Presto (Elf-F1/MU1): NPC
     Lena (Magic-User-2): NPC

Bonewsa, Roghan and their henchmen tracked the goblins harassing Goodwater. The found the goblin lair, plumbed its depths, and slew the goblins' leader, a Bugbear. They cut off the Bugbear's head, and brought it back to Goodwater. There they found that Helena had been cured of her kaprothopy by the ministrations of Diana Foxglove.

The party returned to Ravensburg. There they learned that Susan Fellgood's caravan never made it back from Hamm's Fork. So they went off in search of her and her people.

Examining the area around the meteorite strike previously encountered, they found indications that the caravan had veered off the road in the direction of the meteorite. They made their way to the meteor, discovered it was hollow, and entered it. Inside they found the dead body of one of the ogres they had previously charmed and sent north to "investigate." There were also the bones of five elves (possibly the ones they had encountered earlier).

The place turned out to be the lair of some lizard-like creature, and its eggs. The party killed the creature, its young and its eggs. They found Susan Fellgood (still alive) and one of her drivers (dead and half-eaten). They pried some platinum deposits out of the meteorite's inner walls, and picked up three glowing green stones (coined "candlestones" since they give off light equivalent to a candle). Then they made their way back to civilization.

And there the sessions ended for several months.

Interlude:

Since it had been so long since we played (and because of some confusion of where exactly we had left off) we assumed that Boneswa had gone back to Goodwater to help the villagers there rebuild and recover, before returning definitively to Ravensburg. We begin Session 9 with Boneswa's return after a months-long absence.

New region map, freshly made for Session 9 last night.

Ravensburg Session 9:

Characters:
Boneswa (Elf-F1/MU2): Tim (+Gothridge Manor)
     Corder (Fighter-2): NPC
     Rosalind (Cleric-1): NPC

Boneswa returned to Ravensburg. The rumor mill was abuzz with news. During his absence...

• A green dragon had been spotted flying over the edges of Dankmarsh; people traveling south and east were increasingly nervous.
• For a period of three nights, loud rumblings had been heard from the ruins of the Black Tower, as if stone and earth were being moved. The ground in Ravensburg itself could be felt to tremble. 
• Meanwhile the goblin raids north of the town continue. 
• A large cat of some type, with reddish fur, had been seen on moonlit nights prowling around the west edges of the Briars; dead goblins had been found mauled and half-eaten in the same area.
• Halfling Durston Lowell had become the talk of the town, regaining his family fortune rapidly after Boneswa had returned his family ring to him; some folk talk of his investments being more lucky than smart.
• Susan Fellgood, a major shipper in Ravensburg, was once again interested in hiring on guards to escort a caravan west to Mudport.

Boneswa took some time to get his bearings and gather further information on these matters.

Speaking to Big Willie in the Surly Dragon Inn, he got confirmation regarding the green dragon of Dankmarsh and Durston Lowell's fortune. He learned the rumblings in the Tower had frightened many folk, and that none of Willie's adventuring clientele had had the nerve to delve the dungeons since that had occurred.

Boneswa then visited Durston Lowell. The Lowell home appeared from the outside to be restored to its former glory. Two new doormen blocked then entry. When Boneswa asked to speak to Durston, he was informed that he was not on Mister Lowell's (ahem) appointment list, and that he could be scheduled a week hence. Boneswa took the appointment and left.

He went to Cosmo's Curiosities, to see if Cosmo had any potions to sell. The prices were a bit too high for Boneswa's meager savings, but he managed to work out a deal, trading ten gold pieces plus one of the "candlestones" he had acquired inside the meteorite for a healing potion. Cosmo also showed him a new sword in his inventory – a dragon slayer. Cosmo understood that Boneswa obviously didn't have the coin now (3,500 gold), but thought Boneswa might be interested at some later date.

Finally the elf visited Susan Fellgood and signed on to escort the next morning's caravan west to Mudport.

The journey to Mudport was uneventful. Once in town, Boneswa took a room in The Rusty Anchor. On the menu was boiled fish, fried fish, baked fish, and mudsnake kebabs. The latter were a local specialty from the nearby mud flats. He washed the kebab down with snakeskin ale, a local brew that nauseated him but didn't make him vomit.

On the return trip to Ravensburg, Boneswa spotted a green dragon flying over the Sundered Hills, heading directly toward him from the direction of Dankmarsh beyond. Boneswa quickly directed the caravan to cover in a copse and the dragon passed over them without noticing.

A day later, crossing the bridge over the Mist River, the caravan spied a large, hairy many hip deep in the river fishing with his hands in a very bear-like manner. Boneswa kept the group moving without drawing the fisherman's attention.

Back in Ravensburg, the elf kept his appointment with Durston Lowell. The now-wealthy halfling greeted him warmly, thanked him again for the return of his ring (a magic item granting luck in investment, but only for those of Lowell blood – which is why it had not helped the adopted brother who had "borrowed" it without his knowledge), and made a gift of a fine necklace to Boneswa.

After the interview, Boneswa noticed that Lowell's former manservant, the elderly dwarf Creighton, had been nowhere to be seen. A younger and rather unpleasant human, Quagmire, seemed to have taken his place.

On returning to The Surly Dragon, Boneswa was drawn into the alley by a whispered "pssst!" Going to investigate, Boneswa was addressed by none other than the dwarf, Creighton. Creighton was concerned for his (former) master, Durston Lowell. Durston had been making deals with "unsavory" individuals. Concerned for his master's safety, Creighton had eavesdropped on several conversations. One name in particular had come up multiple times. That name was Simon of Bellamy. Boneswa knew the name, but only as a vague figure of legend. Still, if true, this was likely bad news. Durston had dismissed Creighton, who had been his faithful, and indeed only, manservant for decades. Creighton was now almost out of money and living on the street, so Boneswa hired him on as a servant himself.

Lastly, Boneswa went to visit Natalia Stoynich, the widowed antiques vendor. He mostly wanted information from her, as she had previously seemed to have some knowledge of the history of both items and people of Ravensburg. Boneswa asked her about Simon of Bellamy, and the rumors that Simon had returned to the Black Tower.

Natalia was surprised by the question, and shocked by the possibility of his return. She was quite certain this was impossible.

Simon of Bellamy.

Could he still be alive?

In a nutshell Natalia told Boneswa this:

• Two hundred years ago, there was a cult who worshipped Vecna, believing that he was actually a god. The cult grew in power. They built the Black Tower, not far from Ravensburg. As their power grew, they became more and more a threat to the town and the land seemed cursed.
• A group of wizards banded together to put down the cult. These included Gustav of Briarwood, Grimling of Dankmarsh, Tosa-Noa – a mysterious wizard from the distant southern jungles of Zoth, and Simon of Bellamy – then resident in Ravensburg. These four mages defeated the cult and killed the cult leader, Dargol.
• In the wake of the final battle, Grimling and Gustav returned to their homes. Tosa-Noa and Simon, who had become fast friends, decided they would cleanse the Black Tower and make it their own shared residence.
• The friendship did not last long. Some people think that the residual evil of the cult corrupted the two men.
• Simon and Tosa-Noa had a falling out; Tosa-Noa left the tower to build his own stronghold in the Sundered hills. Simon remained alone in the tower. 
• One night, about one hundred years ago, there was a terrific storm. Lightning and and thunder crashed down on the tower, destroying the upper works. No one knows what caused the storm, but some surmise it was summoned by Tosa-Noa. 
• Rumor held, however, that Simon survived and fled east to the distant desert land of Zandistan to study powerful dark magic.

Tosa-Noa came from the Jungles of Zoth; 

Simon of Bellamy fled to Zandistan.

Natalia, however, refused to believe that Simon of Bellamy has returned. Even for a wizard with all the enchantments imaginable, a lifespan of over 200 years is simply impossible she argued. Natalia insisted that this cannot be.

Boneswa took in this information. Before leaving, he sold Lowell's necklace to Natalia for 600 gold.

And there ended the session.

OD&D: Ravensburg Sessions 5 and 6

Catching up with two weeks worth of session reports in one post.

Session 5: First off, two Wednesdays ago when +Tim Shorts and I had a one-on-one session...

     Boneswa the elf and his sidekicks sought out information regarding the ornate ring he and Roghan had found in the Black Tower the previous week. Boneswa found an old widowed antiquities vendor, Natalia Stoynich, who offered to look into it, but it would take a few days.
     While waiting, Boneswa decided to head north on the Willowgrove Road to hunt for goblins, since he had so far found none on the first level of the Black Tower's dungeons. After a few hours march he was attacked by a fairly large band, and barely managed to drive them off. The surviving goblins fled toward...the Black Tower. Boneswa headed back to Ravensburg to collect the goblin bounty. A lieutenant of the Ravensburg's Black Guard paid the bounty and said he could hook up Boneswa with some caravan guard work in the future.
     Boneswa then headed back to Natalia's antique shop. She had the name of the family whose crest appeared on the ring, and gave Boneswa the address of Durston Lowell, last heir of a family of halfling bankers in Hightower.
     Boneswa paid master Lowell a visit, discovering he was an impoverished last heir, living in a mansion that was falling apart. The ring had belonged to Lowell's brother, who had disappeared in the Black Tower in a bid to regenerate the family fortune. In exchange for the ring, Lowell gave Boneswa three items which a comrade of his brother's had brought back from the dungeon – a potion of healing, a ring of spell storing, and a magic sword (exact nature as yet unknown to Boneswa).
   Here the session ended.

Session 6: Last night, +Rob Conley was back in action playing Roghan, the fighting-man.

     Not looking to head back into the tower again so soon, Boneswa and Rhogan checked with Lieutenant Argus about caravan work. Argus came through and put them in contact with an agricultural exporter named Susan Fellgood. The adventurers and the businesswoman haggled a bit and agreed on a fee. Two days later they set off.
     Over the course of the two-day journey south along the Ham's Fork road, the party encountered a massive ditch blocking the road (carved out by a recently fallen meteorite), and with the help of some elven hunters (for which the party traded some of the goods they were transporting), they built a makeshift log bridge over the ditch and continued on.
     Camping for the night near a broken down church, the party set out trip wires. During the pre-dawn watch, two ogres stumbled over it. Spells were cast, and soon one ogre was sound asleep, and the other charmed. The party ditched the ogres by telling the charmed one to head north and check out the meteorite for them once his companion woke up.
     Reaching the Ham River, the group encountered a young woman about to commit suicide by throwing herself off the bridge into the water with a rock tied to her ankle. Boneswa talked her out of it, and convinced her to accompany the party the rest of the way to Ham's Fork. On the way, the young woman, Helena, admitted she had recently been afflicted with kaprothropy, and was now a were-boar. On two separate occasions she had lost control of herself and killed people from her village. Unable to bear what she had become, she wanted to end her life. The party promised to find a priest or a healer to help her.
     Once in Ham's Fork, the party settled their accounts with Susan Fellgood and went in search of the priest of Saint Lillian's church. Father Michael took the party in for the night, but admitted Helena's condition was beyond his own knowledge and abilities. He sent some parish members out in search of Diana Foxglove, a halfling healer who wandered the environs of Ham's Fork.
     The next morning at breakfast, Father Michael was able to give the party news of Diana Foxglove's whereabouts. She was in a hamlet known as Goodwater, about a day's march to the west. The hamlet was engaged in a minor war with a local band of goblins, and Diana was serving them as medic.
     The party made their way to Goodwater and made the acquaintance of Diana and the hamlet's makeshift militia. The group offered to put an end to the local goblin scourge, and Diana agreed to cure Helena's kaprothropy.
     And here the session ended.

OD&D: Ravensburg/Black Tower Session 4

Last night Roghan the Fighting-Man joined up with Boneswa the Elf to plumb the depths of the Black Tower once more.

Player Characters 
   - Boneswa the Elf ( +Tim Shorts )
   - Roghan, the Fighting-Man ( +Rob Conley )

Sidekicks
   - Sister Regina, a Cleric (Boneswa)
   - Corder, a Fighting-Man (Boneswa)
   - Presto, an Elf (Roghan)
   - Lena, a Magic-User (Roghan)

New Rumors

In Ravensburg's Surly Dragon Inn, Roghan and Boneswa picked up two new rumors:
   - A large cat – perhaps a mountain lion? tiger? – has been spotted on the edges of the briars.
   - Goblins are based in the southwest of the dungeon's first level.

Exploration 
The party entered the tower and headed east with the plan of exploring how far the dungeon extended in that direction (the dungeon is relatively large but it's not a megadungeon, so the party knows there are definite edges to it). Once they could go no farther east, they turned north, pushing for the edge of the dungeon that way. In the course of their exploration, they found a spiral staircase leading down to a lower level (or levels), but they did not follow it down.

Enemies 
The party had three encounters with zombies who seem to have infested the northeast section of the dungeon. One cloaked zombie turned out to be a spellcaster who blasted Corder (one of Boneswa's sidekicks) with a magic missile, before being taken down.

Oddities
   - The party discovered a secret wall compartment that contained a tiny silver orb, about 1" across. The orb responds to questions with beeps and whistles (think R2-D2).
   - The party passed through a previously explored room where they had found a child's ragdoll and a fingerpainted parchment depicting a happy family (mom, dad, little girl, all smiling on a sunny day). In an adjacent room, the party discovered a zombie devouring the remains of a man and a woman, non-adventurers in "civilian" traveling clothes.
   - In another room the party encountered a fist-sized gem floating in mid air. Roghan's sidekick Lena approached it with a 10' pole and prodded it. A hail of arrows shot from the walls, but Lena's use of the 10' pole made it easy for her to dodge them (+4 to her save). The gem however disappeared. It turned out to be a projection of some sort. The party drove an iron spike into the hole from which the projection originated.

Loot
   - Ornate, finely crafted gold ring with a gem chip (worth 300 gp, but the party wants to see if it is perhaps a family heirloom to anyone in Ravensburg, who might be willing to pay more for its return).
   - 50 gold coins in a pouch
   - A wooden unholy symbol (from the zombie mage's neck)
   - A bundle of silverware hidden up a kitchen chimney (worth 40 gold)

OD&D: Ravensburg/Black Tower Game Report 3 (Brother Reginald goes to the hereafter)

Two Wednesdays ago our group was again reduced to just +Tim Shorts and me. So another casual session of Ravensburg it was, with Tim's elf, Boneswa, heading into the Black Tower alone with his two sidekicks, Brother Reginald the Cleric and Corder the Fighting-Man. Joining the small party this time was Kenny, the Torchbearer (note to +Ken H: Tim chose the torchbearer's name, not me).

On their way to the tower, Boneswa and company met the same man they had encountered last time, with orange-reddish hair and beard, streaked with black, sitting on a log at the edge of the briars, relaxing and smoking a pipe.

Boneswa spoke a bit more at length with the fellow, whose name was Tom. From him Boneswa learned that goblins and other things had been entering the tower, at the beckoning of a new master. As for Tom himself, he merely watched the comings and goings of people and creatures to and from the dungeon. Tom wished the party luck as they headed on.

Entering the dungeon and heading south, Boneswa and company encountered more of the hairy, bearded, leather-armored warriors they had encountered in their last expedition. These turned out to be furious berserkers, and in the ensuing fight Brother Reginald was slain.

Returning to Ravensburg, Boneswa and his companions delivered Brother Reginald's body to the Church of Saint Baldric. There Reginald's sister, also a cleric of Saint Baldric, joined the party to take up the work of her brother, smiting chaos with the party.

After some healing, a funeral, and the gift of a healing potion, the party returned to the tower. This time they found Tom's log on the edge of the Briars unoccupied. Examining it, they found tufts of what looked like his hair – but found it was feline in nature.

Proceeding to the dungeon, Boneswa and his followers defeated more berserkers. They also found a room with several iron cages. One cage had its door ripped off, with bits of blood and animal fur on the bars that looked very much like the hairs found on Tom's log.

Lootwise, the highlight of the expedition was the acquisition of a 400 gp gem.

OD&D: Ravensburg/Black Tower Game Report 2

Last week, and last night, the Wednesday night group was unable to get everyone together again, so we hopped into the Black Tower once more (the "casual corner" in Ravensburg) to just to toss some dice. Here is last week's session report; I hope to post last night's report later today.

Boneswa the Elf (+Tim Shorts) was joined by the Fighting-Man Rhogan (+Rob Connelly). Counting their sidekicks (elf, fighting-man, cleric, magic-user), this brought total party strength up to 6 members.

This time Boneswa the Elf (+Tim Shorts) was joined by the Rhogan the Fighting-Man (+Rob Conley). Counting their sidekicks (elf, fighting-man, cleric, magic-user), this brought total party strength up to 6 members.

The adventurers encountered more rats and, more importantly found conclusive evidence that there were in fact zombies in the northeast of the dungeon's first level – keeping the head of one zombie as evidence. The party also encountered three rather hairy, bearded warriors in leather armor (1). Rhogan's sidekick, Lena, charmed them, and sent them off to the north to hunt giant rats.

Numerous rooms were explored. The most curious was one with unusual triangular ceiling tiles in a complex pattern. Some of the tiles had a slightly different color. Rhogan used a 10-foot pole to press on one. It glowed. It also pointed to the next discolored one. Rhogan proceeded to that one and again pressed it, and it glowed, pointing to the next one and so on. This process was repeated until Rhogan had made his way along a tortuous path across the room to the exit on the opposite side. Rhogan warned the rest of the party to follow the path of the ceiling tiles as they must have been put there for a reason. The rest of the party did so, and nothing calamitous happened (evil grin).

Also of note, the party found dropped on the floor in one room a child's rag doll and parchment with a finger painted image of a happy family. Both looked very new. This elicited expressions of puzzlement and concern.

In another room the group found an altar once belonging to the recently defeated cult of Vecna. This particular altar appeared old and not used in ages, however.

Otherwise the adventurers picked up a reasonable amount of treasure and headed back to Ravensburg. On their return trip, they encountered a man with orange-reddish hair and beard streaked with black, sitting on a log at the edge of The Briars, relaxing and smoking a pipe (2). After exchanging a few pleasantries, the group returned to the city and turned in their zombie head to Lieutenant Argus of the Black Guard for a hefty reward.

NOTES:
(1) The party would encounter more of these guys a week later (last night).
(2) The party would encounter this fellow again a week later (last night) as well.

Creating a "Casual Corner" in My Game World

It all started when I read some posts at The Alexandrian about running an open table game. I was immediately drawn in with the analogy of "playing catch" vs. "joining a baseball team." If you haven't read it, it's definitely worth your time. A lot of what Justin Alexander says there seemed to apply not just to open table gaming, but to any form of casual play as well.

This came up about two weeks ago as +Tim Shorts and I chatted online, with our regular Wednesday game cancelled for the second or third week in a row. We talked about it and I said I'd toss something "casual" together just so we could sling some dice the following week.

And this is exactly what we did. Tim mentioned my abstract map in his post-game report. And I thought it could be worthwhile to post on that and all the shortcuts I took just to create a "casual corner" in my Ravensburg setting that can be used henceforth whenever a quick pick-up game might be needed.

I still plan to write up more "proper" adventures when my turn to GM for the whole group comes around. But the "casual corner" is something I want to have in my pocket ready to go at a moment's notice any time it might be needed.

A) Choosing a Spot. First I had to pick a "corner" of my setting to use for this purpose. I chose the large dungeon just outside Ravensburg. I've been meaning to create and stock it for a couple years and have just never gotten started on it. So this seemed like the perfect spot to designate.

B) Mapping the Dungeon. I used a very abstract dungeon mapping method, as Tim mentioned in his post. The map looks like this:

Sample of my dungeon map -- the section of level one Tim's character explored.

I assume that all rooms have uniform exits – that is, either all the exits of a room have doors, or all the exits open directly into a corridor. This is not terribly far-fetched, since most rooms in the real world work this way. In fact, all the rooms in my house are set up this way, and it makes sense. A door provides security and/or privacy. It generally makes little sense to provide that at one entry to a given room but not all entries. Likewise, open areas are meant to facilitate the flow of traffic, so again it makes little sense, say, in my dining room or my living room, to have some open exits, while one or more exits have a door.

This assumption makes it easy to color-code the rooms. A solid black room has doors; a white room with just the black border has no doors. A triangle in a room indicates a stairway; pointing toward the top of the page means the stairway goes up; pointing toward the bottom of the page means the stairway goes down.

Anything else, I write in my dungeon key. All rooms are assumed to be "medium" in size (roughly 30' across) unless otherwise noted in my key; so most rooms have no annotation for size. Those that are either small (say 20' across) or large (50' across) are marked "small" or "large" in the key. I'm also assuming rooms are roughly symmetrical; not necessarily exactly so, but more or less. Again, honestly, this is modeled on the rooms in my house – they're all rectangles, but they're really fat, stubby, nearly square rectangles. I assume the same for the rooms in my dungeon, whether they're quadrilaterals, triangles, or other shapes.

Each grid square equals one exploration-speed move, so about 120'.

This speeds up pre-game map drawing considerably (more on that below). It also makes in-game mapping by the players in face-to-face play much less of a chore – I've used a similar system in face-to-face games with my wife, and it works wonders.

C. Stocking the Dungeon. To stock the dungeon I went through the following processes. Bear in mind the point of this exercise was to come up with a quick and dirty adventure environment in minimal time, not to craft a creative masterpiece of artistic adventure design. To that end, I proceeded in "assembly line" style, as you'll see below, and I used Roll20's online random number generator rather than real dice, since with a series of rapid mouse-clicks you can churn out five or six random numbers in the same amount of time it takes to pick up a die, roll it, wait for it to settle, read it, note the result with a real die.

Step 1. Determine total number of levels of the dungeon and divide each level into two to four zones.

Step 2. Use wandering monster tables to determine at random the dominant monster type of each zone.

Step 3. Quicky define the relationship of each zone-based group to the others around it (e.g. friendly, hostile, neutral).

Step 4. Determine an overall "atmostphere" for each entire level – for example, the first level, that Tim began to explore, is made up of smooth stone floors and walls, and the air is unexpectedly cold.

Step 5. Randomly place dungeon dressing in 50% of the rooms. I simply put some form of dungeon dressing in every even-numbered room or every odd numbered room in a given section. That saved me lots of die rolls right there (i.e. I didn't need to roll to see whether or not there was some form of dungeon dressing in the room – the room number dictated whether there was or not). I created my own dressing table focusing on "categories" or "types" of things (e.g. "damaged adventuring gear" rather than "broken lantern" or "frayed rope"), and then quickly just made up the specifics. This kept me rolling on only one table, instead of multiple tables, for all types of dressing – again it saved time in the long run.

Step 6. Randomly determine the general type of contents (empty? monsters? traps? treasure?) for all rooms without determining the specific details of those contents. I did this using the 1e AD&D DMG room-stocking table from the random dungeon appendix. This stocks the room with a single d20 roll, rather than two rolls of a d6 – literally cutting die-rolling time in half.

Step 7. Go back for each room and figure out the exact nature of each monster, trap, treasure. Most monsters are simply the dominant monster for the zone – this again saved time – and aren't rolled for. Once in a while, I'd roll a random one just to avoid total uniformity. For treasures, I just used OD&D's unguarded treasure table, which is much simpler than using the treasure type tables. Occasionally, where it obviously made sense, and didn't require more than a second's thought, I just put a certain type or amount of treasure in a room. Additionally, I tried to make quick ties between the existing dungeon dressing and a creature, trap or treasure in the room, whenever I could do so logically. For example, the dual pit-and-pendulum trap that Tim encountered. In the dungeon-dressing phase, I had already rolled a "pedestal" in the room. In the general stocking phase I rolled a trap result. So in the detail-determination phase, I linked the trap to the pedestal by placing treasure on the pedestal as bait. This, by the way, is why I rolled for dungeon dressing first, and then monsters/traps/treasures afterward, since in many cases, dressing would dictate the exact nature of the other features.

Result: The combination of abstract mapping with assembly-line stocking, single tables, and computerized die rolls let me create the two largest dungeon levels I ever made in record time (or record time for me, anyway). In all, the mapping and stocking came out to 3 minutes per room (I'm phrasing the time scale thus in order to avoid giving away the number of rooms on the levels I prepped). To put it in perspective if, hypothetically, there were 50 rooms on a level (100 rooms total), my total time to map and stock these two complete levels would have been five hours. If, hypothetically, there were 100 rooms on a level (200 rooms total), my total time to map and stock the two levels would have been ten hours.

OD&D: Ravensburg/Black Tower, Session 1

Since the Wednesday Night Group couldn't all get together this week (for something like the third or fourth week in a row), +Tim Shorts  and I decided to play a one-on-one D&D game in my Ravensburg setting, using the original three little brown books.

Tim wrote his own post about the session over at Gothridge Manor in his colorful and inimitable style.

We used Total Party Kill's random LBB character generator to create Tim's main character and two sidekicks.  And after tweaking some gear and making note of a few house rules we were off.

Tim's Characters:

Personal Character: Boneswa, the elf (F/M-U 1)
Sidekick 1: Brother Reginald (Cleric 1)
Sidekick 2: Corder (Fighting Man 1)

Boneswa and company began the session breakfasting in the Surly Dragon Inn on their last handful of silver pieces. A clerk from the Ravensburg City Council strode in and nailed an official-looking poster to the wall. Due to increased goblin activity on the road near the Black Tower northeast of the city, a bounty of 10 gp was being offered on every goblin's right hand brought in to the city guard. Additionally, because of recent unconfirmed claims of zombie, ogre and troll sightings in the vicinity, any proof of such creatures' presence would also be rewarded.

In the preceding days, Boneswa and his companions had also heard a few scattered rumors about the Black Tower:

     "Many folk don't know it, but giant rats is good eatin'!"
     "The northeastern part of level one is infested with zombies."
     "There is a tunnel in the dungeons of the Black Tower that will take you all the way to hell."

Armed with lots of courage, a few rumors, and little cash, Boneswa led his sidekicks north of town, skirting the Briars (reputed to be haunted), and then hooked back east again to climb Tower Hill.

The tower itself appeared menacing, but was harmless, and the intrepid party made their way down a stair to the first level. Boneswa directed them westward from the entrance. The band very quickly encountered a pack of giant rats – this was to set the tone for the whole delve. In all, the group would have three separate, and sometimes harrowing, rat encounters.

Boneswa held his own in these combats, slashing away with a dagger in each hand.

Corder, the fighting-man sidekick, had issues however, and at one point had two rats climbing up his body, one with its teeth plunged into his throat between helmet and armor, the other covering up the view slit in Corder's helmet, effectively blinding him, as it tried to find some area of exposed flesh to sink its teeth into.

The cleric, Brother Reginald, really shone in these fights. He waded into the rats swinging his war hammer left and right and driving limp rat corpses deep into the cheap seats with almost every blow.

The group encountered two traps as well. The first involved a dose of sleeping gas – to which only Brother Reginald succumbed (probably tired to begin with after hammering all those rats). The second was baited with a coffer atop a pedestal. Grooves in the floor and slits in the ceiling revealed the presence of a dual "pit and pendulum" trap. Corder, the fighting-man sidekick, drew the short straw and moved to flank the pedestal and approach it from between the lines of cut marks in the floor. He managed to step on a pressure plate triggering the two, blade-edged pendulums, which blew past him on either side. But no harm was done, and the fighter came back to the others with over 400 silver pieces and an empty bladder to show for it.

The only other event of note was the approach of tramping feet at one point, which Boneswa thought it best to avoid. The elf led the group on a maneuver to scoot out of the way of the approaching marchers down various side corridors. The maneuver eventually succeeded, as the unidentified marching group strode past down another corridor.

The abstract dungeon map we used -- I'll post more about this soon.

After exploring a total of thirteen rooms, Boneswa led his companions back to the stairs and south to Ravensburg.

Total Rooms Explored: 13
Total Monsters Defeated: 14 giant rats
Total Treasure Recovered: 400 sp, 40 gp
Traps Survived: 2
Groups of Enemies Avoided: 1
Total Party Members Lost: 0

Any delve where everyone comes back alive is a good delve!