The Tumbling Dungeon

I don't mean tumbling in the sense of rolling down an infinite hill (I'll leave that for someone else to explore), but turning through the vertical plane; "rotating" and "revolving" make me think more of movement in the horizontal plane.

A horizontally rotating dungeon seems to be more about trickery-- the puzzlement of identical rooms being switched out as a means to confound players.  I'm more interested in the dungeon already explored becoming an alien place by being turned-- in essence extending the exploration of the same place by making it new with each rotation.  Well, that and just the wonderment of a huge turning place.

The Rotation
Going along with the idea of extending exploration, I think a tumbling dungeon should turn 1) slow enough so that it isn't trap-like and dangerous to explorers, 2) at predictable intervals, 3) at intervals far enough apart that explorers have enough time to explore each turned state.  The last point will depend on the size of the dungeon, but I'm thinking 1-2 hours between rotations at least.  And this is really important because it places a practical limit on the size of our dungeon.

Dungeon Size
My first sketch of a possible tumbling dungeon was a cube of 5 rooms by 5 rooms.  I quickly found out it would be extremely difficult to not only represent this visually, but for players to form a mental mindscape of it while exploring.

So, I reduced it to a cube of 2 rooms by 2 rooms.  Still too complex.  I think tumbling dungeons of this size might work in a video game, but I want something simpler.  I think it should be just complex enough for a player to hold in their mind while providing interesting things to investigate on each rotation.  The perfect size would also allow for at least one rotation to happen during a session of play-- otherwise memory and player churn will become a problem. Remember, a cube rotating will have 4 states, so you'll multiply the number of dungeon chambers by four (and then need to design those rooms).  I'm thinking a dungeon with four rooms and four passages might be just about right for me.

Building Blocks
As far as I can tell there are four classes of elements that will come into play in a tumbling dungeon:

• Rolling Elements-- balls and cylinders
• Fluids-- water and sand
• Hinged Elements- these are connected at two points, doors and shutters
• Swinging Elements-- these are connected at one point.  Unless you're rotating in more than one direction they'll function very much like hinged elements.  Although there may be some differences, the ability to push them aside and such.  Think chains and pendulums.

All of these can function to, not just change the look of a room but hide and reveal features and channel travel by making areas traversable or not.

Gravity
If this place is a feature that has existed for a while, then it will most likely be sparsely decorated and with the building blocks above.  Anything loose would have been tumbled to bits.  So any treasure items will have to be ingeniously secured.

I like the idea of magic producing anti-gravity effects which the tumbling dungeon can't, and thus I would reserve magic for that effect and keep my tumbling dungeon a physical apparatus turning with huge gears or pivots somewhere in a cavernous void.  But using magic to shift gravitational direction would yield essentially identical results as having the dungeon actually physically turning.  So, it's really up to your preference as a DM.

Misc. Thoughts
The first rotation after entering should probably block the entrance the party came in by, forcing some exploration of this strange place.

I think it would be a bonus if it isn't obvious at first that this dungeon rotates, i.e. no chairs on the ceiling.  hat way you get a little extra surprise from players on that first rotation.

For those of you that have a simulationist streak that's wondering why the hell someone would build a place like this, two ideas: an alchemical formula that needs blending for a 1000 years, eldritch eggs that need a source of heat evenly applied to keep them viable.

I can't do a post about rotating dungeons without directing you to Grim's idea of using a Rubik's Cube to generate dungeons with geomorphs, and Norman Harman's further exploration of the idea along with a proof of concept.  Awesome, but it seemed more about generating the dungeon on the surface of the cube than experiencing the effects of those rooms moving through three dimensional space.  Of course, all the ideas above could be applied to a Rubik's Cube dungeon, although I think Norman, like me, found it to be quite difficult to map and represent to players.

More Thoughts on Tumbling Your Dungeon

Keeping Track of Things
I talked a little with my most veteran player (and sometime DM) about his experience inside the Tumbling Dungeon and what he would need to run it.  His first idea was to have a separate map of each state of the dungeon.  I told him this is actually what I started with; four maps in my DM folder.  It turned out to not help.  One reason was that I wanted all my notations (monsters, treasure, corpses) on one map for ease of use while DMing.

But the more fundamental reason was that I had no problem keeping track of how the dungeon moved, but of the orientation of the fixed things within the dungeon.  One example is the pedestal in the center of the dungeon that contains the constantly mixing golden elixir.  It would be much easier to say it is levitating, suspended in the very center of the dungeon's central room.  But if you are saying the whole reason of the dungeon is to mix this elixir, then it needs to be attached to a wall.  And then you need to be able to tell the players the pedestal is now on the ceiling, now in front of you, etc. 

Party faces unexplored chambers

The primary non-tumbling feature in the dungeon is the party.  So, as a DM needing to tell the party what is front of them everything changes.  This became most boggling when some PCs entering the dungeon to join the party late came from in front of them, because the parts of the dungeon that were near the entrance had rotated around the original party.

Party needs to turn around to explore

I'm sure the ease at which any DM can manage this varies, I had a hard time of it.

I don't know any solution to this other than a digital map on a laptop or a physical model the DM can manipulate behind the screen.  I contemplated and almost made a little index card-origami model for myself.

The Sand Room
I would revise the sand room if I ran another party through it.  The cool thing about sand is that, unlike water, you can walk across the features it hides and you can't see them.  You might hide furniture, daises, thrones, etc.  The problem is, that the sand will always find the floor, so these features will only be apparent when they are on the wall or the ceiling, not a very useful place for thrones.  What I did was hid a world map, meh.  The party wasn't very excited by this and it didn't seem to utilize the full potential of the sand.

Now, I think I would make it hide work benches, anvils, sorting tables-- things that would be useful for thirty minutes at a time and could be attached to the wall.  You could have shelves too, as long as they were shuttered and the items inside well-secured.

Again, the whole point for me in tumbling the dungeon was not to try to confuse players, which seems like a much easier task, but to pack more exploration and wonder into the same amount of dungeon space.  Having a workshop appear where before there was only a sandy-floored room seems to get at this.  Especially if players begin suspecting something interesting might be hidden under the ten feet of sand.

Escape
Because the dungeon is consistent and only has four states it isn't too hard to figure out.  My players figured out how to get out in about 30 minutes to an hour of real time in which they were paying close attention to things and trying to map.  That being said, with about 15-30 minutes between rotations, it can take some time to ride out the tumbles until the exit becomes usable.  So this can play havoc with the idea that a party needs to end a session outside of a dungeon.  This didn't cause a lot of problems for me-- I just used dreamlike logic to warp different players in and out of the party when they were present to play.  But it might be a hitch if you are using Jeff Rients' table of Dungeon Doom.

Leaving the Tumbling Dungeon

Acch, I'm three play reports behind.  Here's two:
4/22
"G" F
    Le Bouche hireling
    Janis hireling
"Z" F
    Pita hireling
    Mika hireling
    Fabrino hireling
Darkyo F
Hugelina F

The party intended to re-enter the dungeon to look for Zhang Ziyang who holds the knowledge to cure the crew of plague.  Entering the first room they found a leather satchel with a root and a recipe signed by ZZ.  They followed the recipe, administered to three of the crew members, two of which died an agonizing death in front of them.  G feeling the accusations of the rest of the crew, drank from the concotion himself to show it wasn't intentional.  He lived. (he rolled the Big d30)

They pushed into the dungeon recovering ground previously explored.  There was a tense moment where G miscalculated turn time and was caught in the well room's cylindrycal passage as the dungeon turned.  With some scrambling, a rope was thrown to him, he walked along the bottom of the water and survived several attacks by creatures that look like giant tadpoles-- with lots of teeth.

Then a lever was surely and firmly pulled.  They found their way to the Alchemists Sleeping Chamber just as the dungeon was turning a way it had never turned before.  The frantic party jumped to the gimballed bed.  Pita, she-of-the-ever-bad-luck failed a roll and ended up in a squirming mass of grubs.  The party pulled her out.  And then realized someone was in the bed!

Zhang Ziyang.  He said he couldn't remember anything.  Under the bed were 6 drawers which revealed 2 silver rings, a bolt of folded cloth with an inscription in Arabic, a wolf's pelt and some gold.  We stopped there, with the party having a slumber party.

4/29
Mollie DP
Toral DP
Athydas MU
"G" F
    Le Bouche hireling
    Janis hireling
"Z" F
    Pita hireling
    Mika hireling
    Fabrino hireling
Zhang Ziyang NPC

We started out with Toral and Mollie heading into the dungeon alone (the rest of the players were late anyway) to search for the rest of the folks, the sick crew was getting worse-- a few more days and they'd all be stranded here.  Toral, who had grown a familiar with the Tumbling Dungeon's ways noticed at the first tumble that something was off.  They soon found themselves faced with something new, the Component Library was open for browsing.  Athydas (who joined the two above when his player showed up) decided to explore the shaft heading directly down with floating stone spheres in it.  He was very aware that if the dungeon tumbled he would be in bad shape.

Eventually the party below saw the lantern light and yelled up.  Ropes were rigged and the party all came up into the Component library.  ZZ was consulted and the appropriate root was found.  While this was happening Toral and Darkyo scouted out the central, spherical chamber to find a huge sphere of water slowly rotating in mid air.  Within it were darting black shapes and a pale, teenaged body.  Toral's hireling.

The party got the root and got out of Dodge.  The concoction brewed and administered, the crew began to show signs of relief.  Z administered some to the Knight of the Order of St Letholdus, who he seems to be trying to become friendly with.  Just as the party sailed Zhang Ziyang said he was staying behind.
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Some Thoughts

I need to do these sooner so the things I learned are more fresh in my mind.  I improved my descriptions of the dungeon as they became more clear in my head.  Poor Toral and Gail might have found the treasure trove if I had described the bed in its gimbal better.  The brass library with all the spells embossed was never described well by me, I still need to clarify that one in my own head.  I did figure out a simple way to fix my stair problem: floating, buoyant steps that stay where they are as the room rotates.

The session with all fighters was sort of boring, you need some magic to give players a wider range of options.

You can see how my constantly shifting player attendance can wreak havoc with any sensible narrative.  But I make it dreamlike and let people join the party and leave it without making a big deal about it.  When I go up a level as DM I think I'll try to implement Jeff Rients' table of Dungeon Doom to make sure partys aren't left in a dungeon at the end of a session.  This dungeon would have made that a little harder of course, because finding the exit would have been a tricky.

This sucks for players too, though, Because Gail and Toral basically mapped the whole dungeon out and then, when they couldn't play, G and Z had to figure it all out again for themselves.

Giving the spell transcription costs has made a huge difference for the magic-users.  They've been trying to kill seagulls to gather blood and quills, they are moving spells from scrolls to books and seem empowered in general.

Oh, I almost forgot, in that first session it was everybodies' birthday (or near it) and since it has been my tradition to give Boons to folks as gifts, three people wanted one.

"Okay, okay," I said.  "Two of you can pick a hard core perk the other has to pick from the animal perks."  Dice were rolled and Darkyo had to pick an animal.  She chose a trained ferret.  G chose the Obsidian Blade and Z chose the Iron Hammer, though I don't think he understands how, even as simple as it is, it works.  Interestingly, G was speculating later whether his blade might have killed the grubs. Yes, it would have worked if he tried.

Some things my players never found out: Pita has been infested with a parasite and will start vomiting monsters soon.  There were two witches.  Zhang Ziyang was charmed.  At the center of the dungeon, the reason for the tumbling, is a golden elixir.  Zhang Ziyang knows this.  He intends to drink it.

Into the Tumbling Dungeon II

I ended up running a session with only 2 players yesterday.  It evoked a weird feeling for someone who used not have anyone to play with.  I enjoy the social aspect of our sessions, and spend so much time developing the material, just two players seemed kind of like having a party with just two people-- what's the point.  But we played, it was fun, I think I creeped them a little (that really isn't my only goal, but it seems easier than others).

Toral DP
Gail MU
Zhang Ziyang NPC

Alone in the Tumbling Dungeon they dithered and went back and forth a lot.  They found a passage with four spheres sunk in the floor, made their way past it and found a new room.  Black walls with crystals embedded in them, it looked like a night sky.  A bed on gyroscope-like gimbals in the middle, the floor covered with a writhing mass of giant grubs.  They turned back.  They'd been getting pretty blasé about the dungeon's tumbles and a little later found themselves caught midway down a passage that was quickly becoming a vertical shaft.

Sliding the last bit, they fell ~20' into soft sand.  The lantern went out.  The three of them sat their catching their breath.  In the darkness, only the sounds of four people breathing.  Four!  Toral tried pray unsuccessfully for light.  The witch touched his neck, whispered "You are unwanted."  She mentioned they must be weaker than she had thought.  Gail agreed, "Oh yes, we aren't powerful at all," assuming she saw the powerful as a threat.  "Weak enough for me to slit open your bellies?" she asked.  Gail frantically relit the lantern.  It's light filled the room to reveal something crawling quickly up the the shaft out of view.  Zhang Ziyang was gone.

They dithered a little more but eventually figure the way out. Back on the beach the sailors of the junk Haiyan are slowly dying of plague.  After resting the night, Toral prayed for healing in his broken arm and was answered, then prayed to have his plague removed and was answered!  But they both know the sailors will die in a few days, miracles are uncertain, and the healing root and the one who knows how to prepare it are both back in the dungeon.

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Some Thoughts

More training for me on roleplaying npcs.  I know if the witches confront these folks, the witches will most likely end up dead.  So, when I rolled one an encounter I figured she was shadowing, shadowing.  "What will she do?" I was wracking my brains, then the dingleberries got so careless with the dungeon they ended up in a hallway they should have know was about to become a shaft.  An viola, perfect.  She's there in the darkness with them.

What now?  Especially because there's another session tonight which will involve a much larger party.  I'm thinking the witches will leave a root and instructions to prepare it in the first room of the dungeon.  They just want these fools out of here.  Of course it will be poison and written in ZZ's hand who is charmed by them now.

Also, the grubs are a dud.  I made them slow moving, and basically harmless, as long as you don't try to hurt them or let them crawl up your leg.  I think they need to start turning into beetles of some horrible sort.

Wheeled Fountains & Wandering Traps

My last post made me realize that I conceive of traps as stationary.  Then I began wandering what a mobile trap might be like.  Or a mobile trick.  Here's some brainstorming:

• Is a mobile trap just a monster?
• If traps are meant to keep folks out of certain areas is a moving trap just a patrol like a guard or robot?
• maybe it follows the party from room to room making things more difficult somehow.
• maybe it makes a timed sweep through the dungeon and knowing its path and timing could be a kind of treasure map players need to find or info to get from npcs.
• I'm thinking of Labyrinth now, weren't there rolling grinding machines?
• a mobile trick I have an easier time imagining, a fountain on wheels, an altar that teleports.  One reason is if players discover that they grant a boon, needing to find them later would be a task.
• Or, I'm very interested in squeezing more exploration from the same location (see tumbling dungeon) what if this mobile trick did something to a room that made the room different?  Infrared light that reveals runes on the walls.  Floor level fog that hides holes in the floor.  Soft music that obscures the soft ticking of secret mechanisms (find secret doors).
• Heh, what if the mobile trap was just a cage that traps a pc and then travels slowly through the dungeon making it hard to find and free them?  I have no idea why the maker would want that, maybe a crazy mage.
• Oh, maybe it was some kind of practical tram that has gone haywire.  If the players figure out its buttons they can toodle wherever they want in the dungeon in relative safety, but experimentation might just dump them in the troll den.
• Back to the mobile room changer- anti-gravity seems like a good one, two dungeons for the price of one mobile trick.Very similar to the tumbling dungeon idea except the people tumble not the dungeon.
• trying to come at it from the simulationist why-would-it-be-there-angle: maybe that wandering fountain is a kind of aid station/refreshment center in the dwarven mines, rotates through the shafts efficiently so that work never stops in more than one place at a time.  Maybe gather data on the denizens-- a watcher in a prison, a kind of nature observer set by a mage guild in a monster ecosystem.  Perusing the data could help players crack the patterns of a dungeon.
• Cleaning!  That seems obvious now, brushes pushing pcs out of rooms, water sprays hosing them down, heat to sterilize.
• Are gelatinous cubes just mobile traps?

Okay, that's all I got right now.  Hope you're having a great weekend.

Into the Tumbling Dungeon of the Grand Alchemist

I'm a behind in these, first session took place March, 8, 2011 second one was this past Friday.

Gail MU
Athydas MU
Mollie DP
Toral DP
Torie hireling
"G" F
Le Bouche hireling
Janis hireling
"Z" F
Pita hireling
Mika hireling
Fabrino hireling
Darkyo F
Zhang Ziyang NPC

Half of the crew of the junk Haiyan has contracted the plague.  The captain becomes worried that if many more become ill they might end up adrift at sea, so they head near shore.  They see a carven structure in the reddish rock that corresponds to a point on their map.  Setting ashore, Toral builds a fire, Gail and Mollie scout for water sources, and the rest immediately begin poking around the opening of the structure.

Two giant black scorpions erupt out of the darkness, the fighters and hirelings manage to form a shield wall in front of them. Even so, Le Bouche has to sacrifice a shield to save his life.

The rest of the party reluctantly follows the fighters into the dungeon.  The first room is a perfect 30'x30' cube with rubble in one corner and one exit to the right.  The wall has a fresco that Zhang Ziyang says is alchemical in nature.  A hallway leads to another similar room and fresco, this room has 10' of sand on the floor, however, and an exit to the left.

A hallway leads to a spherical room with three more exits and an odd pedestal in turning in the center.  Beside the pedestal is a lever. Darkyo pulls and pushes the lever (to Gail and Mollie's chagrin). The party decides to head right, the hall has oddly corrugated walls with inscriptions painted on each panel.  They reach a room with a coracle floating in a pool of water. It has an inscription in Arabic script that they can't read.

Back to the spherical room and the whole places starts shifting.  They scuttle along on the round surface until the dungeon stops shifting.  Now the spherical room has a shaft leading directly up, a shaft leading directly down and the odd corrugations turned out to be stairs, to the right, down, to the left, up.

The party heads down the stairs to the coracle room.  It is now full of water up to the door and there is a circular passage in the North wall.  They use the coracle to reach the opening, travel down it and find a tightly closed brass hatch.  Opening it revealed a small room with shelves full of dusts and powders.  ZZ recognized some of them and said he might be able to fashion a cure for the plague with a certain root as well.

End first session
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Gail MU
Mollie DP
Toral DP
Torie hireling
Zhang Ziyang NPC
-----------------
showed up halfway through:
"Z" F
Pita hireling
Mika hireling
Fabrino hireling (played by visiting player)

Most of the party decided to head back to the ship to check on things.  The four left behind decided to head up the stairs to the West.  At the top, lantern light showed a cubic room covered in brass with raised marking.  In the far corners were two humanoid figures just out of the light.  The party heard the sound of breathing.  After much dithering they decided to go back the other way.  In the spherical room trying to decide what to do next, they heard whispering and everyone except Gail crumpled to the ground asleep.  Gail whipped around to see a woman crawling on the ceiling of the stairs they just came from, her filthy hair hanging underneath her.  He got off three darts, one barely nicking her before she uttered something unholy and he froze.

The figure scrambled to him and bound his hands.  Then Gail worked furiously at his bonds as she drug Torie, clanking down the stairs toward the water.  Splash.  The figure returned to drag Mollie down to the water.  Splash.  Finally, hands free, Gail ran frantically into the darkness of the stairway (forgot the lantern).  On the way down he felt dirty hair across his face and . . . he ran right into the water.  Flailing around, he managed to grab Mollie and was trying to pull her back onto the stairs, when he was bit hard by something on his calf.  He started to push Mollie's stomach to get the water out.  She woke to complete darkness, soaking wet, with someone striking her.  Her hefty blow just missed Gail. Praying to her earth mother, Mollie summoned a fairy fire to light their way.  Back in the spherical room, Toral and ZZ were gone and . . . the dungeon started turning again.

About this time, from the South, Z and his hirelings showed up.  Fabrino, a foreigner who speaks no common was leading a goat.  The party headed to the West, what was once again a level passage with corrugated walls.  Peering in the room they saw two figures prone, one on the North wall, one on the South.  Each had their backs turned and faces turned down, toward where the wall meets the floor.

Thinking it a trap, the party decided to leave them be.  They returned to the sphere and headed North now.  A large cubic room with spikes covering the walls to the East and North.  On the ground were three translucent grubs the size of cats.  Z kicked one hard into the spikes and then doubled over in pain.  The grub seemed unharmed.  The party carefully skirted them to check the passage to the West.  A 10' diameter stone sphere blocked the way.  Mollie stripped off her leather armor and forced herself through the crack, hump and all ( she has low charisma, decided she has a hump).  There she found another sphere and turned around.  The party headed back to the spherical room and the dungeon turned again.

This turn slammed a huge hinged brass wall piece onto Toral, breaking his arm.  Awake he heard ZZ trapped nearby and helped him.  A prayer to the Allfather and a great halo of orange gold light appeared above his head.  The party called out (or maybe it was Toral) and the two joined in the room with the brass embossed with writing.  Gail recognized it for magical writing.  These were spells he could transcribe but it would take several days.  The party wanted to leave desperately.  Finally Z communicated with Fabrino to ask his goat.  The goat was a very special scapegoat capable of answering yes/no questions.  Fabrino asked if the root they sought was within 200'.  He then strangled and disembowelled the goat.  The bright yellowish tinge said "yes."  So the party decided to risk the tumbling dungeon a little longer and try to find the root.
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Some Thoughts

Yeah, getting them into the dungeon was sort of a push by me.  The more experienced roleplayers were a little resistant.  The youngin's were "Yeah, let's check out this dungeon!" 

That first session was a little slow, and it worked out just wrong that we had to end the session just after the first dungeon rotation.  I was starting to rethink the whole design of the place.

But the second session.  Whooweee, it creeped them out!  When the witch cast sleep on them they all started talking about rolling up a new characters.  I didn't know what to do.  I kept rolling reaction dice for the witches (there were actually two) and they kept coming up, uncertain.  So I figured they weren't sure who the party was, how powerful they were, or why they were there.

I waited about a minute thinking "What would she do?"  This configuration had a chute down, but also stairs down to water.  Perfect.  I knew she would drag them down, their armor clanging onto each step and throw them in to drown, the splash heard up above (I ruled magical sleep is deeper than normal, deep enough to drown in).  Gail was freaking out.

I also figured that one of the figures lying prone in that room was a witch.  The other witch was on the ceiling holding ZZ.  When the party decided not to spring the trap I suppose I could have had them kill Toral, but I rolled a reaction and decided the witches would bide their time, maybe re-memorize spells and left.  Is this illusionism?  Am I controlling what happens too much?  I don't know?  I just kept thinking, having two witches walk out and start chatting with the party will not be frightening.  Likewise, an all out assault will get them as dead as those giant scorpions.

About that time a player showed up with his brother.  He said, "Hey, it's my brother's birthday can he have a talking dog?" (it become my tradition to give folks a perk on their birthday)  So, I showed him my hard core perks to pick from and he chose the Scapegoat!  Later I asked "so, how was your first time playing D&D?"  "He said it was depressing."  Acch, I might have turned someone away with the creepiness factor. o.O

Having the spell research rules clearer was cool too.  Gail was really conflicted about staying to put spells in his spellbook, or getting the heck out of dodge.

As far as the dungeon.  Man, I need a little model to keep that thing straight in my head.  I don't know if you could market a module like this, it is hard to follow where each room is and where the fixed features are in each state.

Now to see if party can figure out how to get out. There are only four positions . . . that is unless they pull and leave that switch down.  Then the dungeon tumbles on the other axis (yeah, I added that because I had the whole thing down in my head).

If you made it this far, thanks, here's a little Joesky (too long already): an entire city covered in volcanic ash, then lava.  Years later, underground water washes away the ash, leaving access to the buried city and all its perfectly preserved contents.

Hall of Four Spheres

Designing a Tumbling Dungeon is proving more difficult than I'd hoped. At least, in balancing how interesting the turned chambers are with the complexity of explaining them. I thought I might put up some chambers piecemeal as they come to me.

The Hall of Four Spheres is first encountered as a hallway with domes in the flour. These domes are made of stone/iron/brass and have inscriptions of astrological signs on them representing four skies:

The domes are actually full spheres resting in hemispherical depressions in the floor.  When the hallway is rotated (or the gravity is switched to either of the two walls or the ceiling), the spheres will roll, blocking the passage.  Children, hobbits, and talking dogs may be able to slip between the spheres and the walls of the passage when blocked, but then they'll have to fight the grue alone.  There could be interesting inscriptions in those depressions revealed when the spheres roll free, you might need a child, hobbit, or talking dog to squeeze in there and see.

The Temporal Dungeon

The dungeon that shifts in time is an exciting possibility to me.  I remember being thrilled when C.S. Lewis had Cair Paravel visited hundreds of years after it was abandoned.  That really made the world seem real to me.   Letting players explore the differences the passage of time makes on a place really makes that place a location too, rather than a one shot plot.  The best way to do this would be to let the natural flow of campaign time effect things.  This is difficult though, you aren't often going to get a campaign with generations of pcs that can revisit a place 100s of years later.  So, time travel.  And a dungeon designed specifically to be explored and enjoyed through time travel.

If I'm learning anything, these focused dungeons should probably be smaller, if not just a few rooms.  I'll assume here that we have about one dungeon level, maybe 10-12 rooms.  Remember, like the tumbling dungeon, the effective room number is multiplied when you apply the special effect.  In other words a dungeon of 10 rooms and four time periods is really 40 rooms.

How to Travel Time
If the dungeon is designed to be visited through time then there should be some way to travel on site.  You could have a mobile means of travel, say a ring.  That would mean players could flick back and forth through the ages while standing right in front of a feature that they want to investigate through time.  That seems interesting and convenient, it also seems like a pretty damn powerful item to let loose on your campaign.  Every battle might be subject to a rewind.  So I will settle on time travel through an unmovable location at the dungeon site.  You might think, should we limit its affect to the dungeon itself to avoid that kind of havoc time travel might play on your campaign?  I'm thinking no.  If you put the dungeon in a remote enough place and the players want to travel all the way back there to try and use time travel to save a hireling or stop an assassination or something, well that sounds awesome to me.

The Time to Be Traveled
Something I managed to get right with my one previous go at time travel in my campaign was that I didn't let the players choose the granularity of their travels.  In other words, they couldn't twist a dial and move back or forward 5 minutes.  I used our game sessions as a unit of time.  I think that idea of you the DM controlling where the party will be dumped in time is essential to this working, otherwise you basically have an infinite sandbox with no real way to prepare.  It will also be too easy for players to just jump around obstacles instead of having to think.

So, I suggest limiting the time in our dungeon to be traveled to 4 eras.  I'll name them after four stages of human age: infant, child, adult, aged.  And I'm going to have to get to work so now some quick brainstorming on what things might be cool to have in each age:

Infant

• The architect of the place, can be persuaded to make some changes
• children to be saved that will apear later as traders or helpers
• places to plant seeds ala Ocarina of Time
• Completly different fauna, the beasts that had to be cleared out to build the dungeon.
• Some basements and parts of the structure started
• a real need for certain structures like bridges or stairs in a cliffside

 Child

• most rooms built, with furnishings, new and shiny
• people living here or using it
• perhaps the ruler of the place to interact with
• maybe different fauna besieging the place
• machines or contraptions that may break later
• fountains and magical devices that have very clear uses in the context of their time, baffling later

Adult

• the default time, first encountered by players
• just abandoned, broken furniture, ransacked
• stiff doors, bandits or unsavory types to interact with, hiding here
• different fauna, maybe vermin and parasites
• hard to reach spots behind portcullises or bricked up walls

Aged

• centuries after the place was being used
• ruined- ceilings collapsed, areas under water
• different fauna, maybe undead or those things that live in stark, barren places
• places difficult to reach without messing about with things back in time like shoring up ceilings or asking the architect to put in secret trap doors
• maybe a powerful hermit to interact with

Detail & Dungeon Design

Amityville Mike at the The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope posted on the One Page Dungeon Contest today. In commenting on the submissions he had this to say:

One of the purposes of the One Page Dungeon, something that several contestants failed to grasp, is that it’s supposed to give the referee just the information they need to run the dungeon. If you can fit in more, fine, but brevity is the One Page Dungeon’s strong suit.

Yikes! I don't know whether he had my Coastal Caves in mind or not, but it sure applies to my entry. I approached the OPDC not trying to see how to do more with less, but to see how much I could fit into that one page. I packed that thing like a $20 burrito! It's a little embarrassing seeing as the aim of my blog is to simplify and come up with elegant solutions that do more with less. So, I decided to make it a learning experience and write about detail. After two long drafts and tumbling this around in my head all day, here is what I've come up with:

Telecanter's Three Laws of Detail & Dungeon Design

First, to define detail as I mean it here: specificity, development, fine grain rather than broad strokes.

#1. Detail is Expensive
This seems most straightforward so I'll start here. It takes time to name places and people. It takes thought and creativity to place hazards and dungeon exits. Modules wouldn't be for sale if we were all satisfied with randomly generated or stock dungeons.

#2. Detail is Dominant
Once detail is there it tends to stay there. Sure you can rename Acerak, but it takes a little time and effort (see #1.), and if you're changing every name, every monster, every treasure, there's a point where you may as well make your own dungeon from scratch. It's easier to work with what's given than change it. This is also because detail tends to be related to other detail, if you want to take Roghan out of B1, you'll have a lot to do, including changing or ignoring the initial carved in the headboard of his bed (if I recall correctly). But detail is also dominant in the sense that once the dungeon is defined as the evil temple of a frog god, it can't be the good temple of a frog god, or a laboratory, etc. Detail by definition cuts off other possibilities.

#3. Detail Demands Mastery
If the lich is named Acerak, you need to remember that when you play your friends through the module. Sure, sometimes it won't matter, but what if the name shows up in inscriptions, in riddles. The more detailed a trap or trick is, the more you have to study it to run it. Some details may be far more important than others-- maybe you forgot to mention the treasure in room 32A and that treasure had the key that allows access to the dungeon's second level. You can wing it, of course and always change it, but there comes a point where if you disregard enough of the detail, you may as well have made your own.

And here are some additional thoughts that don't seem to merit a law:

• The more improbable something is, the more detail it takes to establish a sense of verisimilitude. For example, that fountain of gender exchange may require a lot of backstory to make it seem reasonable. (This would only matter if verisimilitude is a concern, and it doesn't have to be)
• I wonder if there is a paradox here: the people of the OSR are making dungeons for other people in the OSR who like making their own dungeons. I'm not sure about this, I would be interested to know how often you use modules and when you do, how much you customize them. And this surely deserves a post of its own, but what level of detail would a module perfect for you have?
  

The Well Room

My players are on a ship, headed north, but seem very interested in stopping at a mark on the map for which I have nothing prepared.  So I'm thinking I'll use stuff I've worked up partially, which means finishing up the Tumbling Dungeon.  So here is another room I just figured out.  It was like doing geometry homework, damn you OSR!!!! Haha.  If I have errors let me know*.

Here we see the room as first encountered.  Water is all in the Well.  At the bottom of the shaft there is a secret room storing alchemical powders.

Now the room has tumbled once (rotated through it's vertical axis).  Forgive me, this is very hard for me to represent graphically, but basically the water pours out filling the room with ten feet of water.
So, to lay out all the states the room will tumble through:

1. Water in the well. When players first see it.
2. Circular tunnel in the wall, room full of water.
3. Circular hole in ceiling, room full of water.
4. Circular tunnel in other wall, room full of water.

 I'm pondering putting critters in the water.

* the cylindrical tunnel actually widens from about 10' in the wall to 15' for the rest of the run in order to hold that volume of water, but I drew it simpler.  I figure if players start asking about water volume then, yes, biting critters appear.

Animal Games

Had a great session Saturday night.  My players gave up on the Undertavern after a cleric was brutally mauled by the Gulo.  They sought out the old Animal Arena and much absurd fun was had.  First bout Spirit Bear vs. Black Panther, and the only match to ever go into overtime (I forget now which won, but one player lost 300 silver on it).  Second bout, the arena was flooded and jelly fish were set upon by a pack of wolves trained to kill invertebrates.  Wolves won.  Third bout was truly a nail-biter a koala vs. tortoise.  Tortoise won.

My players have decided they want to enter the animal fighting business.  So they headed back to the magical chest that leads to Animal Island and ended up encountering more Headless villagers in a favorable way.  They obtained a third scroll for the animal making machine.  They had Dog and Elephant, and now have Panda.

I have nothing prepared for animal fighting houses or tourneys, this was all originally a mingame meant to be entertaining.

I suppose there could be groups of citizens with colors like I've seen medieval Italy had competing, but that doesn't fit the tone exactly.  That would be better if it were humans performing races or tumbling etc.

I could have it set up like Roman gladitorial houses with trainers and lineups.  But I wonder if the absurd waste of animal life would better suit a few rich playboys amusing thmselves by competing in ostentatious displays of waste.

Not sure.  What would you find most fun? 

Some ideas:

• make transporting animals from the island difficult and dangerous
• have dangerous rivalries, animals poisoned- party jumped on day of fights
• have win-loss records for animals and animal heroes
• I could tie XP to how ostentatious the player displays are
• make players want to search for specific types of animals- we need x to combat y
• could make strategy involved-- players have a stable of animals to choose from for each fight

This is sounding more and more like Pokemon, isn't it ;)  Whic is one of the things I was thinking of when I designed animal island, trying to tap into things kids find fun.
_______________

Also, props to ZakS, I used a technique I saw on his blog where a player rolls on a random chart and can keep the result or choose the one above or below the number they rolled.  Worked awesome, was hilarious.  Was a great mix of randomness and player choice.  The cleric that was resurrected had to choose between Bleeding, Boils, and Arousal as a permanent side effect.

Happened again with determining the newest animal scroll.  The players had just been laughing it up about how a parrot would be funny, so they could make a parrot-headed elephant-- and also because long ago I introduced a parrot-pig to annoy them with which they summarily drowned in quicksand.  And I'll be dipped if they didn't roll Parrot!  But out of Panda, Parrot, and Peacock they chose the first.  Not sure why, guess cause it has claws and might fight better.

One Page Dungeon Contest

The deadline is next week.  Last year I didn't enter anything, don't remember why, probably because work was insanity then.  I wanted to submit something this year just to be a part of the community and let everyone see-- hey here's something I made.  It was this contest that was partially responsible for getting me to blog. 

I was thinking of the Sodden Temple, but it's really a two level dungeon and I don't think I could squash it onto one page.

I was thinking of the Tumbling Dungeon, but after playing it last night I realize . . . it's kinda boring, too linear. I want to revise it to try to fix that.

I was also thinking of this animal island thing I've been working on, but, again I think it is too big for the OPD, just with the random animal/bird/dinosaur tables.

Then I remembered the Undertavern from SAGE last year.  So I submitted that.  Not too exciting if you've been following my blog, but maybe people will see it who wouldn't have otherwise.

Have the club pics on the house. PD.

The Tumbling Dungeon II

Here's a draft of a pretty simple dungeon that rotates around one axis.  To keep it manageable it will have four states.  The first is the way it looks when the party first enters and pokes around the place:

To visualize state two, print this out then pull the title toward you until the page is vertical.  What was hallway BCF now become a vertical shaft.  To get to state three continue rotating the title toward you and down and you get this:

What used to be the floors of all these chambers are now their ceilings.  What goes in those rooms and halls is for another post, but I wanted to try and convey what I had in mind.

Some additional thoughts.  I struggled with doors; at one point I even had a draft map with stairs leading up to the door from each of the four directions.  I think it is simplest to just say the "doors" are square openings in the exact center of the walls.

The central spherical chamber is the reason for the dungeon.  It could be made larger.  I'm toying with the idea of corrugating the walls of those 45 degree halls that become chutes, so that they actually become stairways.  I mean, I'm not trying to make a death trap here.  On the other hand, it might be interesting and nervous-making for players to start sliding down a slick chute.

Update:  Doors are still a problem.  I forgot the rooms as drawn here are 30x30x30, which means a 10x10 opening in the center of the wall is 10 feet off the ground!  I guess we could put rungs leading to the opening from all sides, but that would sort of give away the rotational nature in the first room.  I'll think more about this.

Who Built The Fountain of Gender Exchange?

I'm a Gygaxian naturalist, actually probably more than that, a verisimilitudinist, or even, gasp, a fantasy realist. Well, not completely. I have conflicting urges.

My undergrad degree was in biology and I come to the world wanting answers. I like knowing how things work and what to expect in given situations. I loved the old monster ecologies in the Dragon magazine and actually xeroxed many of them, putting them in a black binder-- my own Tome of Teratology.


The old cliché of a giant crammed into a dungeon room or dungeons as menageries with no hint of an ecology, turn into the farcical for me. If I, as a player, stop and say: "Wait a minute . . . how did that get in here?" or, "what do these hundreds of orcs eat!?" then my suspension of disbelief has been broken. The sets come tumbling down. You ruined the mood.

And it's more than mood, it doesn't make for a good game. Without some sense of pattern, some sense of reason, players can't make rational decisions. How are we supposed to ration our resources and survive the dungeon experience if we open a small door to find 10 dragons? Now that's probably an exaggeration for the mature, experienced roleplayers of today, but I think this idea of things making sense applies to other features in a dungeon as well.

I think you can sum this issue up with the question: "Who built the fountain of gender exchange?" What is the reason for these things? Why did Zelligar have all those lovely pools in Quasqueton? And really, why was the megadungeon built at all? Who would go to the expense of excavating level after level of rotating rooms and chutes and random teleporters? The only answer seems to be madness; Zagyg was nutty.


But here's the other end of the problem, no one wants to go exploring the post office. The magic, the Unknown, is sort of the point . I don't care that it might be impossible physics, I want my flying bears. And giants, and firebreathers, and shapeshifters.

The lack of the unknown makes for a bad game too. The uncertainty of what might happen is just as essential to player choices as rational boundaries. I mean, the last five rooms have been empty, but the next room could have 10 goblins arguing over a captive. Without randomness, you could plan out your resource expenditures on a spread sheet, dole out XP, and call it a night.

So what is the solution to this problem? I don't think it's an easy one. I think you have to find a balance between Reason and the Unknown. And I think people do a decent job of that. Zagyg was an acceptable solution, but I don't think the reason behind megadungeons can always be madness.

I like the idea of layered history: this was built by Dwarves, then used by a forbidden cult, then the lair of bandits, now abandoned to orcs. This allows you to add things in a dungeon that might seem random otherwise: features from different eras of time, artifacts of wildly different religions. So this could allow you to pack in some wonderous variety while adding to a sense of history and grounding detail.

I also like the idea of the quotidian distressed: the flooded monastery, the half-collapsed dwarven mine, the temple corrupted. This is similar to a layered history, the flooding had to happen sometime, but more than that, it uses one layer of rational description to add chaos to another.

But maybe this is all really about restraint; the chutes, and magic fountains, and teleporting pools, are more unnerving and effective when they aren't in every room.



(p.s. I'd still love to play a character trying to figure out things, like how many ounces of blood a week a stirge needs to survive, haha)

6 Animal Friends

I've seen a few comments around about the OSR being too grim.  And while I feel like I am good at coming up with creepy ideas more in tune with the spirit of early fairy tales or a savage, swords and sorcery type world, I'm completely sympathetic to someone that wants to just escape this rough ol' world a bit when they play.  So, for those of you that want something more cute or fun, I promise to try and keep you in mind with my posts too.  With that in mind, here are six animal companions for your players to find, tame, or buy:

6 Animal Friends

1. Blossom Moths - These moths the size of a fingernail are white on top and various colorful shades on bottom.  They perch on their owner in the dozens as a clump that looks something like a white mum.  When a stranger approaches, they burst into flight and flutter around their owner's head in all their color.

2. Long Fox - Two yards long or more, these creatures prefer to curl and clamber around their owner.  At a simple command, they will fluff up their silky-soft fur to its utmost, protecting their owner from even magic cold.

3. A Troupe of Hamsters - This dozen or so hamsters are found living in a keg fitted with straps to be carried on their owner's back.  The keg smells of sawdust and has a tiny door from which, when asked "Hey, what happened here?", the hamsters will trot out in little paper costumes and reenact whatever event happened in this location most recently.

4. Scout Gecko - Call its name, point to a room, and salute and this gecko will salute back, crawl ahead on walls and ceiling, and chirp when everything is clear.

5. Probable Pup - What is your favorite breed of puppy?   What a happy coincidence, that's the breed of this pup!  A single pup in your hands when scritching its belly or letting it gnaw your finger, when you set it down on the ground it blossoms into hundreds of pups loping and tumbling in every direction.  A roiling mass of pups covers the floor, but only where a pup wouldn't be hurt, so dangerous spots-- chute traps, trigger stones, snares, rotten flooring-- become quite obvious. 

6. Golden Joke Frog - A tiny green frog will drop a coin from it's mouth once a session when told a joke.  Rumor has it, it will drop two coins for each joke if you've given it a cute hat to wear.

Session Tonight

As always, I don't feel prepared enough at all.  Some random thoughts.

At least one of the players caught the plague.  I went to the lbbs looking for a simple mechanic for plague.  Finally found the diseases in Blackmoor, but the rules weren't very helpful for me. 

"There is a 10% chance that if the victim doesn't succumb, he will be permanently incapacitated. Any person that contracts this disease will infect 90% of the people he comes in contact with. There is a 5% chance that the victim that contracts it will do so only as a carrier, not

having it himself. Once survived, the player will have immunity."

Okay, it gives rules for how to catch it, but what then?  You just die?  How soon?  And for "permanently incapacitated," what does that mean?  In a coma?  Weakened so they can't adventure?

One of the original suggestions of why a tumbling dungeon might exist at all was to turn an alchemical potion.  The more I flesh out the dungeon the more I've gone in that direction.  I have a storage area for alchemical powders, a library of material components.  I've planned a library made of hinged brass plaques and a room of diagrams and shifting sand.

I decided the Grand Alchemist was "Arabic", but is long gone now.  I'm thinking there might be some crones taking advantage of the facilities, some pearly grubs, and a sentient black, oily liquid as per richard's suggestion.

The players may not even remember they were interested in this point on the map, but there may be something that I can use to steer them toward it, one of the passengers is a Chinese alchemist and he may recognize the significance of this site.  He may also know it as a possible place to find a cure for the plague victims.

I feel kind of crappy about nudging them toward this, but other than that it is an 8 days voyage to the city they are heading to and I have nothing prepared for that city, no map no npcs, nothing.

The advantage of having a blog and a smart phone, is I can show players pics at the drop of the hat for magic items like the fingerbone necklace, or whatever.  Okay back to work.