Old-time Orc Lair notes

I think my inspiration for this can pretty directly be traced to a White Dwarf article called The Naked Orc from WD53, from May 1984 (info here).

Other references are to the White Dwarf Personalities (rules in WD50, figures on Stuff of Legends here, a couple of mine here). I use the names 'Agaroth the Unwashed' for an Orc captain (with 6HD) and 'Ugbash Face-splitter' for a chief (with 7HD). Both of these names are from the White Dwarf Personalities set  (no matter that they spell it 'Ogbash' on SoL, I'm right, they're wrong). Agaroth is an Orc to the WD folks - or Half-Orc at least - but Ugbash is a Chaos Warrior so I'm not sticking to my sources.

They probably date this package pretty well. 1984 or early '85 at the latest I guess. Pretty certain that by late 1985, I'd have called an Orc-Chief 'Harboth'.

Lord of the Rings is also an obvious influence, both directly on me in the case of names and iconography, and also on the article.

So what does this great Orc lair consist of? 4½ pages of notes and 2 versions of the map, in short.

The first map, which I shall think of as the draft version, is on a sheet of plain paper (I don't know where from, this is long before printer-paper was a thing) and has a cave-system (obviously inspired by the Caves of Chaos) with rooms numbered up to 53 (probably 56 in fact, I've spotted that I've got 12,13,14 in different places, there's a 14a attached to one of them, and I've not found 21) divided between five groups of Orcs, these being the Orcs of the Black Bone, Slobbering Jaw, Eye, Moon and White Hand. Each of the first four groups has its own entrance (Black Bone has two, I can't find an entrance for the White Hand, who were I think intended to be a shamanic group inhabiting the innermost recesses of the caves), but the caves connect internally. It's a single level complex, and I've marked a lot of what I guess are doors 'L' which surely means 'Locked'.

The second version of the map is on graph paper that was probably stolen from a maths-book. There are now four 'clans', Black Bone, Slobbering Jaw, Eye and Moon. The whole map is entitled 'Tribe of the White Hand'. Again it's a single-level complex about 2,700' or half a mile across, but now there are 73+ rooms (numbering is also screwy on this map - there doesn't seem to be a '4' but there are two '6's, two '10's, three identical '13's next to each other, and a bunch of annexes marked A-F - all in all there must be closer to 90 rooms), but only one 'shared' room - the four cave-systems meet at a large square room which I think is intended as a kind of assembly-chamber, shrine or possibly some kind of fighting-pit, it's difficult to tell (and I can't remember). At a guess, this is about 6 months-a year later than the first draft. 

In both versions of the map, the majority of rooms and corridors are constructed, but there are a few intended to evoke natural caverns. Both times, I've started numbering with the Black Bone clan, The accompanying notes (that seem to have been composed just after the first draft of the map, there are crossings-out and corrections that indicate that they were composed to go with the draft map and corrected for the second map) all relate to the Black Bone clan. These notes include a Wandering Monster Table with 12 encounters; a tally of the Black Bone clan's strength in terms of numbers of males, females and young for each of The Naked Orc's types - Snaga (80, 150 and 330), Soldier Orcs (12, 30, 46) and Uruks (3, 1, 4); basic stats and details of equipment and treasure for the four Uruks (Ugbash, his mate Gargantua, and his two captains Agaroth and Zargob); a list with less detail (but still including names) of the 12 male and 10 of the female Soldier Orcs in the clan; and a list of 23 prisoners, which includes an NPC Magic User, who is fully-statted.

Then there are the room descriptions. These amount to rooms 1, 1a (a guard-post) and room 2. The description of room 3 has been started but only notes its size. So out of about 90 rooms, I managed to create three. I didn't even get anywhere near the 20-25 rooms (depending on which version of the map I was using) that I needed for the lair of the (Orcs of the) Black Bone (Clan). I do however know that Lagduf & Muzburg are on guard in Room 1, Zabron & Gargan in 1a.

The total population of the Orcs of the Black Bone Clan is 656. The fighting population is about 106 (I'd obviously intended some but not all of the females to fight). The implication of this being only one of the four clans is that the total population in the entire complex was intended to be about 2,500 and the total number of fighting orcs about 420 (about 1 in 6).

That's a truly vast population in my opinion. It implies an average of around 29 orcs per room, of which 4 or 5 will be fighters. It's also around four times bigger than what I consider to be the huge Orc population of Silvergate, as detailed here. Or, to put it another way, the Black Bone Orcs are about the same size of population as my Silvergate Orc-lair (656 v 640, 109 v 160 in fighting strength). So I'm going to tweak this info a little and use it for my Silvergate Orc population. I'll add the 38 adult (including some with clerical skills) and 15 young Orcs from the descriptions for my original Dwarf-city megadungeon (mentioned here) and roll the two together. Then I need to drop two Trolls into the mix and voilà, I have my Orc-lair.

Given that I was wondering in this post about the use of bone (and other substances) as an alternative for scarce wood and metal, the fact that long ago I called these the 'Black Bone' Orcs is a serendipitous co-incidence. Maybe, the tribe's totemic item is a huge black bone of a dragon or some other underworld denizen, kept in a cave at the centre of their settlement, or some such. It is little more than a bit of flavour, but perhaps I can run with this theme and have them wielding 'black bone' weapons or utilising (black) bone armour. I wouldn't want these guys to just be another vanilla population of Orcs to be slaughtered. Something to make them stand out, even a little, would be good. After all, they've been with me (even if largely forgotten) for nearly 33 years!

Lost Megadungeon details

I had a reasonable idea, I think, for the East-facing entrance to my original megadungeon. The doors (15' wide each, and 30' high, and flanked with towers) open onto a kind of ledge, with a long narrow bridge stretching away about 185'. The bridge is above what I've called the 'Bargaining Floor' - this settlement was obviously intended to be heavily involved in commerce. Steps lead down from the ledge into this large room. The bridge ends at a large platform with a statue of a dragon on it, and an entrance (shh! It's secret!) to the rest of the complex.

There isn't much of this that I actually did - a couple of pages of notes, detailing 11 rooms on Levels 1 and 1a, four maps, which cover the areas I have the descriptions for and hint at what I had in mind for some others (the other levels I've drawn seem to be parts of 2 and 4, connected by truly enormous staircases, though many of the details on the maps are now obscure to me), and a couple of sketches of how levels relate. Some of the notes on the maps are frustrating - on the Level 2 map, 'to Level 4 and the South Gate' presumably means I had another part of Level 4 in mind, because the part of L4 I do have connects to another part of the L2 map. I don't know what 'back of cave' means (or rather, I don't know which cave it refers to). I do know what 'to Anak/Noegyth' means (this dungeon was originally intended to link to maps and other info I wasn't otherwise going to use) but I won't be allowing the players to do that. That staircase will now have to lead somewhere else - to a brand-new Level 3. The Level 4 I have here is going to be scrapped for the same reason - I'm replicating maps from other sources that I've now 'folded back' into the existing game-world.

It seems that the entrance-level is actually quite small. I guess my thinking was that it would be easy to isolate this area if the city was attacked. The staircase from the platform takes you down to Level 2, which then leads back up to Level 1a - that might need tweaking a little, perhaps there should ways to access other parts of the complex from Level 1, perhaps from the 'Bargaining Floor' - but I like the design of the entrance. I was obviously having a good couple of days when I did this, whenever it was (I suspect about 1992).

I think I will try to tie this information back into Silvergate and try to use this stuff as a subsidiary eastern entrance (the main entrance I've already designed for Silvergate - bigger than this one - faces south). Finding a way of linking Silvergate's topmost levels with these will - slightly - increase my room-count for Silvergate and add some new options and routes for the players. However, this stuff was produced by the 'old me' (see for details this post for example). The default monsters here are Orcs, Goblins and Rats. Perhaps as I need an Orc lair on Level 4, I should just plonk this on top and replace the Level 4 map with my Orctown? That might work.

In all, there's about 25 rooms here of salvageable map, and 11 descriptions, a few of which I'm pretty proud of. There are also two more options for actually getting into the place, through the new entrance proper, and through the 'back of the cave', wherever that turns out to be (about 600' to the north and 250' west, and then maybe a little down the hill, I'd say). Perhaps that is one of the entrances I already know about? I need to get my Silvergate file and take a look.

Ah well, we'll see. It's made me think about Silvergate again, and you never know, I might even start running it soon...

Weird landscapes

Sometimes I find myself in need of weirdness generators. At present I'm trying to set up a weird landscape generator.

So far I only have notes:

The undulating ground is earth but looks like waves on the sea. Ridges resemble breakers. Perhaps over a million years the waves will break.

The flat ground is like red marble, with veins that change colour as you observe them.

The red earth sprouts fleshy trees that produce red sap and inviting fruit. Anyone killed here will produce a new tree in 3 months.

The rocky ground is streaked grey and yellow. A dull green fog hangs over everything.

Towers of black glass dot the landscape. Monster encounters are more common near them.

Though the sun is shining, the sky is black and stars can be seen.

Landscape

Undulating ground like waves in the earth

Plain of red marble with veins of changing colour

Forest of fleshy trees with inviting fruit

Rocky ridges of streaked grey and yellow

Towers of black glass dot the barren landscape

Weather

Clear, though the sun is shining the sky is black and stars can be seen

A dull green fog hangs over everything – visibility 50 yards

Mirage of colossal city in the distance

Black lightning strikes – storm lasts d6 hours, save v death ray every hour or take d6d6 damage

Notes on my original megadungeon and other ancient goodies

Looking in an old box of papers in my loft, I've come across some old gaming stuff, which it seemed was transferred from one box to another nearly 20 years ago without ever really being sorted out. These papers, on closer examination, included:

... the notes for my original megadungeon. These would be about 30 years old or a bit more. I only got round to detailing a relatively small area of the first couple of levels, and no-one ever played it. Like Silvergate, it is a Dwarf city; but really that's where the similarity ends. My idea with... not even sure it had a name ... was to take things I had and bodge together the bits I wasn't otherwise going to use to make a crazy labyrinth. In pre-internet days decent maps were like gold-dust and primarily this was a way of recycling unused maps from White Dwarf. There were some scenarios I thought I wouldn't play without a lot of work, generally because they were for AD&D and I didn't have the Monster Manual. Because of this various monsters were somewhat obscure to me - I think, Sahuagin and Kenku particularly. Everything I knew about Sahuagin I gleaned from DDG; I knew nothing about Kenku at all. I seem to remember that I eventually decided I'd just replace them with Lizardmen and Halflings respectively. Some of this stuff might even end up being incorporated into Silvergate: there's a nice bit with a petrified giant I might include.

... the first 'wilderness' setting I designed, in approximately 1983. It featured a castle, and nearby a dungeon stuffed with Orcs and evil priests. Obviously, it was heavily influenced by Keep on the Borderlands, which came packaged with my copy of the Basic Set. One of the things that really dissatisfied me at the time with my version - and it's a criticism often levelled at the original - is that the scale is all wrong. I abandoned work on it when the idea of a large inimical-humanoid base in a dungeon two miles or so from the castle of the local lord just seemed... daft. There may, however, turn out to be some things that can be salvaged, though I don't remember very much. I haven't even looked at this stuff since I was a teenager.

... notes towards my first 'campaign setting', referred to in this post where I discuss my much-later Arthurian campaign:

...The Four Treasures - two of which had become the direct objects of mythic quests already - would each be linked to an element in the classical system of elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water). Each element would also be linked to a race. This goes back to a very early stratum of my campaign-design, the first campaign notes I ever wrote in about 1981. Back then, I assigned the elements on the following basis: Dwarves - Fire; Elves - Air; Halflings - Earth; Humans - Water. This time, I assigned them as Dwarves - Earth; Elves - Air; Humans - Water; Orcs - Fire...

Well, those are the notes I found, though I now think that they're probably from 1982 instead. Some notes about meeting an old dying Halfling on the road, and him pressing a jewel into one party member's hand and telling them a scrap of poetry. And then dying of course. I imagined it would be an epic quest, naturally - except it never happened, I never ran it. I wouldn't even consider doing something similar now - far too railroady, not enough opportunities for player choice. But perhaps the set-up could still work as a lead-in a bit more dramatic than hearing a rumour at the tavern.

There's other stuff too; a fairly meticulous cave-system with different factions of Orcs is one thing I think I saw while I was looking through the pile of paper, which may also end up as part of the long-stalled Orc settlement in Silvergate. Another is a series of notes trying to build a campaign from In Search of the Unknown, where Zelligar comes back and blackmails the PCs into doing stuff for him. Basically, it's my unused DMing notes 1982-87 or thereabouts. I didn't however find my DDG-inspired pantheon I wrote around 1983 - that would be interesting I think. A more careful sort through what is actually there is definitely in order (just in case those notes are there).

Now I'm seriously thinking that I should just smash all this stuff together and call it a sandbox... it should all more-or-less work, though it lurches from the gonzoid to hackneyed and back again with gay abandon. There's a certain naive charm about it. I mean this isn't 'old school', it's not retro or revivalist - it's genuinely just old.

Quantum Difficulty and fudge in the sandbox

I like Dreams in the Lich House, I read and re-read it on a regular basis.But, I already have a work email and a university email and a personal email and a gaming email... I'm not going to start another email addy to comment on it and oher G+ forums. So I don't, I occasionally comment here instead.

There has been much discussion lately on DitLH about quantum difficulty and whether this negates player agency. It seems to me that that John Arendt is absolutely right and quantum difficulty is an utterly reasonable way to deal with time in games.

Surely, no-one is claiming that only players have agency in an invented world? If not, then why can't monsters increase in levels over time?

The players, when they're Level 1, hear about some 'vicious' bandits in the locality. How vicious? Vicious enough to be told that they're vicious, that's for sure. Maybe there's 8 NMs, a couple each of Lvl 1 Thieves and Fighters, and a Lvl 2 Cleric. So what's vicious about them? Perhaps the PCs were told the bandits are vicious by a local tax collector - the bandits target tax collectors and string them up while giving the loot to local poor, which is why the locals love the bandits and hate the Sheriff's men sent to round them up; or perhaps the bandits only attack caravans with only a few guards and murder all their captives but one who is released back to civilisation to spread the word. They don't actually have to be 'hard' to be 'vicious'. They just have to get a reputation for being brutal to those in their power. Level 0-1 NPCs can be vicious. Most Orcs are 'vicious' and they're the equivalent of Lvl 1. I'm sure the Sheriff of Nottingham and the Abbess of Kirklees thought the Merry Men were 'vicious', even at the start, though we might think of them as the good guys. They're still basically bandits, and being 'vicious' is a question of perception of action, not necessarily an accurate reflection of power to carry out that action.

Maybe then our gang should be: one L2 Cleric; two L1 Fighters; two L1 Thieves; 8 NM - not an insurmountable obstacle at all for a Level 1 party, and coming in at 14 levels in total. So anyway, the PCs ignore the bandits and go exploring other parts of the sandbox. 6 months or 2 years later, what are the bandits doing?

It seems to me that the only thing you can guarantee that the bandits aren't doing is behaving exactly as they were 6 months or 2 years ago. One of the things that is regarded as disconcerting in Kafka's books is that time passes strangely. A man torturing a second man in a particular room is still there, possibly months later, still torturing the same second man. Is this really how dungeons or sandboxes should operate? Should those Orcs still be fighting the same Goblins in the same room if you go back 2 years later? Likewise, should the bandits not have either been caught, or alternatively attracted more followers or otherwise increased their fighting ability? I'd think change would be inevitable; the local law-enforcement might have sent patrols (allowing the bandits the opportunity to ambush them and get better kit and maybe a few new recruits from the underpaid men-at-arms who didn't want the job anyway, for example), The bandits may have upped their raids on local caravans, settlements, temples, wherever they can get loot, and attracted more recruits through their fame. Other outlaws may have come to join them, desperate landless men might journey into the forests/badlands to seek them out.

So 6 months or 2 years later, the party is say L3 and the bandits might number one L4 Cleric (she's been levelling up in the meantime), three L2 Fighters, four L2 Thieves, six L1 Fighters, 8 L1 Thieves, two L1 Clerics, and a L1 Magic User, as well as 20 NMs. That's 45 levels and a much more serious proposition, though of course the party should still be able to take them. Effectively, the bandits have levelled up at the same rate as the party.

The key to maintaining player agency I think is information. For this tripling of the bandit threat, the players should be told that the bandits are gaining more strength, hitting bigger targets, doing more audacious raids, ranging further afield, or whatever (maybe all of these). If the rumours about the bandits keep coming, the reminders that they're there still keep coming up, and the players ignore them, then when the PCs finally do get there, they can expect different conditions than there would have been if they'd taken on the bandits before clearing the Hobgoblins out of the Old Tower and then going after the Kobolds in the Endless Swamp and the cultists in the Forbidden Temple and whatever else the party has been up to in the meantime. As long as the PCs keep hearing about the changed conditions (and if the bandits are attacking either mobile of fixed targets in the area, why wouldn't the PCs hear about what's happening?), then what's the problem? The bandits want to become more powerful, they have a drive and dynamic to do that I think, and in game terms, it's up to the players to stop them. If they're not stopped, then the bandits should become more powerful.

Though this example uses bandits it holds good for anything. Successful Orc tribe breeds more warriors or attracts another tribe as allies; dragon matures a bit and is a bit tougher two years down the line; middling wizard has the time to complete his researches and is really nifty with his new death-spell; gelatinous cube spawns loads of copies of itself if it's left undisturbed to replicate, or whatever else.

To me then the notion of 'quantum difficulty' isn't a problem, it's an essential recognition of the passage of time, a way of imparting a dynamic structure to fixed encounters and a way of making choices have consequences (concentrating on this threat now leaving that threat for later gives the latter a chance to thrive). Much more of a problem would be to eternally peg encounters to the levels as first heard about, as if only the PCs can learn by experience. Pretty sure 'monsters' can do that too.

One more for the Observer's Book of Monsters

The Fossegrim ('Waterfall-spirit') is as its name suggests a spirit that lives in a waterfall. They are always male and mostly found in Scandinavia. In Sweden they are sometimes called 'Stromkarl' ('River-man'). They are very talented musicians apparently, and can with gifts of food sometimes be tempted to teach their skill with fiddling and harping to mortals. They also mate with females who go bathing at the waterfalls; if the offspring of this union is male, it will on reaching adulthood reveal its Fossegrim nature and find a waterfall to inhabit.

Distribution based on approximate usage of the term 'foss' (Norwegian, Icelandic) or 'fors' (Swedish, I kinda guessed about distributions); in Northern England, especially in North Yorkshire and Cumbria, there are many waterfalls called either 'Foss' or 'Force', so it seems reasonable that Fossegrimen live in them.

Hurrah for Christmas

Well, it's certainly that time even if there's no snow here... and I thought I would post with the gamiest thing I received as a Christmas present this year, from my lovely brother and sister-in-law; Diana Wynne Jones's "The Tough Guide to Fantasyland".

Written somewhat like a "Rough Guide", it is based on the principle that Fantasyland is a real place (with Embroidery, Rabbits and Dark Lords and other such arcane subjects) and the important information about the place is included in the book. It's a little bit like early Pratchett in some ways; a good-humoured and affectionate piss-take of fantasy tropes.

It is a) very funny (it's funny because it's True - Diana Wynne Jones knows her stuff of course), and b) very sobering (because one recognises many of the clichés that one liberally sprinkles over any fantasy gaming/fiction endeavour), and c) very enlightening (because by analysing the clichés and pulling them apart it's sometimes possible to find the bits that work while discarding the bits that are overused). It goes as much for fantasy gaming as for fantasy writing I think, and will I hope allow me to either a) avoid or b) play up the clichéd elements as appropriate (because sometimes, it is appropriate).

It has also left me wanting to write two things: first, a fantasy series that uses (literally) every cliché in the book, and second, a fantasy series that subverts every cliché in the book. Can we imagine a fantasy world where witches don't attempt to seduce unkempt strangers who are not lost heirs, while hordes of Barbary Vikings don't drink ale and have good-natured fights using battle-axes, and avoid sacking nunneries from which there won't be one survivor? I'm not sure but I'm suspecting I'll have a lot of fun trying.