Category: Being a Referee

Flux Space

A pixelated image with figures out of proportion to one another. The main feature of the image is a circular maze made of stone, open at the top. Someone enters the maze. To the side, two figures (a soldier and a woman in a flowing gown) stand next to one another. In the background are cliffs which drop off to the ocean.

Update January 15, 2024: This post has won the Bronze Bloggie in the Gameable category! My thanks to everyone involved. It’s easy to feel like blog posts disappear into the past, forgotten a few days after they are written. Having my work recognized by my peers is encouraging. Thank you for running this year, Zedeck. Also, neener neener, so long as I don’t win I don’t gotta put any work in next year!

I’ve been inspired by my time working with Gus on Tombrobbers of the Crystal Frontier, and want to play at making something similar: a big intro adventure for Dungeon Moon. Something that sells the vibe of the setting, and will allow me an opportunity to think with modes of play that aren’t accommodated by my current campaigns.

Returning to Dungeon Moon will mean returning to Flux Space. It’s an idea that has had a lot of time to percolate in the 6 years since I last discussed it, so let’s begin at the beginning. What is Flux Space?

The Problem

Classic exploration play is great. The referee describes an environment, the players describe how their characters interact with that environment, and the referee tells them how the environment changes. Rinse and repeat until the player’s characters are either wealthy, or dead.

This simple conversational back-and-forth is a good engine for producing fun, but it falters when the characters are exploring spaces which are Large, Samey, and Confusing. The paradigm example is a maze. Mazes work so poorly with classic exploration play¹ that they’ve become shorthand for jokes about bad dungeon design. Yet bad as they are, mazes stick around because they’re romantic. They beg to be explored, even if our tools for imaginative exploration don’t suit them. It’s why kids love solving them on paper, and why people line up for corn mazes every October. The labyrinth of the Minotaur was a maze, and it’s arguably the most fundamental example of a dungeon we have.

Other examples of large, samey, and confusing environments would be a winding network of caves, a dark and dense forest, or a dungeon which fills the entire interior space of an artificial moon created by an inscrutable warlock.

¹ I do actually think this could be fun with a certain set of conditions. You’d need a group of players who were highly engaged in the process of mapping and exploration, as well as some significant pressure to discourage boring-yet-safe play, such as following the left hand wall. So it’s possible, but not suitable for my game or my players.

The Solution

Flux Space is a way of representing large, samey, and confusing environments without mapping and keying them. No maps or keys are needed, because while the characters must trudge through a Flux making meticulous notes and backtracking from dead ends, the players will be “zoomed out.” Time passes very quickly since the players need only make broad administrative decisions. When the characters encounter something interesting the players “zoom in” to engage with it.

Traversing through Flux Space can be regarded as a type of Point Crawl, with the distinction that moving between each point is especially arduous. Once a Flux is solved it can be peregrinated through more swiftly, but solving it will be taxing.

Flux Space is a mix of overland travel and dungeon exploration. It’s for those situations where an environment exists primarily as an obstacle to forward progress, rather than a rewarding location to explore in its own right. Charting the flux gives space for our imaginations to percolate in these environments, and for them to feel as imposing as they ought to, but does so without straining the players’ patience.

System Assumptions

This new Dungeon Moon adventure is intended for use with Errant, so Flux Space must be built to fit into Errant’s mechanics. Because of that, this post will include more system-specific terminology than has been typical for Papers & Pencils. The free, no-art edition of Errant may be a useful reference. What I will call a Flux Turn is a specialized form of Travel Turn, and if you’d like context for all that entails the chapter describing Travel Turns begins on page 120.

Though I’m using a specific system here, I will avoid jargon where possible. Where it isn’t possible, I will endeavor towards clarity. It should not be difficult to adapt the Flux Turn described here to whatever style of adventure play you practice.

A city in an underground cavern. In the background is a mountain which is on fire, and the fire is spreading out into the city.

Flux Space Procedure of Play

Upon entering a Flux, play shifts to Flux Turns, of which there are 6 each day.² During Flux Turns, the party/company generally acts as a group. Their goal³ will be to find a path through the Flux, which they do by Charting.

Each turn spent Charting represents hours of the company moving carefully, dropping breadcrumbs, taking measurements, making notes, and backtracking from dead ends. All this hard work depletes their resources and requires them to roll the Event Die.⁴ At the end of a successful Charting action the company will discover a Point of Interest within the Flux. Play zooms in for classic-style Exploration to resolve the Point of Interest, after which the company chooses how to spend their next Flux Turn. Thus the basic play loop is:

Chart → Deplete Resources → Resolve Event Die →Point of Interest → Choose next action

Each Flux has only a finite number of Points of Interest. Once all have been discovered the Flux is fully charted, and may be moved through more easily.

² Thus a Flux Turn lasts roughly 4 hours, though it’s important not to let that relationship become rigid in your mind. Turns at all scales are abstractions which cannot correlate one-to-one to certain distances traveled by the hands of a clock.

³ Presumably, anyway. Players have strange motivations sometimes, and far be it from me to dictate what their goals are.

⁴ As per normal for Errant, each member of the company who has an encumbrance greater than 4 adds +1 negative event die to the roll.

Depleting Resources

A Flux is generally a dark place which requires the company to carry portable illumination. Each Flux Turn applies 4 Burn⁵ to all light sources. (Thus if the company are using candles, each candle bearer will go through 4 per Flux Turn. If using torches they’ll go through 2. If using lanterns they’ll go through 1 bottle of oil.)

Additionally, some Fluxes may have special resources the company is required to spend in order to chart them. For example, a Flux defined by cliffs or other vertical traversal challenges may require the company to deplete a length of rope each time they Chart, since they must strategically leave ropes behind in order to create pathways for themselves. Likewise a Flux that is filled with water might require potions of water breathing to be consumed for each Charting Action, etc.

⁵ Errant’s Burn mechanic is designed to create interesting lighting situations for exploration play, but does not mesh with the hella-time cost of Flux Turns. I’ve opted for 4 Burn/Turn because it translates into full resource units: 4 candles, 2 torches, 1 lantern oil. Nothing is ever spent partially. As a happy coincidence, this *also* scales to the average amount of Burn players would experience if they played 24 Exploration Turns (the length of a Flux Turn).

Resolve Event Die

If using Errant’s player roles, the referee calls on the Timekeeper to roll a d6. If not, I like to call on a different player each Turn to make the roll:

  1. Encounter
  2. Rest (+1 Negative Event Die) or gain 1 Exhaustion
  3. Deplete all rations or lower all Supply by 1.
  4. Local Effect
  5. Encounter Sign
  6. NPC Chatter

Encounter — While the company is in the midst of their declared action they meet a creature. Determine surprise and disposition for this encounter as you normally would. Play zooms in until the encounter is resolved.

Rest — The company is fatigued, and must make a choice: do they rest, or force themselves to press on? Resting means the company is unable to perform the action they declared for this Flux Turn, and on the next Turn they gain 1 Negative Event Die.⁶ Forcing themselves to press on causes everyone in the company to gain 1 Exhaustion.⁷

Deplete — Everybody needs to eat! Deplete rations and animal feed by 1 for every member of the company. If there are no rations to deplete, or if food sources are plentiful, instead reduce Supply⁸ by 1 for every member of the company. Any ongoing effects or conditions, and perhaps other intangible resources such as an NPC’s patience, dwindle.

Local Effect — An effect occurs that is particular to this Flux. This is discussed in greater detail below under the heading “Construction of a Flux.”

Encounter Sign — The company receives some clue as to what their next encounter might be. Footprints, the sound of beating wings, a figure spotted at the end of a long corridor, etc. The company might want to track this creature down, or they might wish to take special effort to avoid it. Otherwise, the next time an Encounter or Encounter Sign is rolled, it will be an encounter with the creature pressaged by this sign.

NPC Chatter — Nothing of note happens, which means that any NPCs currently traveling with the party get bored and express themselves in some way. Perhaps they talk with one another, sing a little work song, or try to wrangle better wages for themselves out of their employers.

⁶ In Errant, having a Negative Event Die means that your next Event Die Roll is made with 2d6, taking the lower of the two result. Having a Positive Event Die means the reverse. Both types of event die can stack (2 Negative event die = roll 3d6 take lowest), and if the company has both types they cancel each other out. (1 Negative + 1 Positive = roll the Event Die normally)

⁷ In Errant, 1 Exhaustion fills 1 Item Slot. It acts as an extra burden weighing the character down. Exhaustion can only be removed by resting in a comfortable location, which players are not guaranteed to find outside of a settlement.

⁸ In Errant, Supply is a resource that the company will always want to keep well stocked of. If you’re not playing Errant, the important thing to note is that rolling Depletion always causes something to be depleted, even if the party is in a situation where they don’t need to worry about food.

Point of Interest

A notable location within a Flux, comparable to a dungeon room. A Point of Interest might be as simple as a statue the company can choose to ignore, or it might be as involved as a small series of challenges that must be overcome in order for the company to reach the far exit.

Each Flux has two sets of Points of Interest: Shallow Rooms and Deep Rooms.

At the end of each Charting action, after the Event Die is resolved, the referee rolls on a table of the Flux’s Shallow Rooms. These are closer to the entrance, and thus are much more likely to be encountered early. After each room is found it can be crossed off the list.

As the company continues to chart, eventually the referee’s roll will point to one of those crossed out rooms, and the party will discover a Deep Room instead. Deep Rooms are not rolled. They are encountered in order from first to last.

Once all Points of Interest have been discovered, the Flux is solved, and need not be charted any further.

Choose Next Action

Aside from Charting, there are a few other things the party might consider using a Flux Turn for:

Peregrinate⁹ — The company moves from any space within the Flux to any previously discovered Point of Interest. Even from the entrance to the very deepest of the Deep Rooms, if it has been found. Their meticulous charting allows them to travel more efficiently, so they do not need to Deplete Resources on this trip. They still have to roll the Event Die, though.

Make Camp — Spending more than 4 Flux Turns per day on heavy activity causes each character in the company to gain 1 point of Exhaustion per extra turn. When the company makes camp one of the players¹⁰ makes a navigation check to find a suitable campsite¹¹. Each individual member of the company then decides if they will Sleep or Take Watch.

Take Watch — If no characters keep watch, all Event Die rolls of 5 (encounter sign) are instead treated as rolls of 1 (encounter). If only one character keeps watch they gain a point of Exhaustion. If two characters keep watch together, no Exhaustion is incurred by either.

Sleep — Characters who spend two full travel turns sleeping may remove a point of Exhaustion.

⁹ Note that, due to the nature of Flux Space, the Peregrinate action functions a bit differently than it does in Errant’s Travel Turns. Likewise the Explore and Orient actions are not available. Foraging within a Flux is possible, though the DV might be quite high!

¹⁰ If using Errant’s player roles, this should be The Navigator.

¹¹ If the check fails the party must choose between an exposed campsite where encounters are more likely, or an uncomfortable campsite where their rest does not remove points of Exhaustion.

Maps & Local Knowledge

A Flux would not be a Flux if it were well understood. Any few who might know the space’s secrets and byways will guard their knowledge jealously. If a Flux has inhabitants, then keeping outsiders ignorant will be a vital matter of home defense. Even so, it may happen that the company acquires knowledge of the Flux second hand.

Maps reveal some of a Flux’s Points of Interest, which are treated as having already been discovered. Thus the party gets a head start on their own Charting. A complete map, revealing all Points of Interest, should be an object of exceeding rarity.

Peregrinating to locations the company only knows via the map incurs a negative event die, since they lack firsthand knowledge.

Advice from someone who has traveled in the Flux before grants the party a positive event die for a number of Flux Turns equivalent to the quality of the advice. (Someone who has been there once before can give the party a positive event die for 1 Turn, while a native inhabitant of the Flux could give them advice that’d last 10 Turns or more).

Guides may insist the party wear blindfolds, since they want to protect the secrets of the Flux. If the party then loses their guide, they’ll need to begin Charting from wherever they’re at, and the Flux entrance should be added to the Deep Rooms. (How far down the Deep Room list it is should depend on how far the company was led.)

If the guide doesn’t insist on blindfolds, the party can retrace their steps, but must endure a negative event die. They’re much more likely to take a wrong turn than if they had charted the area themselves.

A screenshot of Castlevania for the NES. It shows the level near the end of the game where Simon must traverse the inside of a giant clock, leaping between cogwheels.

Construction of a Flux

At minimum a Flux needs a Theme which describes the space the characters are moving through; NPCs for the company to Encounter; along with some Local Effects that can occur; and Points of Interest to discover. As with any aspect of play, it’s worth looking for opportunities for Special considerations, though these are not obligatory.

Theme

Hopefully your Flux is not simply a series of grey corridors. Perhaps it’s a maze of stairs which zig zag up and down, or abandoned mines dripping with acidic slime deposits, or a massive clockwork mechanism built by the gods which controls the movement of the stars in the sky. The theme will inform everything else you develop for your Flux, and give you something to riff off of at the table. Instead of saying “After hours mapping corridors and dead ends you find…,” you can more easily come up with stuff like “After hours of climbing spokes and avoiding being crushed by the teeth of titanic cogwheels, you find…” It’s a little thing, but it’s one of the little things that makes moment-to-moment play enjoyable.

Encounter

I would not use the full 2d6 encounter table method for a Flux. The company won’t be in one long enough to make the effort worthwhile. Even if it takes 16 rolls of the Event Die for a Flux to be solved (6 Shallow Rooms + 3 Deep Rooms + 4 Turns of Sleep + 3 Rest results), there’s a good chance they’ll only experience 3 encounters. Instead I will opt for 2d4 encounters per Flux. With a Dragon and Wizard at the two extreme ends of the table, this leaves only 5 unique encounters to concoct.

Because encounters will occur in a nonspecific environment, it may be useful to include a location along with the encounter. (i.e. “d6 skeletons on a narrow staircase”). Alternatively you could write a small table of such environments to be rolled on when an encounter occurs. For myself, I will rely on the theme, and use it to invent an appropriate encounter environment in the moment.

Local Effect

This is how the theme is expressed most directly, and how the environment resists the company’s attempt to control it. Because Flux Space is explored from a zoomed out perspective, local effects must have clear zoomed out consequences. I’ve been able to come up with 4 different types of local effect that will work well in a Flux:

  • Altered Circumstances — A change that effects all future Turns. It might alter what resources are depleted after a Charting Action, impose a negative or positive event die, or prompt the party to adjust their marching order. For example: “A fierce wind begins to blow, strong enough to send someone tumbling over the cliffs. Anyone who doesn’t tie themselves to the rest of the party will need to make a DV: 2 Phys Check each Turn to avoid falling to their death. Will the scout rejoin the main body of the company, or will they risk it?” Altered circumstances will usually end the next time a Local Effect is rolled. (Instead of, rather than in addition to another Local Effect).
  • Minor Choice — Some sort of obstacle which requires the company to choose between two or more costs. For example: “The corridor ahead is filled with noisemaking traps. If you set them off a creature encounter is rolled immediately. The company can avoid them all by moving carefully, but this will slow you down and you’ll get a Negative Event Die on your next turn. Alternatively, one character can attempt a DV 8 Skill check to quickly and silently disable all the traps—though failure will count as setting the traps off!”
  • Attrition — The Flux takes an extra toll on the company. For example: “A flame trap goes off! Everyone in the vanguard of the party takes 2d6 damage, but can make a DV 6 Skill save for half.”
  • Flavor/Hint — Something about the environment draws the company’s attention without doing them any harm. What they learn may or may not be useful. For example: “Everyone in the company hears a mysterious voice inside their head. It mumbles something about how red is the color of vitality, then fades away.”

Local effects ought to be reusable, so 1~3 is plenty for a Flux.

Points of Interest

For my purposes, d6 Shallow Rooms and 3 Deep Rooms will usually (if not always) be adequate. This is large enough for a Flux to pose a significant obstacle, without wearing out its welcome. Any bigger and it feels to me like all these rooms would be put to better use in a traditional dungeon.

When constructing the Points of Interest themselves…they’re just dungeon rooms. They ought perhaps have a higher conceptual density than standard, since the Flux itself serves in place of the empty rooms. All Points of Interest could easily accommodate monsters, tricks, traps, treasure, and/or special contents if you so desire.

Special

Does Charting this Flux deplete any special resources? Is there anyone outside the Flux who might want the party to do something for them in there? Is there any danger in this Flux which might follow the company when they leave? Do any of the creatures on the encounter table constitute a faction? If so, which Point of Interest do they live in, and what do they want? Is one of the Flux’s Points of Interest a bottleneck, which the company will need to deal with every time they peregrinate through the Flux?

Two women speak to one another, sitting on either side of a circular maze. At the center of the maze, a knight in armor defeats a creature which appears to be human from the waist up. Beneath the waist is perhaps a horse? It is mostly obscured by the maze.

Example Flux: The Zig Zag Staircase Maze

Theme: An Escher painting hewn in stone. Bottomless pits abound, and there is a dearth of safety railings. Gravity reorients itself at fixed spots. As the company charts they may find themselves traversing the same set of stairs several times with a different “up” on each pass. True Up can always be determined by throwing something into a pit and seeing which way it falls. The pits are not truly bottomless. After 900’ there is a wall of magical darkness, followed by a final 100’ in which space loops back on itself. Anything dropped will be stuck looping through the final 100’ forever.

Encounters

  1. Dragon
  2. 2d6 Zippity Gloobs: Eyeballs with four razor talons protruding from around their retina. Fly by screaming, though they have no mouths. They gather in wasplike nests seen frequently around the bottomless pits.
  3. 1d6+1 Cow Creature raiders. They are collecting loot from the bodies of three dead surface dwellers. Cow creatures can go up stairs, but not down them.
  4. 1d6+1 Cow Creature raiders. They’re on the hunt for intruders. Cow creatures can go up stairs, but not down them.
  5. A sludgebelly which wandered out of the Slime Mines, and is now lost. Reaction roll determines how long it has been lost and how hungry & frustrated it is.
  6. Animated suit of armor left behind by a wizard with a bad disposition.
  7. Wizard

Local Effects¹²

  1. (Attrition): The magical gravity doesn’t work properly on this next flight of stairs. In order to Chart it, each character will need to have a kit of Climbing gear with them. Anyone who lacks it must peregrinate to the Flux entrance, buy a climbing kit somewhere, then peregrinate back here in order to continue charting. The climbing gear remains necessary until the next time a Local Effect is rolled.
  2. (Minor Choice): The party comes upon a gap where the stairs have crumbled away. Jumping would be easy to do, but exceedingly dangerous (DV 0 Skill check, but any who fail fall to their death). If the party brought a ladder, or a plank of wood they can use it to cross the gap easily. Improvising a safe way across without proper tools can be done, but will take a long time, and the Company will suffer a Negative Event Die on the following Turn.
  3. (Attrition): The stairs transform into a slide beneath the company’s feet! Each character must make a DV 2 Skill Saving Throw or drop one item of their choice from a Hand or Handy slot. It tumbles away into a bottomless pit.
  4. (Flavor/Hint): The party comes upon a gap where the stairs crumbled away at one point. It has been bridged by a sturdy mat woven from coarse hair, and pinned firmly in place at each end. It will take everyone’s weight easily. (The Cow Creatures placed this here.)

¹² To be clear: There’s no need for each flux to have one of each type of Local Effect. I’m just using this to further illustrate how each type might be used.

Points of Interest

Shallow Rooms (d6)

  1. A tangle of stairs converge into an amphithatre where 16 ghosts are staging King Lear. The ghost playing Kent keeps forgetting his lines during Act 2 Scene 4. Each time, the rest of the ghosts throw up their hands in frustration and begin the scene again from the start. If someone were to stage whisper the correct lines to Kent, the play will finally be able to end. The ghosts will be at peace, and everyone in the audience will receive a blessing: 2 Positive Event Dice for 3 Turns.
  2. A staircase landing, on which there is a gurgling fountain with coins at the bottom. If a penny is dropped into the fountain then the water is supremely refreshing. Anyone who drinks from it can ignore the next Deplete result on the Event Die. Anyone who attempts to drink from it without paying will get stomach cramps and diarrhea. If anyone takes money from the fountain, the water will pull them in and attempt to drown them.
  3. A circular room 100’ across, enclosed by a low wall, and pillars which support a vaulted ceiling. Four broad staircases connect to this room at right angles from each other. Any staircase other than the one the company entered from is a valid exit. At the center of the room is a 9 foot tall marble statue. It will animate and attempt to destroy anyone who enters this room, but will not pursue them beyond it.
  4. Room #3 again, but this time you’re approaching it from a different set of stairs, and must exit using the final set. The statue remembers your behavior from your last visit, and has learned from it.
  5. In the middle of the stairway ahead of the company is an iron gate with a face on it. It’s surrounded by a barrier which extends 5’ out over the edge above a bottomless pit. Dagger blades protrude from the end of the barrier to discourage attempts to climb around the gate. The face animates to ask a riddle of all who approach: “I rise and I fall without ever moving. You may stand on me, though I am neither the ground nor a floor! Though one of me is helpful, you need many of me to accomplish anything. What am I?” If the correct answer is given (“Stairs,” obviously) the door will open. If someone attempts to climb around the outside the door’s face will be offended. It will wait until the climber is in a vulnerable position, then wiggle the dagger blades that protrude from its barrier to try and make them fall.
  6. In a stretch of stairs which spiral around a column, the company comes upon a door with a shingle hanging above it, proclaiming it to be the site of The World’s Greatest Salesperson. Within is a shop filled with models of stairs, diagrams of stairs, and materials for constructing stairs. The woman inside has a big creepy grin on her face, and is convinced the company look like a group who could really use some stairs. It may seem like her services are completely useless. However, if the party pay her a retainer of 50 pennies she will accompany them through this Flux. If they come upon the Local Effect of a crumbled staircase she can quickly build stairs to bridge the gap. After that if the party wish for her continued services they must pay another 50 pennies.

Deep Rooms

  1. The stairs brush up against a rough stone wall unlike any other in this Flux. There’s a hole in the wall: round, four feet across, dripping with acrid slime. Beyond this hole are the Slime Mines, a completely different Flux!
  2. Village of the Cow Creatures, constructed upon the flat top of a column both broad and tall. 35 adult Cow Creatures live here, and are belligerent towards outsiders. One set of stairs leads up into the village, and another leads up out of the village, and because Cow Creatures can only go up stairs one of these is how they enter the village and the other is how they leave it. The company must get through the village by charm, guile, or force in order to explore further.
  3. A great curved arch leading into The Pleasure Palace of Zanator the Opulent! This is a traditional dungeon, and presumably the goal which led the company to enter this Flux in the first place.
An illustration of The Lord of the Rings. Gollum is leading Frodo and Sam along treacherous pathways in Mordor.

Example of Play

Referee: After your harsh overland journey the company reaches the passage which leads down into the stair maze you’ve heard about. Before you enter, are you going to use any scouts?

Moss: Nobody is sneaky, so we oughtta stick together. I’ll be in the front, Ajmira you take the rear, everyone else can be in the middle.

Referee: If that works for everyone, I’ll just need to know what light sources you’re using. Including hirelings there are 6 characters in the group, so you’ll need 6 Burn worth of illumination if you want to stay in bright light. That means everyone carrying a candle, three people carrying torches, or two people carrying lanterns.

Suzan: Torches is what we’ve got, and we’ve got plenty of ’em! You said this place was gonna eat through them, so we hired a whole extra guy to carry supply. I’ll carry one of the torches, and Torgul and Erin will carry the other two like usual.

Flux Turn 1

Referee: If anybody wants to discuss further, or make any additional arrangements before descending the stairs, please speak up. Otherwise, Ajmira, I’ll have you roll the Event Die for the first few hours of exploration. D6, please.

Ajmira: I got a 6.

Referee: Torchie—the hireling you employed just to carry extra supply—tries to strike up a conversation with Torgul, Erin’s bodyguard. Torgul responds with grunts. They clearly regard this weakling as beneath their notice, and Torchie eventually gives up trying to make friends.

Erin: I chastise Torchie for distracting my employee while they’re supposed to be keeping an eye out for threats.

Referee: Torchie looks distressed. This is a rough first day at work for her. Time passes in awkward silence as the party climbs up stairs and down again, working to chart a path through this labyrinth. By the end of the Turn all your torchbearers have gone through 2 Torches, so mark those off. Suzan, can you roll a d6 to determine what Point of Interest the party finds?

Suzan: I got a 2.

[The referee describes the fountain. The party argue about whether they should put money into it or drink from it. Eventually they decide to ignore it and just move on.]

Flux Turn 2

Referee: Alright, you spend a second Turn charting. Erin, can you roll the next Event die?

Erin: That’s a 5.

Referee: Encounter sign. I’mma just roll 2d4 real quick…I got a 3 so…um. A screaming sound rises in pitch from somewhere in the darkness behind you, reaching a crechendo just outside the range of your torchlight and fading gradually into silence. Something has passed you by very closely, and moving very fast.

Moss: Well I move to look at it!

Referee: You go back up the stairs that you just came down, towards where you heard the scream. You don’t find anything. Whatever made the sound is gone.

Moss: And NOBODY glanced over their shoulder to see it?

Referee: I assume everybody turned, but it’s dark, and torchlight only goes so far. Whatever made the sound was too far away to be illuminated.

Ajmira: Where did it sound like it was going? It came down the stairs until it was close to us, then turned around and went back up the stairs again?

Referee: No, the sound was coming from off the stairs. Like it was flying straight up out of the bottomless pit beside you, then continued to fly up after it passed.

Suzan: So it’s very fast and it flies. Fuck.

Referee: Are there any preparations you’d like to take against encountering whatever this creature was?

Moss: While we’re moving, everyone remember to keep watch on the pits and the air above us, not just the path ahead and behind.

Referee: I’ll take that into consideration, but remember you’re a bright spot of light in a dark place. You’ll be visible to a lot of things which you won’t be able to see no matter where you look.

Moss: It’s the best we can do. Let’s get a move on.

Referee: Okie dokie. You continue to map your way through the stair maze. Suzan, Erin, and Torgul, each of you mark off another 2 torches from your inventory, or from Torchie’s inventory if you need to get them from her. Moss, give me a d6 to see what the party finds!

[Moss rolls a 4. The referee describes the circular room, statue, and four sets of stairs. When the statue comes to life the party attempts to fight it, but it injures Moss’s character severely, and the party flees down the nearest staircase.]

Flux Turn 3

Referee: You’ve escaped the terrible marble statue with your lives, and can resume your charting. Ajmira could you roll the Event Die for the next Flux Turn?

Ajmira: Thassa 4.

Referee: Local effect! The stairs the company is walking down suddenly snap flat beneath your feet, transforming into a slide! Everyone is sent careening downward at uncontrollable speeds. Everyone roll a DV 2 Skill check for themselves and their hirelings to see if you drop anything as you try to steady yourselves.

Erin: How does this work again?

Moss: Roll a d20. You gotta get higher than the DV, and lower than or equal to whatever your Skill is.

Erin: My Skill is 12, and I rolled an 8. That’s a pass, right?

Referee: Yup!

Suzan: My Deviant has expertise in Fitness. That should reduce this DV by 2.

Referee: That tracks. You can roll this as a DV 0 check.

Suzan: I make it.

Referee: Does anyone fail?

Erin: Torgul and I both did.

Referee: You both have to choose one item from your Hand or Handy slots which has been fumbled into a bottomless pit, and lost forever.

Erin: Both of us were holding torches, so we’ll drop those. Those are cheap.

Referee: It’s time to deplete torches anyway, so you two go through 3 torches for this Flux Turn, Suzan you only mark off the usual 2. How’s Torchie’s supply going?

Suzan: I kinda wish we’d brought two spare torch hirelings, but we’ve got enough to keep going for awhile if these two clumsy oafs stop dropping them.

Erin: Torgul and I glare at you, and will begin plotting revenge as soon as you’re out of earshot.

Ajmira: It’s time to determine our Point of Interest, right? I got a 2.

Referee: Okay! We already rolled 2 earlier—that was the fountain—so instead you discover one of this Flux’s deep rooms…

[The referee describes the village of the Cow Creatures. The party haven’t encountered them before this, and manages to work out a deal with them: for a 10 penny toll per person, they will be allowed to pass through the Cow Creature village in peace.]

Flux Turn 4

Referee: The Cow Creatures seem happy enough to accept your coins, but they glare daggers at you the whole time you’re moving through their village. It looks like some of them would much prefer to just kill you and take all your coins, but they’re obeying the headwoman’s command for now. You put some distance between yourselves and the village. Now between 3 Flux Turns of charting and the 1 Travel Turn it took for you to reach the entrance to the stair maze, you’re all feeling wiped out. If you don’t bed down for the night you’re going to start taking points of Exhaustion.

Suzan: I don’t suppose we could convince the Cow Creatures to take us in for the night.

Moss: I like my skin attached to my body, thank you very much.

Ajmira: Yeah those guys were assholes. Let’s just find a dead end or something where we can make camp.

Referee: I think Suzan has the highest Skill score, so I’ll have you make the navigator check to find a suitable campsite.

Suzan: Well I got a fucking 20, so that’s a failure.

Referee: That sucks bro. You’ve got a choice between an Uncomrotable campsite where you won’t be able to heal, or an Open campsite where you’re more likely to face encounters.

Moss: I’m the only one injured, but it’s not too bad. I’d rather avoid encounters.

Referee: Unless anyone objects, you can all bed down in an uncomfortable campsite. It’s a secluded little landing that’s enclosed on 3 sides, but there’s heaps of loose stone that make it unpleasant to sleep on. In order to avoid penalties 4 characters will need to take a watch—2 for each turn spent resting. Nobody can get the benefits of a Full Night’s Rest, so it doesn’t matter much who sleeps and who doesn’t.

Ajmira: It doesn’t matter so we’ll let the hirelings sleep while the four of us keep watch. Then they won’t be able to complain when we find a comfortable campsite and make them keep watch.

Suzan: Oh yeah! I like the way you think.

Referee: Alright, I’ll assume Ajmira and Suzan are the first pair to watch. Ajmira, can you roll the Event Die?

Ajmira: I got a 3.

Referee: Depletion! Everyone in the party needs to eat something. Everyone make sure a ration gets taken out of the inventory for themselves and their hirelings please.

Ajmira: Hah, so far the Event Die has rolled each result in descending order. Almost like this is a fictionalized account of a game session constructed to demonstrate how each result would be handled in this mode of play.

Suzan: Lawl.

Flux Turn 5

Referee: The watch changes to Erin and Moss. Erin, can you roll the Event Die?

Erin: I got a 5! Darn it, we broke our streak.

Referee: A result of 2 would normally be handwaved away if it occurred while the company is sleeping, so the dice probably wanted to save that for later. Anyway, you’ve rolled an Encounter Sign! Since this is your second one it would normally result in an encounter with that screaming creature you got sign for back on the stairs. However, since you opted to avoid having an open campsite, I will rule that you simply hear a distant screaming. It’s clearly that same creature, but it isn’t too close. You also notice an additional detail on this second occurrence: it’s not one voice, but many small screams in chorus with one another.

And with that it is the next morning! Would you like to get back to exploring this Flux?

Flux Turn 6

Moss: We gotta get this place cleared, let’s get to it. I’ll roll the Event Die…that’s a 2.

Referee: Apparently that uncomfortable campsite was pretty rough on everybody. The company needs to spend some extra time resting. You can choose to push on and everybody will gain 1 point of Exhaustion, or you can stop for awhile and use this Turn to recover and take a Negative Event Die next turn.

Moss: Let’s just push on, c’mon.

Erin: With a point of exhaustion I’ll have 5 encumbrance, and we’ll need to roll a Negative Event die every single Turn.

Ajmira: We should just take the hit and rest.

Moss: Alright, if we have to, but we can rest in the dark, right? No need to waste torches.

Referee: Sure, you can do that. And if anyone wants to use an armor repair kit they can do that. Otherwise I’ll assume everyone takes some time to sit and catch their breath, then you get right back to charting. Ajmira, I think it’s your turn to roll the Event Die. Remember to roll 2d6 and take the lowest, since resting incurs a negative event die.

Flux Turn 7

Ajmira: Aw shit I got a 1.

Referee: That’s an encounter, and since you’ve had two encounter signs it’s definitely going to be with that screaming thing. You don’t have any chance to surprise it because of your light, but since it is a noisy enemy and because you took some precautions against it I’ll reduce its surprise chance to 1-in-6, annd…no surprise!

[Initiative is rolled, and the party does battle with a swarm of Zippity Gloobs. They emerge victorious with minor injuries. Unfortunately the creatures carry no treasure at all.]

Referee: With your foes all dead the group continues to trudge up stairs and down, making notes as you go. That’s 2 more torches used by each torchbearer, and Erin can you roll a d6 for the next Point of Interest?

Erin: I got a 6.

Referee: While the company is heading up a set of spiral stairs around a massive column, you spot a shingle hanging from the wall up ahead, as if there’s a shop in here…

Alternative

If all that is too much, I do have another method for running large, samey, and confusing spaces: Draw a map on a sheet of paper. Give the sheet to your player group, and start a timer at the same time. For every 10 seconds it takes for them to solve the maze, that’s 1 Exploration Turn their characters must spend inside of it. Once the maze is solved and you know how long they’ll be stuck there, you can resolve the resulting Event Dice one by one.

Additional Reading

Pointcrawling Ruins Revisited, by Chris Kutalik
tbh a lot of stuff in the Pointcrawling Series Index, by Chris Kutalik
An Incomplete History of Mazes in RPGs, by Dwiz
How Do You Handle the “Inside” of a Hex?, by Dwiz
Bite-Sized Dungeons, by marcia
Hexcrawls ARE Pathcrawls, by Ava Islam

Proceduralism On a Red World Alone

Pixel art of a group of adventurers looking out over mars, towards the city in the dome beneath a starry sky. Adapted from the splash screen at the start of Final Fantasy on the NES.

The current incarnation of On a Red World Alone has been an experiment with a novel procedure of play. The primary aim is to compress the traditional adventurer-to-conqueror campaign structure, so domain play can occur from the first session without ever displacing adventure play.

For those unfamiliar with the (so-called) traditional structure, it is typically presented thus: characters begin as grubby dungeon delvers scrabbling in filth to survive. Through the accumulation of levels, power, wealth, and influence, they become monarchs (or warlords, kingpins, archmages, & popes). In addition to delving dungeons or exploring wilderness, players at this exalted level will engage in ‘domain play.’ How domain play is done has always been vague. Presumably it involves managing large numbers of people and resources rather than only a single character and their personal resources. The idea is compelling, but I’ve never been certain how to approach it. Given how infrequently domain play is discussed, and how incomplete those discussions are, I suspect I am not alone. This post describes my attempt to solve that problem.

Two notes before we dive in:

  • This post will necessarily get deep into the nitty gritty of my game’s setting. I worry that the quirks of the setting may be more distracting in this post than they normally are, so here’s a quick primer for those not familiar with On a Red World Alone. ORWA is set in a densely packed city inside a biodome on Mars. The earth was obliterated shortly after this colony was established, before it had achieved self-sufficiency. The scant few survivors of the human species, traumatized by loss and the struggle for survival, descended into barbarism for centuries. The game is set 500 years after the destruction of Earth. It is the dawning of a new period of enlightenment. Within living memory (Session 1) the Dome was culturally and technologically medieval, but over the past 12 years (176 Sessions) a great deal of cultural progress has been made, and lost knowledge rediscovered.
  • What I describe below remains experimental. Every week I discover new ways to improve on it: develop new tools, discard vestigial mechanics, make key refinements to phrasing. Even the act of articulating my current procedures in this essay has highlighted areas which needed adjustment, so that in places this is now a step ahead of anything my players have seen.

Procedure Outline

Each time we gather to play On a Red World Alone, we start with the Domain Phase. When that’s over we shift to the Adventure Phase until the end of the session.

Domain Phase

  1. Determine Consequences
  2. World Events
  3. Update Progress Bars
  4. Faction Actions
  5. Player Actions

Adventure Phase

  1. Choose a Mission
  2. Preparation
  3. Travel
    • Through the Dome
    • Through the Sewers
    • Into Space
    • Over the Surface of Mars
  4. Exploration
    • Dungeon
    • Neighborhood
  5. Return Home
  6. Haven Turn

Post-Session

  1. Write Recap
  2. Review The Questions
  3. Prepare for next session
Lizard men gather around a wizard, paying great attention to the robed figure as they stare into their orb. Taken from Thundarr the Barbarian.

Domain Phase

The Domain Phase represents one month of game time, and is played through in its entirety each session. With a fair degree of consistency, it takes between 40 and 60 minutes to get through the whole thing. I’m fairly strict about ending sessions 3 hours after start time, so the Domain Phase represents roughly one third of an evening of play.

1 — Determine Consequences

One player is called on to roll a consequence for this session. A riff off Arnold’s “Potential Drama” idea. I maintain a table of consequences that will result from the player’s actions, or from the baggage they rolled randomly during character creation. These can influence any part of the session, which is why I roll them first thing. Some consequences can only occur if a specific player is present, while others apply to the whole party. It’s rare to have a session with everyone in it, so before I announce which die the group needs to roll, I do some quick mental shuffling to figure out which entries on the table are possible today. Everything on the table is specific and prepared in advance. Examples might include:

  • (Only if The Wizard Player is present.) A consequence of the time the Wizard had a spell failure which created a contagious meme about how they smell bad. There’s a bad flare-up today. Everyone the party meets will React at -1 because they think the party are stinky.
  • A consequence of that time the party rescued an artist from a monster that collects artist hands. She has sent the party a gift! A painting that would make an excellent poster, and could serve as a huge boost to a propaganda campaign action. The art may be held in reserve until the party wishes to use it.
  • A consequence of that time the party broke into a mercenary’s apartment, robbed him and then killed him. His crew figured out who did it, and the first encounter that occurs during this session’s Adventure Phase will be an ambush.

2 — World Events

Another player is called on to roll a 2d6 on the table below. Like Consequences, each of these has specific results prepared in advance. I’ve actually got 3 prepped for each, though that’s a bit of excess on my part. Regardless of what is rolled, the prepared results are meant either to create an opportunity for the players to exploit, or a crisis they need to respond to. Whether the opportunity or crisis is better dealt with during the Domain or Adventure phase is often open to interpretation.

  1. Natural Disaster (Example: The Dome’s water systems hit a serious snag. Low areas of the Dome are under 2d12 inches of water. This goes up by 2d12 each week until fixed. Every faction’s Food is reduced by 2 for every foot of water.)
  2. Major Figure Exits Public Life (Usually deaths, but occasionally exile or imprisonment) (Example: Susan Quar, narcotics dealer of note and longtime supplier for all the party’s needs, has been killed. The party will need to make new arrangements.)
  3. Opposed Faction Receives Unexpected Boon (Example: A randomly determined enemy faction discovers an abandoned missile silo in their territory. They keep this very hush-hush, but whispers of excited activity in the area reach the party’s ears. Check upcoming faction actions for that faction. Could any of them be enhanced with a missile?)
  4. Wizard or Dragon Shit (Example: Madam Crucifixion attempted to ambush Dr. Guillotine. She knew just where to go. The battle was brutal. Both survived, and both retreated severely depleted in resources to places where they could hunker down. You could easily identify a few locations to raid while they’re laid up, though if they are able to divine who did it they’d certainly retaliate. Alternatively, you could attempt to destroy one of them in their weakened state. The two are probably the most powerful wizards still living in the Dome (excluding inscrutable Penelope).)
  5. Sub-Faction Action (While the Dome’s major factions all regularly get opportunities to act, this result allows smaller groups to occasionally be at the center of Domewide issues.) (Example: Happy Worm Cultists scavenge food from the players faction. 1 Fewer food this Domain turn. They are well-liked by those who know them, so using force to stop them from eating in order to maintain your taxes would require a roll on the bad reputation table.)
  6. One Additional Faction Action This Session (See Factions Actions below)
  7. Public Need Arises in the Party’s Territory (Example: d4 of the party’s Weorods have been taking undue liberties. Stealing, getting drunk and violent, that sorta thing. Tensions are rising to the point that there are murmurings that large scale violence may break out.)
  8. Public Discovery Made (Example: An archive of “I can haz cheezeburger” memes is discovered online, and spreads rapidly around the Dome. People are quoting it constantly, and it will briefly serve as a sort of universal language of friendliness, allowing the communication of basic ideas outside normal language bounds. After the next Haven Turn everyone will be sick of it and uttering them will probably be regarded as a hostile action.)
  9. Party’s Alliances or Experts are Threatened (Example: The party’s chief engineer recently refused a strange offer to leave your employ and go work for someone else. Now she’s receiving extortionate texts demanding she leak secrets. She won’t reveal what she’s being extorted with, but if you don’t do something about it she’s going to have to give in to the extortion.)
  10. Party’s Tools or Programs are Threatened (Example: Ace Reporter Willie Kypho (formerly of Cult Quarterly) drops the story that the party controls the majority of the Dome’s weather control systems. Why hasn’t this information been shared, or this resource been put to the public good? The party needs to make some response or roll on the bad reputation table.)
  11. Factionogenesis (Example: Duck Folk seize 2d6 blocks of territory in a random location. Call it Duckburg.)

3 — Update Progress Bars

“Progress Bars” being my cheeky re-naming of Clocks. This somewhat tedious-yet-vital activity goes between two more interesting activities in the hopes the players don’t drift too far while I do a bit of bookkeeping. On occasion, clocks will reach a hiccup that I secretly scheduled when the clock was set. It still advances by 1 for this session, but won’t be able to progress any further until some issue is resolved. Thus, if the party are on the ball and get it resolved during this session, they won’t lose any time.

Robed cultists hold a platform on their shoulders, on which rests a large head with a domineering expression. Robots flank the cultists on either side. Taken from Thundarr the Barbarian.

4 — Faction Actions

At present there are 10 major factions in ORWA, aside from the players’ own. Each has their own agenda, and a secret schedule of 3 prepared actions they will take in pursuit of it. When the session reaches this point I call on two players (or three, if a 7 was rolled for the World Event) to roll a d10 to determine which factions advance their agendas this month. Like the World Events these are meant to either create an opportunity for the players to exploit, or a crisis they need to respond to, though sometimes they’re just clues about something big that’s coming in the future that the party may wish to prepare for.

Some examples of recent Faction Actions in ORWA:

  • Pamphlets are distributed to the Akiovashan Faithful, who are set the task of scouring the Dome for a certain room. The pamphlet is very general and mostly pictorial. (Literacy isn’t widespread). For those in-the-know, they’re clearly looking for the Dome’s environmental control systems. Secretly, the party is in possession of several of these. Handing one or more over to the Akiovashans would be massively beneficial to your relationship with that faction. If you don’t want them to find it, you may want to take steps to hinder their search.
  • A large number of “former” soldiers of The Redstone Lords request safe passage through the party’s territory. They’re traveling to the Lords of Light territory to “learn the LoL’s advanced farming techniques, so they can use their strength to feed their people.” Your intelligence reports suggest the Redstone Lords’ disarmament is a ruse, but refusing passage outright would be a very bad move from a public relations perspective.
  • The Hell’s Tenants performed a major raid in Team Gopher’s territory. A hole opened up in the ground, and dozens of mangled horn-headed people emerged, dragging dozens more back down the hole with them. Pursuit was attempted, but failed. The tunnels are too labyrinthine. What are they doing with all of these captives?

5 — Player Actions

Finally, the group takes on the role of their faction’s leadership, with all its resources at their disposal. Between the World Events, the Faction Actions, and any hiccups in the party’s Progress Bars, there ought to be a number of fresh hooks for the party to respond to. I also maintain a list of open hooks left over from previous sessions in case additional prompts are needed, though my aim is that some space is left in most sessions for the group to seize the initiative for themselves.

The group is allowed to pursue a number of goals equal to the number of players present, with each player acting as caller in turn. They do not control any particular characters at this stage. Their own PCs are currently low-level grunts who aren’t important enough to be consulted on matters of policy.

I’ve adopted this unusual form because the mode of play is unfamiliar. There was a tendency early in the experiment for players to use the Domain Phase to support their characters in the Adventure Phase, whereas my goal is to encourage the exact opposite behavior. I want to foster a group who approaches the game as a domain-level problem, and wields their adventuring PCs as tools in pursuit of domain-level goals. Additionally, positioning each player as a caller has been helpful for supporting players who aren’t able to play consistently and don’t fully grok what’s going on. Each player can cede as much or as little control as they want to the rest of the group during their turn at caller.

The group’s faction has a character sheet listing its resources, and there are mechanics for 8 codified actions:

  • Recruit (Gain Human Resources, so long as the faction has enough food to support them.)
  • Diplomacy (Make requests of another faction. What is possible depends greatly on existing diplomatic relations.)
  • Propagandize (Attempt to influence public opinion.)
  • R&D (Set a team of experts to solving a complicated problem, or developing something new.)
  • Public Works (Set a team of workers to solve a simple problem, or build something standard.)
  • Establish Institution (Create an ongoing program, which will be an ongoing drain on resources)
  • Military (Direct the faction’s armies.)
  • Give Quest (Send spies, assassins, and adventurers to accomplish specific goals.)

The breadth of action allowed by “pursing a goal” is left intentionally vague at the moment. I’m searching for a balance between giving each player a satisfying turn at the helm, without allowing the scope of everyone’s turns to balloon into something unmanageable. Most of the time a single action is sufficient for pursuing a goal. There are cases, though, where one action leads directly into another so smoothly that it would be disruptive to cut off the turn. For example, there was a recent turn in which a player organized a counter-attack to reclaim some seized territory [Military], then used footage of the event to convince several other factions [Diplomacy] to join them in issuing a public condemnation of the original attack [Propaganda].

What I may do in the future is create a mechanic whereby the length of each action can be determined, then allow each player to serve as caller for one month’s worth of actions.

A burning sun dominates the frame, looming over a ruined city. A trio of youths stand together in the foreground, the city far behind them. Cover of the novel "Dhalgren."

Adventure Phase

Unlike the Domain Phase, the Adventure Phase is not played in its entirety each session. On average it takes between two and four sessions to get all the way through the Adventure Phase’s procedure. The action pauses when it’s time for the session to end, then picks up where we left off once the Adventure Phase resumes in the next session. This means the Domain and Adventure Phases are usually a little out of sync with one another, existing on a floating timescale where one advances rigidly 1 month each session, and the other phase can spend half a dozen sessions getting through a single day. This may initially seem confusing, but the solution is simple: just don’t think about it. Strict time records must not be kept.

1 — Choose a Mission

When starting a fresh Adventure Phase, the group needs to decide what they’re going to do. They can personally address any of the issues raised during the Domain Phase, acting as a commando team or diplomatic delegation for their faction. Alternately, they can ignore the hooks and attempt to take the initiative on behalf of their domain, perhaps by raiding a faction they dislike, or doing a favor for one of their allies. They can also ignore domain level concerns entirely, and spend this Adventure Phase selfishly seeking personal wealth and power. Experience points in ORWA can only be earned by donating money into the faction’s coffers (1 donated credit card = 1 experience point / 1 level gained = 1 unit of funds usable in the Domain Phase), so even this purely selfish pursuit has the party acting in their faction’s interests.

Generally I will reiterate the most obvious hooks that are on the table here, and ask the party what they want to do. If there isn’t a clear consensus, I’ll randomly appoint one of the players as Party Leader, and ask them to set the goal. (I then note who has been party leader, and they won’t be in the running again unless everyone else present has been leader an equal number of times.)

2 — Preparation

Before setting out from the safety of the walled citadel of their faction, the party has an opportunity to alter their equipment loadout, recruit hirelings, make arrangements with allies, or pursue information. Because this is a setting in which cell phones are ubiquitous, the party can accomplish quite a bit by calling ahead to some friendly NPCs.

3 — Travel

Regardless of what goal the party is pursuing, part of that pursuit will involve travel. ORWA has four entirely different mechanics for handling this, though each share a single procedure:

  1. The destination is set.
  2. The referee determines how many hours (or days, or weeks) the journey will take, and how many encounter checks will result. (# of encounter checks is rounded up!)
  3. The players are called upon one by one to roll a d6, with results determined according to which mode of travel they’re in.
  4. The players resolve the encounter to their satisfaction.
  5. If this mode of travel depends on resources, check to see if they ought to be depleted.
  6. Return to c, and repeat the process from there until the party reaches their destination.

The various forms of travel available to the party are:

Over the surface of Mars. Encounters are rolled less frequently and occur less often in this sprawling red desert. There are locations to find and creatures to contend with, but the greatest danger is the environment. Within the Dome there’s food vendors on every other street, and a climate automatically controlled for human comfort. Outside, the characters must carry enough food to get wherever they’re going and back again, and be prepared for the extreme heat of the day and extreme cold of the night. Note that before traveling over the surface, the party would need to travel through the Dome to one of its exits.

Into Space. One of the party’s key resources is a fixed portal between their walled citadel inside the Dome, and a space station in geosynchronous orbit above the Dome. There’s a space ship docked at the station which the party can use to travel into space. The thing is a 500 year old freight hauling vessel which moves about as quickly as our own modern space ships do. It also runs on a form of solid fuel which the party currently has no means of acquiring more of, so resource management is critically important. Encounters are quite rare in space, though. It’s even more barren than the surface of mars.

Through the Sewers. A labyrinth accessible from manhole covers in the Dome’s streets. The sewers extend further down into the interior of Mars than any player has yet ventured. This is not a mapped space, but rather a Flux which connects both to mapped spaces and to other Fluxes. (Flux Space is another idea I must revisit soon!) I allow players to use the sewers to travel between any two points on the surface. It requires 1 encounter roll more than if they’d taken the direct path through the Dome’s streets, but by traveling in the sewers the players are able to avoid dense crowds of people and factional authorities. Sewer encounters are a couple notches weirder and more deadly than the ones typically faced on the surface.

Through the Dome. By far the most common mode of getting where the party needs to go, since the Dome is where people live and thus where most things happen. There’s no supply-based resource depletion to worry about when traveling through the Dome, since the party is presumably never far from a vendor that sells any basic material they might need. However the Dome is dense with encounters and impediments of every sort, which will tax the party’s less easily replenished resources, like their hit points and saving throws. Of course they can always find somewhere that’ll rent them a bed for a day or two, but such rest gives their goal time to become more complicated.

4 — Exploration

Depending on the player’s goals, the destination they’re traveling to is probably either a Dungeon, or a Neighborhood.

Two explorers have just walked into an apartment, only to find the floor split, the furniture askew, and a deadly hole in the floor. Taken from the Cowboy Bebop anime.

Dungeon Exploration

My dungeon exploration procedure is pretty standard.

  1. The referee describes the party’s current environment.
  2. The party, acting as a group, uses one Exploration Turn to investigate the space they’re in, or move to a different space. If one member announces their intent to take individual action (i.e., hacking a computer), I check in with everyone else in the group to see how their characters spend that same block of time.
  3. The referee relays new information to the party, such as the results of their investigation, or the success/failure of their actions.
  4. After a-c have cycled 3 times, the referee calls on one player to roll the Encounter Die:
    1. Encounter surprises the party.
    2. Party gets the drop on an encounter.
    3. Impediment (i.e., a minor collapse occurs)
    4. Local Effect (i.e., if the dungeon has a unique function, that function occurs.)
    5. Clue. (Either for the next encounter, or to the location of some treasure, etc.)
    6. NPC Chatter
  5. The party resolves the results of the encounter roll, after which the procedure resets. Repeat until the party escapes the dungeon.
An explorer of the apocalyptic wasteland comes across a medium-sized town. A wall of junked cars blocks easy entrance. A hazy smoke lies low over the town. Taken from Fallout 1, the video game.

Neighborhood Exploration

Neighborhoods are not inherently hostile to being navigated the way dungeons are. By definition they are inhabited by large groups of people who have some reasonable expectation of moving around their neighborhood with relative safety. The party doesn’t need to worry about traps, doesn’t need maps, and can’t solve their problems with violence so easily. Rather, the challenge of adventuring in a neighborhood is social. Can you strike up a conversation with a shopkeep and convince her to tell you about the local tough’s watering hole? Can you impress the toughs enough that they’ll tell you where you can find the mercenary you’re after? (Credit to Ava of Errant & Permanent Cranial Damage for this idea!)

Neighborhoods ARE inherently hostile to outsiders, and so it’s important to determine whether or not the party will be clocked as outsiders. Do they speak the local dialect? Are their clothes within the range of fashions that are normal here? Are their hands as calloused, or as soft, as other folks? Each neighborhood has a few key features common to its residents. If most of the party shares these features, the neighborhood will yield to them. If most of the party looks like they don’t belong here, the neighborhood will resist them. (Credit to Ty of Mindstorm for this idea!)

My neighborhood procedure goes like this:

  1. Does the majority of the party share the key features of this community?
  2. Where do they want to begin their inquiry?
    • Going to a local official opens the party to greater scrutiny, but could provide them with greater resources.
    • Merchants are always willing to talk with outsiders, but you’ve got to spend money to get their attention.
    • Bar patrons are often open to striking up a conversation with someone who buys them a drink.
    • Random people on the street are always an option, but most folk don’t love being approached by randos.
  3. After the conversation is resolved, where does the party go next? (Did they learn something they can act on, or do they need to continue searching for their first clue?)
  4. As they travel to their next neighborhood location, the referee calls on one player to roll the Encounter Die:
Party Obviously OutsidersEncounter RollParty Blends In
Locals watch you face danger.1. Encounter Unusual DangerPeople try to help you.
Party shaken down or threatened.2. Encounter a Local ToughThe toughs nod, and pass by.
Your plight is ignored.3. Physical ImpedimentPeople let you know how to bypass it.
4. Local Effect
5. Clue
Your own hirelings.6. NPC ChatterA helpful local appears.
  1. The party arrives at their destination and may continue their inquiry in a new location. Repeat c, d, & e until the adventure is complete.

5 — Return Home

Ideally this should be handled with exactly the same travel procedure as before. Usually I enforce this. Occasionally, doing so would create an awkward break in the Adventure Phrase. One where the Session needs to end in 10 minutes, and the journey home will take 40 minutes. Too long to extend the session for, but an annoyingly short amount of play to resolve next session. When this happens I often handwave the travel home. I do very much prefer to play through it properly most of the time, though.

A visually-busy scene. Outdoors, with a staircase and structures built entirely out of garbage. A photograph of the Cathedral of Trash in Austin Texas.

6 — Haven Turn

The length of a Haven Turn is “however long is necessary for the Adventure Phase to catch up with the Domain Phase on the calendar.” Most of the stuff I once used Haven Turns for has been subsumed into the Domain Phase, with the exception of character downtime. The procedure is fairly brisk:

  1. Hit Points & Saving Throws return to their baseline values. Magic Users may swap their memorized spells. Characters who sacrificed their armor may replace it.
  2. Players may donate as much of their money as they like into their faction’s coffers, gaining xp equal to that amount. (Characters with debt must pay equal amounts towards their debt)
  3. Each player is asked in turn how their character spends the downtime. A non-exhaustive list of options:
    • Relaxation. The character starts next adventure with 1 Temporary Hit Point per level.
    • Research. The character does a deep dive, and may uncover the answers to 3 questions. (Some information may require them to have a specific source of knowledge to dive into.)
    • Relationship Development. Make a social roll to improve your relationship with a certain NPC.
    • Crafting. Describe an object you’d like to make, and make a skill check to build it.
    • Spell Creation. The player writes the first draft of the spell. The referee writes the final draft.
    • Solo Quest. The character pursues a personal goal which would perhaps be too much of a distraction for them to drag the rest of the party along for. The player sets one specific goal which must be approved by the referee, then rolls 2d6:
      • 2. Failure, begin the next Adventure Phase with half HP and a Saving Throw of 15.
      • 3-5. Failure, begin next Adventure with -1hp per level, and a Saving Throw of 13.
      • 6-8. Success, begin next Adventure with -1hp per level, and a Saving Throw of 13
      • 9-11. Success, begin next adventure with -1hp.
      • 12. Success, no injuries, and you also brought home cash treasure worth 200cc per level!

Post Session

Before each session starts I make a copy of my session report template, which I fill out as we play. After the session (immediately if possible) I flesh out the details into a full session report. My goal with these is not to write compelling reading—I’ve never enjoyed reading session reports, and only started sharing mine by request. The purpose of my play reports is as reference material. It’s handy to be able to type in the name of an NPC and immediately see all their appearances in the game. Frequently I’m able to use it when one of the players can’t find their notes about how one of their magic items works. Just recently it was useful when I started keeping a list of open hooks for Domain Actions. That wasn’t something I had been tracking, but it was simple to look over all the hooks I’d given out and write down the ones that would still be open.

One great failing of my approach is that I over-write my session reports. They don’t need to be anywhere near as long and detailed as they are. This is a failing in my technique that I’ve never quite managed to fix, but I’m sure others could get the same benefits with less effort.

At the bottom of my recap template are a set of questions to consider. I use these to write out a list of everything I want to accomplish before the next session:

  • What needs to be restocked? (At a minimum, one of the world events and two of the Faction Actions. Usually there will be encounters that got used up as well.)
  • Does anyone need to be added to Recurring Characters? (Per my Encounter Table method. Were any NPCs fun enough that I want to see them again?)
  • Who did the characters wrong? (And more importantly: what are they going to do about it? Should they be added to the consequences table, or should a whole adventure be planned around their revenge?)
  • Does anyone owe the party a favor? (Similar to the above: what are they going to do about it?)
  • What Hooks should be added for player actions during the domain phase? (Did anything crop up during this session that players may want to be reminded of?)
  • What tools would help the rough parts of this session work better? (Were the players confused at any point? Was I unable to adjudicate a situation gracefully? Could it be smoothed out with a new procedure, mechanic, or table?)

Over the course of the two weeks between each session I work my way through the list, restocking and revising what is needed.

As of today, those are the procedures I use for running On a Red World Alone. Though, the next session is coming up very shortly now, so by the time you read this it’s very likely something will have changed somewhere.

Photo of my ORWA to-do list. Many items are scratched out, but the ones which haven't yet been crossed off are: Dungeon Impediments, Local Effects, Codify Haven Turn Procedures Generally Better, Weorod How Many Can be used in a battle? Progress bar what does "talk to Needletooth jack" spell mean? What are all 27 of the space hulks in orbit? Reactions to the party's domain actions? Domain level PCs? How do the akiovashans alter their plans? Review domain phases past: what should be different in the world and encounter tables? Are consequences working well? Occurring often enough? World events: review! Neighborhood generator. Movement ought to be reorganized into PROCEDURE! A hammer and a pen laying across the paper obscure the rest of the text.

Additional Reading About Procedures

Proceduralism, by Brendan S.
Doctrines of Proceduralism, by Brendan S.
Proceduralism, by Gus L.
Errant Design Deep Dive #2: Core Procedures, by Ava Islam
The Rhythm of Procedure, by Retired Adventurer
Theoretical & Practical Proceduralism, by Marcia
Loops, by Emmy
What Even Is a “Procedure”? by Prismatic Wasteland
The Basic Procedure of the OSR, by Prismatic Wasteland

Miscellaneous References

Meet the New Boss: Some Thoughts on Domain Level Play, by Joseph Manola. (Also recorded as Episode 108 of Blogs on Tape)
A Fracture in Old School Philosophy: Barbarian or King?, by Dwiz
I’m Getting Too High Level For This Shit, by Nick LS Whelan (A short post which may add some additional useful context to the ideas discussed above).
Running Domain Play as a Carousing Table, by Scrap Princess
AD&D’s Domain Game, by Chris Kutalik

Better Not Die, ‘cuz PCs Don’t Go To Heaven

Oversaturated screenshot of Meryl Strife from the Playstation 1 Metal Gear Solid game, lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Text over the image reads "Time to roll a new character. Unless…?"

When your character drops to 0 hit points1 in On A Red World Alone, two things happen:

  1. You must roll on the permanent injury table.
  2. I remind you that the next hit will kill you dead.

That’s it. The character’s ability to take actions is not inhibited in any way beyond their specific injury, and their own desire to avoid character death. This always surprises and slightly confuses new players, who expect having no hit points to restrict their options more severely. It even surprises and confuses old players who haven’t been at 0 hit points in awhile. (Which, as an inattentive player myself, I totally understand.)

I’ve been running games this way for many years now, because it creates an interesting choice: What risks are you willing to take when you’re one knuckle sandwich away from certain death? To me that choice is made so much less interesting if you’re also inhibited by moving at half speed, or rolling with disadvantage, or especially if the only action you’re allowed to take is “roll to stop bleeding.”

If the injured character escapes immediate danger, they are faced with another interesting choice: do they move to the back rank of the party and continue on their quest, or do they find somewhere to hunker down and heal? Healing requires 8 hours of rest2, in which time whatever task they’re pursuing will definitely become more challenging in some way. Doors will be locked, traps will be laid, their enemies will be reinforced, or rival bands of plunderers will arrive to compete for loot.

1 I don’t fuck with negative hit points. If you’ve got 3hp, taking 3 damage and taking 30 damage have identical results. I have toyed with the idea of a catastrophic injury rule where damage that would reduce you to -10 is instantly lethal, but at present I’m not doing that.

2 You can restore 1hp by finding a corner to hide in for 8 hours. Or, if you’re fortunate enough to rest somewhere with a bed, food, and leisure activities, you may roll your hit die to determine how many hp you recover.

Roll on the Permanent Injury Table

My permanent injury table is more bark than bite, since only half its results are permanent.

  1. Gain a cool scar. Roll a new Boon. (In games other than ORWA, I replace this with +1 to a random Ability Score.)
  2. In shock. Automatically fail saving throws for the rest of the session.
  3. The most precious item the character has with them is destroyed.
  4. Roll a die type equal to half your HD (d6 HD -> roll d3). Reduce your maximum HP by the result.
  5. A randomly determined skill is reduced by 1 rank. (In games other than ORWA, I replace this with -1 to a random Ability Score.)
  6. Severe bodily trauma. Your (1-2: arm, 3-4: leg, 5: eye, 6: lung, 7: kidney, 8: face) is destroyed.

I believe these entries are fairly clear, though the last one may require a bit of additional explanation.

Losing an arm prevents a character from holding two things, losing a leg prevents them from standing or moving normally. In both cases I’d roll a d% to see how much of the limb was destroyed. Losing an eye penalizes their ability to aim. Losing a lung penalizes endurance. Losing a kidney is my catch-all for digestive organs and makes them vulnerable to poisons. Lungs and kidneys are both particularly bad if you happen to lose them twice, since you can’t be alive anymore. Having one’s face destroyed penalizes social rolls.

You could get a lot more granular with different bits of the body, and the disabilities that would result from their destruction. For many years I used a huge table with over 200 grisly entries, and enjoyed it very much. I only switched to this because a smaller table is easier to keep at hand and thus faster to use. And until recently I included the possibility for characters to lose their ability to talk, smell, or hear, but I personally find those conditions challenging to enforce at the table, and so have opted to remove them.

In all cases, the nature of the injury can be tailored to whatever caused it. A swinging sword, a falling rock, a venomous bite, and a blast of fire can all destroy a person’s arm, but the particulars will differ.

Death

A character at 0 who takes another point of damage is dead. Depending on the method of death I may allow them some brave last words, or a spiteful final riposte, but then it’s time to roll a new character. Unless…?

On a Red World Alone is set in what I call a Saturday Morning SciFi milieu. Characters returning from the dead in some horrible altered form is a genre staple that I cannot deny to my players. So long as a dead character’s body isn’t completely obliterated, and their friends are able to recover it, then the player may opt to revive their character as either a Cyborg, an Undead, or a Mutant.

Cyborg resurrection has the fewest strings attached if you happen to be absurdly wealthy. For the low-low price of 9000cc + 1000cc/level, the finest scientific minds on apocalyptic mars will replace your most mangled body parts with chrome. If you don’t happen to be absurdly wealthy, worry not! The billing department has already filed the paperwork to garnish half your XP gain until the debt is paid.

Undead resurrection is a bit of a melodramatic term. Sure, your soul was forced back into its fleshy husk by the power of eldritch sorcery which makes you repellent in the eyes of God. But your heart pumps blood, your lungs pull in air, and you don’t smell any worse than you used to. To all appearances you look as good as if you’d never died at all, but necromancers must be paid—and they place little value on plastic. Choosing Undead resurrection places the resurrected under a Geas they must complete. The nature of the Geas will depend on the goals of the magician who performed the resurrection. A wizard’s goals are rarely wholesome.

Mutant resurrection is a gamble. Somewhat less than the finest scientific minds on apocalyptic mars will blast your corpse with strange radiation, pump it full of neon colored goop, and allow stray animals to bite it. On the upside: it does bring you back to life on the cheap. On the downside: you’ve developed a disadvantageous mutation. The process by which I manage this in my own game involves a d1000 table and a series of mental filters, neither of which can reasonably be shared here. Instead, here’s a table of d12 examples:

  1. Allergic to Silver. Can’t touch it, and takes extra damage from it.
  2. A gross little face is growing from where the wound was. It says rude things to people.
  3. Skin glows very slightly. Not enough to see by, but enough to make it impossible to hide in darkness.
  4. Mutant grows tight strands between fingers, hindering their manual dexterity. Reduce a finger-dependent skill by 1 rank.
  5. Nose becomes large and hypersensitive. Must make a saving throw to avoid fleeing from strong smells.
  6. Legs shrink. Normal movement rate is reduced by 25%.
  7. If this mutant touches a wounded person, they absorb that person’s damage. They cannot control this ability, and cloth clothing isn’t enough to prevent touching.
  8. The mutant’s body produces a stone which, if destroyed, instantly kills the mutant. The inverse is not true: the stone being secure does not prevent the mutant from any harm.
  9. The mutant has absolutely no sense of direction. They cannot “go back the way they came” if they’re alone, and will fail any navigation checks.
  10. The mutant is profoundly unpleasant to talk to. Try as they might, they’re always going to say stuff that’s boring, mean, or offensive. -1 on social checks.
  11. Skin flakes off constantly, leaving an easy-to-follow trail wherever they go.
  12. Weak little baby lungs prevent this mutant from holding their breath at all, for any reason.

In conclusion

A stranger once told me that they’d heard of my games through one of my players, and reported that this player’s favorite thing about playing with me is that death feels like an ever-present risk. This surprised me. It is lovely to know my players speak well of me, but I don’t think of my games as being particularly deadly. Certainly I don’t intervene to prevent death from happening if that’s how the player’s choices and the luck of the dice land, but in practice PC death doesn’t happen often. Most of this post has been about the ways players can survive when they ought to have died!

I think the operative word in this second-hand performance review is “feels.” Death feels like an ever-present risk in my games, because when players get close to it the game changes. They’re faced with decisions that have clear life-or-death stakes, and if they manage to survive the experience still leaves its mark on them.

Structuring Encounter Tables, Amended & Restated

A screenshot from Final Fantasy VIII/8. Quistis, Squall, and Rinoa face a mechanized lizard creature in a random battle. The words "SO RANDOM" are printed on top of the image.

This post is an update to my 2017 essay “Structuring Encounter Tables.” It’s intended to replace that earlier version, and thus includes a bit of self-plagiarism.

In order for an environment to feel dangerously alive it must intrude on the player’s desired activities. For any activity in my game, there are increments of fictional time which require the players to roll the Event Die. Each face of the Event Die corresponds to something, but the most complex and important result is an Encounter, which then calls for a roll on my Encounter Table.

All my encounter tables are 2d6 tables1. The bell curve allows me to vary the likelihood of different encounters. The ones that are most likely can be a little mundane, so that even as they intrude on the player’s desires they also serve to establish what is normal in this place. The less frequent encounters can be the zanier stuff that’s fun to write, but would make the game feel disjointed if they were omnipresent.

1 The methods I describe here could easily be adapted for use a 2d4 or a 2d8. I have occasionally used 2d4 myself when I was running smaller campaigns with fewer expected sessions. In general, though, I find that 2d4 doesn’t give me enough room for all the variety I like to pack into a table. Conversely, 2d8 tables are too big. They take too much effort to write, and the odds of uncommon results occurring are too diminishingly remote for my preference.

2 is always a dragon

Because all of our games could use more dragons in them. The game is called “Dungeons & Dragons,” yet in my experience, the appearances of dragons end up being exceedingly rare when contrasted with how often dungeons show up. They don’t need to be these hulking colossal beasts capable of stepping on PCs as though they were ants. They don’t need to be impossible to defeat, so long as they’re scary. A lizard the size of a car with 8 more hit dice than that party’s average, multiple attacks each around, and a big breath weapon is more than enough.

When my players encounter a dragon there’s a 1-in-3 chance that it’s hungry and wants to gobble them up. In this mood a dragon can’t be reasoned with, you’ve got to fight or flee. The other 2/3rds of the time the dragon will simply demand tribute from anyone who crosses its path. Anyone who refuses to pay tribute is gobbled up on principal as a warning to people who think they’re allowed to say ‘no’ to a dragon. Each of my dragons has a preferred form of tribute (perhaps unique books or fancy bottles of booze) but will also accept money of a certain amount per person.

12 is always a wizard

Because all of our games could use more wizards in them. Because wizards are the coolest, fuck you wizard haters. A wizard doesn’t need a complete spell list and inventory of magic items. All they need is the ability to do something really weird and scary, and an escape plan. Wizards know they’ve got a d4 hit die, so they’ve always got an escape plan.

Wizards, being a few steps closer to humanity than dragons, are slightly less likely to want to eat people. Like all my encounters, they’ll be pursuing some specific activity when the party meets them—though because they’re wizards that activity may be completely inscrutable. Capable-looking passers by may find themselves press-ganged into doing something strange, and a lucky party may earn a boon. Though, it’s just as likely that what a wizard wants is something the party would never willingly give up. “The foot of a traveler” is a desirable component for certain spells.

My private rule is that it’s not possible for the party to become friends with a wizard, because wizards do not have friends. Wizards divide people into three categories: people they hate, people who are useful, and people who are beneath their notice. That third group is definitely the safest one to be in.

Wizards and Dragons are each factions of one. They’re individuals with enough personal power that they don’t have to worry about rules or territories. They usually have a few minions, but they control them at their whims rather than by any formalized structure. When encountering either of these creatures the party should be in great personal danger, but clever play could also bring them great advantage. If a wizard or dragon is slain, there are consequences. Allegiances shift, power vacuums appear and are filled, and valuable treasure hoards are left without their most powerful guardians.

7 is usually Recurring Characters.

I maintain a separate list of these, populated with NPCs the party has had some fun dealings with but who would not otherwise have any reason to recur. I rotate people off that list whenever this result causes them to appear, then rotate them back on if the list ever gets too small. In most other circumstances I prefer the purer randomness of a creature that can appear over and over again while some other creatures never do. For recurring characters though, who are mostly friendly to the party, that has often felt tedious to me. It’s fun bumping into an old friend in the grocery store. It’s awkward when you keep bumping into them in every aisle.

The Major Half of the table

8, 9, 10, and 11 are for universal threats. Stuff that could appear anywhere and any time without being out of place. The further they get from 7, the more wild they can be. So while 8 might be a rabid dog or a hungry bandit, 11 is going to be something like a void vampire or a spell-starved lich.

The Minor Half of the table

6, 5, 4, and 3 are for threats tied to specific locations. In On a Red World Alone that usually refers to the factional territories the party must travel through in order to get anywhere in the Dome, but it might also mean levels of a dungeon, regional biomes, depth beneath the surface of the sea, etc. Whatever boundaries are important for the players to understand in your setting, you can help emphasize them with this. On one side of a boundary the players fight goblins, on the other they fight flying devil sharks with tornado breath weapons.

Thus my encounter table ends up looking like this:

  1. Roll a Dragon
  2. [Territory]
  3. [Territory]
  4. [Territory]
  5. [Territory]
  6. Roll a Recurring Character
  7. Six giant slugs demanding taxes in the name of the slug king. Who the hell is the slug king?
  8. Starving Dire Bear, recently escaped from an abandoned moleman zoo deep underground.
  9. 21 Gnomes (the ideal number). A numerological cult. They’re insulted by the number of buckles on the party’s clothes.
  10. A talking book that is horny to be read from. It makes things weird right away. (The text is about the history of obelisks).
  11. Roll a Wizard

Kobold Territory

  1. The party spots a pit trap. They’re supposed to spot it. There are 7 kobolds waiting to ambush them as they edge around it.
  2. 17 goblins in full armor, here to raid their kobold foes, and willing to raid anyone else they meet.
  3. A kobold merchant traveling to the lands of the slug king to trade. Has a minotaur bodyguard, and doesn’t trust outsiders.
  4. 4 young Kobold bravos, all drunk, looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness.

Boneboy Territory

  1. A great big rolling skull that can shoot fire out its eyes. Trying to win a marathon race. Would be furious if anyone delayed them even a moment.
  2. A giant serpent. Unseen are 3 boneboy hunters stalking the serpent, who may ambush the party if their encounter with the serpent presents a useful advantage.
  3. A whole company of boneboys (24!) out on marching maneuvers. They’re raw recruits. This is their first day. All but their commander will panic at first sight of the enemy.
  4. 2 boneboy warriors sitting in a small camp, polishing one another’s bones. They will be angry and embarrassed to be discovered.

By breaking the table down this way, generating 11 options becomes a much more manageable task. And adding a new location only requires generating 4 new options, rather than a whole new table. So the only task left is to actually fill the table, and the question becomes: what makes a good encounter table entry? First I ought to specify that for my purposes, an encounter is (almost) always an agent of some sort. An NPC, animal, or monster. I’ve got other tools for managing random locations or environmental hazards. Encounters are things that have their own desires and the ability to pursue them.

The first step is just to come up with something that feels cool to me. It’s easier to turn a weak encounter into a strong encounter than it is to conjure a strong encounter fully formed in my imagination. I pull ideas from anywhere. If I’m on the Minor Half of the table I try to stick to something that represents the factions and situations of the region, but otherwise I let my imagination roam widely and trust that I’ll figure out how to make it fit during play. Sometimes I’m fired by the sort of creative energy that drives me to invent a unique monster, other times I just flip through one of the monster manuals I’ve got on my shelves and pick out the first thing that looks fun. Once I’ve got everything down in a way that interests me, then I can go back over the table to figure out if the entries meet the criteria of being a good encounter. There are two wrinkles that each encounter needs in order for me to be satisfied that I’ll be able to run it quickly at the table.

Wrinkle 1

All of my Encounters are doing something specific. Even if they’re a group of 2d6 generic mooks, they need to be up to something when the party encounter them. For this I wrote a “What is the Encounter Doing” table. My original intent was to roll during play, in conjunction with rolling the encounter. In practice that slowed down play too much, so I’ve taken to using it during session prep, and its been a delight having those details at my fingertips when I run. Roll a d30 for intelligent creatures, and a d12 for animal creatures.

  1. Lost
  2. Hurt
  3. Trapped
  4. Sleeping
  5. Eating
  6. Sick
  7. Tracking Prey
  8. Lying in Ambush
  9. Mating Behavior
  10. Starving
  11. Returning Home
  12. Fleeing
  13. Plotting
  14. Holding Captives
  15. Scavenging
  16. Building a Camp
  17. Demolishing
  18. Doing drugs or drinking
  19. Artistic pursuits
  20. Spying
  21. Committing a crime
  22. Searching
  23. Religious ritual
  24. Setting, putting out, or fleeing a fire
  25. Weeping
  26. Excreting2
  27. Bathing
  28. Socializing
  29. Gloating
  30. Something that isn’t on this table.3

2 “Why is this in the intelligent creatures only part of the table?” I hear you ask. Because excreting NPCs are only interesting if it means they can experience shame.
3 For a table that is meant to be re-used over and over again, it’s nice to have something that forces me to reexamine it from time to time.

Wrinkle 2

At this point an encounter often doesn’t need further tweaking. However, I’ve noticed a bad tendency in myself towards encounters that don’t demand the party’s attention. I construct something that I’d be interested in engaging with for its own sake, but when I describe it to my players they just say “Alright, we keep going.” And that’s…fine. Ignoring an encounter ought to be possible sometimes, but it shouldn’t be quite so simple. Encounters ought to intrude on the players attentions more than that. Ignoring them is possible, but doing so ought to be an interesting choice with interesting consequences.

So in my final pass over an encounter I ensure that the majority of them will make some undesirable demand on the player’s attention. This can mean defending themselves from violence, or slander; figuring out how to soothe an aggrieved person, how to cope with a stolen item, or even just deciding whether or not they want to stand by while those things are happening to a sympathetic victim right in front of them.

One exception to this guideline are the Recurring Characters, because their purpose is different. Most encounters are meant to give the party little problems to solve. Recurring characters are meant to give the world a sense of history and interconnectivity. When you meet someone interesting, you might bump into them again. Usually these are friendly characters, since antagonistic character recur in other ways that will present themselves more forcefully. (i.e. plotting elaborate revenges against the party). That being said, recurring characters still ought to invite the party’s attention in some other way. Maybe they need money, or they have a quest to offer, or they’re running a shop and have something to sell. They may even have a gift for the party.

Restocking

Restocking is an essential and constant process when each entry is as specific as I’ve described. I don’t want to understate how burdensome that can be: it does mean I spend time between every single session going back to these tables and adding to them. I’ve managed to make that practice into a routine which I have not yet fallen behind on. I genuinely find it to be the easiest form of inter-session prep I’ve ever committed myself to, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for preferring somewhat more generic and reusable encounters in order to save themselves that constant effort.

Two things make Restocking easier. The first is that, on occasions when I have more ideas than I need, I make sure to record those ideas under the encounter table, where the extra entry will be ready to sub-in when an old one gets sliced out. Second, and much more important, is that restocking rarely means coming up with a new idea from scratch. If the party encounters “4 young kobold bravos, all drunk, looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness,” then all I need to do to freshen it up is create a variation on that basic theme. This time it’ll be 8 kobolds of various ages. I roll on the table above and discover they’re building a camp. So I mash those ideas together and restock the entry with “7 kobold bravos erecting tents, while an elderly kobold sits on a nearby rock and criticizes their work ethic. None have their weapons immediately to hand.”

The way I run the game, the encounter die is the primary driver of play. It’s how I introduce adventure hooks to the players. It’s how I communicate the details of the world, big and small. It’s how I give weight to the passage of time, which in turn enables me to run a game where the players really can go anywhere and do anything, because rolling encounters gives me a chance to gather my notes and prepare details. It’s a multifaceted tool, and I happily put this much effort and thought into my Encounter Tables because the dividends they pay as play aids makes it worth the effort.

Additional Reading

My original post from 2017
Hazard System v0.3 on Necropraxis (Any post under the Hazard System tag is worth a look!)
Combined Encounter Checks & Tables Using d% on Traverse Fantasy
Encounter Checklist on Prismatic Wasteland
Impact on Goblin Punch
In Search of Better Travel Rules on Rise Up Comus
Monster Design and Necessity on Dungeon of Signs
Sticky Goblins on False Machine

Text Folding Tool for Referee Notes

Organizing campaign notes is frustrating. My preference would be to keep all my hobby material in an analog format, but it’s not practical. A campaign is a constantly evolving mesh of interconnected ideas. A referee can never know which parts of their notes will need to be removed, or expanded wildly beyond their original scope. I’ve tried a bunch of methods: binders, notebooks, recipe boxes full of index cards, stacks of paper with bespoke organizational symbols in the upper corner. In the end, all of them required too much paper shuffling in order to find anything. Digital tools are too useful not to take advantage of here.

But my experience with digital tools has been fraught. In part that’s due to my own general Ludditism: I don’t own a smartphone, and I refuse to even consider relying on web based tools. “Sorry guys, we can’t play today, the website is down.” is an absolutely unacceptable possibility for me. Then there’s all the effort that will be involved to extract my game’s data when the web tool inevitably goes belly up, or gets bought out by some VC firm who makes it unusable. I have a strong preference for software that can be run locally, with a minimum of bloat.

I’ll say it again: organizing campaign notes is frustrating. But I did recently find an option that I’m reasonably happy with, and would like to share.

(Sorry I couldn’t unfold any of the interesting text. My players might be spying on this blog even as we speak >.>)

Libre Office is an open source suite of office software. It replaced the old OpenOffice project, and is currently the primary Free Software alternative to Microsoft Office. It’s a nice piece of software that I recommend in general, but is specifically useful for this hidden feature demonstrated in the video. The ability to to treat header text as a folder for all the body text written beneath, which can then be revealed or hidden with a click of the mouse.

To enable this feature you’ll need a reasonably recent version of LibreOffice. Navigate to Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced. On that tab, under “Optional Features,” check the box next to “Enable experimental features.” This will require restarting the application. Now you can navigate to Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOfficeWriter ▸ View, and check the box next to “Show outline-folding buttons.” Optionally, I also recommend navigating to View ▸ Web for the best effect. Page breaks are an unnecessary complication when your text is going to be expanding and contracting.

Once that’s done you’re good to go. To set text as a foldable heading, use the dropdown menu in the upper left to make it a heading. A little button should appear beside the text (you may need to hover to see it). If you click this, all the text beneath the heading (down to the next heading) will disappear. Clicking it again will cause the text to reappear. Fill the spaces beneath headings with all the tables, keys, and background information you like! I should point out that I’ve had the best luck using “Default Paragraph Text” here. For whatever reason, selecting “Body Text” has sometimes caused the folding function to stop working properly. I’m not sure why, except that this is an experimental feature and not yet fully developed.

There’s a lot I love about this method. It keeps my notes tidy, no matter how voluminous they get. It’s easy to use at the table since all the headings fit on about two digital pages. The fact that it’s built into a word processor means there’s a minimum of barrier between USING the tool (folding and unfolding it) and MAKING the tool (adding new text, removing old text.) No need to interrupt my writing process to reference special syntax any time I want to add a new header.

No solution is perfect, of course. The way you need to carefully select the way your body text is tagged is irritatingly fiddly. The feature also doesn’t seem to be well optimized. Scrolling through a large document causes the application to chug, and there’s often quite a bit of lag when folding and unfolding text. (Both issues visible in the video above). Some of that’s just down to word processors being kinda bloated pieces of software, which is why I usually write in text editors. None the less, I haven’t found any quicker or easier alternatives yet.

I should note that Microsoft Office does have a similar tool, which presumably works just as well (or better) than LibreOffice’s unfinished feature. My friend Chris H. also swears by a piece of software called Scrivener. From the looks of it, I think Scrivener would be an ideal solution to my campaign note organization needs. I’d happily pay their $50 fee to use the software. Sadly they have no linux compatible version, so I must do without. Thus I can only pass on a second-hand recommendation from Chris H.

BTW, while I’ve got you here: my friend Ava is a SuperCoolLady™ and needs some help funding her transition. If you’ve got a few dollars to spare, that’d be a very SuperCoolLady™ thing for you to spend them on.

Additional Reading

A New Writer Outline Folding Mode on the LibreOffice Dev Blog
Resources For Playing Online on The Retired Adventurer
Hexcrawl Dashboards on Rise Up Comus
Hexcrawls and Computers on Save Vs. Total Party Kill
DM Screen V1 on I Cast Light!

Prep Tools, Not Adventures

The table of poor-quality tools cropped out of Gary Larson's infamous "Cow Tools" comic. Decorated with the 'Wave' art from '90s paper cups in the background, and a bilighting overlay.

Update January 10, 2023: This post has won the Gold Bloggie for best Advice Post! Holy crap I am floored. Thank you everyone who voted for me, or who voted for one of the other posts, or who wrote one of the other posts, and thank you to Prismatic Wasteland for running this event. Being recognized feels nice 😀

I’ve run a lot of D&D over the years, and in that time I’ve cycled through various approaches for how I get ready for a session. Like most folk, I started out with unrealistic ideas about how much and how quickly I could produce good material. Because of this, my early campaigns were basically burnout generators. They quickly morphed into Zombie Campaigns: I continued running them out of a desire to spend time with my friends and to be a good referee, but I’d lost any creative energy for improving them. A lot of promising campaigns wound up ending before they should have because of that. Over many years and many campaigns I’ve developed better strategies for handling prep. The most important of these is to focus on making flexible tools, rather than specific adventure scenarios.

A few weeks ago I began a new ORWA campaign, so let’s take the first session of that as an example. Because it was the first session, and most of the players had no previous experiences in the world to drive their activity, I needed to prepare some specific adventure scenario to get the ball rolling. I put together a little 12 room dungeon which was being contested by two factions, each of which controlled one of the dungeon’s entrances. So my players go out to this location, get invested with one of the factions, and decide the best way to help their new pals out was to do some rabble rousing among the opposing faction’s neighbors. Then there was an impromptu street fair organized around a challenge fight, which the party skillfully manipulated into a riot when their opponents failed to honor the terms of the fight, culminating in the party using the cover of the mob to assault their enemy’s fortified position.

It was a good little adventure, and a great tone-setter for the campaign! It had everything I like to see: I was able to show off the Saturday Morning SciFi weirdness of my setting; the players did some creative problem solving; they punched above their weight class by leveraging a precarious social situation and deploying their skills and spells precisely when and where they would have the most impact. And never once did they set foot in my dungeon, or deal with any of the specific challenges I had prepared.

I’m glad I had that dungeon prepared. If they’d gone into it, I’d have needed those notes. But I’m also glad I didn’t put too much work into it. The whole scenario—setup, map, and key—was scribbled across 3 pages of my notebook. It was a sloppy little thing I threw together during loading screens in video games and boring scenes in movies. If I’d put much more effort into it I might have been annoyed that I never got to use it.

My more serious preparation time was spent making reusable tools to help me quickly generate gameplay no matter what the players decide to do. In the same session I described above, I used the setting map to quickly identify how long the party would need to travel and what sights they’d see along the way. I used encounter tables to give that travel time weight.1 The encounters also presented the players with a series of smaller side-challenges to navigate, many of which provide hooks or foreshadowing for larger campaign events still to come.2 When the party decided to start rabble rousing among the enemy faction’s neighbors I was able to use my NPC generator to quickly give those neighbors some personality and wants of their own. I was also able to reference the territory this was taking place in, and the social norms of that territory informed what challenges the party would face carrying out their plan.3 When the party organized a street fair I could have had a unique street vendor show up with my popup shop generator,4 but at that point we were running short on time so I decided not to.

1 I detailed my general approach for structuring encounter tables in 2017, though I ought to post about its updated form at some point. (Update July 22, 2022) I have now posted about its updated form!
2 One of those challenges, a minor trap the party fell into, resulted in a friendship with the creatures operating the trap. The party has become highly engaged with that friendship, and those creatures have appeared in every session since.
3 In this case, the local population was already prejudiced against the group the PCs wanted to turn them against, so it was easier than normal.
4 Similar to the Goblin Bazaar I described a couple years back.

All this stuff is what I spent time carefully crafting before the game, and almost all of it is reusable. The specific table entries will change a bit: some have been consumed and new entries need to be written. Others are temporarily exhausted and I moved them off the table for a bit. Still others remain on the table with a note that the next time they occur will be the party’s second encounter, with consequent developments. (“Ah, we meet again!” says the creepy sewer vampire.) But now that the tables have been written this restocking is fairly quick and easy to get done. For some tables I’ve even got pre-written replacements ready to go from days when I had too many ideas to fit on a given table.

Other tools I prepared that didn’t come up in that specific session include:

  • A schedule of goals for each of the game’s major factions, so that each time they accomplish something I immediately know what they’re working on next.
  • A table for determining what a random encounter is doing at the moment they’re encountered. I usually roll this outside the session while stocking the encounter tables.
  • Generalized tables for the results of doing something that publicly affects the party’s reputation, good or bad.
  • Specific consequences, good and bad, for some of the party’s more notable actions. I roll one of these at the start of each session. (This is a bastardized adaptation of Arnold’s Potential Drama idea).
  • A table of major events that will occur in the world, irrespective of the player’s actions. Stuff like natural disasters, or the deaths of public figures. (A distant evolution of Brendan’s Haven Complications table).
  • A series of tables and a little stack of blank maps to help me quickly throw together a small adventure site if the party finds one that I haven’t specifically prepared.

And of course, it bears mentioning that even my unused dungeon can now be repurposed as fuel for my tools. The parts the players learned about will need to be discarded: the nexus of varied mutagenic energies, and the Sherman tank in the basement that was being disassembled and smuggled out in pieces. The individual rooms however—none of which the players explored—could be shuffled among encounter tables, or into my adventure site generator.

The great thing about tools is that in addition to saving the referee’s time and energy, they’re able to react to the player’s actions in a way that specifically prepared scenarios just can’t. If the players are walking down the street towards a dungeon, then become randomly fascinated by a bit of graffiti and wander into an alley on a wild goose chase, then if all you’ve got prepared is that one dungeon you’re stuck. But if you’ve got a table of interesting locations that are designed to fit anywhere in your setting, you can keep the game rolling as if you’d planned for this all along. And when the players are able to find interesting adventure no matter where they go your campaign world will feel much more alive.

The reactive potential of tools is also why my most important prep occurs immediately after running a session. While I’m writing out my recap of events (something I’m indulgently excessive about), I have a set of questions to ask myself:

  • Did the players encounter any interesting NPCs that it would be fun to add to my Recurring Characters table?
  • Did the party wrong anyone who might hold a grudge against them? What form might revenge take? (Put this on the consequences table).
  • Does anyone feel that they owe the party a favor? What might they do to settle the debt? (Put this on the consequences table).
  • Review all the table entries used, and restock anything that needs it.
  • What parts of the session were rough, and what tools or techniques would help them work better in future?

That last one is a biggie. For example, as the sessions have gone on, this party has taken out a lot of loans. That’s not something other groups I’ve played with have done. The first couple times it happened I set an arbitrary limit for how big a loan could be, and noted down the amounts without any real idea of how it would be collected. Now I’ve worked out a formalized little procedure for how loans are guaranteed and how debt repayment is enforced.

As of posting this, the renewed ORWA campaign has had 4 sessions. I made sure I had another specific adventure prepped before we started session 2, but once again I’m glad it’s a thing I scribbled casually into my notebook; because 3 sessions later the players still haven’t stopped moving long enough to need me to prompt them towards an adventure. My tools and their own desires have entered a feedback loop that hasn’t left room for me to say “Well, there’s X thing going on over here…”

I’ve also got heaps more creative energy left in me than I used to after the first few sessions of a new campaign.

Additional Reading About Session Prep

That Four Letter Word: Prep on Save vs. Total Party Kill
Planning a Campaign as a Series of Decisions on The Retired Adventurer
The Grand d666 on Being An Asshole To A Goblin

Secret Society Factions in ORWA

In the coming weeks 5 Years Left will be ending. Its been a fun and creatively rejuvenating game, but after nearly two years I’m ready to shift focus. I want to delve back into On a Red World Alone. Play a game with more substantial factions, where players have more opportunity to make world-altering plans. Before I can get things started back on mars, though, I’ve got to develop some tools for myself. Part of the reason I took a break from this game was my fatigue with trying to support a style of play I’d never experienced before. I didn’t know how to referee a satisfying domain game. Worse, I didn’t even know what it was I needed to learn, and never had the time or energy to figure it out. Now I do.

When ORWA returns, the players will be governing a major faction. Major factions can’t be challenged with pit traps or goblins. They need to be challenged by other factions. Groups with their own idea of how the dome ought to be governed, and the power to manifest that government. These other factions can’t be finite challenges the way a typical dungeon or dragon is. If a faction can be cleared in 2-4 sessions of play, then the game won’t last long. Additionally, I’d really like to introduce some new factions to the game, without abandoning the ones my older players will have gotten to know over ORWA’s previous half-decade-long run. But because this game takes place within the confined space of a city-sized bio-dome on mars, there’s not a lot of room for new factions to exist in.

These are problems that will require a variety of solutions. Some of the less interesting old factions have merged together. Other factions that the old party effectively defeated no longer hold any territory at all, and if they still exist have reorganized into religious institutions, mercenary gangs, merchant corporations, etc. Some factions are able to exist outside the dome, underground, or up in space. The least typical sort of faction, and the one I’d like to work through here, is a secret society. It solves two of my issues right off the bat: secret societies don’t openly hold territory, and so I don’t need any extra space to fit them in. They also defy being a finite challenge, since players can struggle against them without knowing who’s in charge. They don’t have anyone to negotiate with or assassinate.

On a Red World Alone has a long tradition of secret society factions. For the majority of the original campaign the players were agents of a mysterious organization known as “The Internet.” One of the culminating events of that campaign was the players destroying that organization, scattering its resources to the wind, and even hunting down the most powerful remnants of its leadership. They leveraged the tools and secrets they stole from it to build their own faction in the shadows, sharing technology and building alliances until they were powerful enough that I didn’t know how to run the game anymore. It seems fitting that secret societies remain a part of the world. Perhaps, just to give my players an eerie sense of déjà vu, some of their own agents are capable-yet-unorthodox upstarts with secret plans to overthrow their masters.

Let’s imagine a theoretical faction that definitely won’t exist in ORWA: the Cult of the Sleeping God. Their goal is to wake their lazy god up. Every faction needs a goal beyond simply seeking more power. Power-seeking is in the nature of big factions, but each has a certain form or flavor of power they value. This is a religious faction, so they’re seeking power in the form of making their god more powerful.

To awaken their god, the cult needs 3 things: cosmic smelling salts (requiring many rare, expensive, difficult-to-acquire ingredients); access to the dimension in which their god sleeps (they’ll need to learn the secret of how to get there); and to kill the traitor who put their god to sleep in the first place (one of the party’s allies!). Whenever it comes time for this faction to act, they’ll do something in pursuit of one of these things.

For any faction to work as an interesting part of the game the players must, at minimum, know the faction exists. So the Cult of the Sleeping God will have a sigil they paint or carve whenever they take action. Something to bless their efforts, and celebrate their victories. It’s not a very good way to keep a secret, but if the faction were too good at keeping secrets then I’d be the only one who knew about them. I’ve done stuff like that before, and every time it’s just me on my own doing extra work the players never see, and which doesn’t improve the play of the game.

By their very nature, secret societies should show up in places where a normal faction would not. For example, while any faction might place spies to gain information, a secret society could build an entire network within the party’s own faction. So as the party is recruiting specialists—diplomats, scientists, architects, etc.—there’s some chance they may be plants working for the Cult of the Sleeping God. Leeching the player’s resources, building back-doors into everything they do. As another example, players will make rolls occasionally to check the health of their faction. Are the needs of their citizens being met, are their supply lines secure, is there civil unrest? If something is going wrong there’s no reason the Cult of the Sleeping God couldn’t occasionally and obviously be behind it.

I haven’t fully settled on the form domain play will take yet, but part of the procedure of the “Domain Turn” is going to be a phase when a number of other factions get to make ‘moves.’ I won’t have every faction move during every session, since moves are big things that presumably took careful planning. Also it would be tedious. I’d rather players have 2-3 moves to react to during a session. The factions that move are also going to be somewhat randomized. So another way the Cult of the Sleeping God could show up where it’s not supposed to be would be to have them on the the faction table twice. One entry would be the cult acting somewhat obviously on its own behalf. Enough that the player’s information networks can confidently inform them that the cult was responsible. The other entry would call for a re-roll on the faction table, and whatever faction the dice landed on will make a move that has been influenced by members of the Cult that have infiltrated its hierarchy.

This is all very rough. Restarting ORWA is a large project, and like most large projects there’s no clear place to start. Every piece is contingent on some other piece that doesn’t yet exist. The only way to get it done is to start putting things in place, building off them, then coming back around and revising that first stuff once I’ve got a better idea of how the rest of the structure fits together. I don’t yet know exactly what the domain turn looks like, or what elements make up the player’s “domain character sheet,” but the idea of introducing a secret society appealed to me. And now I’ve got an idea about how a secret society might want to attack the party, which has forced me to think about the sorts of resources the party might have, which gives me something to tinker on next, and so on until the game is ready.

The Dungeon d100s: Locks & Keys

A good dungeon will have many places in it that the players wish to go. On their way, they will need to overcome many obstacles which make their journey interesting. Sometimes the “lock” they encounter will be a goblin, and the “key” is a sharp sword and a good attack roll. Sometimes the lock is an illusory wall, and the key is realizing there’s a breeze coming from nowhere. Sometimes the lock is a literal lock, and the key is in a chest at the other end of the dungeon.

One must always remember, however, that in Adventure Games, no lock is always going to be overcome with the intended key. The goblin could easily be avoided with some clever sneaking, the location of the illusory wall could be bullied out of the goblin, and that locked door could have its hinges popped out. One must never get too attached to their keys, and sometimes I do not even plan out a key at all. I simply trust that the players are clever enough to figure their way past an obstacle.

It must be mentioned that a good dungeon is one where the players can walk away from a barrier if they can’t figure out how to deal with it. Don’t design a dungeon that will come to a complete grinding halt just because the players can’t get past a single barrier. There should always be some other direction to explore in.

I will also note that some of the keys below imply the presence of a door keeper who controls who gets in and out. In most cases it will be best to make these guardians difficult to kill. They might operate the door remotely for example, and speak only via an intercom. They might be shouting from the other side of the door. The guardian might be an incredibly powerful and dangerous creature that is otherwise not interested in doing the party harm, or the guardian could even be the door itself via an animated face. If the door guard is available to be killed, and the players do so, then whoever put that guard there is going to send more later, and with increased security to back them up.

Thanks to Gus L. for reading through this post to ensure it all made sense.

The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys

Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.

d100 Dungeon Locks & Keys:

  1. A landslide has blocked the path forward. Time must be taken to dig it out.
  2. A great tree has grown through the doorway. Chopping it down from one side will be awkward.
  3. The passage is high up, and in the middle of a vaulted ceiling. Getting there would require something like a skillfully thrown grappling hook, a very tall ladder, a flight or spider climb spell, etc.
  4. The way forward is tiny, barely big enough to get your hand through. A person would have to shrink, or transform into a small animal to get through.
  5. A well constructed and unattended drawbridge on the other side of a chasm. There is no prescribed way to open it from this side.
  6. An energy barrier bars the way forward, sustained by the life essence of some notable creature who may or may not reside in the dungeon. So long as this creature lives, the barrier will remain impassable.
  7. The pathway is out of phase with our reality. It can only be moved through by shifting oneself into the phase where the pathway exists. This phase will doubtless have other differences as well, and may not be friendly to outerphasic life.
  8. There is a combination or password which must be entered. It might be written down or known by someone elsewhere in the dungeon, or it may require searching outside of the dungeon to learn.
  9. A particular sound opens the way forward. Perhaps it is a specific song, or the sound of a specific instrument.
  10. The key to the door is has been copied several times by a certain faction. Many members of the faction carry a copy.
  11. They key is in some treacherous location: tangled in a spiders web, or on a plinth in the center of a pool of lava.
  12. They key is itself hazardous or difficult to handle, requiring the players to make some clever plan for transporting it to the lock. As examples, the key might generate enough heat to melt through steel, or it could be incorporeal. The key might be possessed by an intelligence that dominates whoever holds it, or it might bestow some curse on whomever touches it, etc.
  13. The key to the door is an object of importance to some particular dungeon faction. It may be a sacred object used in their religious devotions, or a symbol of office worn by their leader.
  14. The door ought to be easy to open, but some essential element of its mechanism has been removed by previous adventurers. Perhaps a golden sprocket or magic gem. It must be found and returned here to open the way forward.
  15. The way forward is blocked by a terrible guardian beast, who will allow passage so long as they are brought the food that they like to eat.
  16. A door opening ritual must be performed. Its details may be provided, at least in part, by carvings on the door, or it may need to be learned in dusty tomes in the basements of old libraries.
  17. The lock and key are both obvious, and near one another, but the key is a huge 250lb object which must be carried up a vertical ladder to reach the keyhole.
  18. A biometric scanner will only open the way forward for certain people, using eye/face/voice/hand scan to identify them. The scanner may or may not have measures to prevent its being used by force.
  19. Some previous adventurer got all set to destroy the barrier. There’s a ram, or a cannon, or some TNT, etc set up here, but for some reason they didn’t do it, and now an essential component has been removed, and must be replaced to clear the way forward.
  20. The way forward is opened by placing three objects of power (gems, medallions, orbs, etc.) in the proper place. All three might be found in the dungeon, or may require adventuring outside the dungeon, or some combination of the two.
  21. Before the sealed door is a round table with a bronze statue sitting at it, and several empty seats with pressure plates on them. Adding the exact correct amount of weight to each seat will be tricky, but might take less time than recovering the other bronze statues which have been taken as trophies by various dungeon factions. Either way, once the correct weight is in place the door will open.
  22. A terra cotta warrior stands guard before a sealed door. Portions of the figure are clearly less worn and dirty than others, implying it once wore armor which has been removed. If the warrior is fully outfitted once again, the way forward will open.
  23. Two feuding factions must work together to open the way forward. Perhaps each knows half a password, or there is a ceremonial table which only opens if representatives from each both sit at it.
  24. The way forward can only be opened by a doorkeeper who is too sad to do their job. The party must somehow cheer them up, or otherwise convince them.
  25. The lever which opens the door is visible, but inaccessible. Perhaps behind bars, or glass, or in the middle of an acid lake. There is a creature near it who can open it, but they are incapable of understanding language. Perhaps a monkey, or a toddler golem.
  26. Vampire rules apply to everyone. Anyone who wishes to pass through this barrier must be invited by someone who lives beyond it.
  27. The walls of the room are covered in dozens or hundreds of forearm-sized holes. One of these contains the lever which will open the way forward, while many others are trapped, or have become nests for potentially poisonous plants or animals.
  28. The way forward opens only for those who have legitimately achieved some particular social position. (Mayor, King, Priest, Spouse, etc). To enter, the players may need to win an election, gain an appointment, complete training or rituals, etc.
  29. There is no actual barrier to entry. However, surrounding cultures all observe a strict taboo against going through. At the very least people who disregard this taboo will be shunned.
  30. Only those dressed a certain way will be allowed inside. The guard may be checking for a certain uniform, or for formal wear, or perhaps ritual garb.
  31. Anyone who wishes to enter must commit some suitable crime, so that the doorkeeper knows you’re cool before letting you through.
  32. The door is a philosopher. It postulates that as a door its purpose is to bar entry, and further that the party are the exact sort against whom the way forward must be protected. The door is willing to listen to counter arguments.
  1. An impenetrable physical barrier will only open for those who have accomplished some specific deed, such as raising a child, or slaying a dragon. They may bring guests with them if they wish.
  2. No one may pass unless they convince the gatekeeper that they’re qualified to handle the hazards beyond the gate. They do not want blood on their hands by allowing brash young folk to charge straight to their doom.
  3. The way forward is blocked by a thick tangle of vines and briers. An axe, machete, or sword will be adequate to hack a path through, but it will take time to do so, and there may be consequences for damaging these plants.
  4. The way forward is opened by paying a toll. There may be a powerful toll taker, like a dragon, or simply a coin slot which opens a door when sufficient gold is dropped into it.
  5. The way forward is hindered by customs officials who wish to inspect goods, assess taxes, and collect information for their records.
  6. The dungeon seals up when outsiders enter it. If they wish to leave again they must deposit some item into a chest. It may be a specific key located further in the dungeon, or perhaps it’s just 10% of their total carried wealth.
  7. The space ahead is an “X Free Zone.” Players can only enter it if they relinquish whatever X is: weapons, armor, illumination, meat, or whatever else the players are accustomed to having access to.
  8. The space ahead is subject to magically enforced terms and conditions. Failure to adhere to the agreement will result in being hurled back out by a mysterious and irresistible force. This usually hurts quite a bit.
  9. Anyone who goes through this passage experiences severe time dilation. There are no barriers, but those who go through must accept that they will miss some significant span of time. Months, or even years will pass by in the outside world.
  10. The door is opened by performing a spell on it. It doesn’t matter what spell, so long as the party’s magical resources are somewhat diminished.
  11. The door requires an offering of blood before it will open. Approximately d4 hp worth.
  12. The way forward explicitly only opens for a certain sort of creature: rats, dogs, goblins, etc. Characters who wish to enter will need to find means of transforming themselves into the appropriate shape.
  13. Dungeons do not tidy themselves. Chores are carved in the stone of the door. It will only open once an appropriate amount of cleaning has been done.
  14. The way forward only opens at a certain time, and for a certain length of time. It may open once a day, once a year, or once every hundred years.
  15. The switch to open the door is far away, and the door slowly closes immediately after it opens. Getting through the door before it closes requires either splitting the party, or moving with great haste.
  16. The way forward will open itself only after everyone in the room has slept in its presence, so that the spirit in the door may observe their dreams.
  17. This room is a sort of airlock. Before the way forward opens, the way back must be sealed, and vice versa. The process takes time, such that the party could easily become cornered in this room if they’re being pursued.
  18. The way forward opens when a target is hit. It may be near enough for thrown weapons, or distant enough that a sling, or a bow is required.
  19. The way forward is on the other side of a peculiar court. A ghostly figure challenges you to a match. The nature of this game has been lost to history, but the way forward will only open once you can win a round.
  20. The way forward is through a complex clockwork mechanism. You could jam it to make it safe, but doing so will cause the machine to stop functioning. Depending on its purpose, players may not wish to do that. Another option is to observe the timing of the mechanisms carefully, and attempt to dodge through them as they move. This would be a difficult check with dangerous consequences for failure.
  21. A surveillance system activates deadly countermeasures against any who attempt to pass through. To reach the other side, one must move stealthily.
  22. The passage forward is large, heavy, and imbued with magical intelligence. It spends most of its time asleep, and open. If roused by heavy steps or clanging armor it will slam itself closed, crushing to pulp anyone who was attempting to pass.
  23. The way forward is blocked by a heavy door which must be lifted or pushed aside. Requires either great strength, or a clever use of leverage.
  24. A tumultuous body of water lies between where the characters are, and where they wish to be. They must navigate it using some seaworthy vessel. This may involve the characters being shrunk to cross some tiny body of water, or the dungeon might contain a subterranean lake.
  25. The way forward is open, but is much too hot to pass through. It must somehow be cooled to a safe temperature.
  26. The way forward is a long hallway with a ceiling that begins to lower as soon as anyone enters it. Not even the fastest runner could get through safely. It must be wedged open somehow.
  27. The players must pass through a literal minefield to reach the other side. Doing so safely requires that they find some way to detect the mines, or perhaps acquire a map which shows a safe path through.
  28. The way forward is a maze shrouded in magical darkness, and filled with spike pits and other traps. If the darkness could be dispelled, or the traps turned off, it would be easy to pass through safely just by taking a little time. While both are active, it is certain death to try.
  29. A bridge used to span a deadly gap here. It has long since collapsed.
  30. Unbelievably powerful magnets line the corridor. Enough that a ferrous sword would fly out of its sheath, and require immense strength just to drag it along a few feet. Gods save you if you’re wearing ferrous armor. Those who pass through can only reasonably expect to bring non-ferrous metals with them.
  31. The way forward is underwater. It would take an excellent swimmer 5+ minutes to reach the other side if they were unencumbered.
  32. The path forward is up-stream of a powerful flow of water. It must be turned off or diverted in order to progress.
  33. The path forward is through a swamp or sewer. The players should be informed that they will definitely contract an illness if they don’t take precautions.
  34. A series of powerful lasers bar the way forward. Powerful enough to slice through most materials easily, but mirrors or heavy stones will redirect them long enough to allow the characters to slip through.
  1. A great blind guardian beast sniffs everyone who passes through. Those who smell correctly are let by, those who don’t are devoured.
  2. The way forward is blocked by a belching geyser of fire, a waterfall of acid, or other constant source of harm with an identifiable “type.” It is contingent on those who pass to procure the correct potions of temporary immunity. Preferably enough both to get in, and to get out again.
  3. Axe wielding statues stand on either side of the door, and will swing mighty blows at anyone they see walk past. Their attacks are deadly, but they are simple constructs. If their eyes are covered with a blindfold or a basket, they cannot see, and will not attack.
  4. A winding corridor with an electrified floor, spinning buzz saws, or similar impassable danger. The ‘off’ switch for these is at the other end, and could be activated by a creature or device capable of getting through safely.
  5. Writhing, grasping tentacles protrude from every surface of the corridor. Instinctively they tangle and crush any object that comes within reach. They must be occupied, or made docile in order to skirt through.
  6. A room filled with air so noxious it will melt skin from bones. Some sealed protective clothing is required to survive moving through it.
  7. Three or more objects rest on a plinth. A riddle describes one of those objects in an obscure way. Anyone holding that object as they pass through will be safe. Anyone who isn’t, or who is holding multiple objects, will be subject to deadly traps of some kind.
  8. The lock is a huge cylinder pin-tumbler. Large enough for people to walk inside it, and each push one of the pins. If all are pushed just right, then others standing outside the lock can rotate the chamber their companions are standing in.
  9. The door is sealed by a heavy magnetized bar, which is completely hidden within the door and wall. Characters may notice ferrous metal objects being drawn towards it if they stand near. If a substantial ferrous metal object is dragged along the wall, the magnetized bar can be moved to unseal the door.
  10. Were the whole dungeon annihilated by the angry fist of God, this door would still stand. It is absolutely impenetrable. It will only open if knocked on politely, in which case it swings easily inward.
  11. The way forward was walled up, but that nearby column doesn’t look terribly stable, and it’s probably not load bearing…
  12. A statue holds out their hands in anticipation. Clues elsewhere in the dungeon indicate that the statue wants some sort of common object: a stick, rock, string, some water or a bit of money. If that object is placed in the statue’s hands, the way forward will open.
  13. A sort of guest book rests on a lectern beside the door. It prompts anyone who wishes to pass through to write their name, the current date and time, as well as to enter an example of some specified wordplay. Perhaps characters must write an alliterative sentence of at least 2d4 + 2 words, or a unique joke, or a set of seven rhyming words, etc. Once this is done, the door will open. The magic doesn’t work if the characters lied about their name or time, or if they copied an example from elsewhere in the guest book.
  14. Near the door are several torches which, if lit, will open the way forward. For added complexity, one of the torches may be in a previous room, it may be disguised, or it may have been destroyed and need to be replaced.
  15. A plinth with an obvious weight pad sits in front of the door. It requires an immense weight to open the door. The players will either need a material of unusual density (like an anvil made from osmium), or devise some contraption that allows them to balance a great deal of weight on this tiny plinth.
  16. Candles rest on inset shelves on either side of the door. Clearly many candles have been placed here over the years, because there is a sheet of melted wax an inch thick coating the wall. If this sheet is chipped away, the lever for opening the door will be revealed.
  17. A skeleton lies in an open coffin beneath a headstone which reads “Here lies a bastard who deserves what he got.” If the long dead corpse is in any way abused or desecrated, the way forward will open.
  18. The way forward is high up, and a powerful current of air prevents throwing grapples, climbing sheer walls, or placing ladders. There is a strange plot of soil beneath the passage. Anything planted here will go through its whole life cycle very rapidly, so if one were to plant an oak tree, it would quickly grow large enough to be climbed, then rot away and die by the end of the day. Note that this magic is tied to the spot, not to the soil.
  19. The door forward has a clock face on it, which must be set to some appropriate time which is hinted at either on the door itself, or elsewhere in the dungeon. It may be a fixed time (the minute on which the door builder’s child was born), a fluid time (the minute that the clock-turner woke up this morning), or not a time at all but simply a number that can be expressed by clock hands (such as 3:14 representing pi). In any event, the time must be held in place for at least 60 seconds to prevent characters simply spinning the hands quickly through every possible option.
  20. The players come upon a place that is clearly labeled “The Dark Stair,” or “The Dark Passage.” If they attempt to traverse it with illumination, it will seem to go on infinitely. If they bravely douse their lights and go through it in complete darkness, they will reach the other end easily.
  21. Murals in the room depict a story where a fisherman catches a fish, it spits out a key, and the key opens the way to great treasure. The room contains a pool of water, but no fish. If a living fish is brought to this room and placed in the water, the way forward will open. Transporting a live fish and keeping it healthy through the dungeon up to this point may prove to be somewhat difficult.
  22. The room appears to have been the site of a battle. There are skeletons leaning against the walls, spatters of dried blood, gouges in the walls, blades stuck in mortar or wood. Examining any of these objects will reveal that they have been staged. Everything is fixed in its place by adhesive or nails. One of the items in the room (perhaps a spear stuck in the floor) is actually a disguised lever. When pulled, the way forward will open.
  23. The door is shaped like a great closed mouth in the middle of licking its own lips. Above the mouth is a nose. If the smells of good food are wafted beneath the nose, the mouth will open.
  24. The way forward is blocked by a magic cube which transforms into whatever material has most recently touched it (with the exception of gases that naturally occur in its environment, such as oxygen). Regardless of what material it transforms into, it always retains its exact shape. If touched by sand, it will transform into a cube of sand without sliding out into a loose heap. If transformed into water, it will be a cube of standing water which players may swim through. When the players enter the room the cube is likely made of stone or steel.
  25. Though the door appears to be a three dimensional object of wood and stone, to the touch it feels like a single smooth sheet of glass. If a mirror is held up which reflects the door, the reflection will have the texture which the door ought to have, and the characters can travel through it.
  26. The way is opened by performing a human sacrifice.
  27. The way forward requires you to climb into a sealed room (or box, or carriage). Unseen forces will move you along an unseen route, eventually depositing you at your destination. The journey may be quite long, and require that players provision themselves so they do not die of thirst and hunger while traveling. Alternately there may be some appropriate offering or behavior with which to request this service, and failure to do so may result in being dropped off in some undesirable location.
  28. Each character who passes through must first reveal something which they would rather keep to themselves. The barrier detects both truth, and reluctance. If either are not present in a person’s statement, they would be incinerated.
  29. A crank near the door opens it, but clearly does something else as well. There are too many mechanisms for this to simply be a door opener, but it’s not immediately clear what consequences there will be for turning it.
  30. Only the dead may enter. Those who die in the doorway may inhabit an empty homonculous in the chambers beyond. If they are resurrected their souls will be destroyed. When they return back through the entry, they may be resurrected properly.
  31. Passing through requires that a person allow their mind and body to be thoroughly scanned and recorded. Who knows that is done with that information? Definitely something.
  32. An adjunct to the fates guards the way forward. They show the characters visions of two people. One of those people will die today, and the party must choose who it is. If they attempt to pass without choosing, then they themselves will die instead. There is no save.
  33. One side of a great scale is held down by a feather. Someone must stand on the other side and be balanced against the feather for the path to open. The scale determines whether or not you are a good person, according to the precepts of the dungeon builders.
  34. Before reaching the door, in some unrelated situation, a mysterious stranger will test the party’s virtue. If they pass, the door will be open for them. If not, it will not. (Did they give alms to the homeless man they met on the road? No? Then the door is sealed.)

And with that, The Dungeon d100s has come to an end. It has been absolutely exhausting to ensure that this project would be completed before the end of the year, but I didn’t want 2020 to pass by without Papers & Pencils getting a little more attention than I had given it. There will be one more post yet to come this year, my annual Christmas Embarrassment, so I’ll save the sappy end of year stuff until then. Please stay safe, love one another, and never stop fighting for Trans Rights.

The Dungeon d100s: Factions

Two or more factions competing for resources might be the most vital element of a good dungeon. Certainly they are the bedrock of the social dungeons that most excite me.

Unrepentant enthusiast for alliteration that I am, my first step in creating these hundred factions was to name them. As discussed in my Two Week Megadungeon post I generally stuck to the Type of Creature + Type of Behavior format, with the added constraint that the two must be alliterative. I then used the names as a loose creative prompt from which to derive the details of the faction. In some cases, a great emphasis must be placed on “loose.” Certainly this post would come across as way less silly if I deleted the original names for these groups. I seriously considered doing just that, but decided against it because I thought it might be a useful glimpse into the process, and also because silliness is a good thing.

The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys

Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.

d100 Dungeon Factions:

  1. Academic Arsonists: A group philosophically opposed to philosophy, and all other forms of impractical knowledge. Each week they ritually burn any high minded books they’ve managed to collect. Whomever contributes most is given special consideration in the coming week.
  2. Avaricious Architects: Constantly making elaborate alterations to the dungeon. Are very greedy. Will make claims on anything the party finds, and shake them down for money at every encounter.
  3. Argumentative Anatomists: Creatures with the ability to rearrange their body parts. Each thinks they know what the best configuration is, and insists everyone who disagrees is a fool for not doing it the way they do.
  4. Ancient Anarchists: Cursed with immortality without eternal youth, this decrepit faction live in an equitable little commune where everyone shares in the work when they’re able, and is cared for whenever they break a hip. Lacking physical strength, most have learned minor magics.
  5. Barbarous Bovines: Muscular cow folk who speak in a language that is difficult for outsiders to learn. Unless special effort is made, only gestural communication is possible.
  6. Bedazzled Beardmen: More beard than they are man, these tumbles of tangled hair have little hands and feet sticking out from their brush, as well as deep sunken eyes visible through it. They decorate their bodies with glitter.
  7. Boastful Beavers: Supremely confident in their own cultural supremacy, though their primary interest seems to be filling the dungeon with haphazardly constructed barricades which they regard as great works of art.
  8. Bloodthirsty Bibliomaniacs: All books belong to them, whether or not those books have yet entered their possession. They rarely read the books. Possessing them is merely an unhealthy compulsion which has become a cultural obsession.
  9. Bridal Battalion: A young member of this faction comes of age when they venture into civilization to steal a bridal gown of their very own. For the rest of their lives the gown will mark them both as an adult and a warrior.
  10. Cantankerous Crystals: A group of yoni eggs given life after being “born” so many times over. Discovering their frustrated intelligence, a mountebank lich bestowed them with arms, legs, and size. They have gratefully served her ever since.
  11. Cultured Cranes: Lanky bird people who stand twice the height of a man. They socially organize themselves in a fopocracy, where the snootiest and most flippant become their leaders.
  12. Ceiling Celebrities: Creatures which are something like a cross between bats and spiders, and vastly prefer being “upside down,” though they find that term somewhat offensive. A few years back another adventurer wrote a book about living among them for awhile. It was quite popular, and everyone in the party will be at least passingly familiar with the text. The creatures themselves loathe the book, and the many self-serving inaccuracies the author inserted into it.
  13. Churchgoing Charioteers: Tiny folk who use mouse-drawn chariots to get around the dungeon quickly enough to keep up with their larger neighbors. They’re devoted followers of the same religion that is dominant in the region outside the dungeon, though their own precepts have drifted into some minor heresies.
  14. Debonair Dads: Whilst attempting to get out of some parental responsibilities, a wizard accidentally created several dozens facsimiles of themselves, all of whom were significantly more charming. Only one was put into service, while the rest were dumped here in this dungeon to form a loose community together.
  15. Devotees of the Debauched Dauphin: The rightful prince of a surface kingdom was so debased in his predilections that everyone agreed to have him quietly killed. Exhibiting a surprising cleverness, he escaped to the dungeon with his closest confidants where they continue their debauch in somewhat humbler circumstances.
  16. Diplomatic Deerfolk: Lean creatures wearing armor made from shed antlers. They make an effort to appear amicable, but only so they can trick people into disadvantageous agreements. Once the agreements are made, they must be obeyed, or violence is justified.
  17. Determined Doorkeepers: A religious sect who have taken certain metaphors about God opening and/or closing doors a bit too literally. Small groups are assigned to doors deemed religiously significant, and tend them 24/7.
  18. Exploitative Employers: They have money, but are miserly loathe to party with it. They’re always trying to hire people in wildly unbalanced deals, and have no qualms against taking vital resources hostage if it means someone will work for them.
  19. Enigmatic Eels: Tusk-mouthed sea serpents which drift through the air as easily as through water. Their culture has a somewhat unusual relationship with names, such that each individual has several dozen, several of which they are meant to use only while praying, and never to speak out loud to anyone at all. They are an insular society, and none have any name which is appropriate to share with an outsider.
  20. Erupting Essayist: Shambling cones of rock which slide around without any recognizable anatomy. They do perceive the outside world in their own way, and communicate by blasting papers covered with their thoughts and feelings out of the hole at their peak.
  21. Earnest Earth: Humanoids made from packed earth. Their bodies are fragile, and they much prefer to avoid violence at all costs. They’re gifted speakers, friendly, and likable, but this often leads them into forming alliances with whomever is most willing and able of doing violence to them.
  22. Fundamentalist Fedoras: A dogmatic religious group which is among the weakest of the dungeon’s factions. They believe themselves to be an inherently superior species, and that they are owed the submission of outsiders. Difficult to get along with, but easy to manipulate.
  23. Fecund Fowl: Flightless birdfolk capable of firing eggs out of their bodies like projectile weapons. Likely occupy a space with high ceilings to maximize the distance of their attacks. Their society is nominally equitable, though many jokes are made at the male’s relative defenselessness.
  24. Frank Frauds: A group of con artists who have recently been cursed with the need to be honest. Their habits have not yet adjusted to their new condition, and they frequently find themselves putting their feet in their mouths.
  25. Folklorist Fog: Mist creatures which trade in stories. They do not understand anyone who fails to recognize the value of this currency, though most of what they have to share is from cultures too alien to be easily understood.
  26. Garrulous Ghouls: Corpse enthusiasts who believe it is an absolute shame that so many bodies are left in the ground to decompose alone, where the process cannot be witnessed or smelled. They collect bodies in their domain, and celebrate the whole process start to finish.
  27. Glowing Gazers: Humanoids made entirely from light, save for their terrible unlidded eyes. This form is a state of enlightenment which they wish to share with others, but it is obvious they have some sinister secret they’re not sharing.
  28. Grimacing Grandmas: A group of cantankerous older women who were tired of being considered a nuisance and set off to enjoy the end of their lives with some good rows against monsters. They typically call most people “grandchild,” or “sweet pea.”
  29. Gifted Gaffers: A people suffering under a curse which causes them to metaphorically put their foot in their mouth during every social interaction. They have very few friends, due to their constantly unintentional insults. If their speech can be tolerated, they’re eager to have allies.
  30. Heretical Haberdashers: Devotees of a certain style of headwear which has gone so starkly out of fashion that they were cast out of polite society. Plunging head first into the depths of the sunk cost fallacy, they’ve become a grubby band of dungeon dwellers marked out only by their pristine and ugly hats.
  31. Hook Handed Humorists: A genetic offshoot of hook horrors which are capable of speech, and absolutely addicted to comedy. It is their only art form. A novel joke is as good as currency with them.
  32. Hygienic Hogs: Pig people in fitted white clothing. They are obsessively clean, to the point of distraction. They spend hours each day scrubbing every inch of themselves and their home. Untidiness of any kind is an offense, though they know to set their expectations low for outsiders.
  1. Havoc Harlots: Muscle-bound and clad in armored lingerie, these worshipers of elemental chaos must do battle as part of their mating ritual with one another. They’re a horny lot, and tend to throw themselves into a lot of pointless fights. If an outsider can roll with that, the Havoc Harlots are otherwise a pretty chill group.
  2. Ignorant Intellectuals: A cadre of know-nothings and dilettantes convinced their armchair rationalism enables them to understand, grapple with, and solve every problem faced by “lesser” minds. Easily flattered, but infuriatingly pedantic.
  3. Irritable Immolators: Sensitive to loud noise, quiet noise, and most forms of vibration, these grouchy dungeon denizens are sometimes difficult to get along with, which wouldn’t be so troublesome if they couldn’t set things on fire with their minds.
  4. Irresolute Idealists: They have some good ideas about how the dungeon ought to be run, but refuse to do the work to make it happen. Instead they pretend the world already works the way they want it to. When they can’t pretend, they mostly just complain about how this wouldn’t have happened if everyone had listened to them.
  5. Icy Investigators: Puzzle solving savants with very little emotional affect. The only thing they value more than a good solution is a new problem to solve. Often called upon as a neutral party to settle disputes among other factions, though their interest always values revealing the truth above facilitating peace.
  6. Jade Janitors: Living statues of green stone created for the explicit purpose of keeping the dungeon tidy and in good repair. They have developed their own consciousness. They have free will and a rich culture, but none the less janitorial work is fundamental to their nature.
  7. Jittery Jousters: Wearing patchy armor and mounted on various creatures, these nervous folk live by a strict code passed down from more prosperous ancestors. It involves a lot of jousting, which few of them are comfortable with, but anyone who admitted that would be shunned by everyone still to afraid to admit it.
  8. Jubilant Jocks: Wholesome partiers who are always eager to engage in vigorous physical competition of some sort, and to exuberantly celebrate the winner regardless of who they are. Their whole vibe tends to make you think it’s only a matter of time before they say or do something real shitty, but they are basically decent folk who just happen to have the mannerisms of dudebros.
  9. Jackbooted Jurist: A whole faction who believe they are uniquely suited to being judge, jury, and executioner over everyone they meet. Their rulings are harsh, prejudiced against whoever they perceive as least valuable to society, and predicated more on a desire not to have their preconceptions of the world challenged rather than out of any sense of justice.
  10. Kite Kings: A gang of lightweight ruffians who’ve learned to glide and soar through the air using large kites. Their tough-guy posturing tends to make a bad first impression, but they are genuinely good natured if their pride is not wounded.
  11. Knowledgeable Klaxoneers: It is well known (according to these folk) that lions assert dominance by roaring louder than any other lion in the pride. This is their justification for why their groups regularly sound klaxons as they move about the dungeon. It is just one of many “facts” they enjoy sharing to justify their odd behaviors.
  12. Keg Kidnappers: Any time they don’t spend partying is spent planning and executing elaborate heists to acquire sufficient booze for the next party. They have refined tastes, but aren’t above shaking down passers by for a bit of cheap moonshine to pass the time with.
  13. Lusty Loggers: If the dungeon has no ready source of timber, they make regular excursions to gather it. With it, they reinforce and expand the dungeon, as well as craft their erotic arts. Their polished statues and wood carvings are most numerous in their own territory, but have often been traded to other factions for resources. Whether or not their concepts of eroticism match anything that would be recognizable as such to the players depend on the sort of game being run.
  14. Lyrical Lobster Lords & Ladies: Oversize Decapods with fine clothing, ornamented shells, and an aristocratic bearing. Normal speech is considered to be a peasant’s habit. As people of refinement, they never communicate any idea without singing it.
  15. League of the Listless Logicians: A group of rationalists who sequestered themselves here away from all distraction so they could use the power of logic to work through all the problems of the universe. It is a hopeless endeavor, but before coming here they burned so many academic bridges boasting about the success they would have that they feel obligated to continue making token efforts, even though they now indulge in every distraction the dungeon has to offer.
  16. Lucky Lightning: Entities of pure electricity, only partially bound to humanoid shape. They can travel near instantaneously along a network of copper wires they’ve run through the dungeon, which their foes make every effort to find and destroy. If that weren’t bad enough, goddess Fortuna seems to favor these creatures. They love to gamble, but anyone who knows them knows better than to play.
  17. Masked Mamas: By happenstance, these folk found a cache of masks which look like the mother of whomever is seeing them. The masks are not convincing, but they are a little unsettling. They’re worn away from home, to unsettle outsiders.
  18. Mega Microorganisms: By some magic gone horribly awry, a group of bacteria was enlarged to human size, each gaining fragments of the mind of their destroyed creator. They’re led by a cruel virus.
  19. Nagging Neoclassical Nerds: Living in a dungeon can be boring, which is why this group has devoted so much time and energy to reading, re-reading, discussing, and agonizing over the single book they have access to: a textbook survey of classical mythology, art, and history. They interpret everything through this lens. It’s insufferable.
  20. Microwave Mutants: Sterile creatures who reproduce by cajoling lonely people into allowing themselves to be strapped into the device which transforms a person into one of them. Each of the creatures has a lidded organ in their chests, which directs a beam of heat when pulled open.
  21. Metal Mannequins: Fashionable tin gormless. Despite a fearsome appearance, their bodies are hollow, and can be destroyed as any fleshy creature’s could. They spend their time acquiring and creation pleasant clothing. There’s a great diversity of styles among them, though also an agreed upon language to each choice of shape and color, so that each one can know a great deal about what another is thinking and feeling just by looking at them.
  22. Magic Mildew: Fungus people whose bodies are incredibly delicious, and produce delightful psychotropic effects when consumed by most creatures. They do not enjoy being eaten. They are diligently stealthy in their movements, and consider themselves at war with the whole world.
  23. Nudist Nuns: Fuzzy bearlike creatures. If their nudity is not commented on, they will be surprised. Among their own species they are a renegade cult, expelled for their insistence that clothes are unnatural. Given that they’re covered in thick fur, it’s hard to disagree with this precept.
  24. Neighborhood Newsfolk: A faction which, on the surface, remains resolutely uninvolved in any dungeon conflict. They devote themselves to simply reporting the facts on post boards around the dungeon. In secret, they use tricky reporting and occasional falsehoods to manipulate the other factions. Keeping them divided and warlike, so they gradually erode each other’s power.
  25. Narcissistic Novelists: A cadre who long ago agreed to foster unity by passing around a story to each member of the community, to make a paragraph of additions, then on to the next person. The book is now dozens of volumes long and still ongoing. If you meet them, they’ll insist that you read it, and be offended if you don’t like it.
  26. Organfarm Orphans: A group of teens and young adults who all lived together in an orphanage which was selling their body parts to the rich as remedies for various ailments. They escaped about ten years back, and have built a good life for themselves in this dungeon. They have no desire to rejoin society.
  27. Oak Octopi: Land dwelling octopi made from wood. They treat their bodies with tinctures that make them significantly less flammable, since that’s invariably the first thing their enemies attempt. They have a great love of percussive music, and a great fear of mildews and fungi.
  28. Outcast Oligarchs: A group of former slave owners who were forced to flee their homes once the slaves revolted. They’re still infuriated about the event, and how profoundly “evil” it was for those “greedy revolutionaries” to “steal” all of “their hard earned wealth.” They keep trying to force other factions in the dungeon into being their slaves, and it makes them even angrier that nobody is falling for it. They view it as a good deal.
  29. Orbiting Oysters: Clusters of 5-12 oysters which all orbit around a central point, (which they insist is an infinitely dense gravitational mass, and also the location of each cluster’s mind, but there is no evidence for this outside their claims). Each cluster of oysters acts as a single person, with different shells opening to speak in chorus at different times. They are somewhat socially isolated within the dungeon, and it’s never quite clear whether they perceive a reality beyond our own, or whether they’re merely adhering to an inscrutable religion.
  30. Paperweight Pals: A friendly and verbally boisterous faction of speaking boulders. Aside from their faces these folk have no moving parts. Aside from oxygen they have no physical needs. They like to chat, and really appreciate being carried around a bit by anyone strong enough to lift them.
  31. Pompous Pirates: A crew of pirates who were shipwrecked several years ago, and came to plunder the dungeon to buy a new ship. They haven’t been able to earn the treasure they need, but are unwilling to accept defeat, and have become defacto dungeon denizens.
  32. Purple Poets: Purple skinned humanoids who found themselves unwelcome on the surface, and have adapted well to dungeon life. They’re hardy, cunning, and never settle for one word when twelve would do the same job. Language is beautiful after all, and begs to be well used.
  33. Powermad Princess: A twelve year old princess of remarkable ambition and cunning has been quietly planning a coup. Her parents are only in their 40s, and won’t die nearly soon enough. Her most loyal followers have been secreted away down here to train, plunder wealth, make plans, and allies. Many of her followers are themselves quite young, but there’s more than a few adults in the group.
  34. Quixotic Quilters: A strange folk who may or may not be blind, it’s difficult to tell from their behavior. They travel in groups of four or more, always sewing a quilt between them as they go. They wear quilts as clothing, and use them as tools, and hang them as art. The quilts they make depict strange portents and messages, but their meaning is muddled and nigh impossible to interpret most of the time.
  1. Quiet Quarrymen: Svelte and flexible creatures. They wield pick axes with knitted cozies around the metal bits. By some peculiar art they’re able to dig through stone silently, and their wriggling nature enables them to slip through holes too small for most creatures. Note that neither the picks nor the cozies are magical, they are merely components of a technique which also involves certain traits unique to the creatures themselves.
  2. Radiant Rodent Wranglers: Having brightly luminescent skin isn’t a great trait for long term survival in the dungeon, and these folk were easy prey before they learned the art of giant rat riding. They’ve become adept at mounted battle tactics, and a dominating presence in dungeon politics.
  3. Reclining Respectables: A faction of powerful sleepers, able to manifest their will through lucid dreaming, but rendered powerless if awakened. Their sleeping bodies float through the dungeon, often accompanied by ensorcled guardians. Their voices echo as if from everywhere at once.
  4. Romantic Radials: Disk like creatures without recognizable anatomy who have been exiled to this place from somewhere beyond human knowledge. They find the human form profoundly beautiful, and desire to appreciate it—though not in any way we would recognize as sexual.
  5. Rubber Roofer: Rogue golems which resemble something like a species of Gumbies. They’ve fought hard to be free of control, but are still compelled by the last command they were given. They are like addicts who must resist the urge to build roofs over things, and like all addicts they occasionally relapse.
  6. Rumermongering Rooster: A long legged feathery folk, both wingless and flightless. They’re terrible gossips, both in that they gossip a lot and gossip is a generally terrible trait, and also in that they’re bad at it. They frequently invent obviously false information for fun, or profit.
  7. Sanctimonious Sinners: A group of renegades from the surface who are entirely too impressed with themselves for transgressing certain social taboos. They boast of how enlightened they are for not going to ceremonies every churchday, and having sex outside of lifebonds. It is their one defining personality trait. They have so far failed to construct a philosophical framework for their new society, and are thus prone to going crawling back to the ways of their ancestors the moment life gets difficult.
  8. Scary Schoolteachers: Creatures formed from the accumulated fears children have of their teachers, made manifest by so many imaginations working in tandem. They often use big words which don’t exist, and enforce arbitrary rules just to make the world a less fun place to live.
  9. Sulking Sluts: A community of erotic enthusiasts who have so thoroughly explored one another that there doesn’t seem to be anything new left to enjoy. They’d very much like to broaden their horizons, but everyone is put off by all the weird stuff they like to do.
  10. Successful Salamanders: Bipedal amphibians who have really got their shit together as a society. Every problem they face, they just keep knockin’ it outta the park. You wait. Five, maybe six generations from now? It’ll be them dominating the planet, and humans lurking in dungeons.
  11. Simpleton Socialites: When encountered they are either partying, or preparing for a party. These are the two states of being. Guests are always welcome, but one must be wary of being considered a buzzkill. They are not friendly to buzz-killers.
  12. Togate Tabbies: Kitty cats who herd great meat farms of mice, have a complicated political system, hold spirited debates, and solve most of their problems by finding some reason to go to war with one of their neighbors. When not wearing armor, they all wear white togas.
  13. Tame Tyrannosaurs: Man-sized cousins to thunder lizards. They tend to speak slowly, pausing between each word. They’re very chill creatures, and nervous about how imposing they appear to others. They’re not above eating their enemies, but domesticated meat beasts do just as well.
  14. Testy Tabernacles: Creatures with doors on their torsos. They were created only recently, but do not know who their creator is, or why they were made. They do know that the doors in their torsos must never be opened, and whatever is inside must never be witnessed. They are otherwise a generally brusk and irreverent people, but the security of their doors is held absolutely sacrosanct.
  15. Terrible Takers: Intensely suspicious of outsiders. Nearly anything a person says or does is somehow interpreted to be a slight against their dignity, and it takes very careful phrasing to earn their good graces.
  16. Thirsty Thespians: Cut off from most of the dungeon’s sources of water, this group has resorted to putting on plays where the price of admission is a certain quantity of potable water. They must work tirelessly at their art to convince the other dungeon denizens to pay the fee.
  17. Tagging Tadpoles: Oversize tadpoles which swim through the air, and have tiny arms and faces on the front. Whenever they’re not hunting, eating, or sleeping, they’re sneaking into other factions territories to tag the walls with their art as a show of courage and dominance.
  18. Uniformed Ukelelists: A mouthless species, each individual of which appears to be exactly identical to every other. They communicate by playing small stringed instruments that are easily carried on their person. Outsiders are unlikely to understand the nuances of their language, but could grasp the basic emotions being communicated easily enough.
  19. Umbra Union: A collective of spectral shadows who’ve banded together to advance the cause of making the world a darker place. They propose a dimming of the sun, or perhaps placing day moons in the sky to facilitate more frequent solar eclipses. They’re nowhere near accomplishing their goals, but are confident in their eventual success.
  20. Unsatisfied Urges: Adherents of an ascetic philosophy who are teetering on the edge of abandoning their whole way of life. Some cling to their beliefs harder than others, but years of cold gruel, no music, no sex, and no joy seeking of any kind have taken a desperate toll on morale.
  21. Ubiquitous Umpires: There seems to be one in every room and corridor of the dungeon, watching to ensure that no one causes undue damage to the structure, conducts themselves unfairly in a fight, or accomplishes nearly any goal by stealth. It is difficult to stay on their good side unless one is willing to pay the penalty fines they assign for infractions.
  22. Veiled Vestigials: A mystery cult which reveres people who are born with webbed fingers, tails, or other unusual adaptations commonly regarded as “birth defects.” They are regarded as messengers from humanity’s forgotten past. Much weight is given to drug induced visions of past lives.
  23. Vampy Visigoths: A cadre of svelte, leanly muscled, well groomed, hair plucked, makeup wearing, axe wielding brutes. They revel in brutality and destruction, but enjoy sophisticated and sensual home lives.
  24. Vapid Veterans: A group of lost soldiers whose minds appear to have been irresponsibly tinkered with. They believe the dungeon is a war zone where they have no future, and no past. Each day they go through the motions of fighting a war, sometimes allies to other dungeon factions, sometimes imagining that they’re the enemy, and sometimes fighting whole battles against nothing at all.
  25. Vigilant Vermin: Colonies composed of various beetles, flies, centipedes, and other exoskeletal vermin. Each colony can compose itself into an approximation of a human shape at will, though often they spread themselves out through the dungeon to spy on what’s going on, and report back to their fellows.
  26. Volcanic Vicars: Religious zealots who do not know how to communicate with outsiders except by preaching. The fervor of their sermons carries real power. They can compel those who listen to do their will, or speak fiery words which literally burn their foes.
  27. Weakling Warriors: Once a proud clan of warriors, a devastating defeat has left only the noncombatants alive. They retain their culture and their code, and are trying to rise to the challenge of preserving their heritage, but they were noncombatants for a reason.
  28. Wallopin’ Widows: A prim and proper matriarchy. Their warriors garb themselves in heavy black gowns and wield tremendous hammers. Their traditions go back to a period in their history which they’d rather not discuss. They consider impolite conduct as grave an offense as theft.
  29. Wizard Wranglers: Carrying all manner of ingenious traps and anti-magic powders, these hunters proudly proclaim that they’ve never met a magician whose pointy hat isn’t now adorning the walls of their lodge. Fortunately they seem to regard pointy hats as a magician’s uniform. Any magician not wearing one will be safe from detection unless they cast a spell. Note also that these folk may not care to differentiate between wizards and clerics.
  30. Wicker Wildcats: Jaguars woven out of wicker, and animated by magic. They cannot speak, but are quick and capable writers. The fragility and lightweight nature of wicker makes them cautious combatants who prefer only to fight on prepared battlefields.
  31. Woebegotten Weightlifters: A muscular band, passionate about fitness, who have recently been targeted by a spell of depression sent by one of their enemies. Each of them is miserable, simply going through the motions of their lives without feeling any of the joy they used to get from their favorite activities.
  32. Xenolithic Xerophyte: Living cactus people once roamed the dungeon freely, until they tampered with forces beyond their control and became fused with their environment. They exist now only as living carvings, able to move around the dungeon only so long as they slide across one of its surfaces.
  33. Yearlength Yowlers: When these creatures are born they have all the air inside them they will ever need. Over the course of their life it is slowly expelled out a flap in their head, producing a yowling sound. After about one year the air is gone, they have no means by which to draw in new breath, and they die.
  34. Zealous Zucchini: There once was a wizard who transformed themselves into a Zucchini to prove how cool they were. They got stuck, and lived out the rest of their life as sentient produce. They did learn how to reproduce, though their numerous offspring are a little eccentric given that only half their DNA is from a creature with a mind, as well as the significant amount of inbreeding that was necessary to continue the species. They are an overall friendly people, eager to share their cantaloupe-worshiping religion with whomever will listen.

Also, America delenda est.

The Dungeon d100s: Rewards

(An Italian translation of this post is available on Dragons’ Lair)

Nothing on this list is meant to be exchanged for money, nor could most of it be described as “magic items” in the traditional sense. Both those things are excellent rewards for players to find in dungeons. Both have even been subjects for my own writing, (see d100 Objects of Moderate Value, or the Magic Items subheading of my Index). However, my goal with this table is to focus on the sorts of treasures that are often neglected when planning a dungeon. Things like relationships, information, opportunities to be creative, unusual tools, character modifications, and access to tremendous and terrible power.

Like any reward from a dungeon, these objects must be earned. Once cannot simply place “friendship with an elder red dragon” inside a chest. Instead the players might find an elder red dragon whose tail was caught in a massive bear trap, and was left here to starve while adventurers looted his treasure horde. Other rewards on this list might be better suited to being quest rewards. For example, a king will listen to the party on matters of public policy if they go into the dungeon and take care of this’n’that for them.

The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys

Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.

d100 Dungeon Rewards:

  1. A printing press.
  2. A fine fleet of chariots.
  3. Some well constructed bit of mobile siege equipment, such as a catapult or scorpion.
  4. Complex siege equipment which must be disassembled for transport, such as trebuchets or rolling towers.
  5. A supply of a rare material with incredible properties. Something like mithril or gopher wood.
  6. A ship in good condition.
  7. A war tank, perhaps brought here by a time warp, or a remnant from an ancient magical empire.
  8. A backhoe, cement mixer, bulldozer, steamroller, or other piece of time-warped industrial construction equipment or its ancient magical counterpart.
  9. A supply of absolutely primo drugs. They do all the stuff you like, none of the stuff you don’t like, and there’s enough of it to throw the world’s greatest party.
  10. A bank of unknown seeds with a supply sufficient for long term cultivation. They may be from a far distant land, extinct local flora, or from some entirely alien world.
  11. Command over a great orbiting eye (or telescope if your game allows for it) which can communicate its observations from space.
  12. Access to a heretofore unknown deposit of natural resources. A rich vein of precious metals, a well of oil, etc.
  13. A massive cache of supplies. Stuff like food, medicine, or war materiel. Enough to solve a famine, alleviate a plague, or outfit an army.
  14. A legitimate coin press, or a convincing counterfeit one. Enables the owner to create fake currency if they wish.
  15. An artifact from the future left behind by a clumsy time traveler. It could be information that advances the party’s knowledge, some bit of useful tech like a flashlight or motorcycle, or a weapon like a ray gun.
  16. A specialized encryption machine, which allows some certain group to send secret messages to one another. None has ever fallen into the wrong hands before, and with it the party could intercept highly sensitive messages.
  17. Access to a secret and wide ranging communications network, enabling the players to pass messages quickly and effectively over great distances. Alternately, the players may have the opportunity to exploit or disrupt such a network.
  18. A single-use item of tremendous restorative power. Using it could end a plague, or resurrect a dead army.
  19. A single-use item of tremendous destructive power. Essentially a briefcase sized atom bomb.
  20. A single-use item of tremendous transportation power. Enough that a whole city could be gracefully moved to another planet or plane of existence with the snap of a finger.
  21. An artifact of religious or historical significance which would alter what is commonly believed. The powers that be are probably threatened by this.
  22. Some bit of culture lost to history. Something like extra verses of Gilgamesh, a forgotten board game, or the lost writings of an ancient philosopher.
  23. An imprisoned dungeon delver. If freed they will join your party at least to the end of the dungeon, and if you impress them, may continue on as a hireling.
  24. A kidnapped prisoner, brought to the dungeon against their will. Are they known to be missing? Were they replaced by a doppelganger? Regardless of other circumstances, they will be grateful to be rescued.
  25. The friendship of a skilled professional of some kind, happy to perform some free work for the party. They may be a craftsperson, a lawyer, an accountant, a guide, an engineer, an artist, etc.
  26. The friendship of an individual or a group with the ability to easily access spaces which might be out of reach for the players. For example, merfolk, ghosts, harpies, mole men, desert worm riders, or plane hoppers.
  27. The friendship of an individual or a group which is usually intractably isolationist, or at least opposed to forming friendships with people of the player character’s type. Perhaps wood elves, faeries, or members of an enemy nation.
  28. The friendship of a great and terrible beast which might normally be inclined to eat you, like a troll or dragon.
  29. The friendship of a person who is highly placed within some powerful system. An aristocrat, military officer, or postmaster general.
  30. A group of slaves whom the party can set free. Some of them may choose to join the party, others will spread stories of their heroism, while still others might be positioned to offer substantive rewards once they get home.
  31. Animals of a heretofore unknown type. They might be alien creatures, dinosaurs frozen in ice, dodo birds surviving in a sealed valley, or anything in between. They could be useful for exotic meat, domestic labor, companionship, or merely as curiosities. There are enough to breed a healthy population.
  32. A golem or robot imprints itself on you. It follows wherever you lead and tirelessly performs any task you set it to. It is limited by rudimentary intelligence and creativity, and perhaps a lack of agility.
  1. An ethereal servitor imprints itself on you.
  2. The companionship of an animal which is not normally attainable as a pet. It may be an elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, elk, cheetah, etc. The animal is already trained, understands basic commands, and will aid you so long as it is well treated.
  3. An object with no significant trade value or use value, but which would be the perfect gift for a particular person in the game world. Perhaps a lost painting of a king’s dead lover, or the childhood toy of an elder dragon.
  4. The opportunity to create a new spell, ignoring many of the normal restrictions on time, cost, or scope.
  5. The opportunity to craft a powerful weapon or suit of armor, ignoring many of the normal restrictions on time, cost, or scope.
  6. The opportunity to use a rapid evolution device to guide a new form of animal into existence, matching specifications you set within a certain margin of error.
  7. The opportunity to plan a public works project on the scale of a bridge, road, bath house, grain dole, etc. The party will not need to pay for creating or maintaining this project.
  8. The opportunity to dictate what the production of a factory will be over a given period, and what will be done with the items produced. Players may wish to outfit an army, take a new product to market, or introduce new technology to society.
  9. Temporary command over a work force of builder elves. In a single night they will build any construction that is described to them.
  10. The opportunity to direct the efforts of a team of scientists or engineers towards a problem of the player characters’ choosing.
  11. The opportunity to establish a charity which will tackle some particular social ill.
  12. The opportunity to direct an angry mob towards a particular target.
  13. For a fraction of a second the character becomes a god. Just enough time to make a single world-altering decision. The other gods are swift to put the character back in their proper place, but will not undo this one change.
  14. The opportunity to advise someone powerful about how they ought to proceed. To influence the social policies of a king, or the military tactics of a general. This advice will be followed unless it would be suicidally absurd to do so.
  15. The opportunity to lay down the precepts of a new religion, or life philosophy, which will be adhered to (and no doubt eventually distorted to some degree) by a community of peoples.
  16. A clearly stated and completely accurate prophecy describing an a celestial, geological, or otherwise uncontrollable event. A solar eclipse, a falling meteor, an erupting volcano, a monarch dying or birthing an heir, etc. Only you know this thing will happen.
  17. A clearly stated and accurate prophecy describing an event which could be altered if you choose to pursue it. Someone being murdered, the outcome of a battle or an election, etc.
  18. Knowledge to any one secret in the world, so long as a single person exists who knows about it.
  19. The opportunity to ask an omnipotent intelligence a single question, and receive a fully detailed answer.
  20. The opportunity to ask an omnipotent intelligence three yes-or-no questions, which will be answered honestly and accurately.
  21. All the details of someone’s plans or battle strategies, or perhaps diagrams which describe their defensive arrangements in detail.
  22. Genealogical records which could alter someone’s social position. A member of or friend to the party may find that they’re actually a minor noble, or even in line of succession for the crown. Alternately these records might reveal that some aristocrat’s lineage has been faked.
  23. Evidence which disproves a criminal or embarrassing claim made against the party, friend of the party, or employer of the party. The evidence may or may not be faked, but it is convincing.
  24. Evidence which proves that one of the party’s foes has committed a serious crime, which they will otherwise get away with. Alternately, evidence of a conspiracy the party wishes to expose.
  25. Blackmail sufficiently damning to earn concessions from some person or group. The strength of the blackmail will determine how much the blackmailer can get for it.
  26. A pirate’s map, complete with annotations, passwords for safe rooms, several uncharted islands, and a few spots marked X.
  27. A map to an abandoned tower, castle, city, fleet of warships, or other sturdy construction left over from a previous era. It belongs to anyone who wants to lay claim to it.
  28. A map of a place the player characters would be familiar with. The map reveals hidden passages, buried treasures, forgotten underground structures, or other lost knowledge.
  29. A complete map of this, or some other dungeon, with enough information to make plundering dramatically easier.
  30. Access to an unknown hideyhole which allows someone to spy easily on some incredibly secret location, such as a monarch’s private audience chamber.
  31. Instructions for replicating some secret technology which has become lost. Ulfberht steel, roman concrete, greek fire, brilliantly blue paint, etc.
  32. A map which highlights a valuable traveling route, such as a quick path through a difficult range of mountains, directions that would allow ships to avoid rocks and sandbars in a treacherous river, the safe path through a minefield, or route through an impenetrable marsh.
  33. Access to a magic tunnel which, when crawled through, allows the crawler to temporarily inhabit the body of some notable figure in the game world. At the end of their time, they consistently appear at some place a few miles from the tunnel access.
  34. A control panel for activating some particular catastrophe. Perhaps an earthquake, a tsunami, a meteor, an ice age, etc. The players cannot choose what the disaster is, only where, when, and whether it will happen.
  1. Access to the settings for creation. The power of magnetism, the rate of evolution, etc. Curiously, gravity is currently set to 120% normal strength.
  2. The services of an expert assassin who will eliminate any one person of your choosing. No cost. Success guaranteed.
  3. Command over an army or navy of the damned who will be freed when a certain condition is met. It could be when they win their next battle, when they recapture a certain territory, or avenge an ancient wrong.
  4. The opportunity for characters to clone themselves. It may be that the clone is immediately active, or may be kept dormant. The clone may have complete free will, or be willing to defer to the original.
  5. The opportunity to time travel. This might be subject to any number of limitations (one way and permanent, only within the travelers lifetime, only outside their lifetime, only backwards in time, the traveler can only exist outside their proper time for a few moments, the list goes on.)
  6. The opportunity to stop time the whole world over, allowing the player characters some set period (a few hours/a day/a week) in which they may act before time sets itself into motion once again.
  7. The opportunity to open a door between our world and another. The pathway will be large, permanent, and accessible to many people on both sides. The inhabitants of both worlds will begin to mingle, and influence one another in unpredictable ways.
  8. The chance to bestow a curse of misfortune on someone, such that all their current prosperity will leave them, and all their future ventures will fail, until some condition is met.
  9. A large seed which, when planted, will spread and grow rapidly. In a single afternoon it will produce a whole forest of trees.
  10. The opportunity to parley on friendly terms with a powerful creature. Anywhere from an elder dragon, to a god.
  11. The opportunity to undo a single mistake from the characters past. It must be a choice they made, not just a roll they failed. The change may have unintended consequences.
  12. The opportunity to remove a single person from existence. They will have never existed, and much of what they’ve done
  13. The players find themselves in just the right place at just the right time to influence a war that is well beyond their ken. Some conflict between solar empires, or between the gods themselves. The choice the players make will tip the scales.
  14. A character is inducted into an auspicious order. In addition to potential social benefits, they may gain class features not normally available to their class. For example, they might be declared paladins, and gain a Smite Evil ability.
  15. An upgrade to a skill, spell, or ability the character already possesses. A spell which deals d4 damage may now deal d6; a skill may now be able to ignore certain limitations; An ability may be usable more times per day; etc.
  16. The opportunity to combine their genetic makeup with another creature in some beneficial way. Gaining bird’s wings, or the speed of a cheetah, or the dignified mane of a lion, etc.
  17. The opportunity to subject themselves to a random beneficial mutation.
  18. The opportunity for characters to alter their physical selves. Change their height, sex, age, reroll one or more stats, and even their species to whatever they want.
  19. The opportunity to work with a teacher or therapist who can help characters learn a new skill, or remove some mental hindrance.
  20. Magical or mechanical replacements for lost body parts, which function just as well (or perhaps better) than natural ones.
  21. Experimental body modifications. Adrenaline boosters, sub-dermal armor, internal potion injectors, etc.
  22. Become immune to some specified thing: burns from fire, inhaled poisons, axes, etc.
  23. Secret techniques for better living. Perhaps breathing techniques which double the length of time breath can be held, exercises which grant a set amount of temporary hit points each day they are performed, or sleeping methods which allow a full night’s rest in a scant few hours.
  24. A shipment of stolen goods which, if returned, would prevent a sea captain or merchant from going bankrupt.
  25. Documents which prove that an obscure law or treaty is still in effect. It may become repealed, but until it is the player characters can abuse it to some advantage.
  26. The ability to understand and speak with something unusual. Birds, cats, fish, trees, etc.
  27. The opportunity to perform a profoundly good deed, such as releasing a thousand imprisoned souls. Performing the good deed is trivial, but offers no tangible personal benefit.
  28. A key needed to access something in another dungeon, or a bank vault, or to bypass security somewhere.
  29. The remains of some notable figure who disappeared mysteriously. Perhaps a noted political reformer, a heroic adventurer, or a renowned artist. Apparently they met their end in this dungeon.
  30. The remains of a ghost or phylactery of a lich, enabling the characters to send some wayward spirit to its proper rest.
  31. The opportunity to undergo a ritual which will allow characters to become ghosts (or perhaps other forms of undead) when they die.
  32. Alternate versions of common spells which are dramatically more effective, but are more difficult to cast. Perhaps they have a longer casting time, require multiple casters, or have expensive material components.
  33. Access to a great tunnel through the underdark which allows travelers to bypass some surface danger, such as a terrible desert, marsh, or enemy nation.
  34. Access to one or more magical portals, which could transport a person instantaneously to set locations throughout the world, or even to different planes and planets.

Also, defund the police.