Megadungeon design - first principles

The Caverns of The Rift are a megadungeon. There's no real question about that as far as I can see. It would be extremely difficult to work out exactly how big it is, though Level 1 contains 12 different sublevels or zones and 443 rooms, Level 2 contains 16 sublevels and 695 rooms, Level 3 is 14 zones and 499 rooms, and Level 4 is 4 sublevels (one of them huge) with 359 rooms. All those levels have corridors that go of to areas waiting to be further expanded, if necessary. Weirdly, the PCs completely bypassed Level 4; having just about started to explore Level 3, they decided it was too dangerous and went Level 5 instead. No, I don't understand it either.

The first 4 Levels are pretty much completely fleshed out with just over 2,000 rooms (maybe 50 of these are just notes rather than full descriptions)... 5, 6 and 7 are substantially finished (maybe 75%) and Levels 8 and 9 are partially sketched out. There is a staircase - it's almost legendary, and called 'the Endless Stair' - that connects many levels directly, but the PCs haven't found it.

Level 10 is a vast subterranean world, a kind of Underdark-ish hexcrawl (more a pointcrawl really) called the 'Abyssal Realms' (there's even a blog label for that, though to be fair I haven't posted about it for a while). That is done differently; I haven't detailed individual rooms for most areas in the Realms, more like encounter areas, but it contains something like 60 unique locations. These range in size from individual small encounters to subterranean cities. Unlike the caves of the Rift, which are quite tightly-constrained in an E-W direction (the caves the PCs have gone to stretch for about a mile along the south side of the Rift), and somewhat in a N-S direction (the south wall of the Rift is the northern edge of any tunnels, and they stretch... an undetermined distance to the south), the Abyssal Realms stretch for dozens of miles under the mountains in all directions. If the PCs make it there, the campaign will have to change, with the PCs' 'hometown' changing from the above-ground Rift City to somewhere underground that they can use as a base of operations (and place to pick up new party members). There are a few contenders for a new underground base for further exploration. But as I say, the PCs didn't reach it, and may never, as the Rift City campaign has ground to a halt. 

So, what's the point of it all? Originally when I conceived of the caverns in this huge valley called 'The Rift' I had in mind something like the Caves of Chaos, but 500 times bigger. A series of caverns over many levels that were linked together, that had factions and stories and lives, in the side of a vast valley. That seemed like a cool place to go adventuring, and provided one of the necessary elements that I'd identified for the game - an adventure site that would be suitable for repeated visits from a local base. That implies a megadungeon.

Image from Dream by Wombo, using prompt 'valley with caves'

This I think is actually my fourth megadungeon. The first was something I started nearly 30 years ago and it didn't get very far - a Dwarf complex somewhat inspired by descriptions in Magician by Raymond Feist, and Song of the Dwarves by Thorarin Gunnarsen, that I was reading in the early 1990s, I think. I had a few plans but did very little work on it. That was folded into my second megadungeon, Silvergate, the abandoned Dwarven city that got somewhat further but has still stalled (or maybe been abandoned... by me rather than the Dwarves this time, though it also has a blog label). I think I'll probably go back to that and try to push it forward at some point though.

The third megadungeon I think never even made onto the blog. I don't know why to be honest, it would have been good to throw some ideas around here. As it is, it exists only on Facebook. Again it's a stalled project, an attempt to co-operatively build a megadungeon. There's been some serious work put in by one contributor - not me. It's called 'The Labyrinth of Nodnol' (link here for those on Facebook) and is based on the London Underground/Overground map.

Then came The Rift. A few of us were talking about starting a D&D campaign and I offered to DM it. I didn't really have any ideas other than that the structure needed to account for people not being able to make every session, so the idea that the dungeon needed to be near the PCs' home base came about. This would allow them to make periodic visits to the dungeon, rather than having a campaign based on travelling from one dungeon area to the next (or even, travelling overland to a series on minidungeons). Perhaps that will be the format of the next campaign; perhaps it won't. The other option of course is just a huge underground exploration, but I wanted to get round the problem players not being able to make consecutive sessions and their PCs being stuck in limbo while life went on a round them. So, I decided on a structure that says that the PCs get the hell out of the dungeon between sessions.

Constantly travelling to the same place also implies lots of entrances. The PCs discovered (I think) 16 entrances into the caves, which variously take them to Levels 1 (7 entrances), 2 (4 entrances); they also discovered one entrance each for the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th levels. As I say, this is from memory, there may have been more they discovered.

I used a variety of methods to generate the content. A lot of it has come from some random dungeon generators, particularly Donjon's (link) AD&D Dungeon Generator. Other Dungeon Generators are available, and some have been used, including the old WotC Generator (like much of the free content on Wizards, this seems to have been taken down sometime around May 2022) and Save versus Total Party Kill's 'Dungeon with x Rooms' (link here) - it only generates short room descriptions so I've also used maps from Dyson (link) and Paratime (link), among others, as well as creating a lot of my own. All of these sources have been smushed together to create the (approximately) 2,400 rooms so far detailed/mapped out in the Caverns of the Rift.

But, now I'm going to start a new megadungeon, though as the Rift Caverns had 2,400 rooms and were not finished, the projected new megadungeon with 365 rooms looks a bit tiny. This new megadungeon is my response to the "Dungeon23" project. This is a kind of design challenge that basically asks for a dungeon-room a day, every day through 2023. The original post is here, though I found it on a Facebook post from someone else. There is a hashtag, #dungeon23, but I don't do twitter and that probably hasn't worked anyway. In the original post, the 'rules' are pretty simple - "Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it in a journal."

I don't have a nice journal, but I do have a blog. I'm not promising to post every day but I will try to post much more regularly than I have been doing. This timetable does give momething to aim at.

I first read the original post today, but heard about this a couple of days ago. The original says (words to the effect of) 'generators are fine, the point is to get it done and produce something'. But, I've built a megadungeon (substantially) with generators. I want to exercise my grey matter. I *could* just go to 'Save versus Total Party Kill' and ask the dungeon-room randomator to produce a 365-room dungeon. Then all I'd have to do was map it. That would save loads of bother. Or I could get Donjon's generator to produce 12 dungeons of about the right size and tweak anything from there. Both of these would be valid ways given the original guidance to produce the required output, but I want to see if I can do this from the power of my own brain. I may well at some point fall back on the generators, but I want to resist that as long as I can, so I can get an idea of what I can do by relying as much as I can get away with on my wits.

I have an idea about the overall design and how I'm going to 'pattern' the rooms/days, and I have an idea about how I'm going to populate it wit monsters, traps and treasure (it will involve using Moldvay pretty heavily) but I have almost no ideas about what I will actually put in as content, except that room/day 1 will be an entrance. That's all I know right now, except for one thing that I will tease you with because I don't want to say just now. I have for a long time wanted to construct a certain type of dungeon and this will be that type. That's all.

Hopefully come the New Year I'll start posting more about this. In the meantime, happy dungeonering, folks!

End of an Era

 Well, it looks like the Rift City campaign is no more, and 'The Wandering Monster Table', the experiment to bring open-table D&D to Leicester is over, after a little over 5 years.

Brigham's Mule Sanctuary, his retirement plan, interpreted by 'Dream by Wombo' (look it up, I've had fun playing with it) AI art generator

I've mentioned in previous postings on the blog that it has morphed into something quite different from the original conception, becoming something more like a regular gaming group, and also (primarily because of covid, but also due to to work commitments and people moving away) migrating from meatspace (and not just face-to-face but in a publicly-accessible space) to online. However, the Rift City campaign was conceived as a drop-in game and in theory at least remained so until the end. And that was the point really, to give people a regular game that didn't involve committing to be at every session.

This was why I adopted the structure I did for the campaign - adventuring in the Rift took place during the day, and at the end of the day the PCs high-tailed it back to town to lick their wounds an count their loot. Then, 'the next day', a potentially new constellation of adventurers would brave the caves and return in glory or defeat.

It's been fun (mostly), and some hard work to keep it going. But over the last couple of sessions, only two players have turned up - Brigham and Ugli, who were the players of Polly the Magic User and Gibbet the Thief in the very first session. We decided if no-one else wanted to come to the next session, we'd knock it on the head. I put out a call on Facebook (most of the players, something like 25 of them, who'd been to previous sessions are on there) but no-one committed to coming. So, I've pulled the plug.

Thanks players for turning up and running through the games I put on, I hope everyone had fun... but it's time to find other things to do every first Sunday of the month. Ciao!

Rift City Campaign Session 60 - out of the Rift!

I'd like to start with an apology to anyone still reading this. It seems I've put two posts on the blog in the last year. I've been very bad at keeping it up to date. I originally started the blog to discuss fantasy gaming, mostly Warhammer and related topics, but after I did, I started playing D&D again and that became the main focus. But lately I've been posting neither D&D nor miniature-gaming content. So, I'm sorry to anyone who feels disappointed. Perhaps no-one is, in which case, that's OK, but in case anyone is, you have my apologies, and at least the expressed intention to do better.

I'm not really sure why it's tailed off. I have been continuing to run the Rift City Campaign, and messing about with a bunch of other things; I just haven't been good at talking about them. But, with the Rift City Campaign, and the 'Wandering Monster Table' project, now 5 years old (we had our first session in August 2017), it seemed like a good reason to sit down and say something about it. So I will.

First, the 'Wandering Monster Table' itself. This was originally conceived as a monthly drop-in game in a (relatively) public space. Our first six sessions were in a pub, on the second Sunday of the month; we had to move for a month when there was an event on for one month (there's a comedy festival that takes place every February in Leicester, and the pub was a regular venue); we met at the house of a couple of people from the group for one session; but after the festival, we went back to the pub for about another year.

Then, the pub we met at closed down and we had to find another venue. So, for a couple of months, we went back to the house of the players we'd been to previously; then we found a different pub, for about another six months.

After this however, I got a new job that involved travelling on Sunday evenings. This meant that we had to move the session, to Sunday afternoon, when most pubs are serving food and much less keen to let some weirdos use a couple of tables. But shortly after this, Covid happened and all the pubs were closed anyway. Also, people couldn't meet face-to-face. So, we started using Discord.

So for half of its life, the 'public drop-in game' has existed as an online game instead. It's still a drop-in game, in theory, but I don't think we've added any players online that hadn't come to face-to-face sessions. I'm not saying the project is a failure - it certainly isn't, it's the longest-running campaign I've been involved in bar none; three people came to the first session (apart from me) and two of them are still regular players; and hopefully people who've played in it have enjoyed it (I certainly have) and will continue to enjoy it; but it must be admitted that it doesn't really fulfil the original brief any more. But, that's OK; who in the balmy days of the Summer of 2017 could have predicted Covid? Not me at any rate. Maybe, at some point, we'll get back to face-to-face meetings in a public place; maybe we won't.

Anyway, that's the 'Wandering Monster Table'... what about the campaign itself?

At the previous session (in June) the PCs had decided that they need more magic items - specifically Bags of Holding, as they'd found what turned out over two sessions to be several dragons, and were trying to find ways of carrying back the piles of coinage that tend to be found in dragony hoards.

There are no 'magic shops' per se in Rift City. Not quite true; there are no general magic emporia, but there is an Alchemist who has opened a potion shop, and potions are sometimes available from some of the temples too, but the supply overall is erratic. Perhaps I've done this 'wrong'; maybe it would have been more sensible to have a magic shop in Rift City, but my thinking has been that magic should be somewhat more difficult to access than say torches or iron rations. It *should* make it more mysterious and 'special', but perhaps it's just more annoying.

However, the party knows that there is a more substantial city about four days' journey away. 'Rift City' is a somewhat rough frontier town, built on the momentary profits of exploiting the adventurers coming back from the monster-infested tunnels in the Rift - it's sort of like a gold-rush town. It hardly has much infrastructure. The 'big city' is actually a real city - much bigger than Rift City and, the PCs hope, with better amenities. 

So, I worked out how far away it was and estimated how long it would take to get there. In effect, it's four days' journey through mountainous terrain, unless something goes very wrong. I wondered about this, rolled up some encounters for different times of the days involved, and knocked together a rough-and-ready plan of action. My estimate was that we could do the journey in one session, then the PCs could have as many sessions as they liked in the city, and then come back to the Rift if they wanted to, or use the city as a basis to go off elsewhere.

Illustration I found googling 'fantasy mountains', to post on the group's Facebook page: © Wizards of the Coast by Alayna Danner

I've discussed at various times on this blog what a 'quest' campaign would look like and how it could be made to work with an open table like The Wandering Monster Table - most thoroughly in this post from March 2018. The short version is, as long as the PCs finish the session somewhere relatively 'safe', where people can chose to stay and new people can join the party, an open table should be able to accommodate a campaign involving PC travel. The trick is ending the action at a point where there can be a reasonable 'changeover'.

As I mentioned, I'd estimated that the journey from Rift City to the city called 'Selen' by the inhabitants of the Rift could be accomplished in one session. I really should remember Helmuth von Moltke's dictum 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy', and not just remember it, but also rigorously apply it to D&D as soon as I get any barmy notions like 'the PCs will probably do this, it should take that long'. No. Doesn't happen.

First, though the players were all agreed to go to Selen, there was no consensus on how they were going to go. I had assumed (me and my assumptions) that they would just set off and go along the road. But, instead, they decided to attach themselves to a caravan. That's OK, I know caravans come and go, some of the early plots and hooks around the Rift concerned the raiding of caravans by Kobolds and the theft of supplies destined for Rift City. Caravans are definitely a thing in the vicinity of Rift City.

So I rolled up a random caravan. I don't have any specific rules for creating caravans - maybe I should write some - but there are Merchants in the D&D Expert book. There caravans can be of different sizes, so I randomised creation and rolled one up. I got the largest size of caravan I could, about 20 merchants and 80 guards; but I don't see wagons making it through the mountains very easily (even with the relatively-OK roads that I assume exist... it doesn't matter why but 'OK roads' seem reasonable in context), so I decided this caravan would mostly be mules - a giant mule-train, basically. I randomly determined when this caravan would be setting off, and as luck would have it, the PCs only had to wait one more day.

Some of the PCs spent this day buying up all the gems and jewellery and platinum pieces they could get their hands on in Rift City, the idea being to take portable wealth to Selen. Other PCs, not so much. They mostly just stuffed money into sacks.

Some of the PCs decided to sign up as guards for the caravan. They negotiated a price with one of the merchants to provide two armoured humans, two armoured Dwarves and an armoured Elf. The party at this point consisted of Brigham and Halvor (Clerics around 8th Level), Heedor and Ugli (Dwarves around 8th Level) and Jade, a new PC (Elf of 7th Level). The price was lower than the player doing the negotiating had hoped for, but reflected market conditions; pay (3gp each for the humans, 5gp for the Dwarves and 6gp for the Elf) represent their cost as 'Heavy Foot' mercenaries. Only not for a month, for four days. PCs have to provide their own food rather than it being provided, and there is some danger on the way for sure; it isn't garrison duty in a sleepy backwater. So the pay is much higher than the minimum to get soldiers. But crucially, there are lots of people who could do the job in Rift City (the place is awash with 1st-Level Fighters, Elves and Dwarves) and the organisers of the caravan weren't going to pay loads for 'special' guards. So the five PCs were offered 22gp to be caravan guards.

However, others of the PCs decided it would be fun to get mules of their own; so, some of the other members of the party bought seven mules, mostly to carry large sacks of gold.

This led to some problems with the caravan. The organisers had agreed to pay for five guards; but on the morning that the caravan was due to depart, two guards and three merchants with seven mules turned up.

A quick re-negotiation with the merchants led to a revised offer; 8gp for the Elf and one of the Human (Cleric) heavy infantry; the remaining PCs paid 15gp for up to two mules to join the caravan (the PC with three mules had to pay 30gp). Also, these PCs hired a mule-handler-cum-extra guard, a Dwarf called Gami.

At last the PCs and the caravan were ready and the whole travelling roadshow set off through the mountains.

According to my rolled encounters, there was nothing in the morning. So, the morning passed uneventfully. I had rolled both an evening encounter, and a situation of some consternation at the end of the day. I'm trialling some rough wilderness creation rules for precisely this sort of situation, and my results were that there would be an encounter with snakes (Giant Rattlers, in this case) and the 'safe' area at the end of the day would be a village of ... Troglodytes. Hmm. Think my procedure needs tweaking a bit.

The snake encounter was fine; as originally I'd done the rolling up when I thought just the PCs were travelling (Helmuth von Moltke is spinning in his grave I presume) there was always the chance that the encounter I planned for them would have been triggered by some other part of the caravan. I just asked the PCs where they were in the caravan ('front, middle or back') and assigned a 2-in-6 chance that that was where the snake attack was. And, it was. Had it not been, I'd have said 'there's a kerfuffle up ahead/somewhere behind you...' but it was nearby. The party toasted the snakes - literally, as far as I remember, I think Jade used Fireball - and that was that. I think someone ate some barbecued snake but can't remember who - probably one of the Dwarves.

My assumption had been for the village at the end of that, that there was a (friendly) village, but the Trogs had overrun it. So, in the evening, as they approached the village, the caravan came across some bodies in the road. As so often happens in situations when I need 'people' quickly, I turned to Donjon's random generators - this case, the NPC generator. I must have also rolled for how many bodies there were, because there were definitely three of them. I read the first three entries, and from the descriptions gave the PCs an idea of the people they'd found - two middle-aged women and one younger woman. I also told them the dead women seemed to be fleeing the village and there was a horrible stench around. Several of the PCs have fought troglodytes before (everyone except Jade I think) so I thought it reasonable that they would recognise the lingering smell.

The PCs decided to Raise Dead on the young woman. It turned out that her name was Astal, she lived in the village with her parents who were farmers, and she had fled when the stinking lizards had attacked and had started running to the north hoping she and her companions could have made it to Rift City, but were caught and brutally attacked... Raise Dead leaves the raised one with 1hp so the PCs decided that Astal should sit on one of the mules and come back to the village.

As the caravan got there, the PCs seemed reluctant to go in (I described it as having an earth bank around it: in my imagination, it's a village inside an old disused fortification, and the road passed between the banks on either side). Some of the PCs turned themselves invisible, but they delayed going in for a while. In the meantime, some of the other caravan guards went inside. By the time the PCs had decided to follow suit, I ruled that the other guards had already dealt with the Trogs in the village so the PCs didn't get any experience for that (or the gems that made up the Trogs' treasure).

The PCs asked Astal if she wanted to go to her house, but she didn't - the potential sight of her murdered parents being too upsetting. So, instead five PCs, an NPC Dwarf caravan guard, a newly-resurrected peasant girl and seven mules all bedded down in a stable. They worked out a watch rota and settled down.

I knew there was going to be an attack of a particular kind during the night. There's a kind of monster from Deities and Demigods called an 'Astral Wolf'. It's in the 'Nehwon Mythos' section, and appears in the Wilderness Wandering Monster Tables for the campaign because, well, everything from the Nehwon Mythos section exists in my campaign. The PCs just don't know it yet because they've only seen the Rift so far. Astral Wolves attack by ambushing people in their dreams and forcing them into the Astral Plane where the wolves then attack them bodily.

To be forced into the Astral Plane, you have to fail a save versus Spells. Of course, all of the PCs made their saves, so they just had some bad dreams about zombie wolves pursuing them through a silvery realm. Gami the NPC Dwarf however, who was on watch, woke the party members to show them Astal, - a Normal Human with rubbish saves, who had therefore been transported to the Astral Realm, where she was attacked by the Astral Wolves, and, having only 1hp from her Raise Dead experience, had quickly succumbed to their attacks. So that was that (for the moment) - the Astral Wolf attack served only to give the PCs bad dreams but insta-killed the person they'd only just brought back.

The PCs went back to sleep as best they could but there were no further attacks that night. In the morning, the party rose and began prep for the next day.

And that's where we ended the session, it having taken massively longer to play that day than I expected. I thought Day 1 of the journey could be 'done' in about 45 minutes - it took nearly three hours. Proof positive that I shouldn't bother trying estimate this stuff, because the PCs will always do stuff I don't expect.

What will the next session bring? who knows? Not me. But I have an idea how the rest of the journey could proceed, if the PCs don't take things in strange and unexpected directions, which they might well; and, if and when they get there, I hope they'll find the City of Selen an interesting place to visit and to adventure in.

Rift City catchup...

Well, I'm not doing well posting updates to the Rift City Campaign. Session 49 (August, the campaign's 4th birthday!) has been and gone - as have Sessions 50 (September), 51 (October) and 52 (November). Session 53 is almost upon us...

What can I say? I write fewer notes with the discord sessions, and then it's harder to reconstruct what happened after the event. This makes it far less likely that I'll actually start writing a blog post, and then the next session comes round and I have more to do with less information (and I've already forgotten half of what happened at the session before...).

What has definitely happened is that the PCs have abandoned the tunnels under the ruins that they were previously exploring, and therefore the search for the tomb of Riha the Bejewelled, and instead started exploring down the hill where they discovered an entrance to a different part of Level 6. They fought Salamanders (the PCs got very hot, and turned one of them into a rabbit); they found some Spectres, Berg charged in and the rest of the PCs stood by watching - as Berg was zapped by six Spectres, making her very dead indeed. RIP Berg, there was many a Dwarf that night crying himself to sleep over his beer I'm sure. There were also some 'evil Dwarves' as the PCs called them (they definitely were evil, I'm not going to lie - some were Chaotic Evil, some were Neutral Evil, a few weren't technically Dwarves, but it doesn't really matter - they were for sure hostile to the party and paid the price) in one of the rooms but they were wiped out and all their stuff was liberated for the forces of Light.

Further exploration in the same area over subsequent sessions has yielded some snake-chickens (Cockatrices that is) and some strange big-cats-with-six-legs-and-shoulder-tentacles, which are of course Displacer Beasts, but because I'm using a Labyrinth Lord monster generator (link here) they come up as 'Phase Tigers', which is a very cool name I think. Certainly, if I were a Phase Tiger, I reckon I'd be very disapproving of people calling me a 'Displacer Beast'. Then of course there were a couple of packs of Hellhounds, which Halvor in particular is theologically very against (his god is a kind of version of the Viking god Tyr, and his mythology has his hand being bitten off by a giant Hellhound. The Hellhound is in turn worshipped by Goblins as a great flaming wolf-spirit of the Underworld).

Image of Tyr from Age of Kings, which I don't think is the same of Age of Empires II, but might be. Anyway, this is 'Yrt', one-handed god of Lawful Fighting.

Halvor's divine interventions have proved particularly useful. 'Sticks to Snakes' (one of the spells Halvor uses most often) has allowed the party to considerably increase their muscle-power, as well as giving them poisoned attacks. It's a powerful spell - though, I ruled (because I can't specifically find a rule for it) that they couldn't successfully attack the Spectres that killed Berg.

Web, from Inarra the MU, has also proved useful. In the last session, when the party was attacked by Hellhounds, Inarra webbed them. This led to a discussion on whether Hellhounds are immune to fire damage, and it doesn't seem they are. The reasoning is that, if the Hellhounds' breath destroys the web, it also harms the Hellhounds. Effectively, they spent two rounds fighting themselves by burning themselves out of the web before confronting the party.

What else...? I'm not sure, I can't remember at the moment. If you want some better detail, Lyracian (whose PC is Halvor) has written up some of the sessions on his blog (link).

Rift City campaign - session 47

 Well, once again I have failed to do the write-up of the session before the next one has arrived. However, Lyracian has done a qrite-up here. It contains the bare bones of the story - captured Orc seemingly tries to lead the party into a trap, fight with insects and then a confrontation with some death-cult clerics.

I have to agree, I thought it was a fun session too! What tomorrow will bring... well, I'd say 'watch this space' but if you want your info hot off the press, maybe you shoud watch Lyracian's space, he's much quicker off the mark than I am.

Tomorrow's session will be the 48th programmed session of the Wandering Monster Table, which I'm chosing to regard as quite an acheivement.  We've only cancelled two session in the last 4 years, re-arranged two for the third Sunday of the month,and had to move venue for a few (generally to Berg and Galen/Halvor's players' house, so thanks for  that) - not bad to be honest given that the idea was to bring an open table campaign to Leicester. I think we can be somewhat proud of how we've managed to do that.

Who knows, maybe for our actual 4th birthday (8th August is the second Sunday in August and is therefore our 4th birthday, even if the opening session was 13th August, the second Sunday in August 2017) we may even be able to meet physically for the first time since March 2020...

Rift City Campaign - session 45

Once more unto the Rift, dear friends...

On Sunday 11th April the Wandering Monster Table had its 45th session, with Halvor, Berg, Inarra and Kate deciding they needed to stock up on silver and magic weapons to fight were-creatures in the ruins in the Rift.

At last everyone was equipped with something that could do damage to lycanthropes and other similarly-enchanted creatures, and they set off for the ruins, under which they encountered the were-creatures in previous visits. Ostensibly, they were there to rescue some adventurers that had been captured by Ogres and enslaved (or worse) by the lycanthropes.

Ironic, given what happened.

Lyracian at the 'Playing Dice with Universe' blog has already written up the session (link here). All I have to add is that the adventure was proceeding in distinctly un-lucrative fashion until killing an NPC party gave the PCs a bonanza of magic items; and, as I just hinted, slaughtering the NPC party was a pretty bizarre end to a session in which our 'heroes' (I use the term very loosely) were supposed to be rescuing some NPCs...

Rift City Campaign -- Session 44

Well, the PCs had another go under the ruins in the Rift. Halvor the Cleric, Berg the Dwarf, Kate the Halfling, Brigham the Cleric and Gibbet the Thief once more ventured in search of excitement, adventure and big piles of loot.

The first thing they did was finish up exploring the tower. They've been there on two previous occasions and had failed to find the room with the trapdoor down to the lower levels. They also hadn't made a map and ended up exploring some of the areas they'd been before.

In one of the rooms, they came upon some undead presences. These proved a little tricky as the PCs don't all have magic or silver weapons. But with Berg taking two hits and losing two levels, and Gibbet losing one, they did manage to overcome the entities before they were all back to First Level. 

The PCs eventually came to a room they hadn't been before, as it was behind the only door they've found that they hadn't opened. Not in some Quantum Ogre sense, just because it was the furthest from the entrance. In the room, sitting on a rug that turned out to be top of the trapdoor, were a couple of prisoners and some Ogres. They Ogres died pretty quickly, the prisoners did not. Their names were Aben (a female Halfling) and Hames (a male Elf); they begged the PCs to rescue their friends (more prisoners had been taken down into the tunnels, it seemed), and agreed to come and help.

So, everyone rolled back the rug and opened the trapdoor, where they found a staircase heading down to the south. They followed it to a landing where stairs went east and west. The east stair smelled bad (probably Troglodytes down there) so they took the west stair. This opened into a wide E-W hall with various doors and corridors off. Taking a door on the north wall, they found themselves in a room where a man dressed in black was playing a lute and singing to to a female human, a female Ogre, and a couple of Giant Rats The female human was one of the captured NPCs, a young woman called Miranda, and there seemed to be some sort of magic going on. A fight rapidly ensued with the music-man being Held (then killed), the Ogre and the Rats being killed, and Miranda falling unconscious when the music-man died (and his spell was broken). On regaining consciousness, Miranda told them that the other prisoners had been added to a group already in the tunnels but that 'the man with the dark eyes' had taken a fancy to her and told the Ogres to hand her over to him. She agreed that coming with the party (given Aben and Hames were with them) was a good plan. So they looted the room as best they could and, after setting what was left on fire, they left.

On the way out, they ran into a couple of rough-looking fellows who seemed to be some sort of wandering guard patrol. Unconvinced by the PCs' explanation, the guards resolved to 'check with Eldwin' (the music chap with rats and women in his thrall, now dead and in a burning room). As they passed the party, a quick attempt at a surprise backstabbing was made... and failed. These guys too were immune to normal weapons apparently... so a short and vicious fight broke out between the PCs (five of them) and their NPC allies (three) on the one hand, and the two guards on the other. The only problem was that due to the lack of magical weapons, only about 4-5 of the PCs could fight anyway. But obviously, the PCs could deal with a pair of lycanthropes even so. Looting the bodies netted some sacks of low-value coins and a couple of pieces of expensive jewellery.

Deciding that by this point that is really was time to head back to the City, they made their way back to the exit. Heading out through the ruins, however, they ran into another patrol - this time 6 more lycanthrope guards. Again the fight was brutal but eventually 6 dead werewolves netted another 300GP for the coffers - and no-one from the party's side died. No-one was infected with lycanthropy either, though it was pretty close in some cases. 

High-tailing it back up the forest path the party was back in Rift City in time for tea and the division of spoils. What will happen 'tomorrow' is anyone's guess...

Rift City campaign - session 43

 The party made their... what, let's call it '43rd' visit to the caves in the Rift (it's not really, we missed a couple of sessions due to work issues, and on some sessions, they've made multiple visits, leaving after a good quick haul and going back 'the next day' during the same session... but about 43rd) on 14th Feb. 

Yes I know that's Valentine's Day, but as it turned out, the four players who came to the session are two couples. 

No I didn't do anything particularly Romantic for the session, but in line with some of my recent musings, I made extra-sure to use Reaction Roles and Morale rolls. I know I should do that anyway, but... I made extra-sure.

Anyway... Halvor the Cleric, Berg the Dwarf, Gibbet the Thief and Brigham the Cleric (that was the marching order) made their way towards the towers that they'd found last time. They'd got a treasure map at the last session that looked something like this:

In case you can't read the text, it says "In the Rift there is the Fortress of Skile, two towers with a gatehouse between. Beneath the eastern tower, a stair leads down to a crypt where lies the Fabled Hoard of Riha the Bejewelled. Gems without count and fabulous jewellery are there, adorning the bones of the last of the Sorcerer-Queens. From the tower, take the staircase, and at the landing, turn west. Foul things lurk in the darkness of the eastern stair. In the Deeps, we came to a great room with six corners, but this was a false chamber – we never found the real burial chamber beyond."

Trying to find the place where the jewels might be stashed, they headed down the path, past the spot where they killed the Giant at the last session (his corpse was still there, somewhat chewed by local scavengers, but substantially intact, so the party, deciding they didn't want a Zombie Giant rampaging around and mindful they were supposed to burn corpses, set fire to it using a barrel of oil they had in the Bag of Holding).

Going on a bit further past the smouldering corpse, the party noticed a flock of ... somethings ... flying above them. They weren't sure what they were so the PCs hid in the undergrowth for a bit. Turns out that the flying things were hippogriffs, and there were 15 of them. The party was undecided about what to do - Berg, Gibbet and Brigham kept hiding, Halvor decided to try and attract their attention. Then Berg threw out some beef jerky for one, which took it, but then the flock decided that it would rather go and investigate the burning Giant so flew off.

The party headed on to the ruins of the Fortress of Skile and found their way in. Remembering there was a pit trap, but not exactly where it was, the party unfortunately triggered it again. No-one was seriously hurt however. Now they've outlined it in chalk so perhaps they'll find it easier to avoid next time.

Making their way inside they turned to the left to try and find the entrance to the lower levels. The first room they came across seemed to be deserted, but the second contained a hideous spider-type entity.  Conscientiously rolling for the spider's reactions, the dice came up snake-eyes so straight into a vicious combat. To be fair, there's only so much interaction I'd be able to role-play as a Giant Spider I think. When they searched the room, they found a chest with some money in it, but unfortunately ripped the old tapestry hanging from the ceiling.

Pushing on, the PCs found a room decorated with a frieze of faces. Searching these carefully they found that one was hinged to come away from the wall. Behind it was a kind of safe - trapped, which Gibbet disarmed (they still don't know what the trap was, but Gibbet detected a trigger mechanism and disabled it) - and containing a potion-bottle and a bag of cash.

They'd reached the end of the corridor, but I reminded them that there were other corridors and rooms they hadn't explored in the other direction (this time they'd entered and turned left; last time they turned right). I don't often do that sort of thing but I thought it was justified in this instance. It was a month ago that the players last explored the dungeon, but for the PCs, it was yesterday. I think that the PCs would perhaps remember that there were further unexplored passages to the right even though the players didn't. So, they started to make their way back to the areas they'd explored the game-day before.

On the way they encountered some 'grey worms' - Caecilia from  the Expert rulebook. These were actually fairly straightforward to deal with, in the end. Somewhere, and I'm not certain where now, they also encountered some Giant Weasels, but as I have no real recollection of this fight I'm not sure they really gave the party much trouble either.

Having retraced their steps, they moved off to the right (east), back through some rooms they'd explored previously, and then on to new territory (actually, they may have run into the Weasels here). This led them to a room of Ogres, who the party, probably sensibly, decided would be a serious threat and a fight ensued. Halvor made good use of his Sticks to Snakes ability (the snakes this time were Spitting Cobras, which blinded several of the Ogres) and the Ogres (6 of them) were disposed of without too much damage coming to the party. However, the fight had alerted other Ogre guards and 5 more then barged into the room when the party were searching. The snakes were still around and had been tasked with guarding the door so the Ogre ambushers were themselves ambushed and soon defeated.

By this time it was the end of the session. The PCs had searched about 90% of the tower but not yet located the steps mentioned on the treasure map. I guess, they'll be heading back here next session... but one never can tell, they often end up going off in all sorts of unexpected directions.

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 37-40 reports - happy third birthday!

Five bold adventurers took up the call for the 37th Rift City Campaign session. This was the third anniversary of the campaign as we started in August 2017.

Marching order was:

Berg (5th Level Dwarf)

Galan (5th Level Elf)

Gibbet (6th Level Thief)

Brigham (5th Level Cleric)

Shazam (2nd Level Elf)

Shazam hasn't been to many sessions recently and is therefore trailing a little in levels.

The party decided to head back to the cave entrance they explored last time. This is a little further on from where they have been going most of the time, they hoped it might mean more loot as the caves would have been raided less often.

They found their way in OK - nothing else had taken residence in the main room behind the cave entrance. Previously they'd encountered Carrion Crawlers there but this time it was empty.

Pushing on they came to a room (I think this one also had Carrion Crawlers in last session - this area contained a little nest of them) where there was a doorway they had not previously tried. I can't remember whether Gibbet found the trap but couldn't disarm it, or didn't find the trap (Gibbet in this session was really successful at not finding traps - made all his rolls, I think, on untrapped doors - but very bad at finding the traps on the doors that had them) - either way, an axe-blade swept out when Shazam tried to go through, and the noble Elf was no more.

I have a houserule called 'Elementary Staunching' that I've used in the last 4 campaigns I've started and discussed several times before on the blog (such as here). It is intended to make combat a little less catastrophically dangerous for PCs by giving them a chance to survive at 0hp until the rest of the party can at least try some battlefield first aid. 

But... the party didn't do it. I'm a little surprised by that. Essentially, the view expressed was 'we're happy for Shazam to die because that way he's replaced by a higher-level version'.

That isn't the way this is supposed to work. Because of the stricture not to allow too much level-mixing, I ruled that new PCs begin at the lowest level in the party. I also have an 'exploration bonus' to XP to represent the exploration of new territory: this is based on the average that PCs need to reach their next level. Low-level characters drag down that average somewhat and make the bonus smaller. The upshot of the interaction between these two rules that it makes sense (from a certain point of view) to allow low-level PCs to die in order to boost the experience of high-level PCs.

That is not supposed to be how it works at all.

Anyway... Shazam died, and the PCs found a new, much higher-level, adventurer, Kraghelm the Dwarf, back at the town. I think this rule is potentially going to break the campaign.

More stuff happened. Oh, boy did it happen. But, actually, it's months ago and I can't remember what.

What I do know is that the party also went adventuring in session 38 (in September), where they visited the Bath-house of Blibdoolpoolp once more, and fought their way down corridors they've never visited before, in the furthest parts of Level 1. They do have a habit of attacking everything though, even things that aren't threatening them. Poor crystal statues...

In October (Session 39), they went down to Level 3 through one of the areas that they've been before. Marl was able to join the PCs for this one which was nice, as Marl hasn't been for ages. A highlight was a room with levers which they played about with until they opened a door. I think they sussed that the other levers opened other doors, but not that they were standing in the control-room of a prison complex. It didn't matter, they killed the prisoners (who were werewolves) anyway.

For the November session (session 40) Berg, Galan, Brigham, Gibbet, Karensa (who joined us for the first time in several months) and Kraghelm ventured down - in that order. They decided they'd dare to venture round the bend in the road and try their luck in a cave round there. That's supposed to be the scarier dungeon entrances, though I'm not sure completely certain what level they were on.

It didn't necessarily go well. Ascertaining from the number of statues in a cavern that there might be a Medusa about, there were in fact three of them. The PCs got surprise luckily but but even so, Kraghelm and Karensa were turned to stone and Gibbet bitten before the fight was over. Gibbet made his poison save so he was OK in the end (a bit hurty from the bite) but with no way to turn Karensa and Kraghelm back to flesh (you can't do that as a wizard until 11th level, apparently) the PCs lashed a rope round Karensa and dragged her back to town so Galan could claim she was legally dead and he was her heir. The statue of Kraghelm was left in the Medusae's cave...

The legal wrangling took as long as the adventuring. Galan also declared that as he now had 20,000gp in portable wealth he was off - as one of the characters that ages ago gave up a family secret, Galan has bee trying to amass some treasure to restore his family's fortunes and marry his lady-love. Her family blocked the marriage alliance when Galan's family was ruined. He's hoping a bunch of cash (and jewellery, gems and a few magic items) might allow the clan to re-establish itself and regain its influence. 

The net result is that there's going to be a lot of new PCs in coming months!

Rift City vague update

Where does the time go?

The Rift City campaign is continuing - due to social distancing, it's happening on Discord. We're still getting together once a month to dungeon the heck out of the caverns of the Rift. The PCs (now mostly around 4th-5th level) are currently beating up an area of Level 3. But, somehow, I never get around to doing the write-ups. Part of the problem is that I make fewer notes running the game on Discord and it's harder to reconstruct in the end. But really I'm just bad at this.

Lyracian, who plays in the campaign, has written up some of the sessions on his blog. Some recent sessions, only partly covered by me, can be found here:

Sessions 30-33 report

Session 34 report

What happened in Session 35? Well, the PCs were exploring the same area of Level 3 as in Session 34. One peculiar thing was that they found a room that contained four curious devices that seemed to be a bit like a cross between a chair and a covered bath. Three were empty but one contained a (possibly sleeping, possibly dead) occupant. The PCs prised open the lid, and the occupant woke up. It was a male Elf, who seemed somewhat bemused. There was also a cat in the ... sleep-chamber... which also woke up. Berg tried to kill it but the Elf cast Hold Person on her, and then berated Galen and Karensa in somewhat archaic Elvish about keeping their servant under control. It seemed the Elf had travelled in the sleep-chamber with other companions, but also inside another metal ship, a great distance from another star. What the PCs made of all of this is anyone's guess, but the Elf announced his intention to see the world of two suns (news to the PCs, they only know about one) and find some Elven leaders to find out what had been happening since he arrived. The Elf PCs at least should be starting to suspect that somehow he's been asleep for a very long time indeed...

This is the 36th session coming up. We've actually missed two while I was working away at the end of last year, so technically it might be the 34th session actually run, but for accounting purposes it should be Session 36 I think. We started in August 2017 after all, and thus have been running for 3 years now. I'm quite pleased that we have managed to keep it going - but I'm looking forward to it being face-to-face again!

Rift City - Sessions 30 and 31

Well, it finally happened. After two and a half years, we had a gaming session that I didn't write up before the next session. Working away is certainly taking a toll on both gaming, and blogging about gaming.

We have had two more sessions of the Rift City campaign, and should be having another on 8th March. On Jan 112th, because I had the 13th off work, we met in our pub venue of most of 2019 in the evening. However, as I can't have the Monday after the second Sunday of every month off work, we're holding them earlier in the day at the moment. Also, because we haven't found a public venue that will take us on Sunday afternoon, we held the last session - and will be holding the next - at the house of Galen, Berg and Karina's players.

Only, Karina's player isn't Karina's player any more, because Karina succumbed to some poison in session 30. So, for Session 31, a new Cleric called Willow joined the party.

The party is currently exploring an area of Level 2 away from where they've been before, running into angry apes, shriekers, bandits and Orcs, and gaining a bit of loot of course. Then they found a way down to part of Level 3. There the PCs encountered a high-level Cleric, but with judicious use of a blinding spell they rendered him relatively powerless while they chopped him up. They've done a bit of exploring but it's pretty inconclusive as yet - perhaps just as well, I'd not expected them to go that way and haven't built much of Level 3. Where they'll go next session I'm not really sure so I'm just hoping I can stay one step ahead.

Rift CIty - Session 28

Alas and alack!

I had hoped not to have to do this but the Session 28 of the Rift City Campaign has had to be cancelled, at pretty short notice. It should be taking place on Sunday, 10th November, at 6pm. As I type, it's Sunday 10th November, just after 5pm, and I will shortly be leaving town to go to a different city about 2 hours away, where I will stay in hotel so I can get to the office at 6am, so I can get a works' bus to somewhere else, another 2 hours away. Otherwise I'd have to leave here at 4am tomorrow morning to get there in time. This work-pattern doesn't really give me the opportunity to DM the regular session on Sunday evenings.

I don't know whether this will be a regular thing, but it might be. That might put the kibosh on the Rift City Campaign if it's a permanent (or even short/medium term) thing. We may be able to re-arrange of course, perhaps doing it in the afternoon, I don't know, I'll have to consult the current players and the venue and see if it's possible. Or maybe I'll get some clarity from work about whether I'll be doing this in future. Perhaps someone else could run a different campaign for a bit - some people have been expressing an interest in Runequest, and someone else in running a Traveler game. I don't want to just kill the campaign, but it's not possible with the current set-up in these changed circumstances.

Watch this space - I hope we'll be back to normal next month, but I have no idea what will actually happen. I want to continue with the open table concept, I think we've done good work over the last 27 months, but something will have to change if we are going to continue.

Rift City - Session 27

A new day and a new party heading into the caves. Joining our regular party members (Brigham, Cnut, Gell, Gibbet, Karensa, Marl and Nelson) was a cleric, newly-arrived in town - Tanika.

The party established its marching order:

Marl (3rd Level Halfling)
Cnut (4th Level Fighter)
Tanika (2nd Level Cleric)
Nelson (3rd Level Magic USer)
Gibbet (5th Level Thief)
Gell (2nd Level Fighter)
Brigham (4th Level Cleric)
Karensa (3rd Level Elf)

The idea was a demi-human front and back to use infravision (I ruled long ago that Halflings have infravision and speak Halfling, even though neither is included in the rules); then a fighter and a cleric (in case of undead); then, in the middle, the two specialists (that is, the only people not wearing plate).

The exploration started simply enough: the PCs have for the past few sessions been checking out an area of Level 2, and decided that they'd head back there. Unfortunately, though they had a map made by Marl and Brigham, they'd forgotten to get the 'other map' off Galen (who wasn't there but had mapped the first visit to these tunnels). However, Karensa had at least sorted out before the game that she'd collected the Bag of Holding for any treasure.

They entered the cave that led to the corridor they'd previously been exploring. About 120' down this corridor, there is a door, and the party was somewhat surprised to see some people coming out of it - adventurers like themselves. These poor souls told the PCs they'd got lost in the caves and didn't know where they were, so the PCs told them that they were close to an exit, and the NPC party turned and headed back the way they'd come. This may have been a sign of things to come -or maybe it wasn't. The PCs then spiked the door shut that the other party had come through, to stop them heading back that way again - the procedure did cause some noise however, which led to me making more rolls for wandering monsters.

The PCs pushed on, and soon found more wanderers. These three were searching for a lost heirloom, a sword with a skull design on the pommel. Again the PCs talked their way through the encounter, and pushed on - through the room with a pool that didn't have a lion in it any more.

They were moving on to areas they'd never been to before when they had their third encounter. Again this was a wandering monster encounter. I hadn't realised when I prepared the list of wanderers for this area that so many of them were NPCs, but they were. Also, I kept rolling low as they explored so they got several in quick succession (of course there was also the banging, that helped). This time it was a lone Elf, who again convinced the party not to attack her.

A little further on the PCs came to a set of stairs going down. They did debate whether they wanted to go down to Level 3 ("there's eight of us after all!" I heard someone say), but decided that they'd stick to Level 2 and explore further.

They moved north and Gibbet, scouting out for traps, realised that there was some kind of magical effect on a door. Making sure that they could open the door without touching it by judicious use of an 8-foot pole (Gibbet's 10-foot pole had suffered an accident many sessions before), the PCs navigated their way  through, with little ill effect that they could determine. However, there were consequences to this that were not to become immediately apparent.

Pushing on, the PCs entered a room that appeared to have been some kind of evil temple. A pile of candles lay in the centre; a tapestry showing ghouls devouring victims covered the west wall; on the east wall, there were bookshelves covered in dust (but no scrolls). As they were searching around, a gas trap went off - Tanika, Cnut, Gell, and I think Nelson failed their saves and were caught in the cloud of poison. This was not a standard 'Save or Die' poison, which is usual in B/X, it came with specific damage attached (this part of the dungeon is ultimately derived from an AD&D source, and I believe 'Save or Die' is less common in AD&D material).

There followed a moment of shock for Cnut - what I think I told him was 'take d10 damage'. But I might not have done - what Cnut's player heard me say was 'take 10 damage', which would take Cnut down to 4hp I think. But when I asked Tanika, Gell, and (I think) Nelson to roll for their damage, Cnut's player asked why I didn't let him roll, and we realised what happened. In the end, Cnut ended up taking something like 3 points.

But, Tanika was not so lucky. I think that sickly Cleric only had about 7hp to start with and promptly fell over, 'dead' in so far as people are dead at 0hp. Time for the party to apply 'elementary staunching', or at least some sort of battlefield first aid, possibly the kiss of life. The result was, Tanika did survive, but at the cost of losing a point of CON permanently (this point is converted to 1hp), going from 10 to 9. Brigham then used a Cure Light Wounds spell to restore 3 more hp to Tanika.

I'll admit I wasn't sure about this. Cure Light Wounds is not 'neutralise poison' so I was unsure it would work. But ultimately the gas did 'damage' not 'poison damage', and what Cure Light Wounds heals is hit points not some subset of hit points relating to injuries from weapons. So I let Tanika heal the 3 points. Tanika felt able to limp on, so the party kept going, on into the next room.

Here they found another large room, but with few interesting features. While searching around however they did come across a kind of leather-covered notebook with diagrams and notes in an unknown language. Gibbet pocketed it for later perusal, and the party moved on towards the south-west. As they did the rearguard heard something behind them.

The PCs have been guilty of some pretty grim behaviour in their adventuring career. The slaughter of Orc prisoners, for example. An unprovoked assault on some Lizardmen during the last session. This time, it was the slaughter of some Lawful, curious and basically friendly Neanderthals that was not the party's finest hour. Unfortunately, the party didn't have a common language with the Neanderthals, and Karensa decided that they perhaps posed a threat, so she shot at them. This enraged them (they made their morale check) and they counter attacked.

Poor Tanika was having no luck, being part of the rearguard, as one of the Neanderthals' stone-tipped spears found a gap in the old plate armour. Then the Neanderthals were on the party. Down the unlucky cleric went went for the second time. I apologised to Tanika's player, though I hadn't done it on purpose, it certainly wasn't my intention to kill a new character twice in one session.

The rest of the party, apart from Marl and Cnut who were in the next room, made short work of the two Neanderthals, and Gell (I think) volunteered to staunch Tanika's wounds. This also proved effective - but now, Tanika's CON has dropped from an OK 10 to a frankly risky 8. Meanwhile the others looted the bodies, coming up with several sacks of coinage - all copper - which went into the Bag of Holding. The party re-organised itself and put Tanika in the middle, just to try to help with survivability! The new marching order was:

Marl - Cnut - Gibbet - Nelson - Tanika - Gell - Brigham - Karensa

This is the marching order that ran into some Rock Baboons. These are noisy but not particularly difficult for metal-clad, bow-armed PCs to deal with. Also, they don't have very high morale. A bit of shooting broke the Baboons' nerve and they fled without causing any real bother. Then few more rooms - the PCs really were getting through quite a lot of exploration, but they weren't really finding any treasure. Eventually they decided head back.

However, when they'd passed through the room where the poison gas trap had been situated, they found to their consternation that the short corridor that they expected to lead to the top of the stairs to Level 3 took them nowhere of the sort. Instead, they came into another large room. 'Oh,' they thought, 'it must be a magic door, it's a teleporter - let's try again'. But going back and trying the door again produced the same result - the door they were heading south through led to a the north-west corner of a big room.

This caused a lot of discussion. I mean a lot. The reason they'd decided to head for home was because the session was coming to an end, and now they were stuck who-knows-where?  The way the sessions are set up - the very method of the open table - relies on the party leaving the dungeon at the end of the session and it looked like that might not be possible. There was even discussion of activating the Teleport scroll that Nelson carried - at least then they would know the way back to an exit.

They were trying to work their way back to the entrance, knowing where it was but not necessarily which way they needed to go to get back to it. They thought perhaps they should head north-east, but in that direction was a room full of Undead and they didn't fancy that. Instead,  they pushed on down one more corridor, and at the end entered a room that some of the party recognised from having been here in a previous session. They'd teleported for sure, but not actually very far. It would have been very convenient at this point to have Galan's map, as this was the area that he had mapped, but it was not to be.

In the room were some Giant Ants, such as have been encountered in this area before. This time the PCs didn't try engaging hand-to-hand (mano-a-mandible?) but instead used a Web spell to try to immobilise them. Four of the five were caught in the web and the other failed its morale check and ran from the party towards an exit in the south-east.

The party took a different door in the east wall - they knew they needed to head east - and making their way through a couple of smaller rooms, they came to a door that would not open - someone had spiked it from the other side! So, they smashed the door down, Cnut retrieved his spike (for it was that very same door), and finding themselves in the long corridor that leads to the steps out, they ran as fast as they could for the entrance...

I wonder if the reason the NPCs right at the beginning had become disorientated was because they'd got themselves teleported by mistake? It's a thought.

Rift City - Session 26

Every so often I post on various local Facebook gaming groups to advertise the continued existence of The Wandering Monster Table. The point is after all that it's an open table and everyone is welcome. Sometimes, that means we get new players. Sometimes ...

Today (actually, Sunday 8th September), the dice-gods decided that many new people would come along. So along with some old hands, a bunch of fresh young PCs (relatively fresh and young, to make the integration process easier for new people, the new PCs start at the lowest level in the party) joined the party for a trip to the caves.

So, the party consisted of:

Brigham (3rd Level Cleric);

Cnut (3rd Level Fighter);

Feign* (2nd Level Cleric);

Gell* (2nd Level Fighter);

Gibbet (4th Level Thief);

Grimble* (2nd Level Magic User);

Karensa (3nd Level Elf);

Marl (2nd Level Halfling);

Rannock* (2nd Level Fighter)

*characters of the new players

The first thing was getting the two groups together. This is relatively easy, new adventurers in Rift City tend to turn up at the Travellers' Inn at the Rift-end of the High Street. It's about the only place they can afford. But that's also where the PCs meet up for breakfast when they're adventuring, so the two groups were sitting eating and drinking in the inn (pub) next to each other... as they were in real life. Spooky, huh?

Next, deciding where to go. The new members have never been to the caves, so the veteran PCs suggested the same location that they visited twice in the last few sessions - the tunnels with the portcullises (Session 25 link, Session 23 link).

This area is all dressed stone and regular corridors. That in theory makes it easier to map. Hahahaha! More on that shortly...

Venturing into the dark, the marching order was Marl, Rannock and Brigham up front, Gibbet, Grimble and Feign in the middle, and Karensa, Gell and Cnut bringing up the rear. The idea I think was to put a demi-human both fore and aft to use infravision to spot nasties, and of course to protect the rather squishy, non-plate-armoured specialists, Gibbet and Grimble. Feign I think was just being cowardly.

There is a very long tunnel just in from the entrance, and it has a door off it to the right. They headed for the far end of the corridor, ignoring the door.

I don't think I'm giving too much away to say that this is what the PCs have mapped. I'm quite good enough with image manipulation software to have changed anything that is on the map that the PCs haven't found, so they shouldn't take this as a representation of 'reality' - this is, to my understanding, their map of what's been found.

The stairs in the top right come down from a natural cave in the side of the Rift.

The room at the bottom of the corridor has four sconces on the walls that have torches in them; it also contains a pool on the north wall. The room to the west of it, through the door, also contains a pool/fountain, on the south wall this time, and this was where the Giant Ants had been residing in the previous session.

You should be able to see that a few of the 'doors' are marked with dots rather than a block - these are portcullises rather than doors as such.

The PCs decided that instead of trying to lift the portcullis, they'd batter it down. This was pretty successful but obviously made a certain amount of noise. Soon after Rannock had smashed his way into the room beyond, PCs became aware that someone was following them. Whether the the someone - or perhaps someones - had come through the western door they didn't know.

Turns out they were Lizardfolk. One of the Lizardpeople approached the party slowly, but as no-one spoke the Lizardman language, it was difficult to communicate. Karensa decided to end the standoff by shooting an arrow at the lead Lizarddude, and all hell broke loose. The Lizardbeings charged and a short but brutal combat ensued: 6 dead Lizardthings and no dead party.

Looting the corpses produced an unexpectedly large stash, so the party high-tailed it back to town, stashed the loot and scurried back to the caves.

Pushing on from the room with the torches, the PCs turned west. This is where the Giant Ants had been hanging out and sure enough there were more Giant Ants in the room. The party is mostly sporting platemail and is therefore pretty difficult to hit, but Giant Ants are tough cookies and it wasn't plain sailing. At some point during the session I know Karensa was injured (slightly, she's 3rd Level and it was only a couple of hp damage) and I suspect it was here. However, once the Ants were dead, the party did find a cache of treasure in a crack in the wall, so it looked like they'd have a pretty decent haul in the end.

Further exploration beyond the room of Ants led them to a fairly small group of Orcs, who the party butchered in pretty short order. The Orcs didn't have any proper treasure, however, so the PCs pushed on in an abandoned store-room and here the party encountered some Zombies. These were in part dealt with by the Clerics, both of whom took a hand in the Turning, though some still remained, and these proved to be a bit tougher than the Orcs, but at last the PCs had battered them to jelly.

Deciding for sure after all this hard work that it was time to go, the party made their way out and trooped back to town to count their loot after a hard day!

Lists of characters (Rift City recap)

There was a title of a post in my list (saved as a draft) but there was no post. I can't remember what I intended to have here. So instead of whatever I was going to do... have this series of lists, that are something of a review of the first two years of the campaign (up to and including Session 25, the campaign's second birthday).

First is the list of the 26 PCs that I can remember and reconstruct who have braved the caves so far, in approximately the order they joined the 'Rift City Campaign' (those in italics are the surviving PCs of more-or-less regular players):

1. Gwynthor (C)
2. Gibbet (T)
3. Polly (MU)†
4. Redvers (D) (retired)
5. Shazam (E)
6. Ays (H)
7. Frost (F)
8. Sven (D)†
9. Len (T)†
10. Galan (E)
11. Bob (F)†
12. Cnut (F)
13. Berg (D)
14. Karensa (E)
15. Daisy (H)
16. Gene (F)†
17. Marl (H)
18. Bonjella (E)†
19. Flenzack (C)
20. Brüna (D)
21. Bunny (H)
22. Greydon (MU)
23. Karina (T)
24. Elenya (E)
25. Brigham (C)
26. Nelson (MU)

Obviously with PC deaths, new PCs are created - one 'flow' of PCs is Polly-Bonjella-Brigham, one is Len-Bob-Cnut, Sven's player next played with Daisy, and Redvers' player retired him and played with Galan from then on.

Next, some of the NPCs the PCs have come into contact with at the inn - these are other adventurers:

Fanfarron, the charismatic fighter;
Dymphna, the dextrous Elf;
Seggulf, the angry Dwarf;
Vortigern, the sappy cleric - this one I seem to recall is deceased;
Hannam, the ugly magic-user;
Kastarys, the sinister magic-user;
Valakar, the dashing fighter;
Rhigat, the enthusiastic cleric;
Slith, the enigmatic thief;
Zanok, the dependable fighter,
Keln, the carefree fighter.

Some readers may recognise some or all of those names. They're 'found characters' (I changed Seggulf's name from the anagramatic 'Fuggles', which was too much even for me) that I had printed out as pre-gens should anyone at the early sessions want to play with a pre-gen. Nobody did, so these 11 became the other adventurers hanging around in the inn, from which rival parties could be drawn, or NPCs hired if the PCs wanted to go down that road. In the end, two of these characters have been adventuring with the party, which I believe were Zanok the fighter, and Vortigern the Cleric, in the 5th session (post about that here). Vortigern unfortunately was killed, by Giant Lizards, apparently, and so was Fighter Bob, by Stirges, though I couldn't at the time remember that he was indeed called 'Fighter Bob'.

There is another NPC Cleric with whom the PCs have adventured - Ademus, Cleric of Yrt (the same religion as Gwynthor). Some time ago now, he went to the caves, trying to find Ulfang the Black, taking an adventuring party of Fanfarron, Dymphna, Seggulf, Hannam, and another Cleric called Vitalinus. They never returned... even though Ulfang the Black is now dead, at the hands of the PCs. Whether Ademus and his friends are dead, captured, or lost and wandering somewhere in the caves, is not currently known.

Of the non-adventuring denizens of Rift City, the PCs have met Gisuintha, a Magic User who lives in a nice house in a slightly swankier part of town (several of the PCs have visited her, to have items identified, or to sell the multifarious parts of interesting animals); Perla, the Halfling proprietrix of the inn/brothel across the road from their inn (Gibbet has also determined that she's a Thieves' Guild contact); there are a couple of Elves at the Sanctuary (the main Elven temple in town) - these include Corrga, the oldest and most venerable of the Elves, who has performed a Remove Curse spell on Galan, and Eglil, an enigmatic silver-haired Elf who has been searching for a Halfling bard to sing a particular song for his master; there is the Town Clerk, who helped to arrange Galan and Karensa buying a house (but I don't think they learned his name); and there is the Mayor of Rift City, Jasper Grubbily, who is a respectable Halfling member of the business community.

Not sure what other locals the PCs have encountered. There was a wizard who seemed to have been imbibing too many of his own potions, and there were some Dwarves that they met in the caves, that Berg took a liking to (she went to visit them at their inn, the Broken Hammer, round the corner from the inn where the PCs hang out), but I don't recall their names.

There's also Marjory (or some name that sounds like it) who was a Gnome the PCs rescued.

Then there have been several Orcs and Kobolds (usually called 'Keith') that Shazam has enchanted, and of course Ningal ('the Mad Witch', as the PCs call her, though on what basis they've decided she's mad isn't really clear to me), in the caves.

Of course, in terms of named antagonists, there was also Ulfang the Black, dead Kobold Lord, as mentioned above.

Who else? What other NPCs have flitted their way through the adventure over two years? I'm struggling to recall names, though there definitely have been more...

Happy Birthday, Rift City! Session 25, and second anniversary

On Sunday 11th August, the Rift City Campaign, and my D&D group 'The Wandering Monster Table', had their second birthday. Technically, the second birthday of the Rift City campaign would not be until Tuesday 13th August, but 11th August was the 'the session on the second Sunday in August', and that's close enough as that was the day we inaugurated the group and began the campaign in August 2017. Calendar drift is not my fault! The campaign has been going for two years (and anyway, the 13th was yesterday so it's two years anyway)!

It feels like a decent time to reflect on what we've accomplished. We've had 25 sessions, which have included 30 days of playing-time (if my calculations are correct); we've had 18 players (and me) turn up to games in that time and 6 PC deaths; one of the PCs has reached 4th Level and several 3rd Level; they've explored around 100 rooms on Levels 1 & 2 of a dungeon that I've been building (slowly) that currently contains more than 1,200 rooms (I haven't checked lately, it may be more than 1,500). I suppose an average session has around 6 PCs, though the smallest number so far is 2, the largest I think 11. 22 of the 25 sessions have been in public places where anyone can join in, and that's the point (the other three sessions were held at Berg & Galan's house when we were temporarily homeless). Except one session when I was away, we've played on the second Sunday of the month in that time (I suggested that in order to keep the regular format, someone else could run a one-shot, but the players decided they'd rather I DMed so the session was moved by 1 week). That is a remarkable degree of consistency, I think

I have to mention the great staff at the Black Horse in Aylestone (Facebook page linked here). We've been going down there for the last few months, since our previous venue closed, and they've been very nice to us - making us little reserved signs with messages on saying things like 'Reserved for Elves, Goblins and Minotaurs' and 'Reserved for Questors for the Wand of Wonder' and similar messages. They really are very nice, and it turns out that one of the management used to play fantasy quest computer games back in the 1990s... which ones I don't actually know, but maybe Baldur's Gate? I have told her, she should book a Sunday night off and come and join us. We'll see.

A very different constellation of party-members this session. Of the people who were there last time...

Cnut's player is on holiday, so wasn't available.

Shazam's player was at a family wedding and also was not available.

Nelson's player however was there, the only one from last session.

Of the habitual attendees (obviously, there are a lot more people who've only attended one or two sessions)...

Galan is still suffering from a curse, and I think his player wants him fit before adventuring again.

Berg's player is also on holiday.

Marl's player was at a festival I think.

Karensa's player made!

Gibbet''s player made it!

Brigham's player made it!

Gwynthor's player... well, no-one really knows. He told us he was coming, but we didn't see him!

There was some discussion between Nelson, Gibbet, Brigham and Karensa as to whether they should venture down into the scary Level 2 or stick to the relative safety of Level 1; and as to whether they should hire some meatshields to help, but in the end they decided that it would be Level 2 with no hirelings - the most dangerous (but hopefully most lucrative) option.

The cave entrance they went for was the same as Session 23, the Level 2 entrance on the downhill side of the road. Entering they found it looked undisturbed from last time, but Karensa, remembering that last time they'd encountered a Gelatinous Cube, decided that a reasonable course of action was to shoot an arrow down the corridor and find out if it made a clattering noise or a kind of floopy plop. Happily, it was a clatter, so they crept on. As they ventured down the corridor however they realised that they'd been followed - a mountain lion had strayed inside, seemingly hunting them. They attacked it, and as it (insanely) charged them, arrows already sticking out of it, Nelson the Magic User used his Magic Missile to kill it - just before Karensa and Gibbet both shot it. Gibbet and Karensa retrieved their arrows. Nelson didn't retrieve his spell.

Not perhaps the most efficient use of a Magic Missile but Nelson really didn't want the first encounter of the evening to be up close with a rampaging mountain lion, and who can blame him? Never mind, he still had Web, as well as Read Languages... hoping that some scrolls might appear at some point. Poking around in the entrails, Gibbet found a coin-bag with some copper that the lion must have swallowed at some point.

Venturing on, the party came to wooden portcullis - 'slightly burnt' it said in my notes, as the last time they were here the PCs tried to set fire to it. It had been impossible to open, two days ago - now it opened with ease. On the far side, the PCs found a room, lit by torches stuck in sconces on the walls, that contained a semi-circular pool of water. Of course, what they did was throw the Mountain Lion carcass into the pool to see if there was any magical effect. Isn't that what you would do?

There were two other exits to the room, one opposite the door they'd entered and one to the right. They tried the door to the right and when they got it open, realised that there was a large hall-like room beyond the door. The far end was too far to make out, even with Infravision. Also, near the far end (I randomly determined how far away) there was a collection of gigantic ants. The PCs shot some arrows at them, then retreated to the door so they could control the frontage the ants could attack on. A couple more hits on the lead ant without it going down was starting to worry the players I could see. Gibbet was remembering the last time they'd encountered some, and how much carnage had ensued. This was in Session 21, and then Gibbet had had to beg a Healing Potion from Karensa because he'd sustained some heavy damage. Well, probably, this time he did too. Certainly there was some damage about. But, Nelson cast Web and the giant ants were stuck trying to get through the door.

This was the party's cue to run away (stopping only to definitely kill the one ant that had got through the doorway and grab one of the torches from the wall - Nelson was damn sure he wasn't wasting his own torches if people were giving them away for free), then start shooting arrows down corridors again, in case the Gelatinous Cube was lurking. Eventually, as they traversed a very long corridor, the Cube moved to attack; but they don't move very fast, so the party retreated up the corridor peppering it with arrows until it exploded.

Moving forward again (taking care to once more loot the gooey mess and this time pick up some gold) the PCs turned north, hoping I think to get into the rear of the ants' room. However, as they'd made a mistake with their map (they'd only drawn the corridor as 120', though I told them it was around 150') the corridor they went north up led them to a different room. This one had a sliding door on the east wall, which led to a room that contained some Shriekers, who of course freaked out at the light and noise. Shriekers don't harm adventurers, just summon things that do harm them, so butchering the giant mushrooms quickly became a priority. However, it wasn't fast enough to shut up the Shriekers' alarms, as shortly afterwards some shambling figures appeared in the room behind the party.

Zap! Karensa cast Sleep at them. Oof! the party said, as I told them it didn't seem to have any effect. Another spell wasted, as these were Ghouls. A short and vicious fight ensued, with no-one succumbing to Ghoul-touch, and the Ghouls were defeated, and quickly looted, whereup a nice haul of funerary jewellery was discovered. Also part of the treasure in the room was more coinage, and an axe leaning against a wall. In Basic D&D, Magic Users are only permitted to use daggers, and Clerics are not allowed to use edged weapons, so only Gibbet the Thief and Karensa the Elf could have taken the axe to use anyway; but Karensa already has a magic sword, so Gibbet took it.

Heading out again, the PCs realised that some more monsters were investigating the Shriekers' noise - this time some large flying insects coming down the corridor at them. The party disposed of them but several people were bitten. Again it was giant insects that ended up doing the damage, with the less-armoured Nelson and Gibbet getting the worst of it I think. I'm sure that, by the end of the session, everyone had taken damage but Brigham, and both Brigham and Karensa had used their healing magic (Cure Light Wounds and a Potion of Healing respectively, Brigham I think on Nelson and Karensa on herself).

So, somewhat depleted in resources, the party decided to head for home. As they passed the room where they'd fought the ants, they realised that the web, the ants and the lion had all gone, back they surmised into the room where the ants had been originally. Sneaking past they made a break for the exit - but between them and safety was a bunch of angry giant centipedes. However, they don't have many missile weapons, so the party again peppered them arrows from down the corridor. Five died; the other two, deciding they didn't like the hail of death much, retreated. The PCs ran the last bit I think and made it back into the clean air once more, to fight another day.

Heading for home, they would no doubt have noticed the beginning of the Lunar Eclipse that was a feature of the calendar I'd noticed recently (I generated the calendar some time ago from Donjon's Fantasy Calendar Generator). I'd told Galan's player that this was when the Elves at the Sanctuary would perform a Remove Curse spell for him, as eclipses were especially auspicious times for such magic.

Dividing up the loot the PCs found they'd come away with a decent haul - a couple of thousand in jewellery and platinum pieces and a couple of hundred in loose change, as well as a potentially magic hand-axe, which was OK between four. And nobody died!