Room Stuffing

An idea: have your players help you prep.  You probably use charts to help you determine treasures, monsters, and traps that will be in different dungeon locales-- and finding out what the charts say is fun.  Also, if you use more abstract charts to offer more possibilities, charts that require a little interpretation (like this one) it's fun to do that interpretation.  So why not let your players have some of that fun?

1. OK, get a hold of a bunch of cheap envelopes and some colored paper.  
2. Determine a color for trap, treasure, monster.  Leave white for details and descriptions.  Cut the paper into slips still big enough to write on.
3. Now, start with one category (would a particular order be more fun?), let's say traps.  Have a person roll and share those results with the group.  the group can bounce ideas off each other about what a cool or horrible interpretation of that trap might be.
4. The person who rolled get's to ultimately choose though, and doesn't have to say what they chose.  They write, legibly, that interpretation on the properly colored slip and place it face down on a pile of finished traps.
5. Everybody gets to do a trap the same way.  Including you.
6. Switch to monsters and do the same thing.  then treasure etc.  For details, if you don't have a chart, it might be good to offer a theme or flavor-- something it would be weird to find, or funny, remnants of some former adventurer, etc.
7. After going through all the color types, use whatever method you like to randomly determine what a dungeon room has and then draw secretly from each pile (they've been shuffled) to place in an envelope. 
8. I think the DM should get a final trump. So, as each item is handed to the DM they need to read them and scribble amendments or revisions. Then place that rooms contents into an envelope and seal it.

I think this could be interesting because the players will have an idea what treasure and monsters exist out in the world.  It might become apparent that some treasures are less interesting than others and some monsters should not be tangled with.  They will probably realize that some rooms have nothing and some have monsters with no treasure.  I think I prefer blind exploration myself, and finding out all these weird and wondrous things that exist through experience,  but you don't have to use this method for every dungeon.  You might want to say "tonight's dungeon is made from the rooms we stuffed," though.

So, when you use the rooms, you just need a map and then draw envelopes randomly.  I think what I'd need to do is open the envelopes then and look at what monsters, traps and details there were.  So when I dm I can use those details when players come close (maybe the monster is sentient and will come toward noise, maybe the trap is on the door.  I might number the envelopes to the room the represent and leave any treasures unlooked at, so they'd be a surprise to me too.

How much detail you need to write on the slips depends on when you have the most juice as a creator.  If you're stuffing rooms with players because you're too tired from work to DM, you might just do the minimal you need to have fun with everyone that night.  If, however, you are doing the room stuffing as a fun and different event to have rooms on hand for a future night that you are too tired to prep for, you'll want to do as much work as you can on room stuffing night and have everything you'll need on the slips when you seal them in.  So, if you are making up new monsters, for example, you'll want to write down AC, HD and determine hit points and # appearing that night, not just special powers and descriptions.

Anyway, I think i'll try this out this Friday.  It's also given me ideas for a better random monster table and a detail table.  I you try it out, let us know how it works.

Serendipity XXII - Maps

Sometimes I find cool pictures when I'm looking for something else. These are all public domain, which means you can use them any way you wish:

I like all of these, but love the style of the last one.  It's close to what I was talking about in my post here, showing players what to expect visually.  I wanted to stitch it together for you, but after several days of putting off the post because of it I realized I was procrastinating and decided to just give you the halves.

PlayerHUD

Here is an idea I think I'll try with my group tomorrow.  First the roots of the idea:

1. James Raggi posted about having players put two index cards in front of them on the table showing what was in their hands (because he was tired of what characters had at hand being nebulous to their advantage).*

2. Cyclopeatron gave a little orange lantern-card to place on the table in front of the person holding the party's light source.

3. My friends have gotten very excited about Munchkin and it helped clarify things immensely when my friend got the deluxe edition for his birthday, because it has a visual way of showing everyone's level.

Now, I know you need to know someone's level in Munchkin because it's a competition, but it made me think of one of the most common questions my players ask each other: "How many hit points do you have left?"

I thought it might be easier to build a sense of tension if they saw how hurt their comrades were.  That the ever present decision of how far to push it would be more visible to everyone if they could see some more information about each other right on the table.  So here is a draft at a display to try and do that:

I figure I would print it 8.5x5.5 inches and have each player place one in front of them.  A paperclip could be slid along the track to indicate HP.  Obviously this only works for low levels.  I suppose I could ditch the numbers and just have boxes represent full, 1/2, 1/4 hitpoints or something to make it useful for higher levels.

I put a place for a shield card so players that can carry shield will remember they have one to splinter, also a spot to place a big d30 card.  I put those because in the heat of things players sometimes forget these options and their party mates will better be able to remind them.

The middle space is for Brendan's roles idea.  I thought it would be neat to make cards for vanguard, rearguard etc. and have players think about what they'll be doing rather than just where they are standing in line. They pick their role, grab that card and plop it down.  If they get hurt and change roles, they need to change cards.

I don't have an explicit space for light source, or what weapon players have (though that might be less important).  But maybe the light could be in front of all this.  Or I could just make smaller boxes.

*I don't think that I read that when it was first posted, but it has been years since I did.  I'm always surprised at how long ideas will burble on the back burner.

Update: Here's draft 2 with cards:

I don't think I'll need the "light bearer" role if we just use the torch/lantern card to indicate that.  I don't see the roles as set in stone, in fact what is so cool about them is that it can be an aid to renegotiating who is doing what; if you lose half your hit points you may want to shift roles and then everyone else needs to think about theirs too.

I think the shield slot can pretty much substitute for tracking both hands closely; if a fighter is carrying a lantern and a weapons, no shield, etc.  Of course the possibilities are endless, but what they are holding has been less a problem in my group then what each of them are doing.
 

Harryhausen

92 is a good age, so I'm not sad, but I want to pay respects for such a fundamental influence on my idea of the fantastic.  Rest in peace. 

OSR on Boing Boing

Boing Boing, if you aren't familiar with it, is very popular web magazine that deals mostly with pop culture.  There is a essay on the front page today about the OSR.  I'll let you go read it.

So, if you read it the same way I do, it seems to be the exact narrative I was afraid was taking hold when I wrote My OSR.  The story is that the OSR was made up of nostalgic grognards that held the AD&D rules in OSRIC form until WotC noticed the error of their ways.

If the narrative shows up on the radar of a site like that I think it won.  Welcome to the history of your hobby.