Mapmaker, mapmaker...

I like maps; I like them for their aesthetic value alone, but I'm old-school enough to want maps for any location my players explore. I'm not adverse to making them up as I go along, but I feel even then that preparation improves improvisation. In any case, being spatially precise helps me visualize the scene and makes things like combat easier to adjudicate.

Some posts about random and semi-random map generation caught my eye recently. I almost never go by random generation alone in anything, but I certainly use it as inspiration. This post, while about computer methods for an as-yet unpublished video game, got me to thinking about how to create random maps in a way that doesn't generate strangely incongrous results.

I took the method described above, and developed my own manual procedure, as outlined below. It requires a little aesthetic judgment, but is still pretty fast:

1. Start at the center of the map. Roll 3d8+1 to determine the size of the room, in squares. Do not worry about doors at this point. Immediately, we have two considerations:
      a) Rectangles are the easiest shape to draw on graph paper, but can get boring fast. So you either need to round up or down to the nearest factorable number ( 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25 ), or you need to add alcoves and projections to get the exact number you rolled.
      b) If the room is not square, determine which way the long axis runs with a simple d6 roll: 1-3 = the long axis runs north-south, 4-6 = it runs east-west.
   
   There's an upper limit of 25 squares with this method. Borrowing a concept from Tunnels and Trolls, however, whenever you roll triples, note what size that would be and roll again. Stick these two smaller rooms together to make one larger one.
2. Starting at the 12:00 position, roll another room in the same fashion. Place it somewhere above the first, spacing it out by rolling 1d4+1. This number is the number of squares between the top edge of the lower room and the bottom edge of the higher one. Place the room somewhere at this point; it probably looks better if the centers aren't perfectly aligned, but that's a matter of taste.
   
3. Continue in a similar manner at the 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 positions.
   
   

   

   At this point, they're just a series of boxes with no relationship. 

   
   
4. Now, starting with the second room you created, repeat this process for every direction that doesn't already have a room filled. In this case, it means that the 6:00 position will already be filled.
   
5. Iterate this process in order of room creation, if possible. Some rooms will have to be skipped because all of the adjacent spaces will be filled. Continue until your map is filled, or the number of rooms is otherwise to your liking.
   
6. Start connecting the rooms with a Minimum Spanning Tree. Don't worry about the math. Basically, all it means for our purposes is, start drawing corridors connecting rooms that are two squares away, then three squares, etc., until you have a path that connects every room.
   
7. At this point, there should be no looping paths, so add a few corridors to create them.
   
   

   

   The room just north of the center was the one I started with.
   The spaces enclosed by looping paths have been darkened; these
   are important because they give multiple routes through your map. 

   
   
8. Add entrances and exits as you will.
   

This process can be done in about a half hour, and creates functional, decent-looking maps. There is certainly a good amount of corridor space in there; I'll show a method of generating more closely-packed rooms at another date.

Of course, populating the area is another matter altogether. When in a pinch, I'd recommend some of the stuff you can find at hackslashmaster. But I often find myself needing a layout for a scenario I've already anticipated, so this step isn't usually a big concern.

cheers, Adam

Trust in a Savage World

I find the frequency with which I blog mirrors the frequency with which I game, and the last couple of months have been scarce due to a variety of issues, not least of which being a bout of Strep. Thank goodness for modern medicine.

But I just GM'ed a session of Savage Worlds, and tried to apply some of the wisdom from hackslashmaster while doing it. Primarily, I was going to give the players all of the information they needed to play, without requiring spot rolls or perception checks; if they said they were looking in the right place, they'd find any relevant information.

They kept on asking to make notice rolls anyhow, and in the spirit of making the game go faster, I let them roll; Savage Worlds is a game where, if the characters want it enough and are willing to spend the Bennies to make it happen, they will be successful far more often than not. I don't think anyone missed a notice roll all night long.

The setting was pulp sci-fi in the style of '30s-era Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. They were members of an underground resistance on a moon orbiting a Saturn-like gas giant, in a city modeled after Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The adventure was twofold: first, their previous excursion had almost been sabotaged due to a traitor in their ranks, and since they were also under suspicion, they wanted to root out the mole.

Hidden information is something that requires a die roll in most game systems, but I let them know that three members of the resistance were in a position to be the mole, and they basically guessed the right on on the first try. I role-played a bit of him trying to get one of them into his chambers, where he'd set off a bomb that he could conveniently hide from and survive. That didn't work, and after a few intimidate rolls, he cracked and let details slip that only the mole would have known, at which point I had notified them that the city guards were bearing down on their underground hideout.

That's where phase two came in; I drew up a simple map of the corridor they were in: on either end of a 140' hallway, two empty elevator shafts provided entry for teams of rappelling guardsmen. Crossing this hallway at two points were shorter hallways, and on the end of those, I placed escape routes in the form of maintenance access shafts. I told them that three out of the four shafts were guarded, and let them do as they would.

Long story short: the next session is going to be a jail break. What I thought would be the obvious thing to do--see where the guards were coming from, go the other way--wasn't as obvious to my players. They did a decent amount of damage tactically, but I let them know that the guards would keep coming in waves. Instead, they tried to go up a shaft from which guards were sprouting, so I informed them that they'd not be able to get past them in such a narrow space, and the reinforcements from behind them would catch up soon enough. Even if they shot a guard, he'd only fall down--on them--and obstruct their escape.

I guess the moral of this story is, old habits die hard, and the players didn't take up the information that I was handing out to them. Sometimes it's hard to trust the GM. But hopefully, if the games keep being fun, I'll be able to condition them until they do.

cheers,
Adam

New Magic Item: The Abacus of Xallim

Lamentations of the Flame Princess points out that, in a world where magic items can be made, not all of them will be made to benefit the adventuring professions. Since upwards of 99% of people won't fall into that category, in fact, it seems like most magic items will not have direct applicability to exploration or combat. I do like the idea, however, of something that might be pressed into adventuring service with a little cleverness, so I came up with the following:

The Abacus of Xallim.

Looks something like this, but more awesome.

It is widely believed that the wizard Xallim bound the spirit of an obsessive savant into the abacus. Some say he bound it into the very wood of the frame, while others speculate its powers have something to do with the strange engraving on the side: an imp, viewed through a four-paneled window, handing a fruit of some sort to a small, flightless bird. Regardless, it appears as a well-made example of its type, capable of counting up to 9,999,999,999. Four red beads on a rod running perpendicular to the rest, on the top of the frame, count the number of daily charges it has left to use. These slide up and cannot be pulled down until the charges reset.

To operate the abacus, the user must say, in any language known to mortal men, the following: "The task has come to you, servant of Xallim, to tally and report the number of [X] that lies [or stands, etc.] before you." Then, placing fingers on the bead, the user will feel an urge to slide the beads back and forth for a frantic period of 10 - 15 seconds. Doing so will reveal the number. If secrecy is desired, the command may be whispered, but it still must be physically uttered.

Without expending any charges, it can instantly size up the number of objects of a type in plain sight.

For one charge, it can discern between real and fake, or pure and adulterated, coins, by counting how many apparent and real numbers of an item are under consideration. The beads will flip back and forth between the two tallies; although it may confuse the outside observer, the user will be able to read the values instantaneously.

For two charges, the abacus can determine if any hidden/secret doors or traps (and how many) exist within viewing range.

By using up all remaining charges for the day, it can determine, as the answer to a yes-or-no question, if an item is magical or legendary. A count of 1 means yes, 0 means no.

While all of the daily charges are exhausted, even the chargeless function ceases. It still works as a regular abacus, however.

There is a 3% chance per use that the user will become afflicted with the compulsion to remain obsessively clean and orderly, which would preclude most adventuring activities. This effect will remain until someone casts a Remove Curse on the user.

cheers,
Adam

Dens of Iniquity

I've been on a map craze lately, spending hours designing and refining them. I don't even have scenarios planned out for them yet, I just want to be able to pull something out at a moment's notice, if need be, and say "yeah, that's the map of the kobolds' lair". To that end, I've been looking at various ways of coming up with layouts quickly. Failing that, I hope at least to come up with cool looking floor plans.

Although there are excellent random dungeon generators out there, and I've gleaned inspiration from them from time to time, I wanted something where my own sensibilities would guide me. Slower, yes, but at this time that's a trade-off I'm willing to make.

The first thing I wanted to do was create a set of lairs: small, self-contained mini-levels that I could drop into a hill in the countryside or on the side of a mountain somewhere, where a small-to-medium sized clan of humanoids dwell. And the idea hit me to use small enclosures where humanoids dwell as my inspiration.

Behold, the House-to-Map-inator!

The house where a certain self-important blogger grew up.
(The second story is smaller than it should be. Sorry.)

Now converted to a general-purpose humanoid lair.

All I did, in case it isn't obvious, was take the rooms and their basic spatial relationships, stretched them out with a few corridors, and threw in a few extras like secret doors and trap doors. I changed things liberally, while staying true to the basic idea of the layout: the second floor now simply extends from the first, I removed a bedroom, and I added more connecting hallways where it seemed to make sense. The basement, rather than being reached by a stairwell, now can be found under a trapdoor in room 5.

Although I know very little about real-world architecture (unlike this guy), it's not hard to see how existing structures can be plundered for inspiration. It works well for houses, and I've got a few of those drawn up. But since I don't have instant recall of real-world monumental structures, I still needed to come up with a system that worked for bigger dungeons; more on that the next time.

cheers,
Adam

Frog, Giant, and Toad, Giant are Friends

 Or possibly, "Friends, Giant". But they're certainly not friends with you.

I noticed something while looking at the table of contents for the 1st edition Monster Manual the other day. Of the 233 main entries, 31 of them are either giants or "something, giant" (not to mention Ettins and Titans, for that matter). Why would that be, I wonder?

Giants appear in the myths and legends of many, many cultures. One common explanation for that is that they are a manifestation of childhood fears, when everything was bigger than we were. Although I suppose that's possible, I would hope that one of our cultures would have managed to come up with an arrangement where children felt basically safe in the world, or at least in the home. Another explanation, and one that rings a little truer to me, is that giant things are a staple of fantasy because fantasy is literally about being larger than life; like Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, with its eight-legged animals and colors that couldn't be found on Earth, fantasy just has to be bigger, stronger, faster, more. And that led me to think about what the process of fantasy does, and the ways it does it.

Fantasy does a lot of things, to be sure, but there are probably a few recurring principles at work. Monsters, in particular, seem a fertile source for speculation: how many truly different ways are there to make a monster? Some sprang to mind, and since monsters are inherently things to be feared (or at least, things to approach cautiously), I began postulating what fear each type of monster might represent. For example:

Chimerism: the basic process where something bad is made worse, usually by combining it with attributes from something else bad. The chimera itself, the manticore, and the eponymous dragon are all examples of this. The chimera is a serpent, a lion, and a goat. (Which, as a manifestation of the god Pan, would reasonably scare ancient Greeks if he was in a bad mood. Read Euripides' Bacchae if you don't think so.) The dragon, a giant serpent and a bat. And I could imagine the dialogue that went on with the first storyteller to employ the manticore: "It's like a lion." "Big deal, my cousin Demosthenes shot and killed a lion with his bow." "Oh yeah? Well this lion flies, and has the brains of a man, and it shoots back."

As a subset, there is the man-beast hybrid: the Minotaur, the Sphinx, the Centaur and the Lamia all represent something with the physical power of an animal and the cunning of a human. Although if you looked at it biologically, the Minotaur is really just as weak as a man and as dumb as a bull. But nonetheless, the process is the same.

Giantism, and its twin, Dwarfism: not the medical kind, but as I mentioned before, these are the basic manifestations of fantasy as being somehow more than real. In the case of Dwarfism, even smaller than normal represents some kind of schism with the World as We Know It.

Abstractions, personified: e.g., the Undead, embodying Death. Not only do they remind us of our common inevitable end, they personalize it by portraying the dead as resentful of those of us who haven't joined them yet, as if we were all Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls, and Death has it out for us personally. Other abstractions might be the Elements (Elementals), Bad Luck (any Invisible enemy, or anything that can cast a curse), or Social Taboos (Demons and Devils).

I'm sure there are more, and I haven't figured out where some things (like Medusa) belong in this or any taxonomy. But the benefit of thinking about monsters like this is, when you as a DM need to come up with a monster that your players can't simply look up in the rules, this process of conjuring up abominations might come in handy.

cheers,
Adam

Still In the Labyrinth

I mentioned  that I was going to play a game of The Fantasy Trip last week, and I did so. I ended up changing my character's name to Xoltoth, because it sounded more Swords 'n' Sorcery-like than Nicodemus. The campaign is set in the world of Cidri, but that's almost like saying it's set in the world of make-believe, because the official description of Cidri states that it's a world big enough to hold any and all campaigns in it.

Although none of us likes railroaded adventures, we allowed ourselves to be drawn into the initial scenario--trapped in a mountain cave by a landslide--for the sake of kicking things off. We did some exploration, and I feel bad that I didn't press harder to climb down one ravine before the party just decided to explore another path: there was a cache of healing potions at the bottom, which we could have used when fighting the dessicated corpses deeper down in the caves.

After that fight (where my character spent most of his time running away due to some really lousy rolls), we discovered a throne room, and, to make a short story shorter, discovered that this place had been the palace of one of the nations that had been wiped out years ago. The undead were there to guard their king's final resting place, a goal that our inadvertent presence messed up.

After all that, we're still trapped in the cave complex.

Some things about TFT that I learned from this game:

1. The difference between a 10 DEX and an 11 is notable; you need to roll under your DEX on 3d6 to cast a spell successfully, and it seems like every roll was an 11. 
2. Consequently, I'm going to buy a point of DEX as soon as I garner enough XP. (That's how characters grow stronger in TFT.)
3. 1-3 points of armor really adds up against a barrage of 1- and 2d6 attacks. Sometimes, our intuitive assessment of numbers is way off, as I didn't think any of the armored characters got a bargain for their gold, but I was wrong.

When we find our way out, I'll let y'all know what happens.

cheers,
Adam

No Greater Burden

I've been a fan of the house-ruled abstract encumbrance system that Lamentations of the Flame Princess uses since I first read about it on Telecanter's blog. The one thing that didn't sit right with me was what to do with stronger characters, who quite reasonably wouldn't feel the burden as much as their weaker comrades-in-arms.

A simple solution is to subtract two slots worth of encumbering items per point of strength over 12. That way, a character with 18 STR could go from say, 19 slots (3 Encumbrance, or "Heavily Encumbered") to 7 slots (1 Encumbrance, or "Unencumbered"). Items would still be recorded, of course. Tying it to every point of STR makes a 13 or a 14 really worth something, as it might just be the difference between Heavy and Light Encumbrance.

cheers,
Adam