Zak's Insta-Dungeon---the weal for your woe...

...or at least mine. Go check it out! And if you're interested in trying it as is, choose the print option on the blog, increase the font size to 15, and save it as a pdf. It ends up a decently formatted two pages.

I have yet to try it (I'm at work with, alas, no dice), but I'm thinking this is a huge insight both into random table design and the possible ways to randomly design dungeons. Too awesome.

A Splendid Random Dungeon Generator...

...from Wizards of the Coast, of all places. Looks like it's for 3.5, but is certainly easy to translate to older flavors of the game:

Go make a megadungeon in under 10 minutes!

And if anyone can fill me in on what the "Load" field on the bottom of the page is for, I'd appreciate it.

I've already printed out two levels, formated as booklets. Too easy!

You are standing in a field...

Otherness: Session 12 was held this last Sunday at the Fantasy Flight Games Event Center, which is a really great place to game. The staff was friendly and accommodating, and someone actually took a picture of Will's whitebox and LBBs, along with my copies of Greyhawk and Gods, Demigods, & Heroes---they claimed their friends wouldn't believe that someone was still playing with these rules. :) Carl was, unfortunately, working there, but he was at least able to catch some of what was going on.

So, I had a last minute inspiration and started the group out "standing in a field, west of a white house." Those of you as old as me may well remember those opening lines to Zork, the venerable text adventure game from Infocom. I think Will was the only one who picked up on it right away, but it was worth it. I didn't stick slavishly to all the details, but the main stuff was in there (D&Dized, of course) as noted on the map above. Once they opened the trap door in the living room, it led, not into the Great Underground Empire, but instead the somewhat less-whimsical Long Tombs.

I created the map for the Long Tombs using this random dungeon generator. AFAIC, it's the best out there. And, we decided to give up on mapping, so I just plunked it down on the table, showed them where they were, and they chose where they wanted to go. I noticed no angst.

As for characters, Will played Aldmore, 3rd lvl MU; Susan played Sydney, 1st lvl Fighting Girl (or Battle Maiden, as we started referring to her); Jesse, returning to game with us again after an absence, played Treehorn the 1st lvl MU; Trevor played his 2nd lvl MU Narpet, as well as running Ashley's cast-off FG (whose name is currently escaping me), and Max played a 2nd lvl three-headed dog named, of course, Rex.

Some Highlights

• The mailbox contained a mummified hand holding a piece of parchment that read, "Go not into the Long Tombs."
• The characters found a brass lanthorn that, once polished, produced a warm, golden light that seemed to be the only thing that dispelled the oppressive darkness in the attic---all other light sources guttered out as the steps were mounted.
• Trevor's FG was attacked by something in the darkness of the attic. A Grue? 
• Sydney claimed a sword from the living room display case with old Elvish writing on the blade stating, Strike Once Slay Thrice.
• In the Long Tombs, they ran into a hideous, giant, scarlet amoeba with three glaring eyes and a fanged sphinctermouth. This was rolled up using Geoffrey McKinney's excellent supplement Carcosa. I've been itching to use the random Spawn of Shub-Niggurath generator for some time now... Even at 7 HD, they managed to kill it AND take its eyeballs...
• At the very end of our adventuring time, they ran into four dwarves, possibly another party of adventurers. Jesse decided to roll the Black Die of Fate (otherwise known as as 30-sided die given to me on my last birthday.) All were informed that a roll of one would be horrendous, and a roll of 30 would be wondrous. He rolled a 9, and another dwarf came around the corner, carrying a crossbow. He panicked at the sight of Rex, and fired. The bolt missed Rex; however, Treehorn was standing right behind him, and was hit for maximum damage (right between the eyes!), killing him instantly. Fate is indeed a fickle mistress...
• Jesse has introduced four characters to Otherness in two sessions, and three of them have died. That's oldskool, baby!

The flame of love doth always burn...

All the denizens of and Adventurers in Otherness raise a cup in celebration---Will, aka coffee, aka Melvin the Magnificent, aka Sneerglaw the Balrog, aka Bahb the Draftee, has lit a torch in the Temple of Venus. 

He and his darling fiancee were married yesterday, and are now prowling the bright decadence of Las Vegas, testing the limits of randomizaion. May they always roll true!

Randomness and Differentiation

Sorry it's been so long since I posted, but the Shadow of the Plague fell on House Kesher. Yea, it fell, but has passed on, may it not soon come again...

A few years ago I came to the realization that I was sick to death of character histories. Some of it stemmed from the cliche that, really, no back story I had ever created had really been used by any given GM. Although, if I'm being honest, I was usually the GM and, while I encouraged back stories, rarely did I do anything with them: Mea culpa too.

Some of it also came from years of playing indie games where mechanically-relevant back stories were created during play, sometimes by the player alone, sometimes with the help of the group (Polaris is a really good example of this, as is In a Wicked Age, mentioned a few posts ago); this all made the "Orcs killed my family" clunker seem less than useless.

So enter my first attempt to let go and roll up a character for ODD completely randomly, right down the line. My task was to create a character out of whatever the dice gave me. Here were the results:

Str: 10

Int: 12

Wis: 9

Dex: 11

Con: 6

Cha: 7

Hm. Not too inspiring. Years ago I would've whined about it. However, that wasn't an option here---whining to yourself is usually just silly...

So, I thought, he may as well be a Magic User, even though that Con score is going to mean a -1 to all HP rolls. Except I had a sudden flash: Oh no---even with the Con, he's going to be a Fighting Man. He constantly drinks wine to deal with a persistent hacking cough that has sapped his strength and soured his disposition. His alignment was obviously Neutral at best, sliding toward Chaotic. I bought him a scimitar for pure color, a quart of wine for character and who knows what else, decided he could speak both Gnollish and Elvish, named him Ballantine, and he was ready to go. I'd play this guy in a second. And you know what else? I would make Con rolls after every fight to see if he didn't double over in a coughing fit. And if he did, well, that'd start to shape the rest of his actions. There's no way I'd ever have come up with that had I rolled 6d6takingthebestthreeofeachrollandputtingthemwhereIwanted, or allocated points, or whatever.

Ballantine's patron god is Randomness.

I was so excited I rolled up another character on the spot:

Str: 14

Int: 9

Wis: 7

Dex: 10

Con: 13

Cha: 15

Okay. Better scores on the surface. So, as the rules allow, I knocked his Wis down to 4 and raised his Str up to 15. No mechanical effect, but it does get him the 10% bounus on XP earned if I make him a Fighting Man. Anyone with a Wis of 4 is obviously Lawful, and probably a dwarf. So, a Lawful Dwarven Fighting Man, almost foolishly devoted to some kind of cause, most likely (given his Cha) with a couple of devoted followers. I named him Redbeard, made sure he was wearing platemail, and would defintely load him down with first hirelings, then henchman, for him to awe and boss around. Not bad either!

And the thing is, these details aren't really "backgrounds", per se; they're more like hooks upon which to hang some quick and dirty characterization during play. Each of these characters, of the uber-generic classificaton "Fighting Man" are already starkly differentiated from one another, all through the simple, built-in game tool of Randomness. Oh, Randomness, how I used to loathe you.

And how I love you now.