Stonehell: the Joys of Megadungeons
Posted by Joshua on Mar 1, 2010
We had a very good session with the kids exploring Stonehell last night, and it was gratifying to see that one of the primary features of a megadungeon that you return to again and again has started to pay off, namely that they are remembering and taking advantage of their knowledge of the places and creatures they’ve run into before. When they killed a wandering giant ferret that attacked them on level one, they headed over to the Kobold marketplace to sell it, figuring the hide must be worth something (and it was). Later on, on the way out of the dungeon, they used their knowledge of the layout to duck out of the way of a group of hunting Neanderthals… the Neanderthals had come close kicking their asses several times before and now they give them a wide berth when they can.
During the session they almost lost a party member to the haunted straight jacket, and unwisely sat down to party with the Piskes whom they mistook for their benevolent relatives the Pixies; they survived that encounter, thanks to a lucky roll by the party cleric in smiting the Piske shaman, but it was a near thing. They also got some interesting magical loot that I threw in, a potion that granted 10 minutes of unkillability (damage taken while the potion is in effect regenerates) and some random magic lollipops (these were licorice, cure poison).
A good time was had by all, and three of the party leveled up (which reminds me I should make a cheat sheet to make that easier next time).
Introducing New Players to D&D via Stonehell
Posted by Joshua on Feb 15, 2010
Last night we brought my wife’s college roommate and her two kids, ages 14 and 9, to our Sunday night Bumblers gathering, and introduced them to D&D. None of them had ever played RPGs before, so I decided that a straight-on dungeon delve was the ticket. The kids were enthusiastic to try, the mom was at least willing. We rolled up characters, using my D&Desque homebrew rules, before the game started and they created Hippolyta the Fighter (mom), Dorian the Fighter (14 year-old daughter), and Little Father Muffler (9 year-old son). My wife Elyssa also rolled a new character, Ranger Joe-Bob. Yeah, I don’t bother trying to encourage campaign-world compatible names, not for this sort of thing anyway. Doug and Dan were the only other regulars, what with it being Valentine’s day, and they brought Tomato the Fairy Witch and Hurlon the Dwarven Thief.
For a dungeon, I used Michael Curtis’ Stonehell, the same one I’ve been using with the other set of kids. (I’m using the free version, though the link it to the more polished and complete version you can purchase from Lulu.) It’s a good beginner’s dungeon with a variety of things to encounter, architectural features, and old-fashioned traps. I’ve found that I like to beef it up a bit, adding stuff so that almost every room has something interesting to investigate or fight; a lot of the rooms are empty, particularly right around the entrance, presumably so you can more easily tailor it to your taste this way. There are probably arguments to be made along the lines of naturalism and discouraging too much caution (by making it boring to search exhaustively) for having a fair bit of empty space, but since it violates the King Kong principle (get to the f*ing monkey), the heck with it… players go into the dungeon to encounter stuff, so let’s have them encounter stuff.
An example: in the Feast Hall I put a niche behind one of the rotting tapestries. In the niche are a swarm of carnivorous moths; they won’t do any actual damage, but will painfully bite exposed flesh (similar to the bit of a horsefly). They are thickly gathered on a small leather bag that’s been coated with a waxy substance. After Joe-Bob the ranger found the niche and got badly bitten for his troubles, Father Muffler (the 9-year old boy) came up with the idea of luring the moths away from the bag with the light of his lantern; this worked and they retrieved the bag with no further problems… though they did end up abandoning the lantern; fortunately they had a spare. In the bag they found a necklace of amber beads, each containing an insect inclusion. Tomato cast Detect Magic, and found that it was indeed magical, and after some hemming and hawing about whether they should try it out and if so, who should take the risk, Tomato draped it over her(him?)self as a kind of sash. Nothing bad happened immediately, and later on in a random encounter with some fire beetles they discovered that it allowed the wearer to control insects. It also dealt Tomato a 1 HP stinging wound after Tomato had made the beetles fight until there was one left, when Father Muffler smashed the last beetle. The party speculated that this was some kind of feedback effect. SPOILER (Doug don’t read): Show ▼
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The new players were a bit confused and tentative at first, but started to get the hang of it as we went along. I did all the rolling for them (usually I let the players roll for everything except searches and the like where they’re not supposed to know whether they’ve failed or there was nothing to find) and just told them the results. They had the fairly typical fear that they were “doing it wrong,” but the experienced players really encouraged them to go with the flow. One thing that I do, which I think helps new players get the hang of the role-playing aspect of it, is encourage them to roll on a random table of motivations: once each for their primary drive and primary aversion. So, for instance, Father Muffler happened to roll that his primary drive was Religion, and that his aversion was also Religion, so he decided that the was a fanatic about his faith and opposed to other faiths. Dorian rolled that her primary drive was Knowledge, and her aversion was Danger. This made for (imo) for a rather interesting character, though I think she was particularly concerned that she wasn’t “playing well” because she was avoiding the fighting that the others were doing (with great enthusiasm on some of their parts. Elyssa in particular loves hacking away at things as a Fighter). After the game we all reassured her that as long as she was having fun, playing true to the character’s personality rather than optimally for the party’s goals was playing well. At least by my group’s standards. Certainly Doug never lets optimum party strategy or groupthink get in the way of his characters’ outrageous personalities, and as long as he manages to be entertaining about it that’s one of the fun things about playing with Doug.
The evening ended with the poison-gas fish-fountain claiming all three of the new players (everyone had to make a save, they were the only ones who failed). It was getting late, so we ended there, but we’re going to play again tonight, probably with just the kids and Elyssa…the mom appreciated it as a new experience, but wasn’t as taken with the whole thing. As they were heading out the door to go visit the museums they have planned for the day, the 9 year-old was busy trying to come up with a name for his next priest…
Hand-waving Dungeon Travel
Posted by Joshua on Jun 4, 2009
The party that’s been exploring Stonehell has reached a point where getting back to the yet-unexplored part of the dungeon and then out again is taking too much of the play-session, at least if I roll for wandering monsters as they travel and restock the likely places like the Orc’s guard-post. In the old days, we used to freeze time in-between sessions… the party wouldn’t overnight in the dungeon, but we’d break in the middle of things and resume there next time. This was pretty much a necessity when you were squeezing a few minutes play in at lunch-time or in study hall, but it carried over into our Friday night games as well.
I’m a little reluctant to go that route with the current game, preferring the party to start and end outside the dungeon–both because the line-up of characters changes when one kid or the other has a sleep-over or Elyssa is away performing or something, and because even if we froze, so far every session at least one character has been knocked around enough to require rest and recuperation even if nobody except Revenge has been injured beyond the ability of one of Horatia’s miracles to revive. So I’m considering just hand-waving their entrances and exits unless they’ve got monsters in hot pursuit. For one thing, now that most of them are second level and considering the damage they’ve caused, the number of times the Orcs’ morale checks have sent them fleeing, and the psychological warfare they’ve been employing (they’ve actually taken the time to gut many of the Orcs they’ve killed in order to reinforce the impression that Horatia’s god regularly does this to their opponents) it would be fairly easy to justify the Orcs starting to give them a wide berth.
If you run dungeoneering expeditions, how do you handle this? Do you let parties camp overnight in the dungeon? Do you make sure there are shortcuts so they don’t have to traverse lots of explored areas? Or do you just do what I’m contemplating and say, ok, twenty minutes later you’re back at the closed portcullis…what do you do now?
Exploring the Contested Corridors
Posted by Joshua on May 26, 2009
Friday we had a good long session of the game with the kids, where they explored more of Amityville Mike’s Stonehell dungeon, in particular the 1C section: The Contested Corridors. The game continues to go well, and much enjoyment is being had by all. There was one more character death this time, Grace’s character Horatia, but a succesful dying prayer (natural 20) restored the character to life in a spectacular fashion, though much in need of rest and recuperation. The party continues to be more and more impressed with Horatia’s make-believe god Horatio, which Grace plays to the hilt. It will be interesting to see if they ever do figure out that the god she claims to be worshipping isn’t the one she’s actually devoted to.
They also leveled up, all except Charlie’s new character (replacing the deceased Revenge) and Elyssa’s new-to-the-campaign fighter, Biff. Mostly that involved getting another dice worth of Stamina points, since nobody opted for trying to increase any stats, and choosing a new Talent, plus selecting new spells for the Mages. I’ve replaced the specific effects of spells like Magic Missile, Burning Hands, and Shocking Grasp with more generalized versions where when you learn the spell you pick the element (from a list of available elements) along the lines of Trappings in Savage Worlds. Mac’s Rogue (Thief/Mage) decided to specialize in Electrical magic, in return for the vague promise of future benefits for having done so; Tommy’s Mage decided to branch out, so he can now cast either the Ice or Poison versions of the two elemental spells he knows: dart and fan.
I had hoped to spend some time RPing the interaction with the Adventurer’s Guild and with Rowena the Healer, an NPC they just met and daughter of Contus the boat-man, who ferries them to the island with the dungeon as needed. But the kids were getting a little antsy, and needed some good hack-time. One of the things I’ve found about GMing Stonehell is that there are really more empty rooms than the kids will put up with. Part of that is Mike leaving plenty of space for GMs to insert their own stuff, and part that there’s a certain logic to not having everything cheek-by-jowl to everything else, but I’ve been sliding more and more towards having something to do or think about in every room. Some of the time I’m just shifting the location of a random encounter so that it’s either in the room or comes upon them while they’re checking it out, but I’m also starting to just wing extra stuff, like the giant crab pretending to be a table, or the secret compartment beneath the broken statue containing a copper bracelet that grants immunity to the lightning that the trapped suits of armor cast. I’ll be interested to see what they do with that, once they figure it out.
The orcs continue to be a source of great amusement; making them comically stupid has worked out really well. The highlight of the session was when Tommy (the youngest) managed to fool a big crowd of orcs who were attracted by the sounds of them fighting the giant crab by shouting through the door in orcish “They went the other way!” It’ll also be fun when they meet the bogeys (shemped goblins) and find out that not all monsters are that gullible.
One thing they’re not very good about is running away when the odds aren’t good. So far, it’s worked out ok for them, but so far they’ve been quite lucky with some of Horatia’s miracles. On the other hand, at least one of the miracles wouldn’t have been necessary if they hadn’t been really unlucky with one of the orc’s damage rolls. I’m wondering if I should tweak the rules for extra damage hits slightly; I had thought that I made really bad hits rare enough, but now I’m not sure.
Names and Language in Nonesuch
Posted by Joshua on May 22, 2009
Anything the players want. That’s what they do anyway, and I know from bitter experience that once I start in on listing appropriate names for cultures and races it’s just a short step to a naming language and then a full-blown death spiral into conlangs. So Umbry, Auxi-lock, Revenge, Expendable 1401, Tomato, Hermia/Horatia, Caboose, Hurlon, Poden Persas, welcome to the Land of Nonesuch! Hope you survive the experience!
Well, except for you Revenge, better luck next life.
One thing I haven’t really settled is how many languages there are and how many the characters know. Originally I was allowing each character one extra language per INT bonus, so pretty much all the characters had one or none. Everybody in the kids’ game wanted Orc, because that was the first group of humanoid monsters they ran into, and they were fun to talk to. Now I’m thinking that will be kind of dull when they run into other monsters, unless they speak common, and I’m also wondering if I’m taking too American a view of foreign languages. In a setting where you’re exposed to them regularly, it probably shouldn’t be so hard to pick them up. Maybe one extra spoken language per point of Int over 9, and one dead language per Int Bonus? It would be something to do with Int for non-Mages, given the system doesn’t really emphasize skills. And I want characters to be talking to the monsters, even the hostile ones, because that’s where the RP is.
Thoughts and suggestions? How do you handle it in your games?