Swashling Bucks

A game broke out spontaneously at my house this weekend.  Sophie decided to run a game using the Pathfinder Beginner Box, making up an adventure on the fly.  Nora and one of their friends from down the street played, and I joined in.

The girl, whom we'll call 'L', played one of the pre-generated characters from the box set.  The sheet described the character as a swashbuckler.  L asked what the word meant and I told her.  Her subsequent play would suggest that she interpreted this in the most violent way possible.  Meanwhile, I played a cleric who was determined to convert anyone and everyone to the worship of Serenrae.  This is the same character who insisted on donating loot to "the orphans" a few months back.  Nora played a "fashion fighter," which she described as someone who fights and kills people who aren't fashionable. The pieces were set:  I would play the lone voice of reason between two murderous adventurers.

It didn't take us long to figure out what we were supposed to do.  A terrorist human named Josh was kidnapping children from around town, and we were the only ones equipped to deal with him.  L went around town with her rapier drawn, trying to intimidate people into telling her where Josh was hiding, referring to him as "the human kidnapper."  She wasn't getting anywhere fast with this approach.  For her part, Nora was wheeling and dealing, borrowing gold against future looting profits at exorbitant interest rates just so she could buy fashionable dresses, tiaras, armor, and accessories.  Her matching pink chain mail and shield will surely set her apart from her peers.

It was up to me to figure out where Josh and his gang were hiding.  One guy seemed to be lying to L, so I followed him to a tavern to keep an eye on him.  I'm still not sure if he was really hiding anything, but some bribes to the barkeeper got me all kinds of information.  The human kidnapper was rumored to be hiding out either in the old mines at the edge of town, or under the long-dormant volcano, Mt. Toughmore.  And a guy by the name of Biggle living across the street knew where the hidden door into the volcano could be found.  I met Biggle and convinced him to show us the way for 10 gp.  We agreed to meet at his doorstep at first light the following morning.

When it was Nora's turn, I was treated to this gem of a conversation:

Nora:  "How much is the shield?"
Sophie:  "Twenty dollars."
Nora (not at all joking):  "Oh good!  Now I won't have to spend the rest of my gold!"
Sophie:  "Sorry, I mean gold, not dollars.  Twenty gold pieces."
Nora (crestfallen): "Oh..."

Then I went outside to do some yard work while the kids continued to play out the shopping portion of the game.  At one point I was talking to my new neighbor when Sophie ran out to ask me a question.  "Dad, L wants to pick a person's pocket.  How do we do it?"

"She rolls a d20 and adds her Sleight of Hand bonus against the target's Perception," I replied.

"I don't see Sleight of Hand."

"Just use Stealth then."

"Ok!"  And she ran off.

My neighbor looked at me.  "Dungeons & Dragons?"

"Yep."

"System?"

"Pathfinder."  He nodded.  Turns out he used to play, but I digress.

Eventually the girls were ready to join Biggle and me and head to Mt. Toughmore to apprehend Josh the human kidnapper.  We arrived at the hidden door and couldn't get it open.  Through a hole in the door we could see there was someone on the other side.  I asked if we could come in, you know, just to talk a little bit about Serenrae.  "It will only take a few minutes of your time," I assured him, "but it could change your whole life for the better."  He didn't let us in, but eventually we figured out the trick with the door and got in anyway.

The first room's lone inhabitant was a goblin.  Instead of killing him, I hired him.  L explained to the goblin that she was a "buckswashler."

"You swashle bucks?" I asked.

"That's right!" she declared.  Who was I to judge?

After that it was stab all the things.  Boggarts, giant spiders, you name it.  Kids were really into it, although Nora tried to get out of having to do the actual fighting at first.  "Here, give me the torch, and I'll give you my sword so you can attack."

"I already have a sword."

"That's ok, I can still hold the torch for you."

"That's fine," I said, "but we won't be sharing the treasure with people who don't share the risks."  That fixed that problem. 

Good times.

Random Generation via d12

Stumbled on this site via Reddit: The Dungeon Dozen.  All kinds of things you can generate with a d12.

I love these things.

Which reminds me, my 20 Death Scenes generator from my last post came in handy last night.  I walked into the dungeon with five level-0 characters, and only one survived.  Well, so far...we still have at least three rooms left to clear.  Anyway, it was fun to role-play my elf ("Berelon Glathoniel the Enlightened, on Whom Shines the Light of Everlasting Utar") describing in gruesome detail how badly the spear in his spleen hurt.  Berelon went on to be revived by one Farmer Brown, who was himself killed just moments later.  Farmer Brown is survived by his duck.

Dungeon Crawl Classics:  very high mortality rate.  And a ton of fun.  I love the idea of Darwinian pressure determining who will be remembered as heroes, and who will forever be relegated to the status of monster fodder.

20 Death Scenes

My kids and I haven't had a chance to play RPGs in quite some time.  I do, however, play weekly with my friends.  One game we plan to try out in the not so distant future is an old-school style game called Dungeon Crawl Classics ("DCC") by Goodman Games.

DCC has a high mortality rate, and since I'll be a player rather than DM, my characters will be dying a lot.  So I decided that it might be useful to have some final moments ready for when my characters kick the bucket.  You know, just a few last words and actions before giving up the ghost.

Roll 1d20:

1. Try to say something, but keep spitting up blood.
2. Be the guy who cries for his momma.
3. Pull another PC close to your face and whisper a single, final word, as if it is a vital clue upon which the other character's survival depends.  Something vague like, "the sanctuary."
4. Chuckle to yourself as you finally comprehend the universe's big joke.
5. Be lost in confusion and utter disbelief.  You have no idea you're dying.
6. Smile and say something like, "That's not so bad.  I've had worse."  Then keel over without another sound.
7. Die slowly, thinking each sentence is your last.  Make the scene get progressively more awkward as you run out of things to say.
8. Swear like a sailor.  Nothing but a long, unbroken stream of what Spongebob would call "sentence enhancers."
9. "Well, this is it!  So long!"
10. Blame one of the other PCs for your death and place a curse on them.
11. Shower everyone around you with praise ("You were all so wonderful, thank you, thank you!"), then politely bid adieu.
12. Act like you're faking your death.  "Just kidding, folks, I'm fine!  See?"  Then die.
13. Explain to everyone around you in exquisite detail how badly it hurts, how it's more excruciating than they can possibly imagine.  Leave out no details.  Then:  "Just wait, you'll see!"
14. Give bogus surgical instructions on how the other PCs must save you.
15. Obsess over what a big mess you're making.  Blood and guts all over your new armor, your new boots, the carpet, etc.  
16. Make a bizarre final request about an heirloom or a body part, or both.  Think in terms of the watch in Pulp Fiction.
17. Offer to sing to those around you the "song of my people."  Begin by singing a poignant note, then die, followed by scatological sounds as your body voids its bowels.
18. Tell one of the other PCs (roll a die to determine which one) that you always secretly loved them.
19. Demand that certain rites be performed before you die to avoid your soul suffering eternal torment.  Tenaciously cling to life until those rites are performed.
20. Act mortified (see what I did there?) and embarrassed, apologizing profusely to everyone for dying in so inconvenient a matter. 

Natural Consequences Should Have More Bite

We played this weekend after another long break.  It was a tough session for me.  The first hour was lost to unfinished business associated with leveling up, during which those kids who were already finished whined incessantly that we weren't doing anything.  When we did finally get started, we stalled right out of the gate.  The kids were in rare form, fighting with each other for 45 minutes about whether to go left or right at the very first intersection.  Voices were raised, feelings were hurt, and one player in particular - one of my own kids - just didn't want to drop it.  I should have sent her away, but it kept feeling like we were right on the cusp of having the whole thing resolved.  Alas, we were not.

I tried resolving it in-game a couple of different ways.  First, I offered to let the main dissenter go her own way.  After all, that's what she kept saying:  "I go to the right." But when only one person offered to accompany her, she wouldn't actually go.  I kept asking, "So you went to the right...tell me about how you're proceeding."  And she kept responding, "We all need to go to the right!"  Loudly.  But the other kids wanted to go to the left, and she never committed to the action of striking out on her own.  Mainly because she didn't want her character to get eaten.  Safety in numbers has been firmly established as a wise aphorism in our campaign.

Then I tried letting the bickering itself yield natural consequences.  The characters were walking on a narrow path that was zig-zagging down the face of a cliff in a vast, dark, subterranean space.  One of the characters had morphed into a bird and cast a Light spell on herself so that she could be a glowing bird.  So there they were, out in the open, accompanied by a bobbing, living beacon, standing out like sore thumbs, and yelling at each other.  Easy pickings, right?  I reasoned that one of the dungeon's big baddies, a hungry and foul-tempered wyvern, would hear this commotion and zero in on it for lunch.  So that's what happened.

The kids promptly kicked its butt.

The wyvern flew in and attacked the elf, missing her with his tail stinger.  The rest of the crew rallied and struck back, bringing it down to just 3 hit points remaining by the time its turn rolled back around.  It had been hovering there so that when its turn came around again it would be able to use its full attack (sting and bite and wings, all at once).  Rookie mistake, and one I've made and learned from in the past.  Not sure what I was thinking.  I should have taken advantage of its Flyby Attack.  Talk about underestimating the kids, right?

So the wyvern flew off with Elerisa's arrow lodged in its eyeball, but at least it lives to fight another day.  And the kids didn't learn a damn thing.

Kids Role Play the Darnedest Things

My buddy Adam recommended this topic.  These are the top 10 things I've seen my kids do in RPGs that I've never seen my adult friends do:

10.  Purchase spare trousers, with an eye toward having a variety of colors in one's wardrobe.

9.  Jump into water.  My friends know that it is always bad in my games to wind up "in the drink," as we call it, whereas my kids are still learning this the hard way.  As of today, they still joyfully leap into turbulent, subterranean rivers.

8.  Float downstream in an umbrella. Heck, even purchasing an umbrella is something you don't usually see.

7.  Loudly proclaim their royal heritage within earshot of armed thugs.

6.  Defecate outdoors.  With adult games, elimination is always assumed and never discussed.  My kids, on the other hand, very deliberately relieved themselves in the bushes before entering the Tomb of Horrors, and discussed the logistics of keeping lookout before doing so.

5.  Quietly remain hidden to allow a band of goblins to pass by unmolested.  No opportunity for a fight is passed up by my friends.

4.  Spend half their wealth having a dress altered from size Elf to size Halfling.

3.  Attempt to converse with a gelatinous cube. 

2.  Google the elven language to learn a variety of phrases for the express purpose of insulting the dwarves in the party.

...and the top thing my kids do that my grown-up friends do not:

1.  LARP.

Thinking Outside the Box

A scene from Saturday, before the Oogma encounter:

The river races faster and faster, disappearing over an edge where it plummets to unknown depths.  Four adventurers are in the water, struggling just to stay afloat as the current pulls them inexorably toward the falls.  Just above the falls, though, a rope bridge extends all the way across, just barely reachable from the water.  Ratfolk archers line the banks on either side, preventing the heroes from reaching the banks.  Unknown to the adventurers, the Ratfolk have a huge net extended just beyond the edge of the falls to catch anyone who goes over.  Their intent is to sacrifice captives to appease Oogma.

Elerisa the elven princess lunges for the bridge and catches hold.  Wren the elven druid reaches for it too, and she grabs it.  Then it's Fiona the halfling druid's turn.  Her player announces she is too short to grab the bridge.   I am about to let her lunge for it just like the others, but since she doesn't seem alarmed, I allow her statement to stand.

"I reach for Wren's waist so I can hold on to her," she says.  She rolls well and succeeds.

Then it's Pinky the dog's turn.  Pinky is being played by a girl down the street who doesn't normally join us.  She decides to latch on with her teeth to Fiona's leggings, and she succeeds.  We end up with two elves holding on for dear life to the bottom of a rope bridge as the river tries to pull them over the edge of the waterfall, while a halfling and her dog form a chain clinging to the weaker of the two elves.

Elerisa climbs up onto the rope bridge, then starts firing arrows into the Ratfolk.  They respond with a volley of arrows that knocks her unconscious.  She falls from the bridge and into the water, where she is caught by the net as she goes over the falls.

Wren attempts to pull herself up onto the bridge, but the weight of Fiona and Pinky, plus the powerful pull of the river, is too much.  She can't hold on much longer, and Fiona and Pinky are getting pounded by the current.  The Ratfolk prepare to fire at Wren to force her to let go.

Fiona:  "Can Pinky hold onto Wren's leg instead of mine?"

GM:  "Sure."

Fiona:  "Pinky, hold on to Wren's leg.  I'll help you."

Pinky:  "I switch to Wren's leg."

GM (handwaving the roll):  "Ok, Pinky, you're holding on to Wren's leg now."

Fiona:  "Can I hold on to Wren with my legs instead of my hands?"

GM:  "Sure, but you'll be upside down with your head in the water."

Fiona:  "Ok.  I do that.  What do I roll?"

GM:  "Roll a d20."  (scrambles to decide what the target DC should be, and what kind of skill check it should be)

Fiona (rolls):  "19?"

GM (relieved because it's a very high roll so I don't need to decide after all):  "Yep, you succeed."

Fiona:  "With my free hands I cast Entangle on the Ratfolk."

GM (chuckling at the revelation of where this plan is going):  "The river makes it difficult to concentrate.  Roll a concentration check, and beat a 20."

Fiona beats a 20.

***

And so it was that the halfling druid, while effectively being waterboarded, successfully cast a spell that entangled several of the Ratfolk.

The Fall of Oogma

Today the characters faced off against the Ratfolk, their shaman Riktokka, and a creature named "Oogma."  Oogma was a hive-mind colony of worms linked together and coated in filth;  a hulking, amorphous mud beast.  The Ratfolk worshiped this creature as a god and were about to sacrifice some of the characters to it, but the rest of the party burst in just in time, while the normal rats, slaves of the Ratfolk, cut through the bonds that held the captives.  A battle ensued, and the characters and their rat allies emerged victorious.

My wife's handiwork, Oogma, on short notice.

The session was fast and furious, covering a lot of ground in a short span of time.  We only had an hour and a half to play, so I was determined to keep the game moving quickly.  We almost had a full house, too; six of the seven players were present, and they were a boisterous crew.  It's a challenge to keep them all focused.  And when you consider that there were 30 Ratfolk, Riktokka, Oogma, six PCs, one NPC, and 40 rats,  you can see my work was cut out for me.

The combat took four rounds, and despite the odds, we knocked it out in only half an hour.  I give credit to the tent cards approach I recently wrote about, and the way I hand-waved the exchanges between the rats and the Ratfolk.  These two groups largely neutralized each other in the battle, except for about eight Ratfolk who were free to engage the characters.  Credit also goes to the kids who, for whatever reason, chose today not to bicker with each other.

The remainder of the hour was spent role-playing, exploring, and of course, the action leading up to the battle.

Here's a quick and easy stat block for Oogma:

Oogma the wormy mud beast

How We Got Started

I was reorganizing my file folders when I came across a document that I read aloud to my kids the first time they ever played an RPG.  This was back in June 2010.  It contains both an overview of RPGs to set expectations, and an opening scenario to get the game started.  I've copy-pasted the contents of that file here to give you an idea of how I introduced them to the game:

Dungeons & Dragons is about writing a story together.  As players, you will be playing the roles of the three main characters in the story:  Elerisa Celerna the Elfin sorceress, equally gifted in the arts of magic and war; Norma, the Dwarf woman, crafty and dangerous; and Fiona, the diminutive Halfling adventurer, wise and true.  These are the "player characters," or "PC's," because they are the characters controlled by you, the players. You will act out the parts of these characters as they seek adventure, and your decisions will impact their story in exciting and unexpected ways.  

As the Dungeon Master (or "DM"), I will be narrating your story.  Although I am responsible for creating the world your characters live in and the adventures they find there, I don't know how the story will play out because I don't know what actions you will choose for the characters to take and what decisions you will make. My job is to create places for the characters to visit, treasures for them to find, and people and monsters for them to interact with.  These people and monsters are called "non-player characters" (or "NPCs") and often have a personality of their own.  I will be role playing these NPCs, or acting like them, to make the story seem more real so you can become immersed in it. 

Dungeons & Dragons also has a lot of rules governing how certain events play out:  the order of combat during a hostile encounter, whether or not the characters or monsters are surprised, how successful you are at climbing a wall, locating traps, or lifting heavy objects, how well you can ride a horse, etc.  The list goes on and on.  As the DM, I will be adjudicating these rules and explaining them to you for your benefit so that you can learn the game and maybe be a game master yourself one day. 

During our time playing the game, when I say "You," I really mean your character.  Similarly, while we're playing, you'll use "I" to refer to your own character.  For example, I might say, "Fiona, what do you do next? " And Nora might reply, "I cast a spell on Norma to heal her wounds."  As the DM I'll check the rules and perhaps roll a die or two to see how much of Norma's wounds are healed by the spell.  For those situations that aren't covered by the rules but should have a chance for success or failure, I will have to make up a rule on the spot and determine how we can decide the outcome using dice.  I will always try to be as fair as possible.  Remember, my job as DM isn't to slay the characters:  it's to help create the story.

This is a story that takes place in your imagination, and we use words to describe it.  Occasionally, though, a given game situation becomes too complicated to describe without the use of visual aids.  When we need visual aids, we'll use miniatures to show what's going on.  This will be especially useful in combat. You should be careful, however, not to let the miniatures obscure the mental image of the story playing out in your imagination.  After all, this is a story we're creating together, not a simple board game.  The better you are at imagining yourself within the story, the better you will be at finding creative solutions to the problems you'll be faced with.

Now that we've covered how we're going to play the game, it's time to get into the story.

***

Each of you has just awakened at the beginning of a new day.  Unfortunately, you have no idea where you are!

You are awakened by the crowing of nearby roosters.  You feel a little bit stiff and achy this morning, probably because instead of finding yourself in a bed, you are lying on hard dirt outdoors, propped up against small wooden buildings in what appears to be a village square.   The air is crisp and cool but not too cold; it feels like mid-Spring.  You can see a few humans preparing their stands for market, displaying berries and breads, dried goods such as jerked beef, clothing, trinkets and the like. The smell of eggs cooking somewhere nearby sets your stomachs to growling.  A scrawny, gray cat casually crosses the street, mewing at anyone who happens to pass by.  Maybe he's hungry too, but he'll have to wait awhile longer for his meal, for a plump woman shoo-shoos the stray along with her broom until a pack of three mutts comes through and chases the cat around a corner.  

You do not recognize this village, nor do you recognize the types of buildings or styles of clothing that you see there.  Fortunately you can understand the language being spoken, as it is a fairly common language.

Nobody seems to have noticed you yet, but you have noticed each other.  As you stir and sit up, your eyes meet from across the narrow streets. Elerisa, you see a female Dwarf, stout but groggy and grumpy looking, rubbing her sleepy eyes and eying you distrustfully, and across the way, a type of creature you've rarely seen before, proportioned like a human woman but only half as tall.  She is yawning, and a wild looking dog  is stretching himself awake by her side.  Norma, after you have cleared your eyes you see an Elfin girl, alert and inquisitive, observing you with a wide, unnerving gaze, and the halfling woman is observing you as well, and in her face you see wisdom.  Fiona, you also see both the Elf and the Dwarf, and you're the first to realize that you're all in the same situation together, you're all in an unfamiliar place.

Norma, you know that your homeland, Dwarforia, is located far away to the west...or at least you think it's west, it's hard to be certain.  You have traveled long in search of your enslaved brother, going so far as to traverse a great inland sea.  The boat on which you sailed was ravaged by a storm for days on end and dashed against the rocks, depositing you in a strange wilderness.  You wandered aimlessly through that wilderness for weeks, then were caught in a great flood and washed down a river, clinging for your life to a log.  It is no surprise that you have become completely lost.  You are wearing a brown hooded cloak tied with rope over woolen undergarments, high stockings and low, soft boots.  You have no weapons or armor (the weapons were washed away, and you had to shed your armor when your boat was smashed or you would have drowned).  Your clothing is looking pretty ragged, and you've acquired a bit of an unpleasant odor.  The only thing you've managed to keep is a little pounch with some coins.

Fiona, you and your dog have been journeying from the Lonely Mountain, which is far away to the east.  You are in search of adventure and, hopefully, more halflings, because there are only three remaining in the Lonely Mountain.  Perhaps when you find such a place you can return to your family and guide them to a new home where the other halflings live.  You have been following the roads but keeping out of sight, for you have found that not all humans are friendly.  You are tired, hungry, and you've run out of supplies, and you stumbled into this village late at night, looking for a meal, and collapsed against the hut.  You are dressed similarly to Norma, and although you're not quite as rank as the dwarf, a warm bath and some hot tea would not be unwelcome.  You also have a small pounch of gold: the last of your life's savings.

Elerisa, your situation is perhaps the most bizarre.  The last thing you remember is packing a lunch for a picnic in the castle gardens, but a sudden drowsiness fell upon you, and you sat down for what you thought would only be a moment to rest and recover.  When you woke up, your surroundings had dramatically changed, and you found yourself here.  You still have your fruit and dried meats, but you're wearing a beautiful, flowing gown that's quite out of place in this new, unexpected setting.  Unlike the others, you aren't so fortunate as to have been carrying around a purse with coinage:  in this village, you are broke except for your food.  The matter of how and why you came to be in this place is a vexing one indeed, and the sooner you can get back to where you belong, the better.  But where to begin?

A sudden commotion distracts all of you from your thoughts.  A boy, not quite a teen, comes running into the village square with wet hair and dressed in nothing but damp undergarments, shouting for help.  A woman, apparently the boy's mother, comes from a shop inquiring into the matter.

"It's Seth," cries the boy.  "He's in the tower!  He's trapped!"

This announcement creates quite a stir among the villagers, and people start to gather around the boy.  His mother addresses her son.

"Nonsense, Thomas," she says.  "Don't you be spreading lies."   

"But he is, he is!" replies the boy frantically.  "I dared him to go in, and he did it, last night, he really did it!  He said--"

The woman cut him off.  "You've been out all night?  You snuck out!?"

The boy looks trapped between getting in trouble for breaking curfew and helping his friend, and  honorably plows on.  "I know it was wrong, Mother, but--"

"No 'buts!'" raged his mom, grabbing him by the wrist.  "It's lashes for you, boy, a dozen at least!  I've warned you too many times--"

Just then an elderly man steps up and interrupts the woman.  "Martha," he says quietly, laying his hand gently on her shoulder to calm her, "Perhaps we should hear more about Seth's predicament first.  There will be time enough to mete out punishments later."

Martha sees the wisdom of this, and Thomas tells his tale.  It seems that Thomas and Seth snuck out of their respective cottages sometime after midnight.  The dare was something that had been cooking for some weeks, and much planning and preparation had gone into it.  From what you can gather, "the tower" is a small, simple castle keep belonging to the local lord, whose name is not mentioned by the boy. The tower is about half a mile away to the northwest, built upon a long island in the middle of the river.  For some reason the lord and his men are away for an extended trip, and the castle has been locked up.  The pontoon bridge normally used to get to the island from the banks of the river has been disassembled and stored away, so the boys had to cross by boat, a feat that shocks the avid listeners when they hear about it due to a danger they refer to in whispers only as "the Thing in the River."  The boy explains that they first went upstream and crossed to the north side of the river at the rapids, far away from the Thing.  This also was a bit of a scandal, and grumblings about the dangers lurking in the wilds of the north had to be hushed before the boy could continue his tale.

Once on the north bank Seth and Thomas walked back downstream and built a raft to cross to the island with.  Repeated trips over several weeks were required to complete the raft.  Their thinking in building on the far bank was that the distance to the island was shorter than it was from the village side, and since the north fork of the river was known to be shallower than the southern fork and full of tall water reeds for cover, they figured they might avoid the Thing altogether.  It was a terrible risk, but it seems they were right, or perhaps the Thing hunted elsewhere last night, for the boys did indeed make it to the island alive.

The tower is all locked up and the portcullis down, so Seth, being an excellent climber, scaled the seventy feet or so to the battlements, taking with him an unlit torch and some flint to light it with, and hoping to find an open trap door on the top through which to enter the keep.  After all, who enters a keep from the roof?  The boys figured the lord wouldn't be anticipating threats from above and might leave such a hatch unlocked.  Seth reached the top, lit the torch, and signalled to Thomas that he had made it to the top.  The next part of the plan was for Seth to drop down through the hatch, find his way to the gate, and find a way to open the portcullis to let Thomas in.  

The hatch was obviously unlocked, for a few minutes later Thomas saw light from Seth's torch illuminate one of the tower's higher windows from within.  That, however, was the last Thomas saw of his friend, for almost immediately thereafter he heard a faint scream, and the light from the torch went out.  Thomas called frantically for Seth for some time, and even tried to climb the wall after him, but he did not have Seth's knack for climbing.  Soon the pre-dawn sunlight colored the sky, and Thomas could wait no more and decided to go for help.  Worried that his friend was in immediate need of aid, he decided to go straight across the southern fork in the river in a straight line toward the village.  The raft was difficult to manage alone, but such was his excitement that he found the will and the energy to make his way with some haste.  Unfortunately, 3/4 of the way across, he heard the awful cry of the Thing in the river, and saw behind him by the dim crimson light a rising mound of water and a lone leg.  He had no time to lose and stripped down to his underwear.  When the Thing was upon him and its toothy maw opened to seize the raft, Thomas dove off the far side, trying his best to kick the raft into those awful teeth and distract the fiend from its true prize.  Thomas swam for his life, and so vigorous was his effort those last dozen yards that he could not hear whether the monster thrashed the raft to bits behind him or left it alone to pursue squishier prey.  Thomas made it to the river bank, hauled himself up on land, and not daring to pause even long enough to look back, ran headlong into the bush to bring his news to the villagers.

While this tale was being told, another woman, presumably Seth's mother, arrives and becomes worried.  After the details are out, the villagers' reactions are mixed.  Most dismiss the story outright as a prank played by the boys on the villagers, while others speculate that Seth has pulled a fast one on Thomas and is alive and well within the tower.  A few exchange nervous glances with each other but decide it is somebody else's problem.  Everyone is leaving.  Thomas' mother Martha grabs her boy by the ear and hauls him off to give him his lashes.    Soon the only one left is the elderly gentleman who calmed Martha, and Seth's mother who has become quite distraught.  As folks are leaving she is spinning around anxiously, going from person to person, trying to get anyone's attention, begging for help to retrieve her boy.  Everyone brushes her off, shaking their heads, avoiding her eyes as they leave.  

"Isn't there anyone who can help?" she cries.  The old man looks on sadly.  "Please," she begs, falling to her knees.  "Can't someone please help me?"

You are the last ones there.  What do you do?

The Tuning Room

Entrance to the chamber:  an iron door.  If the characters spend time examining it, they will note that it becomes very hot to the touch, then 30 seconds later very cold to the touch, then back to hot 30 seconds later, etc.  Listening at the door will also reveal a repeating pattern of five low-frequency musical tones.

Created in OmniGraffle.

Inside the chamber:  The room is 15' wide near the entrance, then there's a 5' bottleneck, and then it expands again on the far side.  The ceiling is high, maybe 40'.  The target treasure is on the far side (see diagram).

Near the entrance on each side is a statue:  one statue of a red dragon, and one of a white dragon, both facing the door.  They seem to leer at the delvers as they enter the room, grinning.  Once every minute, the red dragon statue spews a blistering cone of fire, and the frost dragon blows a biting cone of frost.

Beyond the statues, where the room narrows, a stone slab 4' tall blocks the way.  The slab is hanging from the ceiling, supported by five thick steel cables of varying thickness, starting with the thickest on the left and the thinnest on the right (similar to what one would find under the hood of a piano or on a guitar).  Higher up, out of reach, mechanical hammers strike the steel cables to create the pattern of musical tones.

If the characters look closely, they'll see that the stone slab is already a few inches off the floor, but this doesn't leave enough space for them to crawl through.  Also, the cables are thick enough and grouped together closely enough that characters cannot squeeze between them to climb over the slab.

A stand with the next magical instrument they must collect is clearly visible on the far side.

Solution:  Careful examination of the statues will reveal that the heads are not fixed into place; they can be swiveled around and aimed.  Aiming the red dragon head at the cables will cause them to expand, lowering both the pitch of the musical tones and the slab of stone, not helping the characters at all.  Aiming the white dragon's head at the cables, however, will cause the cables to contract, thereby shortening their length, causing the musical tones to rise in pitch, and raising the slab of stone to a height sufficient to allow the characters to crawl under it.

Creating Memorable NPCs

Over on Reddit I saw a link to this article by Charlie Jane Anders.  Her article targets writers, and she offers ten tips for writing unforgettable supporting characters.  Non-player characters in role-playing games fill a similar niche to a work of fiction's supporting characters, so these ten tips should be applicable to creating NPCs as well.  I've been trying to get better at creating NPCs that stand out in the players' minds, with mixed results.  I like that this article gives me something tangible to focus on.

I have had a few successes in the past, but mostly my NPCs come out a little flat.  One in particular, though, stands out.  Rixin the pixie is the one NPC whose fate my adult gamer friends actually cared about.  In fact, when one of the PCs died, we decided to bring Rixin into the party so one of the players could run him as his own character.  

By blind luck, when creating Rixin I seem to have followed nine of the ten steps the article prescribes.  Take from that what you will.  I know I'm looking forward to trying it on purpose.

Little Furry Critters

I made a big breakthrough this weekend with my youngest daughter, Nora.

Older than she looks, but still young (8)

Since introducing her to RPGs almost two years ago, I've been challenged to make adventures that appeal to both her and her older sisters.  Livie and Sophie thrive on the danger of combat, but Nora shies away when the ride threatens to get rough.  On good days, her halfling druid hides until she is critically needed, or until her animal companion Pinky the riding dog is in dire jeopardy.  On other days, Nora declines to play altogether.  This puts me in a pickle because on the one hand we consider these sessions to be valuable to her education, but on the other they're supposed to be fun.  I don't want to make her play if she's not going to have fun doing it, and if she's miserable, she isn't going to learn anything anyway, except perhaps how miserable playing RPGs can be.  That would be a shame.

I thought about this all weekend as game day approached.  I decided that the session would be required for Nora, but I was determined to make her want to play rather than force her to play.  Then, once I got her to the table, I would aim to make it as fun for her as I could.  So the first thing I did was set up the table the night before, then pulled her aside to ask her where she would like to sit.  I told her I was giving her first choice of seating.  She did not waste the opportunity.  She looked over the map, pointed at the only two rooms drawn on it, and asked, "Which way is it going to go?"  

I told her where I anticipated most of the action would go down, and she chose accordingly, putting herself front and center.  Apparently this made a big impression because she mentioned it to my wife the next morning.  So far, so good. 

Getting her buy-in was all I had planned on doing, but then Sunday morning it finally hit me:

Little furry critters.

The section of the dungeon they are in is populated by Ratfolk.  Their goal is to try to capture the characters and sacrifice them to their "god," a gruesome creature made of worms and mud (this is the final boss for the level).  The Ratfolk ride around on oversized rats and use them to do all their grunt work.  This much I had already planned.   

The new thought was this:  what if the rats don't want to serve the Ratfolk?

You see, Nora is reading Redwall by Brian Jacques.  She also has watched the entire animated TV series several times.  Something about it obviously appeals to her.  Having read the novel myself some years ago, and having some familiarity with the TV series, I get the gist of what it's all about.  It's anthropomorphized woodland critters going on heroic quests to protect the ones they love, usually against cruel woodland critters with dreams of conquest.*  

So Redwall is about little creatures with big hearts, while Nora's a little kid with a big heart who plays a druid who can talk to animals.  How perfect is that?

I didn't have enough time before the game to really nail down all the particulars, but I did just well enough that the session really lit her up, and I was able to sew the seeds for an ongoing influence of little furry critters in our game.  Here's how it went down.

The characters came across a room of junk where the rats store, well, junk.  They saw two rats who were terrified of the party.  Fiona (that's Nora's druid) quickly jumped in and cast a spell to speak with the animals.  The rats said they were frightened, but once Fiona had put their minds at ease, they cautioned the characters to avoid the "Cult of Oogma."  When pressed, the rats said that the cult consisted of Ratfolk.  Later on, while the other characters were trying to get over a river, Fiona spoke some more to the rats and learned that the underground city that she and her companions are seeking is "just beyond the waterfall."

"Oh!  Where's the waterfall?" she asked, excited.  

"Follow the river," they replied.

Fiona dashed from the room to find the others and tell them about this important discovery.  In real life, Nora was standing up shouting, positively elated.  We had to calm her down a bit, but I was taken aback.  This was the most emotion she had ever shown in the game, save once when Pinky almost bought the farm.  I had struck gold.

***

Now, how to keep her interested?  That's what I've been thinking about all day, and I think I finally have the answer.  

What I plan to do is to create a set of events running in parallel to the player characters' main adventure.  These events will involve a cast of furry little critters that Fiona will get to know in her travels.  They will have their own quests, unrelated to the main thread, but they will come into contact with the party from time to time.  Information, goods, and services can be exchanged between the critters and the PCs.  Along the way Nora will periodically get caught up on what's going on in the little creatures' story, and she'll be in a position to help them out from time to time and impact the outcomes of their quests.  In turn, the information she obtains from her tiny friends will be important for the overall quest she shares with her sisters.  It's a win-win scenario.

Our next session, coming up this Sunday, should see this strategy blossom.  The characters really screwed up last time, and they're all down to their last few hit points and floating down a river toward a waterfall.  No big deal, the Ratfolk have nets just beyond the edge to catch them with.  In fact, their whole strategy is to fire arrows from the banks, thereby herding their victims toward the nets.  Players will always surprise me, so I suppose they could get out of this mess, but this time their situation is rather dire. I predict they will be captured.  Well, not all of them...Norma the dwarf and two NPCs took different routes and are safe for the moment, though separated from each other.

While captured in the nets, Fiona will meet Slave Abigail (Abigail, Abby, Redwall Abbey...see what I did there?), a rat who plans to lead the resistance against the Ratfolk.  The rats are being forced by their masters to drag the party to a holding area.  Abigail will whisper to them, "Please free us!  We wish to be slaves no longer.  You must slay Oogma!"  She will then begin gnawing at their ropes, but will be interrupted by a Ratfolk sentry before she can finish the job.  As she leaves she risks one final message: "Wait for my signal!"

The idea here is for the party to rest overnight in captivity and heal up, so they'll be ready to face Oogma.

When/if Norma and the others reunite and show up, and when the party breaks their binds, Abigail will give her signal ("Rise, my brothers and sisters!  Rise against our oppressors!  Free the topsiders!" or something like that), and chaos will reign supreme.  The characters should emerge victorious, as they are wont to do.

The next time they see Abigail, she will have a new title:  Seeker Abigail.  She will be questing for the Lost MacGuffin of Chikkitok.

...an artifact that a certain weasel by the name of Dweezil, with designs against Abby's people, will also be interested to acquire.

---

* Ironically, Jacques - like nearly every other author who writes about anthropomorphized woodland creatures - portrays mice as the innocent, virtuous protagonists, and rats as the wicked antagonists.  The truth, as I have learned through my hobby of captive snake husbandry, is quite the opposite.  Rats are highly intelligent and fairly gentle creatures.  Mice are just plain mean and kill each other for sport in the brief time it takes to get them home from the pet store.  

Reorganization

Here's some more information about the organizational changes I mentioned last entry.

Prior to these changes, I was using a combination of computer laptop (MacBook Pro) and Paizo's Pathfinder GM Screen.   Paizo's screen is pretty good, but I looked elsewhere for four reasons:

1. I would prefer to have information specific to my game on the panels.
2. The style of the Pathfinder Iconics (the heroes you see depicted on the players' side of the screen) does not match the look and feel I am trying to achieve in my world.
3. I wanted a shorter screen so it would be easier for me to see my kids.
4. We play two systems besides Pathfinder:  Savage Worlds, and AD&D (1st edition).

As for the Mac, I tried running my games from it, but I always ended up with too much stuff open.  A browser window with a dozen tabs, an Excel spreadsheet for combat tracking, another for NPC stats,* and Evernote for story elements.  I was all over the place, and while some people thrive in these conditions, I do not.

To remedy the situation I hopped on Amazon and ordered the Savage Worlds customizable GM screen.  This screen is nothing but clear plastic sleeves on both sides of three connected black panels.  I can decide what information to put into the sleeves, and I can swap out inserts for different games or systems.   The orientation is "landscape," so the screen is shorter and I can see my players.

The question then became what to display on the inserts.  The players' side was easy:  for each panel I put the name of the city, a name for the adventure, and a thematic picture pilfered off the Internet, printed on gold-colored card stock as shown in the picture.

What the players see.

The GM's side was tougher.  In the end, I decided that I wanted a few things:

• Pathfinder's grappling flow chart.  Grappling is complicated; the flow chart helps.
• A symbolic map of the larger, turtle-carcass dungeon.  I want to know where things are relative to each other.
• Stats for NPCs the characters are likely to encounter in a given session.
• A brief description of the more commonly occurring conditions.
• My custom confusion effects table (confusion happens a lot in my world, I have learned).

Some of these are a work in progress (for instance, I want the encounter stat blocks to be flexible enough for me to include traps).  Here are pics of what I used this past weekend:

NPC stat blocks.  Six blocks on one insert,
takes up the whole panel.

Pathfinder grapple rules on the left,
symbolic map** of subterranean, inverted,
four-animal-headed turtle-carcass city on the right.

Conditions, confusion effects, and
a quick reminder of the oracle's prophecy.

From there it was just a matter of printing them out on card stock (because the plastic sleeves are tight), sliding the inserts into the sleeves, and draping the tent cards over the top.  Behind the screen I had nothing but dice, a pad of graph paper to take notes, and my dungeon map for the section they're in.  I kept my laptop on a chair next to me and only used it to look up spells.

From a game management standpoint, this setup worked well for me.  Combat moved quickly, and I felt uncluttered.  I was able to focus better on what was going on in the game, and I found myself improvising more than usual.  We played for four and a half hours and covered a lot of ground.

We'll see if it stands the test of time.

---

* Don't get me started on all the combat tracking and NPC generation products out there.  First, the dearth of good RPG software for Macs out there is a real sore point.  And second, most of the products I have tried tend to break down under the strain of my free-wheeling GM style and my custom, homemade monsters.


...and by homemade monsters, I don't mean starting with something known and adding a template.  If that was all I needed, Hero Lab would be all I need.  But I mean starting from scratch with a brand new monster.


** The map style, with images just grabbed from the Internet and assembled to graphically represent denizens, locations, terrains, etc., is an approach I got from Zak Smith (adults 18+ years only).   Zak has more bright ideas in a day than I have in a year, it seems.  I think some of my confusion effects may be lifted from his blog too.

GM Tent Cards

Just a quick shout out to Hit on Crit for their idea for tent cards.   I made my own custom tent cards this weekend and put them into use in our game.  The combat has never moved so quickly.  The kids got it right away and were consistently ready to act when their turns came up.

Looks chaotic, but worked like a champ.
Click to biggify.

I made some other organizational adjustments this session that I'll cover in more detail soon.

What a wonderful moment!

"What a wonderful moment!"

Those were the exact words shouted by a girl (a neighbor, age 9) who joined us today for our Pathfinder session.  Here's what happened.

Her druid, Wren, was standing on a ledge 20' above a churning subterranean stream.  It was 20' across to the far ledge, which was also 10' below her position.  Norma the dwarf had already jumped over and secured a rope to a column on the far side, then scooted through a door while ratfolk cultists rained tiny crossbow bolts down on her.  Wren wanted to follow, so she removed her belt and tried to use the rope like a zip line.  She rolled an acrobatics check but came up short.

Splash!  And into the drink she went.

After that, she had a series of skill rolls to make.  First, a Swim roll to see if she could get her head above water and control her direction.  She succeeded.  Next, the current was dragging her into a whirlpool, which she understandably wanted to avoid.  Her choices were swim into the whirlpool ("Nope!" she said), try to swim directly upstream away from the whirlpool, or swim along with the current while trying to bear to the left of the hazard to bypass it and get further downstream.  She chose the third option, rolled the die, and succeeded again.*

With each roll her excitement was mounting.  The stream rounded a u-turn bend, and soon Norma, high atop a different ledge overlooking the water, saw the druid floating downstream toward her.  Thinking quickly, Norma withdrew four spare pairs of trousers from her pack, and tied them together.  I made her roll a DC 17 dexterity check to see if she could finish in time.  I set that level because her plan seemed ludicrous to me, but it was such a colorful idea I didn't want it to be impossible.  Her dexterity only affords her a +2 bonus, so Sophie would need to roll a 15 or higher on a d20.  She rolled a natural 19, went prone, and dangled her make-shift "rope" over the ledge.

Wren's player was jumping up and down.  "We did it!"

"You're not out of the water yet!" I countered.

Realization dawned.  "Oh!" she cried, grabbing her d20.  "I reach for the pants!  What do I need?"

"A fifteen,"  I replied.  "And don't forget to add +1 for your swim bonus."

"Ok," she said, her excitement peaking.  She rolled...

...and got a natural 14, which meant she succeeded with her bonus.  "You did it!" I said.  "You successfully grab the pants!  Norma can pull you up out of the water."

The girl's fists were clenched, her knuckles white, her eyes about as wide open as they could get.  There was a weird pause, like she was gonna pop.

"WHAT...A WONDERFUL MOMENT!" she cried, jumping up into the air.  Then it was fist bumping and high-fives all around the table.  "That was amazing!"

This pic was taken a few minutes later.
The action described took place near the top center of the image.

Not five minutes later she jumped back into the water on purpose.  Think she's hooked?

---

* Failure to avoid the whirlpool would not have meant death.  I had a whole little spelunking/climbing kind of area planned for anyone who accidentally got flushed down the whirlpool.  Of course, the cave fisher down there could have been a challenge.

A Matter of Perspective

You enter a large, irregularly shaped cavern with peculiar walls made of something like petrified wood.  There are seven large holes high in the walls and ceiling, maybe 7' in diameter, randomly arranged.  On the floor in the center of the room there's an iron spike about about 5' long.  If you listen closely you can barely make out deep, hushed voices, too muffled to make out the words.

Suddenly, a gigantic hand reaches in through one of the holes and starts groping about blindly.  You dive out of the way to try to avoid it.  If you succeed, the hand eventually finds the iron spike, picks it up, and pulls it through the hole.

A second hand enters from behind you.  This time you stab at it in self-defense, and it quickly withdraws.  You think you hear someone huge in the distance let out a muted "Ow!"

Or maybe you aren't quick enough, and the hand grabs you and roughly pulls you through the hole and into an enormous chamber, where an armored giant and his friends examine you curiously.

***

Later, perhaps in the same dungeon, perhaps not, and after much exploration and general adventuring, you come to a room with an irregularly shaped stump placed in the center.  The stump has seven holes in it, 6" in diameter each.  An inscription on the boulder instructs only the bravest of adventurers to choose a hole and reach into it to find an amazing treasure.  You decide to give it a try.

You reach in and pull out a tiny adventurer.

Flash!  Aaaaaah!  Inspires every one of us!

Organic Curriculum

In talking again with my wife about this post, she thinks I'm giving short shrift to the role of RPGs in our homeschool environment.

She doesn't see our gaming as a supplement to the core curriculum that she focuses on.  Instead, she sees it as a curriculum in its own right, and one that develops organically, without a whole lot of structure.  The way she described it reminded me of unschooling.

It's definitely a different way of looking at it than how I have been presenting it in this blog.  I have talked about RPGs supplementing the curriculum, or even being "part of" the curriculum, but she sees it as a second curriculum, and one that isn't as tightly controlled as the more traditional schooling she provides in the classroom setting.

That's a more accurate way of describing what we're doing, I think.

Another Music Puzzle

The characters will arrive at the edge of a huge pit.  They must get to the far side to retrieve another instrument for their quest.  Eight stone discs, big enough to stand on, float magically in open space over the pit.  Each disc has a number associated with it from one to eight as indicated by diamond-shaped markings.  The markings are configured like the symbols on playing cards, while the discs are arranged in a pattern relative to each other as shown in the diagram to the right.

The characters will be able to hear a simple, repeating melody playing overhead.  The melody will correspond to the root notes of a standard jazz progression:

I  vi  ii  V  I   (1, 6, 2, 5, 1, or  C, A, D, G, C)

This is the order that the characters will have to tread the discs in order to get to the other side.  Stepping on any of the discs out of order will dump the character into the pit below.  The minimum weight to activate a disc is 50 lbs, so the players won't be able to easily test them. The distances between the discs will be such that the PCs can jump from side to side (e.g., from  #3 to #2), or from one row to the next (e.g., from #2 to #4), or even diagonally to the next row (e.g., from #2 to #7), but they won't be able to skip rows (e.g., from #2 to #8).

You may have noticed that they will not be able to make it back to disc 1 from disc 5.  The players will need to make the connection that #8 can serve as a substitute to #1, just as the 8th note of a major scale is the same note as the 1st note in the scale, just an octave higher.  So the true pattern is 1, 6, 2, 5, 8.

This will not be an easy puzzle for them.  The pit won't be save or die, of course, but I will put something creepy down in the bottom - and a way to get back up on the near side - to add to the excitement.

Spreading the Learning

Last week I posted a link to my blog on /r/rpg over on Reddit, and a user asked me some great questions:

How do you keep your embedded curriculum relevant to each of your children's lessons? I don't have much understanding of how homeschooling works, but I'm interested to see how you can avoid having the eldest child solve all of the simpler problems aimed at the younger two.

I gave an answer over there, and considered just linking to that and calling it a day.  Then I decided that I'd like to answer it again here.  I've given it some more thought, and I talked to my wife and got her thoughts on the subject too, which I'll share.

1. Keeping game content relevant to my children's lessons

This is how I interpreted MrWiggles2's first question.  The underlying assumption in the question is that my kids' curriculum and the content in our RPG games are tightly coupled.  This was actually something I blogged about trying to do early on when I first started integrating RPGs with the kids' homeschool education.  The idea was that my wife and I would look at what the kids would be learning in the coming months, and then I would take that and weave it into my game planning and preparation.  It was a lofty goal.

Sadly, it didn't happen that way in my house, for several reasons:

• Gymnastics and a few other things don't leave us sufficient time to play RPGs often enough for this level of planning to be possible.
• Making dungeons is a creative release for me, and the dungeons I create kind of go where they want to go.  

There, I said it.  My creativity is a beast, and I selfishly give it free reign.  Looking at subject matter and trying to make a dungeon around it feels forced to me.  The dungeon I'm making now, by contrast, has things in it that are good educational content, but I chose that content based on ideas that came to me when designing the dungeon.  

And the time thing really is a big deal.  By the time we got around to actually playing something that I had planned specifically to coincide with their lessons, the lessons would be long behind us.

I'm not saying that you can't tightly weave targeted subject matter into your games.  I'm just saying that's not how it's happening at our table.  

My wife's take on content:  she has observed our kids recognizing in their core curriculum things they have already learned in the game.  This is a happy accident, but it has happened on multiple occasions.  One prime example is the Skull of Fibon.  Just recently they learned about the Fibonacci sequence at co-op, but my kids already had it down cold.  Just one way the RPG complements the core curriculum.

2. Keeping older kids from solving all the problems

In my answer on the Reddit thread, I acknowledged that I hadn't actually thought about this before.  Since then, looking back on our games, I realized that the reason it hasn't been much of a problem for us so far is because I haven't hit the kids with a whole bunch of puzzles yet.  On the few occasions when they faced puzzle-like obstacles, everyone freely offered ideas and there was at least a modest degree of listening and cooperation.  In truth, though, young Nora has been dominated a bit by the oder two, so her ideas seldom make it to the forefront.

Solutions:

• Separation:  you can't solve a problem for your little sister if your character isn't there with her.
• Conditions:  E.g., blindness, unconsciousness, etc.  You can't solve the puzzle if your character can't see the pieces.  And you can't share your ideas with each other if you've been silenced by a spell.
• Class-based puzzles:  Make puzzles where it only makes sense for one of the characters to have the knowledge to solve it.  For example, it's a plant-based puzzle, so the druid has to solve it.  The trick is to make it so it doesn't feel forced.  Easier said than done, I know.
• Just go ahead and force it:  The DM just decides who he/she wants to solve the problem.  "I want Nora to try to solve this one."

My wife's take on evenly dividing the puzzle-solving load:  surprisingly, this wasn't a big deal for her.  She's fine with whoever solves it.  As long as everyone is paying attention, there will be benefits for all.

Finally, I just want to reiterate something I said on the thread:  I don't get bogged down in what the best way is to maximize the academic benefit.  I focus on having fun and letting any learning happen naturally. 

That's how we roll.

Music Dungeon

Look closely, these are not pictures of rooms.
But use them as rooms I shall.

As I mentioned last time, the skeletal remains of Ayotl's songbird head will house a music-themed dungeon.  In addition to a few monster encounters, this dungeon will consist of a series of puzzles based on music theory. Here's how it will work.

On their way in, the characters will pass under an arch bearing the inscription:  "The Way of a Warrior is to establish Harmony."*  This is a clue to solving the dungeon's final mystery, as we shall see.

The characters will then face six puzzles.  These won't be traps, per se, though some of them could be potentially dangerous.  These puzzles must be solved in order to obtain six wondrous musical instruments.

As each musical instrument is obtained, a theme comprised of low, thrumming tones will gradually build.  This will be accomplished through the Garage Band music-mixing software on my Mac, playing in continuous loop (the software gives me the ability to toggle tracks on and off).  For each instrument the characters find, I add a note to the theme.  Not loud enough to distract the players from the game, but enough so they'll know it's there.  Together the notes form a chord, but soon the players will realize that the chord is not harmonious and with each tone added is getting less so.  I will take this opportunity to explain to the kids the difference between harmony and discord, and how discord can be used to heighten tension.

The sixth item releases a demon, whose name is Mißklang or Zwietracht (German for discord), who attacks the characters.  The musical instruments the kids collected have to be placed in niches around the demon's chamber, and they have to be placed in a particular order to change the theme from discord to harmony.  The demon cannot otherwise be killed, but as harmonious notes replace the obnoxious ones, the demon weakens and is shown to be transforming into something less demonic.  Eventually, when the right combination is found, he is revealed to be a handsome prince (because it's girls playing the game, after all).  The prince rewards them by providing the first part of the key to the Black Tower of Despair.

For what it's worth, the back story on the prince is that he was cursed by his sister, the queen Esseniri whose tomb they seek, when he betrayed her in an effort to save their people from her tyranny.

So, a few days ago in the comments I promised sample puzzles.  I've already given the big puzzle for this music dungeon above, and now here is one of the six puzzles they'll have to solve to get the music instruments:

Sample Puzzle
Lava separates the party from the target musical instrument.    Three large tuning forks stand in the lava in a line leading to the instrument.  An inscription on the wall in front of the lava shows 12 figures:  7 white, and 5 black, all in a line, configured like the white and black keys of a piano.  Three are standing, the rest are seated.  The three correspond to a major chord (the second is four positions - or semitones - from the first, and the third one is three positions from the second.  These correspond to the first, third, and fifth notes of a major scale).  If someone sings a note (or if the bard plays a note on his guitar), one of the tuning forks will vibrate, making the lava ripple away from it for as long as the note is held.  If the kids make a three-part harmony (which I know for a fact my three kids can), then all three forks will vibrate and a path will be cleared through the lava to the instrument for as long as they can maintain the chord.  

Do you have ideas for other musical puzzles?
This puzzle is the most well-developed one I have.  I have two more in the works, but I'll need six in all, because that's how many notes I want the theme to have.

Any suggestions for more music puzzles?

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* "The Way of the Warrior is to establish Harmony." - Morihei Ueshiba

City in a Carcass

In my last post I talked about my goals for a big dungeon adventure I'm making for the kids.  Today I'm going to describe the background of this adventure, and then dive into the overall structure.  That will set up the context for next time when I talk about some of the puzzles in one particular section of the dungeon.

I've already given a little bit of the background for this adventure here.  Some details have changed since then.  First, the carcass of the turtle-shaped demigod is upside down, which is the position the creature came to rest in when it met its doom (incidentally, it was slain by another demigod who figures prominently in part two of the adventure path, which takes place in Nimoriél...but that's a story for another day).  Second, the animal heads have changed.  They are now bird, spider, mole, and ardvaark, for reasons we shall soon see.

Ayotl, in better days

The Micqui built their city in the remains of this beast, and they dominated the people around them for centuries.  Their last sovereign before their empire collapsed was a queen named Esseniri, and it is for her tomb - and the treasure hopefully buried with her - that the characters seek.

Structure
Since the turtle is upside down, that means its carapace, or dorsal (back) shell, forms a giant bowl.  Tectonic forces have misshapen it over the ages, but for our purposes thinking of it as a bowl is useful.  An underwater river falls into this bowl and forms Mors Aeterna, the Lake of Eternal Death, which drains out through one of the heads into another river, deeper down.

This configuration also means that the demigod's plastron, or ventral (belly) shell, forms a ceiling high above the lake to enclose the space.  The river which dumps into the lake actually cuts through some of the ancient scutes in the perimeter of his carapace and slips through the crack between plastron and carapace before plummeting to the dark waters below.  For what it's worth, the part of the dungeon the kids are in now is cut into one of these perimeter scutes, and they are nearing the waterfall.  Back when the city was still on the surface, this section served as an observatory that the ancient scholars used to create their calendar.  Over the next week I'm going to be studying Mayan and Aztec calendars for ideas to slip into this particular section.

The vertebrae for the creature's two spines, which run perpendicular to each other and intersect in the middle, are for the most part intact.  Some of these vertebrae poke out of the lake to form islands.  Rising from the largest of these at the junction of the two spines is the Black Tower of Despair, which is impenetrable except via a magical gate which requires a special key to be opened.   The queen's tomb can be found beneath this black tower, and so they will need to find the key to get there.

Each of the four animal skulls - one for each cardinal direction - contains a different dungeon.  Among the treasures in each dungeon will be idols shaped like simplified versions of the animal heads.  Together these idols can be assembled together to form the key that opens the magical gate.

The dungeons will each have a theme corresponding to human senses, as follows:

• Bird: hearing.  This will be a music-themed dungeon.
• Spider:  sight.  This will be a dungeon that features the use of light and mirrors.
• Mole: touch.  The characters will find themselves misled by their other senses.
• Aardvark: taste.   The characters will find themselves being tasted by the last living tissue of the ancient demigod! (think Millenium Falcon in that living cave)

You may have noticed that I skipped our sense of smell.  That sense is represented by a rivalry between two races who now inhabit this subterranean region.  One race, called the Dark Ones, lives on the edge of the Lake of Eternal Death and fishes its waters.  These creatures do not cast aside their attire when it becomes too old and worn; instead, they simply add new layers over top of the old ones.  For this reason, they reek terribly.  The other race is one I made up myself, and they're called Nifflers.  They have no eyes at all and get by almost exclusively with their sense of smell, so it should be plain to see why they hate the Dark Ones.  The Nifflers inhabit some of the vertebrae islands and patrol the ribs which extend out from the spines and fuse with the carapace to form a network of tunnels beneath the lake.

Both races are hunted by a wyvern who ranges over the lake, and they try to appease him by kidnapping members of the rival race as sacrifices to the wicked beast.

This is the environment the kids are entering now, and they have no idea what they're getting into.  

Next time I'll give an example of a puzzle from the bird/music dungeon.

The Start of Something Big

I've started creating a huge dungeon for the kids, and I thought I'd share my process in this space.  It's a fairly ambitious project.  I'm shooting for the stars, and there's no way to describe it all in a single post.  Today I'll cover what my goals are, but first I'll provide a little bit of the dungeon's context within the overall adventure path.

Long time survivors of this blog may recall that I also run a Pathfinder game for my adult friends, and that my homebrew world they run in is pretty much the same one my kids run in.  Sort of.  They can't affect each other's version of the world, and they can't interact with one another.  This means that I'm effectively running the same adventure path twice, first with the adults who started as level 5 adventurers, and then with the kids who started at level 1.   So even if the adult party kills a major villain in, say, the Temple of Klethnu, that villain will still be there waiting for the kids when they arrive at the same temple.  Unless he's busy elsewhere, that is.

First, a definition for the uninitiated.  An "adventure path," in the sense that I'm using the term, is the set of adventures that the characters will engage in over the full span of their career, from whatever level they start at to whenever the characters are retired.  Adventure paths don't necessarily cover the entire PC career, but they do at least encompass a set of adventures that are connected to each other to form some narrative.  This particular adventure path I'm making will be it for these characters.  Once it's over, the kids retire these characters and we play something else.

The overarching structure of the adventure path that I've created/am still creating for my players consists of four parts.  The adults started with part two, the kids with part one.  I started running the setting well before I had an adventure path in mind, though; the adventure path has grown organically from the initial adventures that I created, specifically the "part two" that the adults just finished up after a year of playing in the elven city of Nimoriél.*  But the overall adventure path is a subject for another day.  I mention it today just to give some context for the dungeon I'm making.

Which brings me to my goals for this dungeon:

1. Advance the characters from level 3 to level 6;
2. Incorporate the dungeon seamlessly into the adventure path;
3. Challenge the players mentally;
4. Teach the kids about a wide range of subjects without them realizing it.

The first goal is to advance the characters from level 3 (their current level), to level 6, which is the level they will need to achieve in order to be ready to survive the horrors waiting for them in the Nimoriél greater metropolitan area.  Three levels worth of experience points represents many encounters, so the dungeon has to be fairly big.

My second goal is for the dungeon to feel like part of the overall adventure path.  That won't matter until much later, of course, long after they have advanced to Nimoriél and points beyond.  Right now the kids have no clue that this adventure path even exists, but years later I want them to look back on all our sessions with a sense of wonder and realize how they all fit so seamlessly together into one cohesive unit.   That's my pride talking, I admit.  I want them to look back on the adventure path as a whole, and each adventure and dungeon along the way, and reach the inevitable conclusion that their dad was a total bad*ss game master.  And I want them to see how I did it and inspire them to reach for similarly lofty creative goals.

An adjunct to this second goal is that I want the dungeon to tie together with what they've done up until this point.  I want to foster the illusion that I had the whole thing planned before we even began.  Eventually they'll know the truth because I'll share my techniques, but let them wonder for awhile.

My third goal is to make this a mentally challenging dungeon, mainly from a problem-solving perspective.  My kids compete in Future Problem Solvers, and I've noticed that since starting FPS, their problem-solving skills have really sharpened.  I've got to come up with something challenging enough to keep them interested.  So this dungeon will have lots of puzzles, none of which will be solvable by mere skill rolls.  And though it will have no shortage of nasty creepy-crawlies, several of the enemies they face will not be beatable by combat.

I'm feeling even more ambitious than that, though.  What I've done is created a structure for this dungeon such that the whole thing is one big puzzle, with subsections which are also puzzles which themselves contain puzzles.  You'll see how this works when I describe the dungeon structure next time.

(Also, the adventure path itself is a giant puzzle of sorts.  Tiny little seeds will be planted in this dungeon that will be clues for unraveling the biggest of mysteries when the characters have advanced to become legendary heroes and everything they hold dear is on the line.)

My final goal (aside from simply having fun), is to sneak in some educational elements.  As always, I'll take a stealth approach to this:  if the kids are having a blast and don't even realize they're learning, then the mission will be a success.  The following are a few subject areas that I know I'll be addressing:

• Music theory
• Ancient Mesoamerican civilizations
• Astronomy
• Geometry 
• Logic
• Anatomy
• How to kill vampires

This last skill is of particular importance.  Not all vampires sparkle.

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* Spanning just three weeks of in-game time.  In other words, we met once per week and played the setting for one year, but the characters were only in and around the elven city for three weeks.

I mention this to give scale to the adventure path.  Parts two and three are the biggest, and part four is the smallest.  I estimate the whole effort could take three to four years.  This assumes we actually get chances to play.  If you've read this blog at all, you know that's a long shot.