The Tomb of Horrors

A few weeks ago I had a crazy idea to run my kids through a classic AD&D module known as S1: Tomb of Horrors by Gary Gygax. Written in 1975, this adventure has the reputation of being perhaps the most difficult commercially available dungeon ever created for the game. I advise players against risking their most cherished characters in the Tomb, as death comes swiftly and often. Better to create throwaway characters for use exclusively in the Tomb, and avoid becoming too attached to the doomed delvers.

I chose this dungeon for several reasons. First, I never had a chance to play it when I was younger. I was never really that alert to the RPG scene, especially back then as a kid, and so when I heard about this killer module and went to buy it, I picked up the wrong one (pretty sure I snagged this one). Oh well. I have it now, years later, but I made sure to grab a copy of the original version, rather than one of the adaptations for later editions. I didn't want the imminent threat of death to get watered down. Later editions of the game are soft on characters. Characters nowadays are heroes destined for greatness. Back then, characters were just as likely to end up as monster food. "Destiny" was a term awarded to characters only after they survived long enough to both accomplish heroic feats and retire in one piece, but I digress.

The second reason I chose this dungeon is because the way it is written, it is all about the players vs. the dungeon, not the characters vs. the dungeon. Tomb of Horrors is a series of puzzles, maps, and traps, and it is up to the players to solve these challenges rather than for the dice to do so. No passive perception checks with a d20 to see if the characters notice anything fishy, for example. Nope. The players have to announce where they look, where they step, what they touch, etc. If they want to find traps, they have a percentage chance to succeed, but they have to say exactly where they're checking and what kinds of things they're looking for. You get through the ordeal by using your brain and taking extraordinary precautions, or you get through it by having your characters die, rolling up new ones, entering the tomb again, and remembering what you did wrong last time so you can avoid death the next time around. Obviously this latter approach is very "meta" (because new characters shouldn't really have access to knowledge that the player gained from a totally different character). Normally I do not permit actions based on meta knowledge, but in this adventure I make an exception. The dungeon was created by an adult to challenge expert, adult players. I'm running kids ages 7 to 12 here. They'll need all the meta knowledge they can get.

So we were playing today during Hurricane Irene, via candlelight. Kind of creepy. Also kind of difficult. I couldn't see the map and room descriptions, and the kids couldn't read their character sheets. We used a flashlight to solve this problem.

There were six kids: my three, two from next door, and a new player from two doors down. Five girls and one boy. The new girl is 7 years old, and a real stitch. Great little role player and keeps us all laughing. This was our second session in the Tomb: last time it took us 4 hours just to find a way in and deal with the first encounter. Much of that time was lost shopping for farm animals followed by a tactical discussion around elimination in the wild. The kids' game is definitely a different experience than the sessions I run with my peers.

Today, things started out rough: kids bickering over trivial matters, goofing off, talking out of turn, etc. You know, like kids do. This irritates me to no end. After all, I was taking a peaceful nap, enjoying the hurricane. I had the sounds of wind, rain, and the oscillating fan, all at once. It was the perfect storm (pun unintended but enjoyed nonetheless). And they came and got me, not the other way around, and for what? To listen to them bicker and yell? I almost got up and left the table. Instead, I told them to roll initiative.

Nothing gets their attention like those two words: "roll initiative." Initiative usually means combat, and combat is serious stuff that commands respect. They were instantly rapt. But I wasn't thinking combat. I had something else in mind.

Based on the initiative order, I asked each one in turn what they were doing next. If anyone spoke out of turn, I politely cut them off and returned attention to the person whose turn it was. If the player used her turn to speak to another player, I allowed that conversation to occur in character. I only answered questions asked in turn, though I would have respected any that were asked politely. This approach got things going smoothly for two whole rounds! The game was finally progressing, and before long the halfling fell into a pit of spikes but narrowly avoided death.

Speaking of avoiding things narrowly, it was precisely at that moment when we heard a huge whoosh! outside. Everyone got very excited and anxious and ran to the window to see what had happened. My wife had been watching out the window and saw the whole thing: a tree fell into our neighbor's driveway, just a few feet from my Honda CRV. That was it for the kids: they grabbed the flashlight and headed to the basement. Our descent into the Tomb of Horrors would be postponed.

Click to embiggen

Lights flickering around me again right now, so I'm signing off.

Fantasy Inspired Art

I'm not sure what this is supposed to be, but it better not be a bong.

Click on the image to embiggen it.

This is from my 7-year-old. Usually she draws me dragons. Fiendishly good ones, actually. I mean, the artwork isn't technically anything special, but her dragons have an edge to them that I think is lacking in modern depictions of dragons. Hers look...diabolical. I think it's the horns.

But this? I have no idea what it's supposed to be. She went to bed before I could ask her about it, so it will have to remain a mystery for now.

Maybe it's a map?

Suddenly, a Game Breaks Out

For my birthday last week my wife gave me a rolling toolbox to put my RPG supplies in. This was a thoughtful gift. She had seen me make multiple trips to load up my car before heading out to game sessions. Usually it takes three trips. Now, thanks to my rolling toolbox, it will take only one trip, two if I'm bearing snacks. And it gives me a single place to store my stuff in between sessions.

I also picked up a 48" x 34.5" battlemat by Chessex. I love my new battlemat.

So on Thursday while I was at work I got a phone call from my oldest daughter. "Dad, where is Pinky's sheet?"

This could only mean one thing: they were playing Pathfinder. On their own, without me, which is exactly what I always want to happen. The more they figure things out for themselves, the more effective a learning tool it becomes. Anyway, I didn't know where Pinky's sheet was, but I knew how to help. "He's a riding dog. Look up 'dog' in the Bestiary."

"Oh, right. Ok, bye!" Click.

I learned later how it happened. The little girl next door was playing with my kids, and they were showing her my new toys. They were looking at all my minis and the new battlemat, getting more and more excited, and somebody finally said, "Hey, you know what? We should play!"

And so they did.

The Mosster Truck

What a fun session we had today! The kids finally got a taste of the action waiting for them in our Savage Worlds Sxibi campaign setting. They started out at Billy Bob Bo's Weaponry Emporium (my 10-year-old named the store) where Ramoka bought a pair of punching daggers, and Lucia bought a used ray gun. Zukey asked for an elven curved blade, and the shopkeeper disappeared behind a curtain. A moment later there was a flash of light, a crackling sound, and the smell of ozone. Then he returned handling an elven curved blade oven mitts, and advised Zukey to be careful because the sword was "hot." Then he effectively robbed her by charging her $200 for the sword (he had asked how much she was willing to pay, and she had replied $200. Sold).

While deciding on the ray gun, my daughter asked me to look up pics of ray guns online so she could decide what she wanted it to look like. She ended up drawing one from her imagination, but we all thought this DIY project looked cool.

After they had paid for their weapons, a delivery man walked in and handed some packages to Billy Bob Bo. Lucia's danger sense warned her that something was wrong, and her hair turned brown. She tried to warn the shopkeeper, but it was too late, the package exploded and purple moss shot in every direction. It stuck to a few of the customers in the store and killed them. That's all the adventurers needed to see, and they left the store lickety-split, passing a befuddled-looking store security robot on the way. Out front, they noticed the delivery man's hover truck had moss growing on its sides. Ramoka's fur stood on end, and they elected to leave the scene...

...and visit a tattoo parlor! We spent about 15 minutes drawing tattoos and searching Google for ideas. Meanwhile, I went to YouTube and found this music (a style called Dubstep), which I told them was playing in the parlor. "Turn it up!" they said, because it really did feel right for the setting, and it was decided that the type of people working and hanging out at the tattoo parlor ("BAE," which stands for "Body Art Explosion") would want it loud. Thus it was that they each spent $50 and about an hour inside getting their ink done, while just outside the doors, the mosspocalypse was getting underway. As they were finishing up, they heard the screams from outside, and sporadic gunfire. Again, hair turned brown and fur stood on end, and they warily approached the door to see what was going on outside.

The first thing they saw was the hover truck, now completely covered in the purple moss, running amok, mowing down pedestrians, and crashing into everything. It was completely dominating the streets, careening around corners and then returning again with a vengeance. They also saw some people covered in moss ambling about. "Zombies! Moss zombies!" exclaimed Lucia. Then she announced her hair was no longer brown: it was now black. "What does black mean?" I asked.

"It means I'm deadly," she replied, drawing her laser pistol and preparing to step outside.

"But you'll hurt the people!" objected Ramoka.

"They're dead! Can't you see? It's too late, the moss got them!"

And so on.

Ramoka and Zukey hatched a plan to obtain weed killer, but they needed to know where to buy it. They consulted Robot (played by my wife), but they accidentally asked her where to find robot killer instead of where to find weed killer. Robot was so frightened by this slip of the tongue that she leaked oil all over the pavement, and refused to use her internet connection to aid them until they apologized and agreed to buy her some Quaker State motor oil. The kids agreed, and Ramoka and Zukey ran off to the pharmacy around the corner to get the weed killer (but not before Ramoka threw a tattoo needle into the face of one of the moss zombies).

Lucia stayed behind to fend off the other zombies. One of them hit her hard, leaving her shaken, but the moss didn't take root on her skin. She recovered quickly and took them out one by one with her pistol. Eventually Ramoka returned alone* with the weed killer, and the two of them went around another corner to follow the sounds of sirens, explosions, and automatic weapons fire they were hearing.

They found four SWAT team commandos with shields taking on the moss-covered hover truck. My youngest played the role of the cops, and since it wasn't her character, she was suddenly all about blowing away baddies. Ramoka charged in with the weed killer, spraying down one corner of the truck and delivering a painful wound that made the truck honk in agony. Lucia toasted it with her ray gun and brought the truck to the brink of destruction, and the commandos finished it off. Their weapons ignited a hydrogen tank which exploded with concussive force, knocking almost everyone over and spraying moss everywhere.

We were getting tired so we wrapped up the session with a conversation with one of the commandos, who said the SWAT team could use some stout folks like the players' characters. Lucia said sure, why not, since they did have a coffee machine at the precinct. Ramoka was open to the idea but not thrilled with the early morning hours. We'll see if Zukey takes the bait. They need jobs, that much is certain.

More to come.

*Note: Ramoka was alone because Zukey decided that discretion was the better part of valor and stayed behind at the pharmacy. Thus continues a trend in our games: the character with the most power - in this case Zukey is a "mentalist" with psionic powers - is always played by my youngest daughter, who feels that most if not all combat should be strictly avoided.

Shortcut for Making a Dungeon

To quote the Star Trek character Spock (who was himself borrowing a term from contract law): "Time is of the essence."

I'm running two adventures right now: one for my kids, and another for my grown-up friends. Both adventures involve cities: the former takes place in the ruins of an ancient city buried underground, while the latter takes place in an arboreal city where a terrible biological catastrophe has occurred. Now I don't know about you, but with the day-to-day hustle and bustle of life, it's just not feasible for me to map out a fictitious city, let alone two. A simple dungeon with a few dozen rooms is time-consuming enough; designing an urban landscape and everything that goes with that - landmarks, neighborhoods, subcultures, economies, religions, guilds, etc. - can be quite daunting.

Today I'm going to write about how I'm approaching this task with the kids' game. This is one of those cases where I want it to look to the kids like I've done a lot more preparation than I really have.

I start with a basic concept. No point in blowing valuable time on that, you can't force it anyway. The ideas will come to you when they come to you. If it happens when you're at the office, send yourself an email as a reminder. That's what I do. So in my case, the main idea is a city built within a turtle-shaped monster's carcass. That gives me the basic shape. The other ideas in play are that the ancient civilization was like the Aztecs, and that they had a queen who had a ton of treasure.

Because it's shaped like a turtle, the city is a dome. All that tells me is that the further down you go, the bigger around it gets. The first thing to decide is how many levels there will be, and draw a simple map showing a side view of the city. In the case of the carcass city, I've decided there are seven levels. That's fairly ambitious, and I have my reasons, but you'll see that doesn't really increase my workload too much.

Next step: generate the top level map. Here's where I cheated in a big way: I went to a web site and had it automatically generate the map for me. Not only that, but it also populated the rooms for me. Here is where I went to do that: Donjon. Go on over there and try it out. Just accept the defaults and click the "Construct" button. Not only does it give you a map, but it also populates the dungeon with critters and things. That's exactly what I did, except I changed the parameters before constructing the floor plan. For example, I went with a circular floor plan for obvious reasons.

Next: customize the dungeon. This involves reading what was generated and making sure it makes sense for your adventurers. My kids will be interacting with a race (RPG for "species," not to be confused with the term "race" as we use it in our society) known as the Dark Folk, who aren't dark at all, they just live in dark places. They are pale, smallish, secretive, and filthy. They never discard old clothing, which explains their awful stench, and they explode when killed. These are the guys I've decided are descendants of the ancient queen's subjects. That gives me a little direction on how to play them. So I put them into the constructed dungeon in place of some of the randomly generated fare. I also change up the traps because mine are better. Inventing devious traps is one of the great joys of being the game master. This is something I didn't understand when I was younger, and I'll go into more about traps in a future blog entry.

The skill check DCs were also a little high. For example, stuck doors with a DC 26 (i.e., difficulty challenge 26) to pry loose. That's means a roll of 1d20 + the strength modifier must meet or exceed 26 to unstick the door. It's not very likely the kids will succeed at that. In the old days you had henchmen walking around with you in the dungeons carrying all manner of useful equipment such as iron spikes, crowbars, and ten-foot poles. These would give you a better chance of breaking down doors. Today's kids, though, don't think like that. They can't be troubled with logistics. They just waltz into a dungeon with no helpers at all, carrying just their own weapons and bare necessities. The door is stuck? I whack at it with my sword! So I have to adjust accordingly or they won't even make it from room to room.

That's it! In truth, I don't even look at everything that was generated in advance. It's often better to wing the details on the fly. Sometimes the characters will choose to explore the dullest region of the map, walking down long corridors with dead ends. You'll know when the pace of the game is lagging and it's time to throw the players a challenge. Spice it up with random encounters, or throw a trap or two in there. I take my lead from what transpires when considering further encounters. In the best games, once you get started, the adventures start to write themselves.

The adventure for grown-ups is far more complicated. I'll go into how I'm approaching that one another time.

Character Sketch Exercise

On a whim this morning I assigned my kids an RPG-based writing exercise. The conversation went like this:

Me (getting ready to leave for work): "Hey kids, I have a writing assignment for you."

Them: [Groans] "Ugh."

Them: "Uh, is it D&D related?"

Me: "Yep!"

Them: "Yay! Alright!" and "What is it?" (now with enthusiasm)

That's good, right? The RPG is working its magic. So here's the assignment I gave them: they have to write a one- or two-page story about what Raze, the man with the eye patch, did after he finished making the deal with Elerisa and left the museum. Since they weren't with him after he left, they get to make it all up. What I've challenged them to do is to show me what kind of person he is through his actions, rather than telling me what kind of person he is. Show, don't tell. This is advice I received from my friend Adam, whose wife Kristi - another player in the older Pathfinder game I run - is an author. I think it is a splendid idea and will help further develop my kids' writing skills. What I'm leading them into is writing character sketches (or portraits), but I don't need them to know that. As far as they're concerned, they're just writing stories.

And writing adventure stories is fun.

When the Party Isn't Much of a Party

My youngest daughter, whom we shall call Fiona (her character's name), is just seven years old. That's pretty young to be playing Pathfinder RPG, a game which is ostensibly for adults, or at least for teens. So the rules and the content are difficult enough, but her biggest challenge may be her fellow players.

On Saturday, Fiona became frustrated because she couldn't get the other kids to listen to her ideas. Her 12-year-old sister Elerisa, trying her best to not be bossy, still managed to dominate the game. To her credit, Elerisa was taking a democratic approach, listing out the options and taking a show of hands. But they were her options, and the options offered up by the other kids, not Fiona's ideas.

It came to a head when the kids traversed a long, narrow corridor with spikes protruding from the ceiling above them. Halfway down the passage the character taking the lead snapped the trip line that triggered the trap. The kids had just a moment to decide: run forward, or run back the way they came. Fiona felt strongly they should run forward and said so, then raised her voice as everyone else started shouting which way they wanted to go. They started arguing amongst themselves, just for a second, but that was too long for young Fiona, in whose powerful imagination that ceiling was coming down and time was of the essence. So she reached out onto the table, scooped up all the miniatures representing the party, made her hilarious, trademark sheep-in-distress sound, and moved the party forward.

The other players cried foul, and rightfully so. Then silence reigned at the table while everyone waited for me to pass judgment. At that moment, I didn't totally understand what was going on. Just like the players, I get caught up in the game. Only later was I able to piece it all together with the help of my wife. Right then, though, all I knew was that I didn't want to embarrass her in front of everyone. Also, although her behavior needed to be corrected, it wasn't fair to the others to take the time to do it in the middle of all their excitement. I also recognized that Fiona was at her breaking point and it wasn't going to get any better. So I quietly told her to leave the table. I figured I'd catch up with her a few minutes later to straighten things out, then let her rejoin the game.

It didn't work out that way, but it did get better. My wife talked to her, and we worked out a plan with Fiona to help her deal with future issues. She will try to remember to be more assertive with me and let me know when she doesn't feel like she's being allowed to fully participate in the game. For my part I'll keep a better eye on her, try to see the game through her eyes and make sure her voice is heard. She has also identified several non-lethal spells she can use against the other players' characters if she needs to get their attention. Nothing harmful, but definitely inconvenient.

We also had a chat at dinner with her sisters about their behavior and ways they can be more inclusive. We'll see whether that sticks.