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.

Rift City - Session 19, on tour...

Due to our usual venue being used as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival, this month our game was at Berg and Galan's house, and a very fine venue it was too, so thanks for putting up with us.

The party consisted, apart from Berg (1st Level Dwarf) and Galan (2nd Level Elf), of...

Bonjella (1st Level Elf)
Gene (2nd Level Fighter)
Gibbet (3rd Level Thief)
Karensa (1st Level Elf)
Marl (1st Level Halfling)

and a new player and PC, Greydon (1st Level Magic User).

Having found Greydon breakfasting in the inn and looking for a party of adventurers to go raiding the caves, the PCs set off again for 'the bath-house of Blibdoolpoolp'.

In the first room, just inside the door, where previously they had encountered Harpies and before that Kobolds, the party found three humans who Gibbet quickly realised were 'legitimate businessmen' of some kind. There were barrels, something wrapped in a cloth, and a couple of chests in the room that had not been there before. Deciding that this must be some of the loot from the missing caravan, the PCs basically provoked the human chaps into starting a fight. They then butchered the men and looted them. It turned out that the barrels weren't stolen property - instead, it looked like the barrels (ale), cloth-wrapped cheeses and chests (of weapons) were being taken into the caves not out of them.

And then...

I don't know any more. Lots of things happened. A room was explored that seemed to be some kind of office, and this map was discovered...

The PCs were exploring round the southern end of this. There were definitely fights with Orcs and evil Dwarves and some snakes and some Killer Bees and more Traders...

Somewhere, another map was found that looked like this (an actual treasure map!):

Map created using the excellent tools at Donjon, with some tweaking

Bonjella got herself a fur body-warmer and some loot was to be had for definite, and then the party split up (I think, Greydon and Galan had passed out in a room that caused unconsciousness, and rest of the party dragged them out and left them in the first room, then went off to do something else)... this ended up with Greydon being hassled by a giant lizard as Galan ran away, if I recall correctly. The rest of the party luckily arrived as Greydon was about to be eaten, so they killed the lizard.

And that was about that...

Next session it seems we'll also have a problem with the venue, so the Wandering Monster Table will be on an extended tour... I hope I'll be better at telling how the next one goes!

Rift City Session 11

The roster for the latest session of our open table, on 10th June:

Berg the Dwarf
Cnut the Fighter
Galen the Elf
Gene the Fighter
Gibbet the Thief
Gwynthor the Cleric
Karenza the Elf
Shazam the Elf (and Keith the Orc),

and joining us especially for this session, two new players with their PCs Brüna the Dwarf and Bunny the Halfling.

Maybe there will be some comment about over this at the Disoriented Ranger blog, because Brüna's player, in an amazing coming-from-a-foreign-country-to-play-games-with-you situation, was JensD of that very blog, who's been visiting the UK and made time to come to our open table. It was lovely to show Jens and his partner something of our city, and Mrs Orc and I hope they enjoyed being here as much as we enjoyed showing them around. Maybe we'll get to pay them a visit in the near future too.

The first thing the party did was try to return to the area of well-dressed stonework that they have recently been exploring. Unknown to them, one of the rooms that they had recently cleared, where the strange blobby creature lived in the dark, had been re-populated, by Orcs this time, as they seem to like to take over rooms in this area.

They managed to avoid too many wandering monsters on the way, the only disturbance being a crowd of bats that were agitated in the corridor. Something had disturbed them, though what that might be was not clear. The bats didn't really bother the PCs much, and the noise didn't summon any other monsters. The PCs have been bothered by enough bats to know they're a distraction and are best ignored. The worst they do is potentially cause enough noise that more wandering monsters might be summoned.

Having passed the place where the bats were, the PCs continued on to the spot where they'd fought some Orcs at the last session. The bodies were gone, seemingly having been dragged away, if the smears of black blood were any guide. Again, it wasn't clear what might have moved the bodies.

The octagonal room with the way down to the lower levels was as before - nothing has taken up residence there lately. The armoury room was also unchanged since 'yesterday'. Beyond that was a short corridor with a somewhat tricksy secret door. The party knows it's there, but it was closed, so I figured it's still invisible. There are 10 of them, and three of those are Elves, so rolling 7d6 trying to get a single 1 and 3d6 trying to score a 1 or 2, was bound to produce a result sooner or later, so they did find the secret door when Gene remembered it was the second brick over that needed to be pressed, not the third.

Opening the door, they discovered the room was still unnaturally dark. While hanging around trying to decide what to do, a guttural shout from inside alerted them to the presence of Orcs, who began shooting arrows at them.

Brüna set a flask of oil alight and tossed it into the room. It briefly illuminated some Orcs standing around. Brüna also asked one of the Elves to tell him some Orcish insults so he could shout at the enemy (he doesn't speak Orcish). A confused firefight ensued, with the Orcs shooting through the flames towards the door, and the party shooting into the room. trying to pick targets by the flickering firelight.

After a few rounds, where Karenza took an arrow (but didn't die), it was decided to charge the Orcs. The party definitely had the advantage as their better AC was turning the Orc attacks while their own attacks, though made into the low and flickering light, were taking a toll on the Orcish numbers. However, the Orcs passed a morale check and held firm. Bunny and Gibbet snuck in to find good firing positions as the rest of the party charged towards the now dying flames and engaged with the Orcs. The sudden charge and brutality of the assault, on top of the withering shooting, broke the Orcs' morale and persuaded them to surrender and throw down their weapons.

At this point the Orcs started trying to buy their lives with promises of treasure. The PCs decided to kill one of the Orcs to make sure the others knew they were serious. Gwynthor the Cleric dissented but he has a CHA of 3 so everyone is used to him being annoying and no-one took any notice. Brüna stabbed the Orc in the back of the neck as he was lying on the floor and the other Orcs, now deciding that they had no chance of surviving and were better off fighting for their lives, attempted to snatch up weapons and attack the PCs again. However, it didn't go well for the Orcs (they were lying on the floor, with weapons out of reach) and the party butchered them pretty quickly.

This was all too much for Keith, the charmed Orcish lantern-bearer. I figured that this was an event traumatic enough to give Keith a shot at throwing off the spell, and he did so. The result was that he remonstrated with his 'friend' Shazam asking how he could support murdering Keith's other friends after they'd surrendered. It seemed to be news to the party that these Orcs are from Keith's tribe. To be fair to Shazam, he'd taken no part in the butchery but he hadn't done much to stop it either. Keith anyway 'woke up' from his illusion that the PCs were his friends, threw his burning lantern at Bunny (it missed, smashing spectacularly on the wall near her), and launching an attack on Gwynthor (ironically one of the PCs not involved in the murder of prisoners, but Keith doesn't speak Common and Gwynthor soesn't speak Orcish) who was close by.

Keith fumbled his attack. There are no actual fumbles in my rules, a 1 is a 1 and a fail, a 20 is a 20 and generally a success, that's all, but given the darkness effect (not to mention Keith's blind rage) I decided that Keith's 1 should genuinely represent a catastrophic failure at this point, and he tripped over one of the corpses as he launched himself at Gwynthor, going sprawling at the latter's feet. Gwynthor decided, probably quite sensibly, that sitting on Keith's back was a viable way to keep him under control, while he called to Shazam to come and subdue Keith somehow. Deciding that disposing of Keith was the only option, Shazam killed his one-time 'friend' (dupe? pet? slave? I'm not sure really, Shazam did seem to have some sort of fondness for him) with a swift stab. That's how it goes sometimes.

Meanwhile, the rest of the PCs were looting the Orcs, snaring some money-pouches containing several hundred GPs and a couple of gems. This turned out to be a considerable haul in the end worth around 950GP. I don't make the party bargain for gems, I can't see the point. If the gems are worth 350GP they get 350GP. Turning treasure into GP to turn into XP is a tedious enough business without requiring them to constantly check their CHA against the Morale or Reaction Rating of a bunch of NPCs, in order to determine what percentage of the value they are given. If they want to up the 'town game' element they can, if they want they can spend their entire time buying and selling gems at the various establishments around town, but that really isn't D&D for me. D&D is fundamentally an exploration game, not a trading game. I'm sure there are other games with more advanced trading systems. But if the players want to do that they can - there is no 'wrong fun' so it's up to them. I don't think they want to at the moment. Kicking in doors and robbing monsters is more fun.

Having looted the Orcs, Brüna suggested nailing Orcs to things as a warning to others. He volunteered to attach various Orc corpses to some of the doors and weapon-stands in the armoury. The rest of the PCs agreed and gave him some iron spikes to help.

Moving on from the Orcs' room they came to the last room that they have already explored. This was a room with a large statue, where they had found a secret compartment at the previous session containing a treasure-chest. No treasure-chest this time but only because I remembered that they'd found it - I'd forgotten to cross it off my list. Must get better at that, in fact I might go and do the paperwork before I get any further with the write-up. That dungeon won't master itself, I have to accept! I may have some simple systems, but it isn't yet fully-automated.

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So, I've done my paperwork. Next session is prepped. Back to the report...

Brüna, busy trying to attach Orc-corpses to things in the armoury, met a strange wood-like beast. I have an image of I am Groot in my mind that I now can't shake. The thing was a Wood Golem, but I'm not sure Brüna knows that, he's never met one before. It seemed to approve of Brüna's treatment of the Orcs, not to mention his own polite greeting to it, and his lack of hostile action. In the end it decided it would be friendly, but Brüna, his task done, left to find the rest of the party.

The rest of the party meanwhile were exploring the next room, which seemed to be a trap-room, with spikes and blades all over the place from rusted traps. None however appeared currently dangerous. The room also contained some doors. Gibbet listened at the closest and heard noises from behind it. The party opened the door, and yet more bats were the result. There was also an old campfire (with some cold rat on a stick) and some bed-rolls. Ignoring the bats (they're little more than room-dressing really), Bunny decided she would play up to a Halfling stereotype, and ate the rat-on-a-stick. There was also a leather satchel with cash in it. It seems that someone had left not only their dinner but their treasure in something of a hurry, in the relatively-recent past.

Brüna rejoined the party at this point, not realising that there was a large crowd of Fire Beetles on their tail. Seven of them had come along, perhaps summoned by the sound of the bats, perhaps following some other instinct, and the party decided to try to take them out.

In fact it was a short and bloody combat. Some good shooting by the party on the one hand, and some hand-to-hand work, left the Fire Beetles dead pretty quickly. I ruled that some had been killed so convincingly that their glow-glands were ruined; any beetle who took more than twice its hp in damage I reasoned had been pulverised rather than surgically dispatched, and I diced for a few others, so only 11 out a possible 21 glands were available in the end. These were collected for sale at 5GP a pop to Gisuintha, the MU back in the city who fancies herself as an Alchemist.

After this encounter, the PCs decided to be on their way rather than explore any further. They nearly made it back without incident too. However, they did run into a couple of Skeletons, but Gwynthor compelled them with the power of the Mighty Yrt, He Who Manifests in Pinecones (according to what we understand of Gwynthor's weird theology anyway), and the bony undead ones were backed the wrong way down a passage while the party made its way towards the exit, Gwynthor bringing up the rear in case of further undead harassment.

Scampering from the caves, the party made it back to town to divide up their hard-gained loot, and that was another session wrapped up...

I think that was pretty much what happened anyway!

EDIT: except I forgot possibly the most important part, at least as far as the long-term progression of the table, the campaign and the PCs go - Gibbet the Thief, who has attended approximately 8/11 sessions (it might be 9 I can't remember but I know he's missed 2-3 sessions) has now made it to the dizzying heights of Second Level! WHOO-HOO! (Cue: small fireworks, bunting, a marching band playing a stirring fanfare and speeches by civic dignitaries, before we all have cake.)

Rift City Session 9

I've left it too long to be able to provide much detail on this: what I can remember is that the party was composed of:

Cnut the Fighter
Galen the Elf
Gene the Fighter
Gibbet the Thief
Karensa the Elf
Shazam the Elf

and we were joined by a new player, who was running Marl the Halfling.

Oh, and Shazam's Charmed Orc, who is called is called Keith, not Barry.

The party wanted to get to back to the area with the good corridors, where the Orcs were. So, they headed back that way. In the room of sarcophagi, where previously they'd encountered Skeletons, they came across some Ghouls. There seems to be some malign influence in that place that keeps bring back Undead. The party doesn't seem to have noticed, but maybe a spring-clean with some Holy Water might keep things quiet for a bit. The Elves went point and took out the Ghouls, due to a general immunity to Ghoul-paralysis. Someone was injured, but not paralysed (can't remember who it was now).

Scouting a bit further the party came to the room where Keith had been stationed as a guard. As there were now only two guards there (Keith's old mates) they rapidly surrendered rather than face the wrath of 7 PCs and their henchorc. Searching about the party found another door. It was the Orcs' privy, occupied by a few more Orcs. A quick fight and it was all over. I can see I'm going to have to beef up some of the encounters in this area, I think they're more geared for parties of 3-5. 8 (or even 7, Keith is basically a torch-bearer) is just tending to overwhelm the monsters.

That part of the dungeon done the party headed north from the room with the Orc/Ogre corpses and big pit. They found a room that had most recently been used an armoury, but the majority of weapons had gone. Certainly those that were left looked mostly broken or at least rusty, except one. Karensa took that, a sword. There was also a chest with a false bottom that contained a small amount of treasure.

North of this room they encountered a meditating Elf who had barricaded himself in and was attempting to regain his spells, having been separated from his adventuring party, made up of some Dwarves.

The party did find the Dwarves, who said it was the Elf's fault he'd got lost.

On the way out, the party ran into some Fire Beetles, which were quickly defeated, and even though Polly the Magic User wasn't there, the PCs harvested the usable glands to take back to Guisintha at Rift City. They've been trained well.

One of the players produced this lovely sketch of the day's shenanigans:

Session 9 by Cnut Cutlet - clockwise from top: Keef the lantern-bearing Orc, a dwarf, a Ghoul Rising, a Fire Beetle and a Ghoul Attacking

Happy Birthday to Me...

It was my birthday recently. One never asks an Orc their age, but I saw the Bakshi Lord of the Rings in the cinema (probably in 1979, the year I first read it) and started playing D&D in 1981 with the Moldvay Basic Set. That's a pretty good indicator.

I got some game-related stuff. From my awesome parents, I received the Eldritch Horror game. I have no idea what they would made of it (they're religious, in a very tolerant sort of way), but I think it looks pretty groovy. It's certainly heavy. I have punched out all of the counters but am yet to persuade Mrs Orc to play: we'll get there soon I hope.

My brother, his amazing wife and incredible son gave me the Adventurer, Conqueror, King System hardback book. I have read a lot of it and I'm very impressed at the production values and way it joins stuff up. I still think that the ACKS was the wrong way to go but they made such a brilliant job of it. I think - maybe - it would have achieved more sales if it had not just substantially repackaged B/X with some great additions, but if instead it had been released as some supplements - one for the 'domain game' stuff, one for character creation. Both of those sections are really good and will I think soon be making appearances in my ongoing campaign. Some of the rest is... stuff I already own but slightly reworded. I dunno, maybe I wouldn't have bought a 'campaign system' for 1/3 the price and an 'expanded character creation system' book for 1/3 the price and all the other ways this could be done, so maybe I'm wrong and Autarch are right. I don't have any games company, let alone one that releases such well-made stuff so am I really a good judge? I just have a feeling I'd have invested sooner if the initial price-hump hadn't been so high. But something like a 64-page soft-cover dealing with Chapter 10 would have been good.

From my lovely wife, who really doesn't know what she's done, I got the Carcosa book. It is of course great, I think there will be some memorable adventures that leap from its pages in years to come. I have form here, please see some posts from the middle of last year by following the 'Carcosa' label - but man oh man I hate 10-mile hexes. So, I've hatched a plot. It's a stupid plot, but right up my ally as far as making things harder for myself by not adapting to change is concerned (which I do a lot... I am still playing B/X-BECMI D&D after all).

Geoff McKinley says that the descriptions are only a small part of what is actually happening in the space covered by the map. That's fine. Adding extra encounters is OK. I have a bunch of hexes that I have already mapped. I think there must be a way to smash my map in the map as already exists and see what happens. I imagine it as being a sort of fractal process.

I think the way I am going to attempt it is to turn Geoff's 10-mile hexes into my favoured 6-mile hexes. This will mean that the number of hexes will increase 3-fold (for 10-to-6 hex-theory, please see this post in particular). This will slightly increase the area being mapped but to be honest I don't care. I don't think it ever says 'it's 480 miles from Carcosa to the Bottomless Lochs' or whatever so it's all good as far as I'm concerned.

There are currently 400 hexes and 800 descriptions: this will become 1,200 hexes with 800 descriptions. My hexes (currently 200) will become 400. I will double the numbers of each terrain type and apply them to the map... I'm not entirely sure how but I'll think about it. I suspect I'd kind of interpolate my hexes, by adding my 20 columns and 10 rows (not forgetting to double them) to the existing 25 columns and 16 rows by some kind of proportional process. If my hex doesn't fit the general theme of the map at that point, then so what? There's a tiny little (6-mile hex) mountain in the ice-field or a bit of desert in a lake (erm, an island maybe?). Or even a series of small lakes in the desert. I can live with that.

Some of the hex descriptions I have are already directly lifted from the Carcosa preview, so I need to find these and eradicate them as duplicates. One, though not lifted from the Carcosa preview, in that it already existed as part of John Stater's Kepler-22B project 'Strange New World', was swapped for a Carcosa preview description; the red vitrified ground in Sector G9 (from 2014, before I even remember having heard of the Carcosa book) was very similar to a description of vitrified white ground in a hex in the Carcosa preview. I swapped mine for Geoff's in my mapping is all. I guess the idea of vitrified ground can occur to more than one person.

But anyway, I have something like 136 descriptions, of which maybe 12 were from the preview. That leaves about 124. I need to add 400 hexes. It's fine, 124 more locations (including something like 30 settlements, a couple of them largish for Carcosa) will fit in that space with hardly anyone noticing. Maybe I should fill in all 400 new hexes? That would be a challenge!

But perhaps, in line with the advice for peopling the map from ACKS I could just interpolate the hexes and keep some of the locations back: when the PCs stumble on them, that's when I add them to the map... I need to read that bit again and think how it applies to Carcosa, the world, and Carcosa, the book. And I need to work out the maths of thing. That may take a little while.

In essence it's simple - in the first hex in the top left of the Carcosa map is an area of plains with trees. In the top left of my map is an area of barren plains. Making one hex into three means there are two mostly-forest-hexes and one barren plains hex. But making that work when I have to also increase the 'sides' of my map from 10 to 16 and the 'top-and-bottom' from 20 to 25 is less easy. The proportions aren't the same so my hexes will have to be taller than they are wide (conceptually at least).

The total number of hexes needs to be divided so that north-south and east-west proportions are round about right. My map, of 200 hexes, was 20x10. The Carcosa map, of 400 hexes, was 25x16. The new map, of 1,200 hexes, probably needs to be somewhere between 40x30 and 50x24 to keep something like the right 'aspect ratio'. Maybe 48x25 is right. They seem to be the only ways of dividing 1,200 hexes in a reasonable ratio anyway. My map is at 12:6 EW:NS. The original is about 9:6 EW:NS. Somewhere between those looks to be about right. 50x24 is just over 12:6 so goes too far in having its EW dimension greater than twice its NS dimension. 40x30 is at 8:6 so goes too far the other way and has an EW dimension less than 1.5 times the NS dimension. 48x25 is just about 11:6 and at the moment looks like the best fit.

Meh, I'll get there. Then I can go mad and do a 24-mile hex map based on the map from Carcosa, which is what I really want!

Rift City Session 6

The sixth (wow yeah count them) of our open gaming sessions happened on the 21st, a week late because of huge scheduling conflicts - in the end, the rest of the players decided they'd rather have it at another time so that I could DM, rather than anyone else volunteering to run a game. Next month we're going to have to change things again, as our usual venue will be occupied - the Leicester Comedy Festival is on in February and most of the places we could meet in the city will be hosting gigs. So, we're having a night off from meeting in public (I know that kinda defeats the point of an open gaming session but it's only one month) to meet at one of the players' houses.

Anyway, the session started in the inn frequented by adventurers coming to Rift City. There, Sven the Dwarf, Frost the Fighter, Gwynthor the Cleric, Gibbet the Thief and Poly the Magic User were breakfasting and discussing their assault on the caves when they were approached by Berg, another Dwarf and Cnut, another Fighter, asking if they could join the party for a bit of dungeon-delving. 

While they were still breakfasting, they were also joined by Galen the Elf, who (being a bit richer than the others as the only PC survivor of the successful raid at the last session) had decided to take up more salubrious accommodation and had taken a room at the Scoundrels' House, a more up-market place all together.

I also supplied the players with a map of the main parts of Rift City; apart from their inn, I've marked on four of the main drinking establishments, the main market area at 'The Circus', a couple of temples and a few other locations of note. Some of these turn up in the large rumour-table I have (100 rumours culled from a variety of sources - the inns and rumours are bound together if you get them from the Donjon site, but not from Inkwell Ideas - which is fine, I need more than six rumours per inn). Some of them have adventures attached all of their own. I won't say which.

Rift City map, including several sites from various random rumour sources...

So anyway the party got itself together at last and set off for the caves. They decided that they might as well go after Orcs - rescuing the poor enslaved Gnome had obviously touched the conscience of... well Galen probably, he was the only PC to have gotten out alive, but he must have been dashed persuasive.

So, they ventured in: they passed the body of Bob the Fighter (who died in sight of the exit last time); no Kobolds this time but in one of the rooms that had been emptied last session, a Crab Spider attacked Galen.

Galen is approximately as armoured as the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz. His nose may count as a vulnerable location but I'm not sure. Whatever, even with dropping from the ceiling with surprise, the Crab Spider was unable to bite Galen before the rest of the party made it into Spider jam. Polly was desperately trying to save any interesting parts to take back to the wizard in town who's collecting such things, but couldn't really identify enough bits in the mush to be of use.

A bit further on - Ghouls, two of them. There are a lot of them around, in 6 sessions there have been at least 3 encounters with Ghouls. Gwynthor tried to Turn them but failed, and they moved to attack. Again, 8 party members made short work of them. No-one was bitten. No-one was paralysed. They were lucky.

They were lucky with Wandering Monsters too. I kept rolling high. No monsters.

They pushed on, looking for the Orcish slavers. But they found some Elves, three of them, a party like themselves out for the killing of monsters and the liberation of treasure - for noble purposes of course. Not only was Galen an Elf, but Sven the Dwarf also speaks Elvish, so the Elves weren't immediately hostile. Some information and wishes for a successful quest were exchanged, Sven was declared to be a noble comrade who would be remembered in the stories of their people, and then as the Elves went past, Gibbet pick-pocketed them, gaining a handful of coins for his trouble.

Several empty rooms, recently cleared - by the party, 'yesterday' in fact. There was some discussion about whether to turn left or right at the furthest point - they turned left but just to do one last room before turning right for home again. And the room happened to be one in which there was some actual treasure. A locked chest, with a poison needle trap - and Gibbet managed, the dice-gods alone know how, to get it open without killing himself. The loot was counted and divided - 300SP, 20GP and two huge gems - and the party decided to high-tail it to the exit.

And then, in the distance, more figures. This was it turns out another NPC party. The only wandering monster in the whole session was basically friendly. They propositioned Berg (the leader of the other pary was a male Dwarf, and Berg a female - they arranged a meeting later that evening), wished the PCs luck,  and warned them the Orcs and Skeletons lay between them and the exit before heading off to the south-east, further into the cave system.

Indeed, a few moments later, the PCs found the cave where the eight Skeletons were. Gwynthor again began trying to compel them by the power of Yrt (a god who mostly manifests himself through pine-cones, or this at least is what Gwynthor believes). Gwynthor shouted at them and commanded them by the power of Yrt not to resist; the rest of the party then battered them to death... or, more to death.

One more room and one more room... after the Skeletons, who were disappointingly short of treasure, the two Dwarves entered another room, that smelled bad and had piles of droppings on the floor - from bats, probably. But the party didn't care, they were treasure-hunting. Unfortunately Sven set off a floor-trap and fell 10'. Lowering Gibbet down on a rope to see how Sven was, the PCs realised their Dwarven comrade was going to soon bleed out. Alas, Gibbet was unable to staunch Sven's wounds and the noble Dwarf died of a broken beard (or something).

Then... the party decided to argue for ages about how to divvy up all the loot. Eventually I rolled a few dice and said "your argument is interrupted by an axe smacking into the wall above you". The Orcs they'd been looking for, merely a few tens of yards up the corridor, had come looking for them having heard the commotion. But, the Orcs were attacking superior numbers of better-armoured foes. They threw their hand-axes as they charged, but they never even made it into hand-to-hand. By the time Polly used her 'Sleep' spell on them more than half were already dead. The rest had their throats cut and their possessions looted, and then it was off home to sell the weapons and gems and divide up the gold, another successful day of murder-hoboing accomplished, the only fly in the ointment the death of Sven Olafson, noble Dwarf and friend of Elves, not to mention wolves everywhere.

Rift City Session 5

I don't remember too much about this I'm afraid. There was bad weather in the UK which somewhat curtailed people coming out to play. At least one of the regular players (maybe two?) and one irregular player had to work. Also, it being winter, there was a certain amount of illness about. As a result, there were only three of us at the session.

Apart from me, the only adventurers were Galen the Elf and ... damn I can't even remember. There were also a couple of NPCs, a Cleric called Vortigern and a Fighter called Zanok. The NPCs were both pregens from old-time White Dwarf AD&D adventures - from WDs 93 and 49 if I remember correctly. Galen had spent time out of the dungeon trying to track down the wizard who was offering a reward for 'exotic animal parts' - the light-glands from Fire Beetles and the honey of Killer Bees for a start, and in general other interesting or magical parts. But in the end they didn't harvest any organs or secretions at all.

The party fought Kobolds (some more had moved into the caverns cleared of Kobolds in the previous session), and undead, and some giant lizards. At last the party (minus Vortigern, who had died fighting the lizards) had some serious money though, the looting had been good with some bags of gold and some jewellery.

And then, on the way out of the tunnels, the party disturbed a flock of stirges (not the 1980s electro band) and one attacked Damn I Can't Even Remember full in the face. And he was dead, really dead, because Elementary Staunching failed. This was the new character of the same player that was 'Lucky' Fisheye Len last time. This was his 3rd session and 2nd PC fatality.

That did however leave Galen and one NPC - Zanok the Lawful Fighter (there are no Paladins in this game) holding all the loot. Well, Galen gust got a bit nearer 2nd level and is scoping out a higher class of accommodation on the nicer side of town.

Session 6 should already have happened, but unfortunately I was unable to attend. The current players decided they'd rather wait a week until I have a free Sunday rather than go ahead with a gaming session that I wasn't running (maybe no-one else wanted to run a game, I don't know). In some ways that's pretty gratifying. Anyway, next session will be on Sunday 21st January. Watch this space...

Rift City session 4

Well, we're still at it - Rift City has now been running for 4 months... which means 4 open tables and so far nine (I think) different players... apart from me only one player has been to all the sessions.

The party (a strangely flexible beast it is, a bit like Grandfather's Axe) is still exploring the upper caverns, but I feel there is a certain lure of some of the deeper, darker passageways, where things are likely to get much stranger...

I feel I need to re-read stuff about running open tables and sandboxes. I've never quite done things like this before and I need to check I'm doing it right. I've been reading 'The Alexandrian' for hints and tips - particularly the stuff on open tables.

The last session was again packed with incident - including the irrevocable death off "Fisheye" Len. Poor Len, he suffered in his short life. He was eventually killed by a falling ceiling-block. I have a houserule called 'Elementary Staunching' that says if your companions can do some battlefield first aid you have a chance of surviving even at 0hp. But, Len was unlucky and missed his CON roll. Farewell Len, we hardly knew ye.

Other notable items of incident - fighting Kobolds! Quite a lot of them, two rooms of the pesky little blighters. The first room was mostly taken out with the judicious use of a 'Sleep' spell from Polly the Magic-User, and many Kobold throats were slit. The second room I don't remember, though as the party had 2 Elves as well as the MU it may be that they hit that with 'Sleep' too.

They explored a few more rooms: they collected as much treasure as they could including a set of Kobold swords that I allowed them to sell back at Rift City, probably for more than they were really worth. We'll have to see what happens next session (only a few days now) when a new constellation of adventurers decides to brave the Rift...

Rift City session 3

Bandits!

Cave Locusts!

A Killer Bee (that the party decided not to kill)!

Some Ghouls (that really wanted to eat the party)!

A flashing light trap!

And even, shock horror, some actual treasure - about 60GPs stashed under a pile of rocks in the cave.

A much depleted party was joined by 'Fisheye' Len the Thief for some cave-raiding action: along with Len went Sven the Dwarf, Frost the Fighter and Gwynthor the Cleric. They managed to avoid losing anyone but the fight with the Ghouls (2 of them) was the hardest part - things looked bleak as Len was paralysed and the second Ghoul attacked Sven, but Plate Mail saved the day and the tide turned.

I think everyone enjoyed themselves ... my impression of the distant noise of a Killer Bee certainly caused some amusement. No, it wasn't beatboxing or even playing a didgeridoo, thanks peeps, just bumbling about looking for pollen. What was it doing in a cave? Perhaps this post might have some of the answers...

A new campaign and a new (sort-of-)Megadungeon and a new group and...

Some friends and I have been discussing getting a group together and running it in public. Somewhere not-at-each-others'-houses. Somewhere where we can be seen and interacted-with. Somewhere where we can be joined, even by people we don't know.

So I proposed running an open table, once a month, running Moldvay basic (with just a couple of tweaks) to see how it goes. We're calling it 'The Wandering Monster Table'.

The first session, at a pub in my city called The Criterion (link to the Criterion's Facebook page here and the group's Facebook page here) was last night. Not much duneoneering went on (none actually) but the party (a Magic-User called Polly, a Thief called Gibbet and a Cleric called Gwynthor) tried to climb the front of a building, got involved in a street-fight resulting in the sudden, unexpected and temporary death of one of them (I'm looking at you Gwynthor), stole from each other (I'm looking at you Gibbet), befriended a Dwarf, an Elf and a Fighter and convinced them to come dungeoneering at the next session, found a pine-tree, considered buying some herbs from a wizardy-looking chap looking somewhat dazed, and wondered a bit about religion. Polly's and Gibbet's players also ate pizza, while Gwynthor's player and I drank beer. Hmm, 'beer iss goood' as Seggulf the Dwarf NPC has already said at least once in a Rainier Wolfcastle voice.

The idea of the dungeon was at least explored - a chasm or canyon of unknown depth and prodigious length called 'The Rift', looking a bit like this but bigger and badder and madder, and stuffed full of caves:

East African Rift Valley - photo snaffled from here - http://www.zoharafricansafaris.com/the-great-rift-valley/

... and beside it, an adventurers' paradise called 'Rift City', full of booze, harlots, cut-throats, ruffians, preachers, undertakers and murder-hobos, that looks something like this:. 

Unfortunately I can't remember where I snaffled this from but it's a very fine picture, I hope whoever did it is very happy with their work.

It was fun and not too taxing, and starting with a small group has helped me with lessons for later sessions - for instance, despite trying to slim down character creation, it's still too long. I need to cut the process as much as possible, because it's going to eat into gaming time.

Printing off the intro will help too. It exists as a document on the group's FB page, and now here for you:

The Rift

The Rift is a vast canyon high in the Mountains of Abomination.
Priests argue about whether it was caused by an angry God smiting the World from the Heavens, or by a vile Power of Darkness digging its way out from a Subterranean Prison.
Sages argue about whether it’s the consequence of an eon-old Mage War, or the perfectly natural result of the Planet tearing itself to pieces.
The Elves, with their uniquely-long take on life and existence and linguistic tenses, say that it is the Earth in the process of becoming That which it shall Always have Been.
The Dwarves say it’s a Big Hole full of Monsters.
The Halflings say What’s for Dinner?

Rift City

Standing hard by the Rift is Rift City, a wretched hive of scum and villainy that is a temporary home to that most disreputable sort of people – adventurers. And where there are adventurers (grave-robbers, treasure-hunters, cut-throats, monster-hunters, assassins and murder-hoboes – sorry, ‘heroes’) there are the people that cater to them – drink-peddlers, prostitutes, snake-oil salesmen and 1,001 charlatans and ne’er-do-wells ready to remove some excess gold from said adventurers’ purses.
Rift City is a booming shanty-town, a rickety and perilous edifice built on the gold-rush of monster-hunting, literally and morally teetering over the abyss. Business is good; theft and murder were never so profitable as there are a lot of monsters down there. And if a few adventurers fail to come back, all the more for the next party of expendable suckers… err, brave heroes to find.
There is one rule about the Rift that everyone knows – near the lip of the canyon, the caves and passages contain less-dangerous monsters, but the rewards are less because those caves are raided more often. Unless you’ve amassed some experience – don’t go beyond the first bend in the trail! There are plenty of adventures to be had and even small fortunes to be made exploring the upper caves. But if you want to separate yourselves from the thousands of would-be champions and achieve true heroic status, you must sooner or later venture into the deeper caverns to confront the horrors that lurk there – and make off with the marvellous treasures you discover.

Fourth part of mapping Carcosa

OK, so I've generated the map at 6-miles per hex, I've put all the encounter numbers on it, I've changed all the numbers to be much more sensibly-organised, re-numbering the 28 encounters I'd already generated in the process, generated around 80 more locations using the Save v Total Party Kill's Random Carcosa generator and sourced the remaining dozen or so from the Carcosa Preview pdf, the Carcosa Grimoire pdf, the odd source like Bernie the Flumph (Vaults of Man) and Joe the Dungeon Brawler (Carcosa Avdenture, sic) and even  some things out of my own brain that will be posted on here at some point as no-one in my occasional meatspace gaming gives a toss about this blog. Villages (whether generated as settlements according to the patterns I already established, or turning up as a 'Weird' result due to some particular eccentricity of their ruler) have been given a cultural quirk from Papers & Pencils - d100 Small Town Quirks. In itself this has caused the necessity for a little re-thinking to sidestep the implicit feudal/pseudo-medieval background of some of the quirks.

200-hex map with sequential numbering

There are a few other things that need to be sorted out: there is occasional reference in the descriptions to things that don't exist in the same format (eg, in one hex there is the description "An abandoned space alien outpost is now home to a group of 23 Dolm bandits. Amongst their possessions is a map of the first level of a space alien research base in hex 1505" - I don't have a hex 1505, but I do have a hex AO 05 which is pretty much the same thing) or at all (eg the map is 20 hexes wide and 10 deep so there isn't anything higher than AT 10, which equals 2010). I need to integrate the Carcosan Rituals in a systematic way too; divorcing them from the 'official' map means that link between components and Rituals is broken, for example. How does a Sorcerer bind the Foul Putrescence with the essence of the fungi of 1302, if a) 1302 is AM 02 and b) doesn't have a fungus-forest? Tracking all of those lose ends and tying them up is I think going to be the tedious bit.

However, the map is I'd say 90%+ complete. If I got a call saying there were people to game this tomorrow I could start running it as a hex-crawl as it is and make up the missing details on the fly. But tying a few more things down first would be useful. Where is the nearest Orange Man settlement to the hex where the escaped Orange Man slave is hiding? The party might not know but the inhabitants of the next village they visit possibly (probably?) would. Where are the Black Men going with their Mummy Brain, and why? Are there carnivorous fungi in hex AM 02 after all, and if not, where are they? It's not so much work to tie up the lose ends once I have determined what they all are.

And I don't think there's much chance I'll be gaming this tomorrow, so that's all right then...

Mapping Carcosa part the Third

Right, to recap (again)...

I'm more than half-way through mapping my 200-hex region, and frankly there's not enough desert. My second lot of terrain determinations (again in a 28-hex area, this time I've been a bit more careful not to go over the edges because I'm effectively starting in my own south-east corner) looked like this:

'County'-sized area in south-east corner of 200-hex map

Don't forget this is approximately the size of an English county - the area of an earldom. In a feudal society we'd expect a population of tens of thousands. The Domesday Book lists 529 population centres in Gloucestershire in 1086. This area is a bit smaller, but the same order of magnitude. I'm expecting that I'll get about 6 settlements.

For the rest of this side of the map, I just filled in the hexes on the big map because I can't tile any more of these small 'county' level grids onto the regional map on this side. I can fit one on the west side - but I think I'll change my style for that, to produce a different distribution of terrain types.

My terrain generation table currently looks like this:

1 - sandy desert
2 - rocky desert
3 - salt flats
4 - swamp
5 - mountains
6 - volcanic badlands
7 - barren plains
8 - open water

but probably needs to look more like this:

01-25 - sandy desert
26-50 - rocky desert
51-60 - salt flats
61-70 - mountains
71-80 - volcanic badlands
81-90 - barren plains
91-95 - swamp
96-00 - open water

That's what I'll use for the next lot of determinations, in the north-west of the regional map.

So, this whole region will be transitional between the slightly damper more volcanic area in the centre (first bloc) and east (second bloc), and the area to the west which is likely to be more characterised by desert.

Next group of hexes in north-west, with single 'odd hex' on west side

This new map looks OK; there's much more desert obviously and no open water (the purpley sections are 'barren plains', even though I'm not really sure what the difference is between 'barren plains' and 'rocky desert'). Smashing through the terrain generation with the new formula, and adding it to the areas I've generated with the old formula, produces a map that looks like this (including not just the odd single desert square on the extreme west of the map but an odd mountain added to the three more-or-less in the centre):

200-hex regional map

So, we have a map which is dominated in the west by rocky desert, but in the centre and east a more mixed landscape prevails, where mountains. lakes, swamp and volcanic badlands all crowd together. I'm perfectly happy with that as a landscape.

Now to do the encounter rolls. I've added in the encounters generated for the first map (though on the regional map, I haven't attempted to place the encounters in specific locations in the hexes, just noted which hexes they take place in).

The first bunch of encounters are keyed to the following hexes on the regional map:

1 -          AH 09

2 -          AH 09

3 -          AI  04

4 -          AI  04

5 -          AI  05

6 -          AI  05

7 -          AJ 06

8 -          AJ 06

9 -          AK 05

10 -      AK 05

11 -      AK 08

12 -      AK 08

13 -      AK 09

14 -      AK 09

15 -      AL 04

16 -      AL 07

17 -      AL 07

18 -      AM 04

19 -      AM 04

20 -      AM 05

21 -      AM 06

22 -      AM 06

23 -      AM 07

24 -      AM 07

25 -      AN 09

26 -      AN 09

So what I need to do now is determine the next lot of encounters. OK, 1 is in an inconvenient and weird place, but I didn't really think about that when I started.

For the next lot of determinations of encounter location, I think I'll tweak the table from the other day. It looked like this:

     1    2    3     4             5          6

1 yes yes no   yes/yes no         no

2 yes no  yes  no         yes/yes no

3 no  yes yes  no         no         yes/yes

where the number along the top is a d6 and the number down the side is the number of the hex in the 3-hex group (generally reading from top-bottom and left-right) where the encounter is to be found. Due to electronically determining lots of numbers 4+ (in fact only one of the 13 numbers wasn't a 4, 5 or 6) there was a lot of clustering of encounters. I don't mind some clustered encounters, but I want a more even (ie, non-random) distribution. Settlements don't form at random, there are some random factors but also non-random factors, and other encounters will also follow both random and non-random tendencies. Some of these I think will act as forces repelling other encounters (eg, it's less likely to get monster encounters near a settlement if the people in the settlement are going to hunt to monsters - though of course, the monsters may be close by because they're hunting the people...).

I think I'll try the following tweak to the above table, replacing a d6 roll with a d12, weighted towards the bottom end of the scale, increasing the chances of separate encounters from 1/2 to 3/4 and decreasing the chance of clustered encounters from 1/2 to 1/4.

    1-3   4-6    7-9    10             11           12

1  yes   yes    no      yes/yes    no          no

2 yes   no     yes     no             yes/yes no

3 no    yes    yes     no             no          yes/yes

That has given me an overall distribution of encounters on the map that looks like this:

200-hex region with encounters keyed to hexes

Unfortunately that's really difficult to deal with due to the encounter numbering effectively spiralling out from the lower centre of the map. I hate maps where the numbers are scattered on the map as I find them more time-consuming to use, so I've already decided that I'm going to renumber everything starting with 1 in the north-west corner, but I have another more procedural choice to make here. I can either determine the encounters first and change the numbers afterwards (which is basically doing the fun part now and the tedious hard work later) or I can change everything over first and then do the fun part afterwards.

I know what I'm like, if I d the fun bit now the tedious bit will never get done. So I'd best start with the boring stuff . Maybe I'll reward myself with breaking it up - when I've done the first group of 34, I'll determine the encounter details for them. That might prevent this from getting too tedious.

A lesson in forward planning methinks... don't start numbering your map in a random location.

Mapping Carcosa part deux

The experiment to map out a Carcosa-style environment continues... with a look back at what has happened so far. So in the spirit of all TV shows at the moment:

"Previously, on 'Mapping Carcosa'... (FX: bell-like theme tune)"

Current map showing settlements with individuals and groups that may belong to them

Well, the area of the Ulfire Men is pretty interesting I think. I didn't put things there on purpose - it just happened that I'd put two encounters in one hex and they both turned up as villages of Ulfire Men, and it happened that one of the encounters in the hex next door was also a village of Ulfire Men. The middle and north-eastern village were - co-incidentally - ruled by Chaotic Sorcerers, and again co-incidentally I generated the same 'cultural quirk' for them - the uniform with the red stripe. All just random determinations.

So, there's definitely something going on there. 800 Ulfire Man is a decent population, about 55% of population the region. If they were united (especially by a gaggle of Chaotic Sorcerers) they'd probably overcome most opposition in the area. Perhaps that's why there are so many settlements on water (1/2 of castles and 2/5 of villages) - because the Ulfire Men rule the land in that eastern portion. Another way to look at this is every non-Ulfire settlement bar one is on water (3/4), no Ulfire settlement is, and of land-based settlements, 3/4 are of Ulfire Men. Ulfire Men avoid water; pretty much everyone else favours it. However (perhaps luckily for the others), the Ulfire Men are not united.

Two things may have happened to a posited 'Unified Ulfire Culture' in that area; either a Neutral Fighter has taken Village 17 from a Chaotic Sorcerer, or the Chaotic Sorcerers in 16 and 23 have recently taken over and are building a power-bloc. Either way, it looks like war between different Ulfire factions. Even the idea that the Neutral-led Ulfire Men have a communal toilet might hint at a militarisation of the village under the threat of the Chaotic Uniformed Sorcerers.

If I was the ruler of the Black Men, or the Orange Men, or maybe especially the Lawful ruler of the Jale Men, I'd be trying to make sure the Chaotic Sorcerers didn't take that last Ulfire village.

If on the other hand I was part of the Sorcerous cult that has supplied the leaders and ideology of Village 16 and Village 23, I'd be trying to not only conquer the last 'free' Ulfire territory, I'd also be trying to destabilise other local settlements. I might be particularly concerned about the Black Men village to the north - perhaps I'd get Black Men to bring me Mummy Brains to increase my power, or maybe, I'd give them Mummy Brains to take back home in a bid to destroy their village from within...

Moving Forward

I have a big bad hex-map with 200 hexes on it (about the size of 7 Gloucestershires or Athens-es). That, of course, is not divisible by 3. But, given that my 3-hex squares are very slightly bigger than the 10-mile hexes they're supposed to be mimicking, I'm not really bothered. I'll have 2 encounters over 2 squares and not worry about it. My version of Carcosa will probably still be slightly-less-densely-populated with encounters than the official version, on a comparison of encounters per square mile covered.

2/3 of 200 is therefore more like 2/3 of 198, plus 2. I think that is 134 encounters (therefore mimicking 134/2 or 67 10-mile hexes), of which I so far have listed 26. I also have a couple of things I've found that I'm going to slot into the space - I'm going to put Bernie the Flumph's Vaults of Man and Joesky the Dungeon Brawler's Carcosa adventure into the map as locations in specific places (the Vaults of Man implies a mountainous location for a start so that will be prioritised for a mountain area), as well as a few locations I've been working on recently. I haven't found much material from other sources - the Carcosan Grimoire aside, which has a set of procedures for settlement generation - but there are some things I think will work in a Carcosa-style setting: I'm going to be going over Chris R's Carcosa blog very carefully, and some of Michael Prescott's material from http://blog.trilemma.com I think might work nicely.

One thing I want to do is try and keep a Carcosa-y feel while re-skinning monsters from other sources. So my 'Space Aliens' are technologically-minded yes, short yes, and grey-skinned; but I suspect that they will be a bit weaker than a standard human fighter (about HD1-1, for example); they will have good vision for seeing in darkness but will likely have a penalty for fighting in full daylight (I expect this will be -1 to hit), and they will scare easily.

Some things will, and some things will not, be like standard Carcosa. I really like the idea of using Treants as huge carnivorous plants. Pretty sure there'll be at least a few dotted around 'my' Carcosa. In fact one of them I think will be part of a locale I'm working on. On the other hand, I don't think getting rid of Thieves as a class as a class makes much sense. Sure, Thieves' Guilds (something I don't really use anyway) don't make much sense in a world without significant urbanism, but I'm happy to divorce 'skill-set' from 'cultural construct'. Essentially, not everyone is 'hard'. Some people are faster or more nimble or more sneaky (because if they can't intimidate other people, they have to be more devious to get what they want). I don't think that will change in Carcosa. I think even in a setting that's less 'feudal' and more 'heroic' (and I use that word advisedly) than the norm for elf-games, one characterised by low-intensity conflict between villages and petty warlords, some people will have sneaking, hiding and sleight-of-hand skills. Think of them as spies, assassins or explorers if you like, and justify their existence as being people who loot ancient and alien sites or got their training from sorcerous or militaristic cults who sometimes need a sneaky skill-set, but I think there's scope for such skills in Carcosa. My version, at least.

One thing I don't understand, but am happy to run with while I work out a justification, is the prevalence of castles and citadels (2/7 in the test area). To me this implies small settlements subsidiary to somewhere else. So, for example:

Encounter 7:
Citadel of 82 Yellow Men led by "the Brilliant Illumination," a Neutral 6th-level Fighter.

This implies to me that  somewhere close by there is a settlement (or group of settlements) of Yellow Men that has sent them as an organised force, rather than a settler community - there are no children or elderly there, it's a military establishment. How do 'young Yellow recruits' come and take up duties in the citadel? Of course, they could just be bandits, taken over a ruin or fortified a site for themselves, but it's difficult to see how they could sustain themselves, especially if Carcosan species of humans are not inter-fertile. If it is to be anything other than a brief occupation of Yellow Men, there needs to be some support network in place to prevent such places being obliterated by more-powerful neighbours before help could arrive from nearby Yellow settlements. Or, perhaps it's more like a 'military order', and there's a known network of Yellow settlements across a much wider area that sends recruits to the 'Citadel of the Order of the Brilliant Illumination'. Or perhaps I need to deconstruct the entries and move the descriptor 'Yellow':

Encounter 7:
Citadel of 82 Men led by "the Brilliant Illumination," a Neutral 6th-level Yellow Fighter.

If the Citadel was open to all Men (possibly except Bone Men, see the Carcosan Grimoire) then it could be self-sustaining easily as recruits could come from any of the villages in the region. I'll have to think about whether I deconstruct the generated results though, it looks a bit like cheating (OK, I'm the sort of person who, when presented with a system immediately goes 'yeah? But what if you do it like this?'... but on the other hand, I set up a system and I'm not going to subvert it just because I can't immediately explain the results. Best to try and find a justification before abandoning the system I think).

Perhaps there's information that could be gleaned from distinguishing between 'village, castle, citadel and monastery (I haven't yet generated a monastery)' in the listings. I've been thinking that 'castle' and 'citadel' are synonyms but there's no reason for them to be so. In English usage 'citadel' is used to mean 'castle-in-a-city' and that's not really appropriate, unless every Citadel generated has an unmentioned settlement outside it. It carries connotations of a central or final fortification, probably on a hill unless it's a metaphorical citadel (of faith or something), where you retreat to when all else has failed - the last impregnable fortress.

But I'm going to use 'Citadel' to mean 'wooden fort on a hill', I think, a stockaded camp of non-settlers (bandits or 'soldiers' whatever that mean in this context). 'Castle' will imply 'stone construction of 1-6 towers (and connecting walls if number of towers >1)' and could be either an ancient ruin or a relatively-recently built construction. 'Monastery' (if I ever get one), which really means something like 'place of those who are separate', will mean 'walled settlement inhabited for educational or devotional purposes' - they will have some defences but not like castles. Their ideology will depend on the generation of their leader - leaders can Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic, and classed as Fighters or Sorcerers. A monastery commanded by a Lawful Fighter implies something very different to a monastery led by a Chaotic Sorcerer, so that's a place to start with determining the character of the place. I might need to determine the monastery's age and/or construction material too. Say, d8 a table something like this:

1 - less than 10 years, wood
2 - 10-50 years, mixed wood and stone
3 - 50-100 years, stone
4 - 100-200 years, stone
5 - 200-300 years, stone
6 - 300-500 years, stone
7 - 500-1000 years, stone
8 - more than 1000 years, crystal or other exotic material

- where 'wood' and 'stone' can be replaced with any suitable local materials (eg the most easily-obtained relatively-tough building material is the carapaces of giant arthropods, that might be a substitute for wood).

That all seems a reasonable workaround I think. 

Now I'll start applying some of that in another area to work up. I have 6 or 7 more areas the same size as the region I've already detailed, but I will experiment with alternative generations in other areas - in a future post...