Dungeon World

Hey, this is old news, but here goes anyway?

Remember Apocalypse D&D? That's my Apocalypse World hacked version of OD&D, designed to be played with whatever version of the OD&D rules you happen to have lying around. We played it a lot at Go Play NW last year. It was fun!

Sage LaTorra grabbed the thing and is turning it into a fully fledged game called Dungeon World. It has a complete OD&D aesthetic with some rules streamlining along the lines of Apocalypse World. It's pretty awesome and well worth checking out.

PAX Wraup

So I went to PAX! Actually, just PAX Friday. One day is definitely not enough for a convention of PAX's scale. I had just enough time to do a reasonably thorough sweep of the convention floor and play some games before going home to crash into bed.

Dungeon World was the highlight for me. John Harper ran a foray into a sunken temple for me, Brandon, Will, and Craig. The Dungeon World rules are really coming together! It's a hack of Apocalypse World and D&D by Adam and Sage with moves from my own Apocalypse D&D project. I also got a demo of Dresden Files in with Ogre. Thanks Ogre!

Some of the stuff I saw on the Floor:

• Torchlight 2 looks encouraging


• End of Nations could be great. I hope the developers have played and learned from Shatered Galaxy.
  
• And I bought Hegemony: Philip of Macedon on the spot. So far it lives up to the promise. It's like Empire: Total War, but with the focus on good grand campaign play. Tactical combat takes a back seat, but still presents enough options to be interesting.

Getting Ready for PAX

It was about Wednesday morning when I realized this is PAX week! I'm only going for Friday, but I still have a lot to do to get prepped.

Sage LaTorra (of Dungeon World fame) has corralled some indie RPG fans to run stuff at PAX. We'll all be hanging out in room 304. If you come by and ask, I'll give you a microdungeon. I'm bringing Apocalypse D&D/Dungeon World and Apocalypse World. I may also bring a giant pad of paper in case anyone wants to play supersize How to Host a Dungeon. Apocalypse World, How to Host a Dungeon, and a bunch of other awesome RPGs will also be available at the Dreaming Booth, #1440.

See you at PAX!

Forward, Hirelings!

W few days ago, I posted a bit about what the hirelings are up to in an Apocalyse D&D game I'm running.

So here are the custom moves I use to manage dealing with hirelings:

Order Hireling
When you have to order your hirelings to face danger unsupported, or take a disproportionate risk, roll 2d6 plus your charisma bonus.
10 or better: Choose 3 from the list
7-9: Choose 1
6 or less: The DM decides how they react

• They do it


• They don't demand additional reward


• They don't question your authority or lose loyalty


• They don't hold it against you or become rebellious

Use Diplomacy
If you're making a reasonable offer, roll 2d6 plus your intelligence bonus.
If you're appealing to their passions or honor, roll 2d6 plus your charisma bonus.
If you're making threats or intimidating them, roll 2d6 plus your strength bonus.
10 or better: They do it
7-9: They do it, but you have to show them something tangible right now to show you're as good as your word.

Of Chaos Gods and Hirelings

I’m running a (Apocalypse) D&D game for Phil, sometimes in person, sometimes over email. It’s a solo game and he’s playing a wizard, so that means he’s been employing a number of hirelings to help buff out his chances of survival.

I always try to make a game with hirelings interesting. I don’t know how this matches the way other people run things, but I generally make my hirelings simple but dynamic people. I think of them as an interesting sub-plot that may occasionally take center stage. I don’t want to give the players too much grief via their hirelings, but I don’t want hirelings to be faceless minions either. Apocalypse D&D helps, because I’ve added in a couple of moves about working with hirelings (that’s another post, though).

So in his first foray, Suten Anu, the mysterious foreign wizard, engaged Mandle, a good-hearted farm boy, Tanga, a tough-yet-vulnerable fighting woman, and Roberto, a rather acquisitive thief. In the first adventure, Tanga emerged as a fearless warrior, Roberto grumbled continually about wanting more money, and Roberto Mandle died unceremoniously when a crossbow quarrel pierced his breastbone.

Back in town, Suten Anu spent considerable time and expense trying to make good with Mandle’s family (above and beyond the call of duty for a mere hireling), showing some of his better qualities. In town, we also got a glimpse of Roberto’s rather high-living lifestyle. No wonder he’s always after more money!

Suten Anu also hired Tartarus the Cleric, an old friend of Tangas. Tartarus finds the idleness of temple work a burden, and wants to escape his rather acrimonious marriage, giving him the perfect reason to go adventuring.

In their second Foray, Tanga discovered the dark lure of Chaos magic, which she embraced rather wholeheartedly, alarming Suten Anu extremely (also, it resulting in him growing a third eye in his forehead). The second foray ended rather abruptly, with Tartarus dragging Suten’s nigh-lifeless body back to town, but at least everyone survived and the undead were put down permanently.

Now Suten is getting ready for his third adventure. He’s gotten Tanga to foreswear chaos magic, but he had to promise to retrieve her father’s bones to get her to do it. They’re also joined by Rhackam, a rather shady Ranger character with a few secrets to tell.

Magical Research

I have always been fascinated with the idea of magical research, but no D&D campaign I've played in has really done it justice. Some flavors of D&D give rules for crafting magic items, but that doesn't do it for me. I want magic to have mystery, power, and unpredictability.

Here's a magical research move. It's totally stolen from Vincent's Savvyhead rules for Apocalypse World. I don't invent, I steal.

When you go into an arcane library, laboratory, and workspace trying to get to the bottom of something or make something magical, tell the DM what you want. The DM will answer "Sure, no problem, but..."

• It's going to take days/hours/weeks/months of work


• First you have to acqurie _____ (magical reagent)


• You need some information you can get from ____


• You're going to need ______'s help with it


• It's going to cost you a lot of money


• It's going to mean exposing yourself (and maybe others) to significant danger


• You're going to have to take _____ apart to do it

For easy stuff, pick just one.
For medium stuff, pick one AND another OR another.
For seriously hard stuff, it's one AND another AND yet another.

Dungeon World

So someone hacked my hack of the game I'm hacking. I've been working on this Apocalypse D&D thing for a while, mashing together Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World with AD&D. Sage just took the thing and ran with it, making it a whole generation better. His version, Dungeon World is here. And to make it even better, he's taking it with him to Gen Con to run for folks! Good luck, Sage!

edit link fixed!

Dungeon Musings

Go Play NW gave me a big energy boost. There's a bunch of awesome stuff going on right now, so that I hardly know where to begin.

First up, thanks for all the great dungeon ideas in the Thanks for all the Dungeons thread! There were a ton of great ideas. That will help keep us all in dungeons for a while to come. David of Tower of the Archmage won the dungeon giveaway. Go check out his megadungeon maps on his blog!

Also, I'm adding a new theme to the blog: city tiles. I have very fond memories of the City of Lankhmar setting that TSR published. These city tiles were created for John Harper's as yet unpublished Stranger Things RPG. The first one, Wound Way was posted yesterday. I'm going to start posting these once a week as well.

Finally, the Apocalypse D&D project has a new home over at Vincent Bakers Barf Forth Apocalyptica. Most news and discussion of this D&D hack will live there, though I'll make the occaisonaly announcement through this blog as well.

The Purple Worm Graveyard

What happens when you read those weird, squiggly inscriptions written along the bottom of that wall? What if you kneel in front of the altar of light and let what comes, come? And when you try to cast that really hard spell and it goes horribly wrong?

You open your mind to the worm god. The worm god is an ancient chaotic entity whose domains include destruction, decay, hunger, compost, and gardening.

Roll 2D6 plus your CON hit point bonus.

• On a 10+, your mind is in contact with the Worm god and it shows you what you want then offers you a bargain or a gift.


• On a 7-9, you receive a true impression or vision of what you're interested in, but then suffer a temporary insanity.


• On a 6 or less, the DM decides what happens.

Temporary Insanities:

1. Fall on your hands and knees and start eating dirt voraciously for 1-4 rounds


2. Projectile vomiting for several minutes


3. You realize that somewhere, somehow, there's a worm in your body. You can feel it, but you can't tell where it is.


4. The Worm god has a command for you, and he's watching to make sure you carry it out!

This is a little tidbit from the con scenario that I ran and Sage ran at Go Play NW. Opening your mind to the Worm god is fun!

Back from GPNW and Fully Recovered!

Vacation, work, and Go Play NW conspired to keep me from my dungeons for a couple weeks, but I'm back now.

Go Play NW was a real blast. I'll probably post a lengthlier writeup some time in the near future. Microdungeons figured large in my convention. I brought three microdungeon adventures with me to GPNW and got to run all of them using Apocalypse D&D. Plus the generous Sage offered to take one of them and run it for a couple of groups as well. That was a pretty amazing experience.

Apocalypse D&D fared very well at GPNW, despite the fact that Apoc D&D wizards are crazy. After each game I gathered up the pre-gens and handed them off to the next group to keep playing. The mage got to fifth level and blew up most of his buddies in a nasty fireball mishap. The Dwarven fighter went evil and ran off with a professional vampire slayer, while the theif was turned into a lesser wraith by one of the bad guys and later ran off with a risen saint to start a new undead religion.

I also got to run some Poison'd and played in a spectacular game of Fiasco and Brandon A's Minions hack for Apocalypse World. What a great con!

The Mines of Ravenswood

Session three of the Apocalypse D&D game started out at Happy Harry’s Ogre tavern in the underground. Karl Ravenswood and Ebag the thief spent some carousing time trying to gather information for the road ahead (which also gave me a chance to try out the new town moves for ApocD&D).

Ebag befriended a rather stuck up wizard. He had an opportunity to befriend the fellow, but chose to wheedle some of his secrets out of him instead, gathering the location of a hidden horde of gems guarded by a Dwarven ghost of some sort. Karl was both less and more fortunate, finding himself in an unexpected an unwelcome interview with an Illithid who mockingly challenged Karl to take on a wererat King on the fourth level of the dungeon. The Illithid also got a real kick out of the fact that Karl's father, the local lord, technically claims sovereignty over the dungeon itself (a claim that Karl would love to enforce).

But our heroes are only second level at present, so they chose to pursue the Antlion king who they knew had taken refuge with the Kobolds. The Kobolds on the level 2 of the mines are a rather dirty “back to nature” lot, though not lacking in swords and pointy sticks. Down a dirty tunnel, the PCs and their retainers encountered a lone sentry, which quickly turned into a pitched battle with a sizable guard contingent. The on-again-off-again fight spanned a few rooms, ending in a huge cavern with an underground waterfall that marked the edge of Kobold territory. A hasty interrogation of prisoners turned into a full retreat when some sort of bat-winged cave Roc tore their best prisoner in half. Ebag also lost his backpack full of gear (which was better than losing his head).

In some confusion as to the Kobold’s true location, the PCs followed a narrow ledge, discovering the entrance to an abandoned Dwarven temple. It wasn’t Kobolds, but their curiosity got the best of them (plus Ston, their Dwarf cleric *really* wanted to check the place out).

There was an iron statue with gem eyes that they wisely left alone, as well as a fount of some sort full of coins, which they also avoided. The mirror-polished room with the dead adventurers was too intriguing to pass up, however, and Ebag and Karl soon had to do battle with mirror-images of themselves. Karl’s might saved the day, however, and the party decided to take a rest and bind up their wounds before continuing on.

Deeper into the Mines

Last night, Gabe, Phil, and I fired up Apocalypse D&D again to continue our adventure in the mines of Khunmar.

When we last left them, the party was trapped in a flooding room with the Antlion King. Ebag the Thief was unable to disable the trap, but with his enormous strength, Karl was able to bust down the door before Ston the Dwarf started to seriously drown. The Antlion King got away in the fracas, however.

Beyond the flooding room, behind a secret door, the party found the Antlions’ real treasure, a horde of coins and some minor magic items. As they were counting it out, however, a group of goblins entered through the *other* secret door. Seems they’d been skimming Antlion treasure for weeks. There was a tense standoff, and one of the frightened goblins shot Ebag with a crossbow (dropping him to -1 HP) before fleeing for their lives.

Some time later, in their search for the escaped King, the party discovered a large cavern where a group of ogres had set up a sort of bar where the various monster groups met in relative neutrality. Since several goblins were already there (including the party’s escaped prisoner Toe Snap), there followed a tense dinner discussion. The goblins ended by handing the party a couple of tasty adventure hooks, then slipping away into the gloom.

But here’s the thing. The goblins definitely got the better of the discussion, thanks to some failed rolls, and ended up handing the party a potentially deadly mission to a lost secret library haunted by a ghost. I was a little nervous that I might have set them up for a TPK, but their native caution served them well. Not only did they get out with the book the goblins wanted, but they avoided the ghost. They did leave behind a potential trove of good loot, however, so I have a hunch they may come back some day.

The adventure ended back at Happy Harry’s underground bar, where the party contemplated their next move, and heard rumors of a horrible creature from another dimension.

The Apocalypse D&D hack functioned very well, with only a couple of head-scratching moments (which can be addressed by fixing up the moves some more). The new trap hunting move worked pretty well. On a good roll, the party can pretty quickly traverse a decent expanse of dungeon safely, but there are still important choices to be made regarding where and how to hunt for traps.

In the Mines of Khunmar

Tuesday night, Phil and Gabe and I decided to throw off our monthly pool game and kick back at the pub for a game of D&D instead, and we were joined briefly by Brandon. I was psyched because I was itching to run an old-style dungeon crawl. Because I had some ideas I wanted to try out, we played a homebrew mashup of AD&D and Apocalypse World.* I also got to pull out the Mines of Khunmar, a pdf megadungeon I’ve been wanting to try out for a long time. *Spoilers Follow*

Phil made a fighting man named Karl, Gabe rolled up a thief named Ebag, and Brandon created a Dwarf Cleric named Stön. These three foolhardy souls were joined by two retainers named Rumsfeld and Griswold.

After circumventing a pit, they stumbled into an ambush of Antlions, cunning ant-like humanoids with a penchant for ambushes and trickery (turns out they can also stick to the ceiling, as Ebag discovered to his chagrin). The antlions underestimated their foes, however, and after a short fight, the party had a clear passage across the plank bridge over the raging underground river chasm to the Antlions hideout. Stön had heard that the Antlions had an illusionary treasure horde to fool interlopers, but that a real stash could be found a secret room nearby so they forged onward.

After the obligatory humanoid slaughter (where Griswold met his demise), there followed a tense struggle where Ebag surprised the Antlion king on his spinning secret door throne, pinning the king’s hand to the throne controls with a dagger at a crucial moment. The heroes extorted the king into revealing his true treasure horde. They failed, however, to extract a promise of safe passage, and the king sprung the treasure’s protective trap on the adventurers, a flooding room. The evening ended with the party trapped in a rapidly flooding room with the King mocking them with mad laughter as they all prepared for an evening of drowning. I do like a cliffhanger.

Hopefuly we’ll get to pick this game up again, because I really had a blast running it, and I think the players got into it too. We might play somewhere quieter next time, though, because the ambient sound at the pub really made it hard to get my DM-ing mojo on. Writing this blog has given me a real desire to play more D&D, and I rarely do, so this was a very nice treat.

* Apocalypse World is a game of Vincent Baker’s that I’ve been playtesting. It’s got some stuff that seems very unusual, but at its core it’s more old-school than anything else. I found it surprisingly easy to mash it together with AD&D.