Gaming the Labyrinth - some thoughts

 

It was my birthday a few days ago. That's not the point but it comes into the story. There are two reasons for mentioning my birthday - the first is a treat, the second is a present. It's also 5 years this month since David Bowie died. That's not the point either but it may explain some coincidences.

I was thinking that I was going to force my family to watch Labyrinth, because on your birthday, you can maybe insist that people do things that maybe they're not super-keen to do but you can say it's your special treat and they should just humour you.

But, I didn't have to. Two days before, Mrs. Orc was flicking through the channels and suddenly there was David Bowie in his surprising hair and even more surprising trousers, so we settled down to watch it. She didn't mind, she thinks it's a good movie too, and we thought we'd let Orc Minissimus off to do whatever he wanted. He can watch it any time he likes (we have the DVD). And, TV being what it is at the moment, with companies desperate to provide content to captive audiences, four days later it's on again right now as I'm typing up this part of the post. Possibly it's on because, as I say, Bowie died 5 years ago and somebody thought it was a good excuse to put one of his movies on telly.

From https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/labyrinth-review/

Anyway, I started making notes on it because I want to run the Labyrinth (or something like it) as a D&D setting. I tried to note locations, personalities, magic items and whatnot to construct some kid of dreamworld or pocket universe with a similar logic or framework or whatever. I'm not thinking of running this as part of my regular gaming sessions, I think this would have to be a little side-project.

No-one reading this, I assume, is unfamiliar with the film. But just in case you've been living in a pocket universe of your own for 35 years... Sarah's baby brother, Toby has been taken by Jareth and his Goblins. Sarah has 13 hours to rescue Toby from Jareth's Castle beyond the Labyrinth, or he will be lost forever.

One of the most important parts of the film, which perhaps is a bit difficult to get across in gaming, is 'time'. Sarah is on a time-limit and Jareth keeps altering the rules. There are various distractions that eat up time. I suppose, one way of doing this would be to run this as a self-contained session: the Labyrinth must be solved by the end of the session or the PCs fail in their quest. So, turning Labyrinth (or, Labyrinth-like, maybe) into a one-shot.

Obviously, Sarah and Toby come from our world. Not sure how to game that in D&D terms, whether it would be easier to assume that all of this happens 'in universe' or to have a framing where the PCs are actually brought in from outside. I've been thinking a little about portals - (link here). Co-incidentally (maybe not, the point is that it mirrors fantasy literature), 'portal fantasies' are mentioned in the game Blue Rose - this is the birthday present I mentioned earlier, because I have now got a copy of the game. I will be reading it carefully to see what I can draw from it to either inform my D&D gaming or whether it might be better to jump in with both feet and run a game using the Blue Rose rules.

Is it possible to run something like Sarah's journey using Basic D&D? Possibly. But there's a certain amount of what might be called 'alliance-building' that goes on that is difficult to simulate exactly. Sarah's relationships with Hoggle and Ludo, particularly, look easier to 'role-play; than 'rule-play' and that is sort of the point, but also sort of not. Especially for NPCs, reactions should be 'rulable'. All else being equal, if Sarah is kind to NPCs, they should be well-disposed to her. If she is not, they should not be. Jareth may in the end be her enemy but Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus and the other more minor characters should be friendly or not depending on their own motivations and Sarah's interactions with them. There should be a way of constructing systems for developing friendships. Again, Blue Rose has 'Relationship' rules - these I think are more intended for longer-term relationships than the ups and downs of a single session's adventuring, but perhaps there are things to be gleaned from how they handle it. Certainly, part of the charm (for me at least) of Labyrinth is the inter-relationships between the characters that help Sarah to grow as a person. Her relationships with Hoggle and Ludo help her to be less selfish - she's kind to them, and in return they help her on her quest (not it it's about 'returns', because virtue is its own reward, but... having a friend that can summon rocks is certainly helpful). Anyway - alliance-building is a key theme of the film. But whether it's possible to game that in D&D, using the Charisma,  Reactions and Morale rules is something I'm going to have to think about. Several years ago now 'Against the Wicked City' blog had a series of posts (using the tag 'Romance') looking at some of this stuff. I've been re-reading them and hope they'll help me to work out a way forward (there's a metaphor there somewhere). 

There are some things that it's not clear to me yet how to solve. But the inhabitants of the Labyrinth, Goblin City and Castle however are pretty straightforward in terms of their physical abilities (certainly for D&D, I haven't really assimilated Blue Rose yet) - I'll put them in their own post.

So, that's what I'm thinking about at the moment...

Portal Fantasy

This post has been dragged out of the oblivion of 'Drafts', for reasons that will probably become clearer in the not-so-distant future. It's is a continuation of my thinking about how to make D&D more like the literature that inspired it and also the literature that people who might be interested in playing could be reading. 

However, I may be a bit off base here as I don't really belong to the age-bracket or cultural context that didn't read LotR and Howard and Morcock as a youngster... because I did. So I'm not the best judge of what exactly would be high on the reading/watching list of the people who aren't playing but might be... I'm not so familiar with that literature, so in some ways I'm going into this a bit blind.

Anyway, one of the things that is part of a lot of the fantasy literature I do know about is portals, which I mentioned in the linked post. The idea that people from our world venture (often by accident) into another is a mainstay of fantasy literature, TV and film from Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to The D&D Cartoon and Stranger Things.

So I'm kicking around some aspects of this question of using portals. I'm looking at the notion of bringing people from our world to the fantasy world to start with.

How does someone from the modern world survive? Classing modern people in D&D terms is tricky.

People from our world will generally be human - unless they have also been transformed while being transported, in which case anything is up for grabs. I can't think of a work where someone's body changed by going through the portal, perhaps there are. More likely that the journey releases unknown abilities (you can't do magic in our world but maybe you can by travelling to 'Fabulosa'? Can't think of any works where that specifically happens but it seems like there would be some. Certainly in the Fionavar Tapestry there is a certain amount of 'magic acquisition' but I'd have to re-read them to work out the particular causes). That might have  a bearing on what class you could be in the new world.

I can't think of a single portal fantasy where the transportee(s) did not speak the language. Red Moon Black Mountain, the Fionavar Tapestry, Chronicles of Narnia, Labyrinth, Magic Kingdom for Sale - SOLD! and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (which to my chagrin I've never even read... though in my understanding the film doesn't depart massively from the book) wouldn't work if Mr Tumnus, Oliver, Loren, Dorothy and so on couldn't communicate. So for starters, the transportees speak 'Common'. Any other languages one might speak in the real world are superfluous. So what if you know English, French, German and a bit of Spanish? Only one of those equates to Common, the others don't exist. Dwarves don't speak Icelandic, Elves don't speak Gaelic. Probably. Though as they're both pretty conservative languages perhaps if the portal takes you back to 10th-century Norway or 5th-century Ireland, maybe the Dvergar and Tuatha de Danaan do speak a recognisable language. But, if you're in 10th-century Norway or 5th-century Ireland, you probably still speak 'Common' - which therefore would probably be Old Norse or Old Irish anyway.

What about skills? Most things modern humans know would be utterly useless. However, we have a much better understanding of stuff like communicable diseases and infection than people living in our own past and that might be a useful survival skill if transported somewhere Earth-like. Most of us I guess know a few things that might be considered somewhat arcane in a different world, like how to make steel by adding carbon to iron, or how to distil vodka. In general terms we might know more about meteorology, astronomy and such like (especially as regards Earth - portals to completely different world would render such knowledge more problematic) but in practical terms we would know less. 

Generally, non-physical skills are a bit more problematic than physical skills. Things like Mixed Martial Arts, archery, and various types of sword-fighting might equate fairly well (though if you're trained with an epee and then get a broadsword maybe not), and some things like being able to chop down a tree with an axe or hunting in the forest would be good for many 'fantasy' settings but otherwise, the sorts of skills that it would actually be beneficial to have are often going to be non-gaming ones. Woodworking and such like, though very practical in a real-world setting, are not exactly skills that feature high in character classes for D&D.

Thief skills are not really a problem. Picking pockets is picking pockets (and sleight-of-hand and misdirection play a part here too I think). The Thief skills seem to be among those that it might be reasonable to directly import.

Unless (see above) the transportation process sets of latent magical talents, Magic Users and Clerics will not be applicable here. Could a devout religious person from our world, whether through faith as an internal mechanism, or from an external source (some god), derive power that enabled them to be a Cleric? Maybe. But I can't see how a Magic User could exist.

Many of us are going to be less fit than people in the past, but conversely - perhaps - more healthy. We often do not lead such active lifestyles as people even 30 years ago, let alone 300 or 3,000. But we don't have anything like the prevalence of rickets, scurvy, polio, leprosy, smallpox or numerous other diseases or other complaints. A year into a global pandemic it seems odd to claim that we're healthier than previous populations but if you went back to Europe in 1349 and talked about a plague that killed 1/1000 of the population, the 60% of the population that survived the Black Death would think you were very, very lucky.

But perhaps some of this is not so relevant. Sarah only stays in the Labyrinth for 13 hours (actually less as Jareth keeps advancing the clock so maybe it's more like 9 hours). Yes, language is pretty fundamental to interact with the inhabitants, but perhaps disease resistance is not so important. The Fionavar Tapestry is perhaps the most 'realistic' attempt at the portal fantasy I can think of, but even then the 'party' (for want of a better term) don't all come down with cholera from drinking polluted water.

So there are problems to say the least with using D&D as a baseline for how you could do this kind of thing in a game, in terms of character generation and classing. Probably not a problem to establish basic stats: STR, INT etc are fairly generic categories, but if you've ever tried to convert D&D to be a space-game engine, for example, it's maybe a bit limited. However, 'how to do magic' is a problem that needs addressing for those classes.

There are a lot of other considerations around portals. I'm sure I haven't even considered a bunch of important factors.

A fundamental question - Who or what has brought the PCs to this world?

a Good Deity
an Evil Deity
a powerful Good Wizard
a powerful Evil Wizard
an accident
an ancient spell
a book or scroll
an ancient magical device
a secret portal (mirror, pool, wardrobe etc)

Not sure if this list is particularly exhaustive. Sometimes there can be more than one answer. An accident, for example, may involve an ancient magical device or spell gone awry. The PCs might be the unintended passengers of a spell meant for someone else, either from a good or evil entity. An Evil Wizard may use a spell or device to trap a questor, etc. Alternatively, an ancient magical device may have been created by an Evil Wizard. So the point of this list is more a 'first cause' than a set of exclusive possibilities. It's probably worth delving into deeper levels of answer that depend on the initial one.

I've just acquired a copy of the game Blue Rose which has a section on using portals in games - I'm going to be reading that section with some interest (along with the rest, of course - I didn't want it just for that section!). I hope, as it's actually part of the fabric of the game, that it might be easier to sort some of this stuff out

So, yeah... portals... they're a thing. Not a huge part of what I'm thinking about right now but I guess connected. It's sometimes difficult to know exactly where to put all the speculation.

Rift City Sessions 41-42

I didn't get round to putting up December's session (Session 41) so this is partly about that - what I can remember - but I guess it's really going to be about what I recall of Session 42 (which was only a couple of days ago).

The first thing that happened was that three new PCs joined the party. These were (alphabetically) Helvor, a Cleric; Inarra, a Magic User, and Kate Short For Bob, a Halfling. This is because of the deaths (or at least temporary petrification) of Karensa and Kraghelm, and the retirement of Galen. About 3 years ago, I asked the PCs to come up with a fact about their PCs. Galen's player told me Galen was seeking to restore his family's fortunes so he could marry his lady love. Having amassed 20,000GP he's taking that back to the Elf-lands to hire retainers and give some presents to local dignitaries to re-establish the clan's standing. So, Helvor, Inarra and Kate joined Berg (Dwarf), Brigham (Cleric) and Gibbet (Thief) to brave the caves.

The first thing the party decided to do - and I have no idea why - was go to the Level 1 cave of Ningal the Magic User and kill her as a witch. They seem to have decided that she's the one who was controlling the Undead, but having killed her, they found her journal that said she'd been having problems with them too, so that wasn't it.

Then they went back to the cave where Kraghelm and Karensa had been petrified. Nosing around there they found a peculiar upside-down pit trap: it was a patch of water on the ceiling, and Kate failed a saving throw and fell 'up' into it.

Now; things that look easy to grasp from my side of the screen look somewhat different from the other side. I thought it was pretty obviously a gravity-reversal trap, limited to a very small area. I expected the rest of the party to throw a rope so Kate could climb down (or, 'up' from her point of view).

But they didn't. They thought it was some aquatic (or at least watery-looking) ceiling-monster with a paralysing/levitating attack - so Inarra the Magic User fireballed it, with Kate still sitting in the puddle. Having done that - bear in mind Kate has now taken d6 damage from falling 'up' 10', and 5d6 damage from the fireball (half if she made her save, I guess she must have done or she'd probably be toast) - the rest of the party decided they'd then dispel the effect, causing Kate to fall again and take another d6 damage. Poor Kate, but honestly, it was hilarious. It also took about an hour before all this was done. Not bad for something from a room description that had originally read, I think, 'the water is on the ceiling'. I don't really want my PCs to know my sources but rest assured, room generator, I am very grateful, those 6 words generated a lot of gaming content. 

It took up so much time that I think there was only time for a fight with some Giant Ants and the PCs decided to head for home.

For Session 42, they decided not to head back to the Medusa Caves, as they're too difficult to map (being a bit wiggly, again, I don't want to reveal too much about my sources, thanks Dyson Logos).

So, instead, they headed on down the path to find another cave entrance.

Now, I haven't designed this area beyond a few rough notes. There is a ruin further down the path, that the party found rumours about 3 years ago (and have probably forgotten).

However, what has been established already is that the wilderness will get more unforgiving beyond the bend in the road. Given the division between 'Basic' and 'Expert' rules, this seems to me to be a reasonable way to conceptualise moving further from civilisation. We joked at the time when Gibbet went up to 4th Level that now the Wilderness could attack him, but having zones of increasing wildness makes more sense. From the Edge of the Rift to the First Bend, is a kind of liminal zone - not completely wild, not completely tame; but beyond the bend, civilised writ does not run. So, a short way down the path, the party encountered some humanoids, at some range. As Berg the Dwarf went to investigate, and the humanoids in question were Goblins, arrows soon started to fly. The party charged the Goblins and saw off about a dozen or so, either dead or chased away.

Again, not really wanting to give too much away but I looked at my maps for the 'next level past the Medusa Cave' and realised that in fact there are no cave entrances to that level. Not that I have established anyway. So they kept on going until they arrived at the ruins.

I knew that at some point the PCs would get here but did not expect to have to flesh them out 'on the hoof' as it were. I had a map and some room descriptions - but the original had 5' squares that made no sense. There is a pit-trap that is only 5' square in a corridor - I can't see what would prevent some even relatively-tall human (it was Helvor who triggered it) from just grabbing the lip at the far side to stop themself falling, or at least slowing their descent so they could hang from the edge and just drop the last few feet.

I told them the squares were 10'. That seemed to solve the problem. It meant all the room descriptions were off and I had to convert everything on the fly. The descriptions were also for a Level 1 dungeon, so I was pulling monsters out and substituting ones of a more appropriate level. As it was, the only monster I remember them finding in the ruin was an Ochre Jelly. It was a little while before they found out that fire was their friend, but they did manage to fireball it and its spawn eventually.

After that (they'd only searched a couple of rooms of the ruin) they decided to head back to civilisation, with not very much loot. But from my point of view it seemed reasonable that they could have another encounter in the wilderness on the way home (one possibility in the morning, one in the evening... both came up).

Consulting the tables it was a Frost Giant (1-2 appearing). Well, it was only one that appeared, looking for 'its' Goblins. When the PCs cheerfully admitted they'd killed some Goblins, the Giant got angry and started throwing rocks at them. The PCs being PCs charged (someone was injured by a rock but I can't remember who) and Helvor saved the day by turning some sticks (that he'd said he was collecting at the previous session) into snakes. The spell is a bit underwritten so I decided to dice for the properties of the snakes - turns out, he'd made 11 Pit Vipers. 3 of them managed to make attacks on the Giant, and of those the giant saved one throw... so, as far as I can tell, the Giant died. Cue looting the corpse where, in the treasure tables, the giant has a 25% of 3 magic items plus one scroll. I can't remember what I rolled but it was less than 25. So I told the PCs that they'd found some cash (the best haul in the session, obviously), and also that they'd found a scroll. Then I rolled the first random magic item... a scroll! And the third magic item... a scroll! And the fourth magic item... a scroll! So four magic items, all scrolls... consulting further rolls these were two scrolls of Protection from Undead, one of Protection from Lycanthropes, and a treasure map. I'm so glad they found that at the end of the session, now I have a month to knock up some sort of map for them to go and investigate for the next session...

What I'm pretty certain is that it will lead to the Sepulchre of Riha the Bejewelled (thanks Donjon for I'm sure at the very least you gave me the name!)

I really don't know where this session would have been without loads of internet content out there - thanks to all I haven't mentioned too, but some at least will have to be kept under wraps until my players have pushed on a bit further.