Exploring the Wilderness - Life with Rocs

More solo play with post background after the jump.  Next time they should be at the tomb.

Vineyard’s Bounty, 8th Rising. On the Old South Road in the Quean’s Waste at the Domain of Lanpugna.
Map 2 Hex 3003.

    After clearing Black Baron Pass (Map 2 Hex 3105), the Old South Road stuck to the foothills of Cloudwall Mountains. The road, as well as the adjacent fields, pastures and dwellings, was frequently shadowed by the tall ponderosa and red pines left standing as obstructions to the rocs and other aerial predators of the Quean’s Waste. Looking to the right the party could see the badlands and sands of the Waste stretching out to the distant heights of the Ered Losthain. On the fourth day out of Castrum Venterlapis they arrived at the manor of Lady Rusonia Brucetus in the Domain of Lanpugnia.



    Walker, the man at arms Hervey Stylle and the pack handler Otmar led the mounts and the pack animals down to the corral and stables behind the Lapungnian peasant, Herwig. Herwig had them remove the

saddles and pack frames by the stables, saying they could move them inside after they turned the horse and mules out into the corral.

    In the stable, he directed them to pile the saddles and tack on top of an existing pile of old harnesses. When Hervey placed the third saddle on top, the whole pile slid over with a metallic, jingling sound. A battered backpack, looking half burnt had slid out and blackened scale mail spilled from it.

    “Damn,” Herwig said, “the armorer was looking for that last week. I forgot we’d thrown it in the pile after we buried him.”

    “The armorer?” Walker asked sardonically.

    “No, some poor sod of an adventurer, like you, the goatherds found in the lower pastures. He was all burned up, you can see the damage to the backpack and look, ” he held up the remains of a set of scale armor out of the backpack, the right arm was missing and the right side looked half melted away. “I’ve heard there’s some red dragons in the Cloudwalls, I think maybe one of them got him.”

Otmar looked pale.

Hervey said, “Almost got him, if there was anything left to bury.”

Walker rummaged in the remains of the backpack and pulled out a scrap of burned parchment.


~~llow Moon Dog, 7th Rising

We left Alerion Affame early in the morning, but the sun was setting when we found the tom~ Wulfwin decided to camp w~~~~~~~~ng wall and clear the sand from the west entrance today, but n~ start exploring. We looked inside the corridor, I saw fou~~~~be five doors in the torchlight. The f~~~ ~~o on the right have already been opened. Hopefully the rest are waiting for us.


“When did you find this guy?” he asked.

“Six, eight weeks ago, I think.”

“Was there anything else in the pack?”

“You’d have to ask the steward. Anything of value would have been kept by Lady Brucetus.”

Exploring the Wilderlands - REG and the Orcs of the Ocher Spear

 

    One of the topics I have repeatedly posted on over the last dozen years are random encounters.  Generating them, running them, frequency, I've covered all of those.  One thing I don't think I've posted on is REG, my home rule Random Encounter Generator (not exactly a creative name, I know).  I developed REG a LONG time ago, so long ago that I need to retype it as all I have is the PDF copy, the original Word file was done several laptops ago.  I may not have recycled it yet, but not sure I want to try to boot an old Windows laptop up for one file.  Besides it needs some updates as I have evolved my approach for random encounters.

I wrote up the result of a Random Encounter from REG a couple of posts ago

"No, no, it's true the Ocher Spear threw what the orcs call a bridge across the Murmuring Stream, just up from where it flows into the Mageven. It cuts a full day off the ride to the Old South Road. But it will cost you a fair amount. Two gold crowns a leg, man and beast is what I heard. O'course the bridge is too rickety for a cart or wagon so I haven't used it me self." the driver passed the rumor on to them.

What's not obvious is what the random encounter actually is:  it's the information about a toll bridge.

    When I sat down and thought about random Encounters, I realized that while based on the tables in the old DMG and the incentives of gathering XP - most random encounters are run as straight combat encounters.  I've done it as a DM and been bored by it as a player.  So I gave some consideration to what the characters and players could gain by random encounters.  Combat and XP certainly stay in there, but encounters can also be designed to funnel information to the characters and to increase the players' immersion in the world.

My first breakdown is by type of Encounter

Challenge - both the classic monster encounters from the DMG and also mechanical challenges like dealing with toll bridges, flooded fords, rocks in rivers etc while the party travels.

    Information - information is simply any knowledge of possible use to the characters.  Whether about a Challenge, the current Adventure or a hook for another adventure.  The key is that the characters now have a data point for the players to consider and take action on or not as they see fit.  This also adds to player immersion as they're not rolling dice, they are considering course of action.

    Recurring NPCs - whether a Sponsor, like a Noble needing a team of deniable agents to advance her goals, a regular Informant (like Huggy Bear in Starsky and Hutch - for those of you old enough to know) or a pesky rival party trying to horn in on your loot.  The purpose is to introduce these NPCs organically into the campaign and see where the players go.  Again, dealing repeatedly with the same NPCs adds to immersion as the world stabilizes for the players.

    I have a fourth category - Gonzo in the original REG, where the party would meet a challenge from one of the other RPGs in my library.  However, I've shifted to a kitchen sink approach to generating random monsters and this is why I need to re-write REG.

    To get back to the toll bridge, I rolled Information about a Challenge.  The Challenge turned out to be a

Road Hazard (Toll Bridge) and the information was available verbally from an NPC, rather than the party discovering physical evidence.  Once I knew that it was a matter of figuring out where the bridge was and who was collecting the tolls.

    The map does not show a road from Zothay up to the Old South Road (dashed red line).  I've placed all the nobles in my Feudal Wilderlands, and I know there isn't a castle in that area.  That left looking at the monsters in the random encounters in the area and picking one.  Orcs seemed like a good choice, but since these were local characters and NPCs, I needed a name for the tribe.  Up in the Dearthwood there are the Orcs of the Purple Claw.  And of course, Saruman had the Orcs of the White Hand.  So naming them [color] [item] seemed like a good pattern.   I've always been intrigued by Ocher as a color, ever since I first played the board game 'Civilization' and encountered it as an early trade good.  Anyway, it refers to pigments from ferrous compounds, ranging from yellow to dark red. 

    Orcs of the Ocher Spear - a tribe ranging the Arthiop Mud Flats and northern reaches of the Fogbound Forest.  They use the Arthiop Hickory (carya arthiopis) to fashion spear shafts, new ones issued to young warriors are light yellow.  The shafts darken as the wood ages, and dark spears are a sign of rank and a reason to challenge a rival.  It is rumored that the High Chieftain's spear shaft is very ancient and a dark brown like dried blood. 

    The road from Zothay to Bellystone Ford is a long one and skirts the headwaters of the Murmuring Stream, as the lower reaches have wide soft banks at the confluence of the Mageven.  

    Now my world has a few more details.

Real Tomb Maps for Your Gaming Enjoyment

Tomb KV08 - Pharoh Merenptah
Copyright American Research Center in Egypt
(ACRE) used with permission under Fair Use

 I came across a wonderful resource for all of you grave robbing murder hobos out there.  The Theban Mapping Project has been creating vertical and horizontal plans as well as 3D images of the tombs in the world's most famous necropolis - Egypt's Valley of the Kings!

If you need a quick tomb to explore or if you are running a Cthulhu Gaslight campaign or anything else you can think of, you can find these wonderful images here.

The Theban Mapping Project Plans

Forced March - Accelerating Cross Country Game Play in RPGs

Feb 2023 Blog Carnival
@Plastic Polyhedra

     I spent last Saturday night rolling dice, as the party moved across the grasslands from the human kingdom to the elven forest.  Every day has the players, in order around the table, rolling dice to determine if a random encounter had occurred, morning, (after)noon and night.  Standard procedure from the beginning of gaming, right?

     True, but I've had time to wonder as I awaited my turn to roll, why?  I know that random encounters use resources and provide variety from the adventure path - but in my decades of experience I've rarely seen them be more than one more combat in the evening.  Mechanically they slow gameplay twice, once as the players roll and then again as the DM looks up the monster and stats it out.  Let's see how we can accelerate this if we stop asking the dice if an encounter has occurred and start asking them when the next encounter occurs.

     First, please raise your hand if you always follow the encounter times in the DMG, yeah that's what I thought.  Actually game play has simplified the table to using the 'Plains' distribution more often than not.  So three chances per day, at (in Wilderness) a 10% chance of an encounter occurring.  (My current DM uses 25%, but that just changes numbers within the calculations.)  So, on average we can expect 3 encounters every 10 days; but that's the same as one encounter every 3.3333 days.  Let's round that down to one encounter every three days.

     Now, when play begins have the player roll two d6/2, to give you the number of days until the next encounter and the time of day the encounter occurs.  Make sure the group has given you their standard watch rotations and marching order before they roll; and don't let them change that after the dice have fallen.  Now play is jumping from scene to scene without the repetitive dice rolling with negative results.

    Obviously, for you purists who never deviated from the DMG, you can adapt this to any encounter check frequency you need.  If you have the prep time, you can even pre-generate the encounters themselves so you don't need to stat them out during play.

 

This is How We Grow

   Got a call Thursday, asking if I could run the second half of my Traveller adventure on Saturday.  I said, probably, but it would be short as there wasn't much left for the party to do and I wouldn't have time to prep anything as I was writing reviews for work and had plans Friday night - oh. and I was driving an hour to help the youngest work on his house Saturday morning - so timing was iffy.  I was told no problem, one of the regular players (the bartender) was interested in running something.

    Well running a cable around the outside of his house to feed it through an existing hole took an hour longer than expected, so I was running late when I got there with my kit.  No problem, they had started rolling characters.  He'd had Dark Heresy on his shelf for ten years, had never played it and never run a game before.

    I've never played it either, but I do have Warhammer FRP 1e on my bookshelf for the last thirty odd years, unplayed.   So I had some familiarity with the underlying system. But he got everyone through character generation and equipment, taking his time and looking things up as he needed to find them.  Nobody showed impatience, we were all learning the system and gave him suggestions like - instead of doing weapons one player at a time go through the table and everyone who has that weapon can write down the specs together.

   He wanted to ise an introductory scenario, as much so he'd get familiar with the different types of checks as we would, and he reassured us that combat would only be a minor concern as we were weak and crunchy anyway.  The scenario was set up to introduce social interaction checks, like Inquiry first, then physical skill checks, then combat.  Now, we were skeptical, because the group tends to shoot first and question the souls of the dead afterwards, but OK.

I immediately short-circuited the social interaction checks by doing a 'take me to your leader' routine as soon as we touched down.  So no following up on people mysteriously coming up and talking to us.  Although one character did intimidate a quartermaster out of his own suit of armor and got us some frag grenades to boot.

We manage to short-circuit the physical skill checks to.  Instead of jumping across a chasm, we go back and retrieve a door we'd taken off the hinges earlier and make a bridge.  So we very quickly got into combat with groups of abominable mutants.  Where we all felt comfortable and we got to work out the mechanics of Warhammer Critical Hit System.  Lots, I mean LOTS of gore in the descriptions.  I've always enjoyed them.

  The whole time,  we were offering suggestions and discussing rule interpretations with our new DM - three of us have run games before.  Ranging from - don't show fear to "OK, he made the absurd skill check, but here's a suggestion on how to handle it so it doesn't derail the scenario.

At the end an enjoyable evening and a new DM for the group.  This is how we build our hobby, one player and one DM at a time, playing together rather than competitively.

Big, Round and Down: The Unfinished Domain of the Scarlet Prince - Part 6

Big, Round and Down 

Area 1 Room 3 

Quick Look - the walls extend away, curving inward. Your torch light doesn't find the far wall. Your footsteps echo slightly in the large gloomy chamber. You see a wooden well cover lying on the floor. 

Detailed Examination - the room is an 80 foot diameter circle, slightly truncated where other rooms have been built. Under the well cover is a 5 foot shaft leading down. The only other object in the room is a bundle of leather. Examining it determines that it is a crumpled, small leather pouch containing flower bulbs. Lily bulbs if they check. 

Exits 

To Room 1 - Normal Door, although it has an unusual disk carved (standing out from the surface of the door) under the latch.. To open and disarm the trap: Slide the disk down while the door to Room 2 is closed. The door from Room 1 to Room 2 must be closed to open this door. If the disk is lowered, while the door to Room 2 is open, the trap triggers. The trap sprays a slimy gel on the hands of the door opener, making it impossible to grasp objects. Clean off with wine or vinegar. 

To Room 2 - the door posts are carved with flowers. Lilies, if anyone checks. The door itself is a normal door, it shows no unusual damage on this side. There is no trap. 

Shaft - a five foot diameter shaft leading down. There are rungs bolted to the side of it

5 foot squares
Adding details as I generate the rooms

Room size and presence of the shaft created with the DMG tables.  

 Decided that doorway decorations should usually repeat on the other side of the door.

Tome of Adventure Design, Tables 3-27 through 3-29 for the door and latch/trap trigger to Room 1, which only became apparent when I laid the room out on the map.   The trap itself was generated using Tables 3-126 Basic Traps and 3-129 Trap Liquids.  They gave me the inspiration for the effect and remedy.

The pouch and contents were generated from Table 3-144 Dungeon Dressing and 3-159 Herbs.

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince - Part 5

   Doorway behind stage - when I looked at my drawing, I changed it to the rear left corner of the stage - a player's entrance.    ToAD Tables 3-27 through 3-29 - archway is painted in a repeating pattern. The theme of the dungeon gave me the inspiration for the pattern,  Doorway is painted with red and white tragedy/comedy masks.  Door itself is plain.  Room 2 is a 30x40 Rectangle.  I used ToAD Table 3-39, think I'll just use the DMG in the future for room sizes, more variety.  Contains monster only. DMG Table V-F. Undead, incorporeal, semi-intelligent, does not create more monsters.  ToAD Tables 2-1 Monster Type and 2-64 Undead.  I then went through the incorporeal undead from the Monster Manual and settled on Shadow.  This differs from the the ToAD result as Shadows can reproduce by creating other Shadows. 

Area 1 Room 2 

Shadow of the Prop Master  

Room 2 is accessed by the doorway off of the rear left corner of the stage.  The door posts are painted with a pattern crimson masks of comedy and tragedy running down them, the door itself is unadorned. Try as you might you discover no indication of a trap.  The door is not locked, nor is it stuck.

Quick Look - shadows predominate in this room.  Your light striking tables and chairs, rolls of canvas stacked haphazardly and racks of clothing decaying into gossamer spider webs, casts them on the far walls and between piles. The room is about 30 feet across and extends to the right into the gloom past what your light illuminates


Detailed Examination - the room is 30x40 and piled with theater props. Bards will recognize this immediately, as will anyone with any skill or experience in acting. For the others, the clothing looks expensive, but the cloth is cheap. Armor is knitted chain mail and tin plate. The rolls of canvas, if unrolled, are painted scenery. Of more interest, to the pecuniary minded adventurers, are the unlocked chests on the far wall. They will prove to contain wood discs painted gold, obviously fake, and costume jewelry. If the party has determined this is a prop room, give them a +4 on any appraisal check to determine the gems and jewelry are fake. Otherwise they can carry them out and pay to learn they are fake. Under a jumble of canvas rolls is a skeleton.

Monster - the room is haunted by the Shadow of the Property Master. This being will use the shadows to hide and reach out to steal life from random characters. The only way to avoid the shadows would be to push all the props up against the walls. To banish the Prop Master, the skull from the skeleton must be taken on stage and a play performed with the skull playing the lead role.

Shadow (14 HP), AC 7, 3+3 HD, One attack for 1d4+1 Damage + Strength Drain (1 pt/hit). Shadows are 90% undetectable and require a +1 weapon or better to hit. Strength loss returns in 2d4 turns. Characters reduced to 0 Hit Points or Strength are turned into Shadows themselves.

5 foot squares
Updating the layout as I generate the rooms

Getting a sense of how to combine Tome of Adventure Design with the DMG.

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince

Part I - The Entry

Part 2 - The Grating Chasm

Part 3 - Area 1 Layout

Part 4 - Theater of the Crimson Mime

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince - Part 4

    In which I determine what the Tome of Adventure Design isn't and start detailing the rooms in Area 1.

   ToAD is not a dungeon generation system, which isn't obvious at first look, although I had my suspicions by the third look.  Great tables for coming up with creative features, but no guidance on how often such features should crop up.  This isn't an issue for anyone with access to the DMG, it's really a matter of choosing when to move between the two.

   I really like ToAD's area design, so starting with that, as I said in the previous post, I know  Area 1 Room 1 will be of unusual size.  Table 3-40 gives me a room nominally 50x80, with far end a ziggurat like stepped triangle with a 20' point. 

   OK, what about the door into the room from the chasm?  Have to jump around, but Tables 3-27 and 3-28 treat Archways.  ToAD defines an Archway as where ever a tunnel or corridor leads out of the room.  Leading into one is the same thing, so I have a Trap!   We'll leave that for a minute while I get more information.   Table 3-29 Normal Doors; Basic Description of - comes to the rescue saying the door while otherwise normal is painted an unusual color.  Table 3-30 tells me it's painted a red and white checkerboard.

   Traps, there's a whole chapter in ToAD with tables for randomly generating a trap.   And none of my random rolls gave me anything I liked.  Finally I started reading the table entries and after eight pages came across a magical trap effect "Floating image of person, monster or animal."  That, with the door pattern, gave me an idea.

   Other than that, ToAD has lots of random room content tables, but as I said no room content distribution table, so back to the DMG Table V-F Chamber or Room Contents.  If I roll a Special I'll jump back to ToAD.  And I roll an eleven, it's empty.

Area 1 Room 1

Theater of the Crimson Mime.

     Crossing the grating, the ledge on the other side is differs only in minor details.  The wall on the far side contains a gaily painted door in a red and white harlequin pattern.  Successfully detecting traps will find a spring compressed at the top of the door.  The trap may be disabled.  Detect Magic will detect a a strong illusion dweomer.

     Opening the Door- if the trap has been disabled, nothing happens.  If it was not disabled, the crimson figure of human wearing a jesters cap and bells appears to have opened the door, it mimes pulling a stout rope (seemingly connected to the party) towards itself, bows and vanishes.  Behind it, there is darkness as your feeble light doesn't illuminate the far wall.

    Quick Search -  the room is 80 feet long and 50 feet wide, the final fifteen feet decrease to a twenty foot width as shown.  The last twenty feet of the room, including the reduced width, are raised approximately five feet higher than the floor, forming a stage.  There are three doors in the other walls (to be subsequently placed and detailed when I create the rooms.)  

    Detailed Examination - nothing new.

Area 1 Room 1 
5 foot square

(Edit) Exits
The Prop Room is accessed by the doorway off of the rear left corner of the stage. The door posts are painted with a pattern crimson masks of comedy and tragedy running down them, the door itself is unadorned. Try as you might you discover no indication of a trap. The door is not locked, nor is it stuck.

To Room 4   A curtain of moth-eaten linen, undyed, but painted with red swirls is reveals a plain wooden door, opening outwards. when the curtain is moved.  A pressure plate on the Theater side of the door will cause the ceiling to grind down over the next four rounds.  Two characters can clear through the doorway each round, but if the character ahead of you has a lower dexterity bonus than your character, you must delay clearing the doorway until the start of the next round - and everyone backs up behind you.  

And now I know more about the Scarlet Prince, it's the title given to  the Guildmaster of the Community of the Crimson Clowns, a guild of Bards and Jesters.

The Unfinished Domain of Scarlet Prince

Part I - The Entry

Part 2 - The Grating Chasm

Part 3 - Area 1 Layout

Creating a Dungeon with the Tome of Adventure Design - Part 2

 Or when to know when to quit rolling dice.

    Having created the entry in Part 1, I decided there should be a transition between there and the first dungeon area.  ToAD has a table for that, which has many possibilities branching from it.

Transitions Between Dungeon Areas (Table 3-23) gave me 'A bridge over a river or chasm' and on the second column of the table a Hazard Trick.

Hazard Tricks (Table 3-92) gave me 'Venting steam, bad air or dangerous gases.  Reasonable hazards for a chasm, so no  river we have a bridge over a pit.  And that gives me the idea that one of the other levels connects back in at the bottom of the chasm.

Wait a minute, I need a description of the actual area where the chasm is bridged.  Back to Corridor, Basic Description of (Table 3-24) which gives me a 10' wide, 10'high natural cavern...with two unusual features!

Corridor, Unusual Features of (Table 3-25) gives me 'Large grates in floor' - must be in the bridge deck.  And a Trap.  Basic Mechanical Traps (Table 3-126) gives me 'Magentism'.  As long as I'm here, I'll roll up the gas from the Hazard Trick on Gases (Table 3-128) which provides the information, 'Removes Oxygen' and 'Lies near floor, lingers'.

    At this point I realized the process had gone off the rails, there were too many features being crammed into a minor corridor - and I hadn't even rolled up a description of the Bridge yet.  But it had given me a number of inspirations to put together.

I decided to strip it down to the basics, a cavern crossed by a loose grating.  Which immediately put in mind of driving over the old Jamestown Bridge to Newport, Rhode Island the first few times I went there for schools in the Navy.  Let me tell you an open metal grating 135 feet over Narragansett Bay, if not terrifying, at least gives the driver an immense sense of relief to have gotten over it.

Corridor

     Leaving the entry through the opening under the frieze of the bridge, the party steps out onto a narrow ledge 5'wide and 10' long.  A grating bridges a chasm.

Quick Search

     The chasm is about 15 feet wide and it's roof is about 10' over the bridge.  Based on what your torch illuminates, it's more than 30 feet deep.  You get the impression that the chasm narrows in both directions, but the light doesn't illuminate the ends. The grating itself isn't fastened to the ledge but rests about halfway across the ledge.  It's made of joined wood, with 2 inch members and 10 inch holes. Any characters moving at greater than half speed need to make a Dexterity (Balance) check or fall.  Potential consequences of the fall range from dropping anything in hand to plummeting into the dark below.

Detailed Examination

    Better illumination will show the chasm is approximately 45 feet deep.  If they drop the light off of the left hand side of the grating, there is a 50% chance they will spot a doorway at the bottom (Perception check).  If they state that they are doing the detailed examination while on or across the grating, they will notice likely handholds in the chasm wall nearest the Entry that can be used to reach the bottom.

Creating a Dungeon with the Tome of Adventure Design - Part I

      I've come across references to the Tome of Adventure Design a few times in reading various blogs and MeWe posts.  It arrived on my doorstep on Monday, 300+ pages of random tables covering more aspects of campaign and adventure design than I have had a chance to digest.  Definitely a five skull product.

    As I'm at a bit of a block with  my current Call of Cthulhu adventure, I decided to amuse myself by using the Tome to design a moderately sized dungeon.  Rather as the Castle Triskelion site is doing for a megadungeon since the G+ days (he's been on a short break since December 2018).   I'll generate the rooms individually, then go back and edit them as further rooms give me more ideas and to fit whatever area configuration I put them in.   (I'm in IT, iterative design provides better results than waterfall.)

     One of the excellent suggestions in the Tome is to design dungeons by areas - connected blocks of rooms with transition connections between them.  They also provide random configuration suggestions for linking corridors, rather than random corridor generation which has been a jarring note to me since the AD&D DMG.  There's no natural way for the dungeon to be complete with those.  I decided on a modest three area dungeon, which I quickly determined to be Area 1 - 14 rooms, Area 2 - 3 rooms and Area 3 - 14 rooms (Table 3-38).  When I went to consider where to start, well I haven't found a table for dungeon entries, so I decided to start with an What Comes Next (Table 3-78).

Entry

      Entering the dungeon, the party enters a 50 by 50 foot room, in a stepped triangle shape, a ten foot opening on the far side can be seen to lead into another large area.  The body of a gigantic snake, obviously dead, lies on the floor.

     What Comes Next - Room with Dramatic Architecture (3-57) and two items of Dungeon Dressing (3-144).  Decided that it should be a Room of Unusual Size (Table 3-40), which gave me the hourglass and it's size.

Quick search.

          The far side of the room is a mirror image of the first, making the whole room a 50x100 foot stepped hourglass.  A carved frieze adorns the far wall around the exit.

Detailed Examination

          The snake was killed by edged weapons, most of the wounds have been stitched up for some reason.  One wound is only partially sewn with the needle and thread hanging off the corpse.

    Dungeon Dressing Table (3-144) - I screwed up handling this one and rolled once on 3-144 and once on Unusual Corpses (3-145).  But I like what I came up with and kept it. 

     The frieze on the far wall is of two figures meeting on a bridge to duel.  The right hand figure is a female human in chain mail with lifelike features, she carries a spear and shield.  The left hand warrior appears not to have been finished, as it's only a rough humanoid shape.

    Dramatic Architecture (Table 3-57) gave me "Walls" and how it is dramatic is "Effect on Viewer".  I decided a frieze would be an appropriate, durable dramatic element on a wall, went to the Statues table (3-75 and generated Battle scene ("Bridge"). 

     The first character to state they are examining the frieze must make a save vs Magic (Will).  If they save nothing happens, if they fail their companions see them appear to get sucked bodily into the frieze, like a genie back into it's bottle, and the left hand figure takes on their detailed features.

     The right hand figure will advance to attack the character, the character has one round before they are in melee.  (The party will see the carven characters moving as they duel.) The character cannot leave the bridge, they must conquer or die.  The only way for the party to intervene is to attempt to destroy the right hand carving as it moves across the frieze.  It's stone and can only be affected as such.  Not that damaging the frieze, by say hammering it, has a 50% chance of damaging the carving of the character too.

    If the character loses, their carving is reset to the left hand side of the frieze.  The right hand carving is reset to a rough humanoid shape, while the party sees the figure pour out of the frieze as her body re-materializes.  The only ways to get the character out is with a Flesh to Stone spell or a Limited Wish.

    Didn't find a table to elaborate on the "Effect on Viewer", but had the idea that a viewer could be drawn in to the scene, like into a Mirror of Life Trapping.  It's a battle scene, so the fight was an obvious consequence.  But I wanted a reward for victory, so I poked around until I found the Benefits and Curses Table (3-121) and gave it a roll that suggested an immunity effect.  

     If the character wins, their body pours out as the carvings reset.  They now bear a round, mirrored shield, covered with a multitude of circular dents.

    Moon Shield (+1 magic shield).  The Moon Shield provides compete  reflective defense against gaze attacks and 50% defense against rays.  Any such reflected attack has a 20% chance of being reflected against the attacker, and a 30% chance of being reflected against some one or something in front of the shield bearer.  Lycanthropes will appear as their natural form if reflected in the mirror.  The Moon Shield disappears after one Lunar year (354 days) real world or campaign year, which ever comes first.

    Don't remember how I got the idea for becoming immune to gaze attacks, but decided a reflective shield as the reward.   Once I had it, allowing it some effectiveness against the smaller rays seemed like a good idea.  And then the idea of having the reflections go in semi-random direction made me think of a shield with lots of small dents, like craters on the moon.  When I got to the name, Moon Shield, I KNEW it had to have something of an effect on lycanthropes.  And finally, it gave me the idea of tying it's use to a Lunar time period, figured a year was better than just a month or the next phase of the moon.

A New Paradigm for Random Encounters

    I've done a couple of random encounter tables this year, where I have taken results from many different systems and created selections for specific localities in the Wilderlands.  In doing so I have used a straight d20 paradigm, giving each monster a 5% chance of appearing.  While I've accepted this, I have also felt that a linear progression isn't right and even a regular Bell Curve is problematical at times - such as when a Star Spawn of Cthulhu has a 5% chance of doing a TPK just by showing up.  Once monsters get tough enough, any Dungeon Master who strives for what's been termed 'Gygaxian Naturalism', has to ask, how do normal people survive when such threats are walking around.

    Late in November 2020, Goblin's Henchman over on MeWe shared a post where he discussed using non-homogenous random tables, based on distance from a town to determine what monsters may show up.  The idea is pretty simple create a random encounter table, set your weaker monsters in the lower range, say 2-12 where you can  use smaller dice to generate the curve.  As you move away from civilization, add tougher monsters and increase the size of the dice you roll.

Probability Breakdown

A simple table compares the probability of any combination being rolled by two of the standard gaming dies.  Looking at any line, for example rolling a 5 - shows how the probability falls off precipitously as the size of the die increases; going from 25% when rolling 2d4 down to a mere 1% when rolling two d20. 

I was going to stop at 2d20, but when I started crunching numbers, I realized that 2d20 wasn't going to drop the probabilities enough - so I added the 2d100 progression also.  THEN I realized that was too long AND it STILL didn't give me the progression I wanted (see below), so I added 3d10 and 4d10 columns.  

Roll	(2d4)	(2d6)	(2d8)	(2d10)	(2d12)	(2d20)	(2d100)	(3d10)	(4d10)
2	6.25%	2.78%	1.56%	1%	0.69%	0.01%	0.01%	-	-
3	12.50%	5.56%	3.13%	2%	1.38%	0.50%	0.02%	0.001%	-
4	18.75%	8.33%	4.69%	3%	2.08%	0.75%	0.03%	0.003%	0.001%
5	25%	11.11%	6.25%	4%	2.78%	1.00%	0.04%	0.006%	0.002%
6	18.75%	13.89%	7.81%	5%	3.47%	1.25%	0.05%	0.010%	0.004%
7	6.25%	16.67%	9.38%	6%	4.17%	1.50%	0.06%	0.015%	0.006%

Even going to 2d100 wasn't enough, I ended up calculating the odds for combinations of 1-4 d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20.  I did decide that going beyond 40 lines in a table was more than I'd like to tackle routinely.

Categorization

    The first change to my approach to building the random encounter tables is that I now need to categorize the encounters by strength.  I have five rather broad categories in mind.  (1) Local inhabitants, farmer, merchants etc.  not usually combat threat but may have information of adventure hooks for the characters, (2) weak monsters - arbitrarily I'll say 1-3 hit dice; I'll need to tailor the definition for Runequest and other such non-leveling systems - I think.  If you're looking for an example, I'm thinking anything weaker than an ogre, as one ogre can put some hurt a party of 1st level characters. (3) middling monsters - say 4-8 hit dice, (4) strong monsters - of 9-15 HD and Oh My God, We're Doomed! monsters of 16+ hit dice.

Taking those categories and adding in some desired frequency by range data produces this matrix.  (I'm thinking of the Wilderlands 5 mile hexes, would also work for ACKS 6 mile hexes.  Would change the range buckets if using 10 or 15 mile hexes; if you're using D&D 30 mile campaign hexes, go straight to the 4+ Hex column.)

Category	0 Hexes	1 Hex	2 Hexes	3 Hexes	4+ Hexes
Local Inhabitants	85%	75%	50%	15%	5%
Weak Monsters	15%	20%	30%	20%	15%
Middling Monsters	-	5%	15%	40%	30%
Strong Monsters	-	-	5%	20%	40%
Oh My God! We're Doomed!	-	-	-	5%	10%

Thinking about it, probably just use the 2 and 4+ Hexes ranges for waterborne encounters to simulate the increased covert mobility of water creatures compared to land creatures.

Results vs Plan

Playing around with a spreadsheet for several day led me to this distribution of encounters in a single table.  I used examples from the last Random Encounter table I constructed.

Roll	Category	Example
2-7	Local Inhabitant	Farmers, Merchants, Local Patrol, etc
8	Weak	Hawk (ACKS)
9-11	Local Inhabitant	Farmers, Merchants, Local Patrol, etc
12	Weak	Orcs
13	Middling	Troll
14	Weak	Al'mi-raj (FF)
15	Middling	Ankheg
16-17	Strong	Chimera
18-20	Middling	Weretiger (ACKS)
21	Weak	Giant Skunk
22	OMG	Star Spawn of Cthulhu (CoC)
23	Strong	Rakox (Gamma World)
24-25	Middling	Cthonian (CoC)
26	Strong	Apparition (FF)
27	OMG	Small Warrior (MA) [1 HD, but # appearing 50-100]
28-29	Strong	Yexil (GW)
30	Weak	Wood Nymphs
31	Middling	Cockatrice
32-36	Strong	Bearoid (MA)

With this distribution, I could check the probabilities generated by various combinations of die rolls and find the ones that fit my desired distribution the best.

Category	0 Hexes (2d4)	1 Hex (1d12)	2 Hexes (3d6)	3 Hexes (3d8)	4+ Hexes  (3d12)
Local Inhabitants	87.5%	75%	43.1%	20.5%	6.1%
Weak Monsters	12.5%	16.7%	29.2%	18.9%	15.6%
Middling Monsters	-	8.3%	20.4%	40.6%	38.3%
Strong Monsters	-	-	7.4%	23.0%	30.1%
Oh My God! We're Doomed!	-	-	-	7.0%	10%

I could play with the encounter category distribution and try to refine it further, but I think I've dialed it in enough for this exercise.

Conclusion

     I don't know if I'll use this when I construct random encounter tables in the future.  The idea sounds good, but in practice you need tables that allow you to roll for monsters of specific strengths.  D&D has done that for dungeons since the beginning, but not for hex crawls.  When I add in my favored way of adding whimsy by combining results from every game system on my shelves - well that would be a project in and of itself to create a set of master encounter lists.

     The other thing I don't like about this approach is the players will learn the numbers to run from and the numbers to ignore.  Such meta-game knowledge I think would lessen the immersion of the players in the game, as they will react differently how their characters would.  After all if the player knows the rustling in the bushes is a wood cutter or shepherd or such, the they lose the mystery and excitement that this time it might be the Blatant Beast come to hear the epic poem it tasked them to create the last time they encountered it.

Your thoughts?

Cross System Conversions

     I like mixing and matching between multiple systems, genres and milieus, as my various random encounter tables will show.  One of the things I have somewhere is a sheet of paper detailing my cross system AC conversions.  But I can't find it so I'm going to rebuild it with a little help.

     My basic approach for conversions has been to use armor description as the starting point, if you know what chainmail is in AD&D and Runequest, then you can figure out the rest of the armor classes from there.  And since monsters are rated on the same scale as humans (at least for all the systems I can think of); the process is to look at the table I just derived and assign the appropriate AC.

    THAC0, %to hit, attack roll - whatever you want to call is more subjective for me.  Usually, I'll look for a comparable monster in the system I'm converting to and peg the attack roll to the comparable.   Take for example, the 'Great Kommata', a gigantic Martian flying beast from Space 1889: it has two attacks Talons and Drop (rocks).  Comparable is a Roc from AD&D, two 3-18 attacks at 18HD.  Add in a rock attack like a stone giant throwing, but can only hit one character.  Presto, all I need to run a combat encounter with one.

     Converting to Chivalry & Sorcery is a bit different, as I all have to do is select the appropriately sized attack form, say 'MLB' or Monster Large Bite and it gives me the attack rolls against every armor class.  

     Magic is either a spell for spell translation to the target system or I need to define the effect in the target system.  For example, "Crumble Wall" in Warhammer FRP is  similar effects to "Transmute Rock to Mud", the stone dissolves into sand instead of collapsing into mud.  The description is different, but the effect and therefore the level is really the same. 

    This shouldn't be a surprise to the grognards, system conversion has been around since at least the AD&D DMG, right there starting on page 113 where they give conversions for Boot Hill and Gamma World to AD&D (The text mentions both Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World, even though Jame Ward wrote both, they use different armor scales).

   What I didn't realize until I was looking the the C&S Saurians book, which I was sure I'd reviewed last year, but haven't, is this little gem.

     Look at that conversion from D&D and Runequest to C&S.  Of course, the Runequest conversion is handwaving the difference between bronze and iron armor in RQ (iron is 1.5x as strong); so I'd take it with a grain of salt.  Still it's a good reason to rebuild my AC conversion table that I've misplaced.

 

Description	From	AD&D	C&S	ACKS	WFRP	MA	GW	RQ
Banded Plate	ACKS, C&S, AD&D	4	4	5	1	4	4	5
Brigantine / Brigandine	C&S, RQ	7	3	3	1	5	7	5
Chain Mail	ACKS, AD&D	5	5	4	1	4	6	5
Chain Mail Hauberk	C&S	4	7	5	1	4	5	5
Chain Mail Shirt	C&S, WFRP, RQ	5	5	4	1	4	6	5
Chain Mail Shirt & Plate Cuirass	C&S	2	9	6	1	3	6	5
Cuirbolli	RQ	8	2	2	0/1	7	8	3
Cured Hide	MA, GW	7	3	3	0/1	5	6	3
Duralloy Shield	MA	+4	+4	+4	+1	1	+4	16
Energized Armor	GW	-4	15	14	3	-6	2	14
Full Carapace	MA, GW	5	5	4	1	3	4	5
Full Plate	C&S	1	10	7	1	2	4	6
Furs or Skins	GW	8	1	1	0/1	7	8	2
Hardened Leather Cuirass	C&S	8	1	2	0/1	7	8	2
Heavy Furs or Skins	MA	8	1	1	0/1	7	8	2
Heavy Scale Armor	RQ	6	4	3	1	5	7	5
Heavy Shield	C&S	+1	+2	+1	+1	6	+1	12
Hide & Fur Armor	ACKS	8	1	1	0/1	7	8	2
Inertial Armor	GW	-4	15	14	3	-6	2	14
Lamellar Armor	ACKS	4	4	5	1	4	4	5
Leather Armor	ACKS, AD&D	8	1	2	0/1	7	8	2
Leather Jack/ Jerkin	WFRP	8	1	2	0/1	7	8	2
Light Scale Armor	RQ	6	4	3	1	5	7	4
Light Shield	C&S	+1	+1	+1	+1	6	+1	8
Linen Armor	RQ	8	1	2	0/1	7	8	2
Mail Coat & Hose	C&S, WFRP	4	7	5	1	4	5	5
None	AD&D	10	0	0	0	8	10	0
Padded Armor	AD&D	8	1	2	0/1	7	8	2
Partial Carapace	MA, GW	7	3	3	1	6	6	5
Piece Metal Armor	GW	5	5	4	1	3	4	6
Plant Fiber Armor	MA, GW	7	3	3	0/1	5	6	4
Plastic Armor	GW	0	11	9	3	-2	3	10
Plate Armor	ACKS, AD&D, RQ	2	9	6	1	2	3	6
Plate Cuirass	C&S, WFRP	3	6	5	1	4	5	6
Power Scout Armor	GW	-4	15	14	3	-6	2	14
Powered Alloy Armor	GW	-4	15	14	3	-6	2	14
Powered Assault Armor	GW	-8	19	18	4	-10	1	18
Powered Attack Armor	GW	-8	19	18	4	-10	1	18
Powered Battle Armor	GW	-4	15	14	3	-6	2	14
Powered Plate Armor	GW	0	11	9	3	-2	3	10
Ring Mail	ACKS, AD&D	7	3	3	1	5	7	4
Scale Mail	ACKS, C&S, AD&D	6	4	3	1	5	7	4
Shield	ACKS, AD&D, WFRP, GW	+1	+1	+1	+1	6	+1	12
Shield of Non-metallic Substance	MA	+1	+1	+1	+1	6	+1	8
Soft Leather	C&S, RQ	9	1	1	0/1	7	9	1
Splint Armor	C&S, AD&D	4	3	3	1	5	4	4
Studded Leather	AD&D	7	3	3	1	6	7	5
Superior Chain Mail	C&S	4	8	5	1	4	5	5
Thin Metal Armor	MA	5	5	4	1	3	5	4
None	AD&D	10	0	0	0	8	0	8
None	AD&D	10	0	0	0	8	0	8
None	AD&D	10	0	0	0	8	0	8
None	AD&D	10	0	0	0	8	0	8
None	AD&D	10	0	0	0	8	0	8
None	AD&D	10	0	0	0	8	0	8

ACKS - Adventurer, Conqueror, King:  Ascending armor class

AD&D - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Descending Armor Class 

C&S - Chivalry & Sorcery: Ascending Armor Class

GW - Gamma World: Descending Armor Class

MA - Metamorphosis Alpha: Descending Armor Class, starts at 8

RQ - Runequest: Armor absorbs damage rather than setting the target to hit.  Also the armor can vary by body part, i.e. you can wear a plate cuirass and have only soft leather on you legs.  Note, I hand waved the difference the system makes between bronze and iron armor.

WFRP - Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing: Armor absorbs damage rather than setting the target to hit.  Also, the armor only protects certain body parts. Leather is rated 0/1, as it only absorbs damage from blows where the damage is <=3.  If the damage is 4 or greater, all of the damage affects the character.

Converting RQ and WFRP armor to other systems, I'll use the highest value provided.