The Grim Megadungeon

 

The Grim Megadungeon doesn’t exist. This map, for instance, is Mapper’s Challenge II by Dyson Logos. He missed a trick, to my mind, by not calling it Mapper’s Delight but maybe he’s not that into the Sugarhill Gang. I’m not sure how I feel about Megadungeon as nomenclature or even a play style. I’ve run a megadungeon. The Anomalous Subsurface Environment, which is good (although unfinished) and read some others. Not all of them are good. 

When it’s done well, the megadungeon encapsulates the fantasy adventure game milleu. Everything that can happen in a game can happen in a dungeon. That term is not a great one though. 

I like underworld. That’s how Dragon Warriors does it, and before that (probably influenced by too) the Empire of the Petal Throne. 

Mega-Underworld isn’t a thing though. 

The Grim Underworld probably does exist. It’s down there. From the very first post of this blog, and before, I have maintained that the city is built on the ruins of a thousand civilisations. That sounds like a megadungeon to me. So the Grim Underworld is down there. Existing. It’s just not been transcribed to graph paper, the rooms stocked and keyed, prepped for play. However, I can feel it. Can you have an Old School setting that doesn’t contain a really fucking massive dungeon? 

So I was wrong. Every time I’ve tried to write the Grim Underworld, I’ve failed. It seems, well, a bit shit. However that’s more or less what I think about every published RPG product I read too. So it’s a bit rubbish. Most other things are too. I wouldn’t wipe my arse with The Curse of Strahd and people fucking love playing that. 

Ok, ok. The Grim Megadungeon does exist. Theoretically. I can feel it existing. I wish it would stop. 

Unplanned Grim North

With one of our players having to miss the session last night we decided that the campaign was at a point where potentially crucial decisions might need to be made. Not good if you’re absent. 

So we decided to play some Grim North to pass the time, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Not just because one of the PCs fell to her death. 

The advantage of running the GN at short notice is it’s a simple OSR game powered by random tables. It also allows for a certain amount of whimsy on my part that a more serious game of Dragin Warriors does not.

So we happened to pick up where we left off with Rufus Rose (a fighter) and Pansy (a thief) found themselves trapped on the wrong side of a sprung steel door, deep in the Undercity. They had originally headed down there to obtain the liver of a Ghost Snake for a wizard, which is a as good a reason as any. They fought some mole men, declined to investigate an underground ziggurat, Pansy fell to her death while trying to escape a cavern, Rufus teamed up with newcomer Tulip (also a thief) and they found a slew a Ghost Snake. They also recovered a fill-in-the-blanks death warrant, signed by the Autarch. 

I remain unhappy with the current process for generating Grim North characters. It needs something along the lines of WFRP’s careers alongside its basic class and level structure. These would help tie the characters to the setting, add a little bit of flavour and provide quick starting equipment. I’ll get round to it eventually but I’ve never really been one for making my own classes or mechanics or whatever. Hmm.

The fragility of 1st level Swords&Wizardry characters remains constant. Perhaps if Pansy/Tulip’s player chose a class that had more than 1d4 hit points it would help. 

However: 

Pandora Set (thief) killed in a tavern brawl after being hit over the head by a plank with a nail through it.

Calypso Seth (monk) killed in single combat with the champion of the Amphibious Gods despite having imbibed several “toad brews” and receiving associated mutations.

Pansy (thief) fell to her death while climbing down a chimney style passage in order to assist Rufus Rose in climbing up. 27 feet was her downfall. 

Meanwhile, Dragon Warriors

I started a new Dragon Warriors game, set as I describe it “North of Fenring.” This a squashed little bit of the map between Fenring Forest and the Pagan mountains with no canonical settlements or the like. An area of blank space ripe for some low stakes adventure with a group of typical DW player characters:

Botwulf, a knight. He might have suffered leprosy, amongst other ailments, he doesn’t have the best stats.

Gwenneth-May, an assassin. Trained by her father and he own curious nature. 

Drakke, a hunter. Bombastic and cocksure. 

They started off invited to a friend’s wedding in the tiny settlement of Crowborough but arrived to find a funeral might be more appropriate. 

Sir Caeron, the local lord had died of a mysterious illness and apparently his hand had subsequently been severed. Meanwhile the mercenaries he hired to serve as men at arms were lording it up over the local peasantry and generally being unpleasant. Their leader, Grigget, pressing a suit of marriage against Ava, Sir Caeron’s betrothed. 

Our heroes set about getting into fights with Grigget’s men, some of which they won; trying to find the missing priest (who may have married Sir Caeron and Ava in secret,) meeting Green Jenny in her lonely cabin; that sort of thing. 

Good times.

On Einar’s Death

Einar was a Thulander, a devotee of the True Faith and a man who adventured because he hoped to build a church. 

He was a good man, prone to berserk rages in battle but sound of reason, conciliatory even, when at peace. 

He fell beneath a hail of arrows, axe in hand, far from home. 

He stormed the barbican of a petty Emphidian lord, on a tiny island, to free the small folk of his tyranny. And to take revenge. 

However the reasons for Einar’s death can be traced all the way back to Ellesland, many game and actual years prior, when he was tricked by a fairy maid and fell into a river. 

 

In water deep and cold he risked drowning beneath the weight of his own mail; so he shed it like a wyrm slithering anew from old skin. 

But alas he never replaced the armour, he was too busy, too caught up in events to source new iron. 

So when the arrows fell during his heroic charge, the unforgiving Dragon Warriors missile fire rules meant he had little protection from his enemies, and he was slain. 

Going Even Lower Prep for a Second Game

Jon Hodgson doing his thing

I’m looking at running another game on Tuesday. The Grim North continues on Sunday nights and the Tiny Prep method is keeping things ticking over nicely there. However as soon as something starts working it’s time to fuck it up, so now that I’ve established I have enough time to run one weekly game I shall try and run two. 

At Dragonmeet this previous year and probably every other year proceeding, those of us that meet up there have expressed our desire to meet up online like we used to in the G+ days and ply a game or two. This week we’re actually going to get our act in gear and do it. 

In order to manage this with the minimum impact on our time, we’re going to play Beyond the Wall in the manner the book intends. So using playbooks to generate characters and a shared village setting; and then using a scenario pack for the evenings adventure. It’s a good way to get things going with zero prep beforehand. I’ve used Beyond the Wall a couple of times in this manner and Through Sunken Lands as well. Through Sunken Lands being the Moorcock/Howard/ sword and sorcery genre take opposed to Beyond the Wall’s Prydain/Earthsea/Dark Rising presuppositions. They’re both good games that do exactly what they set out to achieve and it’s nice to have something like that in your back pocket for such as occasion. 

Beyond the Wall had campaign tools in Further Afield and while I have not employed them at the table, they look sound. If we decide to extend Beyond the Wall past a couple of sessions I’d be interested to see how they work out.  

What I Do When a Player Misses a Session

Play with who turns up.

What? Yeah, seriously, just play with whoever turns up and find a way to make it work. 

In most gaming groups there will be times when you all just can’t make it on the same Wednesday or whatever. This is just a fact of modern life. Something will come up for someone at some point which means they just can’t play. 

I saw a thread on Reddit recently where there was must handwringing on this subject but it’s all a bit nonsense. If one player can’t make it or two players or something please don’t cancel your game. Just play.

Having time for play is a rare thing, allowing that time to be subverted to something else because of scheduling is a shame. Sometimes it can’t be helped but the game should continue regardless. That way great campaigns are built and I think that is what we’re after. If you consistently run your game week in, week out with the players that are available then the game will inevitably grow. If that game is cancelled frequently then it will probably end up in the great campaign graveyard; Hiatus. 

It helps if you have baked into the setting reasons to be flexible about attendance but it’s not necessary. The famous OG West Marches campaign always started and finished in town to allow for its rotating cast of players to always have the same start point. My Grim North campaign exists mostly within one huge city to allow for people wandering off mid adventure to go shopping on their own and rejoin the others later (like next week.) 

Or alternatively Time in the Grim North is mutable. So this past weekend I had two players available out of five. One of whom has just returned from a two week holiday is out of in game continuity. Currently the PCs are involved in exploring an abandoned mansion and dealing with various squatters. I gave them the option of continuing this without the others or taking an alternate branch of the timestream to do something else for the evening, try and resolve it in one session and then pick up the mansion exploration when more people were available. This is a very meta thing to put to the players but it was game time and I wanted to play. They took the alternate timeline option and the two of them became embroiled in a heist to steal the last owlbear egg in the Grim North. 

The campaign continues and that’s the main thing

Setting Appropriate Random Tables

These are worth their weight in the precious metal of your choice. In order for an entry on a random table to have significant value it must be something that the GM couldn’t just make up on the spot. So if entry 23 on your Open Country encounter table is “2d6 Peasants,” it’s not working hard enough. 

The way the Black Hack handles this is interesting, and I expect it’s not the only example of this. It gives each monster entry two small (d6) tables of what they’re doing and what with. See Banished Elves above. This way we’re not just getting “2d6 Banished Elves, fight ‘em” as a result. You could argue that the old school reaction roll helps add variety to general tables and I would agree and wholeheartedly encourage you to use them. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes you need something general but random in order to introduce an element of chaos (with a small c) into your highly structured plan for this evening’s fun. If high structure fun is your and your group’s bag. I always roll on my “What’s Complicating Tonight’s Grim North Session?” table for this very reason. And despite my preference for more detailed and setting relevant results in general, this is just a big list of potential antagonists. This works for me in that it often throws in an unforeseen or incongruent yet possible wrinkle into a session or scenario. The advantage here being that it can be easy to get drawn into George RR Martin thinking when quickly crafting hooks and scenarios.  By this I mean too thematic. When travelling George’s Seven Kingdoms you will often encounter the Fisher Folk who are ruled by the Fish King and sit upon the Cod-bone Throne or whatever. This sort of theming is useful in differentiating between lots of what would be otherwise broadly similar places. Indeed the Districts of Nox Aeterna are themed in this way for that exact reason.  However, if we’re stealing a minority religious item from a cult and there are other thieves, other cults and the Watch involved then that’s fine but it’s all a bit obvious. If we roll on our random complication table and the mysterious Lamprey Men are now in the mix then we’ve got to get creative and that’s where the adventure is. 

If we look at a more specific example from my setting, each District of the city has a short random encounter table. They’re usually just a d6 but the encounters on them are relevant to that location in some way that I don’t have to just make up on the spot. So generally if I roll that table I get something specific to the region of the city the PCs are travelling through without having to really reference any deeper notes on the area; and it’s automatically congruent with that District and it’s inhabitants. In this instance when I create entries for these tables they include the activity taking place. So for instance if we consider this entry for Rivershore, a gentrified former fishing locale now popular with hipsters: 

1. Earnest youths seeking monthly charitable donations for blind, mute, plague ridden orphans

So yes, they’re beggars but more in the vein of the modern tabard wearing charity muggers that accost you in London claiming to want just a minute of your time (and of course a monthly direct debit from which their commission is generated.) It’s not creative genius but it’s definitely better than “2d4 beggars,” and that is sufficient for these purposes.