Last Sunday I invited some of my friends over for an afternoon of Geeking out.
This week’s Feature Game was going to be another Swords & Wizardry session, using Math Finch’s Tomb of the Iron God. Last month we had a real blast with the Quick Start Rules so I was curious to see if we could touch the same awesomeness we had last time.
Given that we only had 3 players, I introduced the use of Hirelings: Men at Arms and Lantern Bearers.
The lineup was:
- Franky’s returning fighter, now at level 2
- PM’s newest lvl 1 Fighter, with a dark Chaotic heart
- Mike’s lvl 1 Thief.
- Bob, a Men-at-arm that coughed all the time
- Bob’s men-at-arm friend
- Thorn, a peasant’s boy, hired as a Lantern bearer.
I’ll give you a time-compressed recap of the game before I go into what worked really well and what didn’t:
Party enters dungeon underneath ruined Monastery of the the Iron God. They explore a few corridors, fall in a pit (killing lantern boy and wounding a PC). Return to city, deal with lantern boy’s dad, rest , hire lantern boy’s cousin as new lantern-boy.
Return to dungeon, explore some more, get a geas from Iron God, get an Iron magic weapon… and fall in a pit! Lantern boy dies (again). Explore some more, get attacked and flanked by goblins, Men at Arms die, party breaks goblin assault, goblin rout, loot! Explore some more, find a bunch of skeleton, Thief dies, party retreats and goes back to city.
Party restocks, Deal with lantern-boys family lawyer, hires 2 new Men-at-Arms (one holding the lantern), sing the praise of dead comrades, hire cleric and return to tomb. Party explores some more, dodge some vermin and find entrance to catacombs.
We stopped there, that was about 4 hours worth of play.
What Worked: Hirelings
I love Old School Hirelings, they take 2 seconds to create (HD: 1 AC 14, Hp: 4, Longsword: 1d8 plus a Saving Throw). And if you inject just ONE personality trait, they make the whole party more colorful. So I had Bob who couched like a 70 year old chain smoker and I had Brier (Lantern-Boy #2) always say ‘huh?’
I also liked how they add complications to the game that PCs need to deal with. At the beginning of the game, when all the PCs were broke, the Hirelings were a resources they had to plan around to get help in the dungeons. They ended up being mostly trap springers and meatshields but what do you expect for 1 or 2 gp a day?
The best moments of the game all came down to hirelings. When the party first came back to town so a PC could heal his 6 missing HPs, I had dead Lantern Boy’s father, a shy peasant that always looked down while nervously grasping his hat, come and ask about his son. Seeing the players scramble to weave a yarn that made them look good (instead of ‘He cushioned my fall into a pit trap’) was freaking priceless.
Later in the game, while being attacked by a horde of goblins, one of the Men at Arms fell to 0 hp. When PM’s chaotic fighter took his turn, he gently took the fallen hireling by the head and tenderly twisted it really really hard. Because heaven forbid that he should get paid 2 gp!
So yeah, that part of the game, I really liked.
What didn’t work: Pretty much everything else
All right, I’ll come out and say it, we didn’t end up having nearly as much fun as the previous game. Part of it was because we had less players so there were less social interaction and potential for chaos. Mostly though, it was because of the adventure.
As PM told me after the game:
It was just long corridors and doors, doors, doors! Nothing to do. Heck, the best parts was falling in the Pit Traps and killing the hirelings!
Ouch!
Tomb of the Iron God is meant as an introductory (but generic) D&D dungeon-based adventure. However, where Chgowiz’s Quick-Start adventure was awesome because it packed so many different kinds of encounters in 20 rooms, Tomb of the Iron God features many many more rooms, most of which are either empty or filled with mundane gear or groups of monsters.
There are very precious few ‘WTF?’ rooms in there, like Chgowiz’s ‘Hall of the talking statues’ in the Quick-Start adventure.I had the feeling that things might be a bit dry, especially the second level, a catacomb that really is mostly monsters and treasure.
I realize that Finch was probably going for the ‘logical’ dungeon, where things make sense. I’m however much more of the “put silly stuff in my dungeon, I’ll cope” school of gaming.
What I want in an old school adventure
After the disappointment of the game wore off, I pieced together what it was that was missing, something I will now make sure are present in all S&W adventures I play…
An Old School adventure that I would enjoy running would need to have plenty of things that players can’t necessarily explain but can interact freely with. For example, take the seminal old School adventure: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, which I loved running. In it you’ll find:
- A large densely populated Dungeon going through an event (a party)
- An overly difficult challenge (Crashing the party)
- Hidden treasures
- Sleeping Guards
- Hundreds of Resentful slaves
- Fake treasure
- Weird tentacle temple
- An hidden story to be pieced together by the party
The adventure, while dead simple, was overflowing with exploration and role playing opportunities.
That’s why I think a good exploration-based adventure needs lots of varied toys to play with. Be they tricks, traps, puzzles and monstrous factions.
The same applies to 4e too. While combat does provide lots of levers and knobs, a great adventure has lots of meaningful choices and unknowns to challenges both PCs and players.
So my next S&W adventure will likely be a work of my own, a Gygaxian dungeons where 2 factions fight over some strange resources while a third, big monster, stands on the verge of killing everyone off. Add a few weird temples and Idols that may or may not protect something even more deadly than the big monster and I’m sure I’d have a blast DMing it.
Sorry to hear it wasn’t as much fun as you hoped, but hey you learn some!
😀 HAHAHA ROTF LOL Out Loud !!!11one
Thanks for the “Steading of the Hill Giant Chief” overview, it got my creative gears turning. A party in a dungeon never occurred to me, but I love it!
I need to regroup and finish the Quick Start dungeon. It is jammed full of weird goodness around every corner, an excellent example.
I have to say that the recap reaffirms my love for 4e.
Not for Chatty’s reasons (4e dungeons can be as boring as S&W ones) but for the kill count. 2 lantern boys, 2 men-at-arms and a PC in a single session.
I struggle to understand how you can build a continuing narrative with that sort of turnover. It might be fun for a one-shot, but it’s not what I want from an ongoing campaign.
It’s a shame it wasn’t as fun as it sounded.I hope the next session goes well!
@ Colmarr – I don’t see why a 4e game couldn’t end up with a couple of dead hirelings. In fact I could see that happening pretty easily, especially if say the lantern bearer was stated as a minion! As for the narrative… I could see that getting a little hurt by that level of turnover.
.-= David´s last blog ..St. Gaxgy The Lawgiver =-.
@Kevin: The thing is, after 26+ years, I know those lessons already… my main barrier is now laziness. The geekouts are not serious game days so I don’t spend time writing S&W adventures like I do for 4e. Thus, I found myself using an adventure that wasn’t tailored to my taste.
But given that our free time remains precious, I’ll be more vigillant next time and follow my gut feelings.
@Colmarr: Both games deliver quite different play experiences. Cheap deaths are a by product of careless players or (in this particular case) slight overuse of the Pit trap. Also, death is not as loss inducing, given that making a PC takes 10 min, tops.
But yeah, your feeling is entirely validated.
@David: We had fun… just not as much as the previous session where everything was shiny new. What you read was an highlighted version with the cool stuff brought forward and the drudgery sent back to fade in the background.
We discussed the fragility of character after the game. We agreed that it didn’t matter much at such low level because we are not attached to our paper men just yet. However such frailty instills a sense of danger that I never encountered in 4e. (but I’m not a great source of wisdom about that).
My opinion is that I prefer to see my character die after hours of fearing for my life than to feel frustrated because my death was unforseable. “I usually have no problems with encounters like these.”
The adventure itself was pretty unexciting. Whoever tought it could make a nice introduction game needs to rethink his marketing strategy. You don’t get players hooked into a new product by having them walk around in empty corridors. An adventure designed to initiate players should be a showcase of all the cool stuff you will be able to do in the future. It must be the intro to Raiders of the lost ark not the Hobbits Taking in the sights through Fangorn forest.
Character death is near meaningless at lower levels. The interesting thing is, given a fair and consistent DM and players that play intelligently, the death rate should go down steeply the higher level players are.
From the moment that players are aware that this edition of D&D has absolutely no algorithm for ‘level-appropriate’ challenges, players can get in the right mindset and go with it.
@ PM: I can’t say that I disagree with your assessment of the adventure. I’m really glad we stopped where we did. It would not have gotten much better, if at all.
Chatty,
Good overview, and the man-at-arms thing you hit ‘dead-on’.
Colmarr, I have to say that it is so cool to hear from what I would consider ‘the other mindset’ of gaming. I really appreciated your view of the time spent and the value of the game. One of the things that is different about Old-school is that when you have a 5th level character, it’s an accomplishment, not a foregone conclusion. Just wanted to interject that to the conversation, but not to say that one way is right.
Chatty is right that the death rate goes down ant higher levels, but death is still right around the corner with a Good GM. The roleplay with the Lantern-boy’s dad is priceless, gaming at it’s absolute best.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited The Calendars =-.
I get attached to my characters too much, I guess… I like them from the moment where I put words on my concept. Of course, the relationship between me and my character grows with time, and I learned to know what I like and dislike, so I won’t agree to play something I won’t like (even though I always try new concepts… I just know my boudaries, such as “no character with lower intelligence than mine – it’s just too frustrating not to be able to solve the puzzles I CAN solve easily”… in a LARP, all of my characters can read/write… it’s too hard to pretend I can’t read this or that… they all speak the languages that I do speak – too hard to pretend I didn’t understand this or that…) But as far as being attached to a character : I get attached to the concept (that has to fit in with the game concept, but that’s an other topic). So, even at level 0 or 1, I do everything I can NOT to die!
As for death itself (mainly deaths of NPC’s like hirelings) – I’m always amazed to realize how much our charaters seem not to care. Oh, here, I just killed two guards! Hurray! They gave me just the XP I needed to level up, and look what I can do now! Wait… what do you mean, I have to deal with the corpses? Don’t they vanish like in video games? Guilt? Huh? What IS that?”
So when a DM forces playes to “deal” with the consequences of their actions (murder = bad things have to happen) I just love it.
And don’t you dare tell me that you can’t feel guilt because you’re evil. Evil people aren’t always psychopaths… And allignments are the worst mistake EVER in a RPG, IMO… But that, again, is an other topic…
Just one thing… how come a cheap hireling agree to jump on traps and to act as meatshields? I mean, you’d have to pay me way more than a few coins to pass before the guy with the shinny armor and the huge kleymore…
Caveat, I haven’t purchased Matt’s “Tomb of the Iron God”, so I have no real opinion on it as a game.
If you go back to the old 1e DMG or even earlier to the LBBs, Vol 3 (Underground & Wilderness Adventures) – you’ll find that empty space was far more common than jam-packed dungeons.
“As a general rule there will be far more uninhabited space on a level than there will be space occupied by monsters, human or otherwise.” – pg 6 Vol 3
It was roughly a 25 to 30% chance that there’d be something in the room, ala a monster or encounter. So from that sense, I’m not surprised that ToIG “felt empty” – most dungeons are. If you look at the room sizes/encounter spaces for later games, the rooms tend to be “bigger”, but you have less of them.
Now, to that end, Chatty, I think it’s my job as a DM to pace a room and dungeon appropriately. I can give pretty good clues when the players are obviously wasting their time exploring a room that absolutely has nothing in it. (grabbing the wandering monster dice is a good way… and being obvious about it…) or I can add my own atmosphere – “This room is empty aside from thick cobwebs hanging from the ceiling.”, “This room is empty aside from a single rusted helmet in a corner.”, “This room is empty, but you catch the faint sound of moaning, as if the wind has changed direction here.”… stuff to break up the monotony. It sounds trivial, but players dig it and it helps to get you into the mindset of where you’re at. Smells, or hints/clues at something beyond.. maybe footprints or the like?
That mundane gear, at first level, should be like treasure. My Dark Ages players have a grim bit of truth when they say that their biggest haul on the first level of dungeons is usually fallen comrades. First levels are not going to be filled with gold stuffed chests, but there should be enough treasure, at least in an old school game (I’m talking AD&D/OD&D here) that 75% of XP comes from loot. Of course, YMMV, wandering monsters can throw that off a bit.
Comparing Matt’s ToIG to my Quick Start is probably unfair because I had to pack it in. I had 20ish rooms to throw a lot of introductory stuff – I don’t know how many rooms are in Matt’s adventure, but I have no doubt that if I had stretched Akban out to a more common 30ish room dungeon, you might have said the same thing about the Quick Start. I guess what I’m saying is that I think the Quick Start ratio of “stuff” to empty is probably skewed wrong, but that was by design.
Empty rooms also make great bolt holes, something my players have put to good use! A hireling might make a comment about marking a chalk mark on the wall “Just in case we need to flee – we’ll know this is a good redoubt.” Just to get the players thinking?
I’m totally not critical of the way you played ToIG, just offering a perspective on it. In the end, the BEST part of ToIG is that it is open enough, if I know Matt well enough, that you can add the bits that make it work for you and your group and you won’t break the dungeon so much.
@Colmarr – in both of my campaigns, still going strong, there’s been some serious hireling turnover and in my AD&D campaign, every player since Jan has lost at least 1 character. The “continuing narrative” is the story they build in total. They still talk about how they’ll take on the troll-mage after the near-TPK, and they talk about some lost hirelings with fondness. The story is their adventures, not an over-arching plot that depends on XYZ to be alive.
@Chatty – one final thought – the death rate goes down as the players learn their DM and the world they exist in. My players in AD&D hadn’t realized that I would let them get in over their heads and die from it. Now they do. Now when they see things that they have doubts about, they’ll recon, they’ll flee, they’ll plot and plan.
One of the things that some people mock Gary Gygax about, but I fully agree with him, is that RPG’ing does involve an ever-evolving/increasing set of skills. That happens with experience and learning. That skill does affect the rate of death. YOU yourself saw that in play… with Tavis sitting next to you at GenCon – that guy had all the tricks and ideas of how to survive a dungeon.
.-= Chgowiz´s last blog ..Player reactions to the "Goblin Battle" =-.
I haven’t yet had a chance to try one of the old-school emulators but I’ve been reading much about them lately and plan to run a couple of games in the coming months.
Colmarr‘s comment (about difficulty building narrative with regular character death) emphasizes what seems to me a significant difference of assumptions between older games and newer games. As Chgowiz suggests, in older games an overarching narrative is not a foregone conclusion and exploring dungeons or other fantastic locales can be an end in itself, whereas some newer games do seem to encourage epic narrative and adventures in strange locales are sometimes only means to that end.
It pays to know what you enjoy, I guess!
@LV: Thanks! I had this strong image of a shy person wrigning a hat that I just had to play it.
The other flash that I had would have been to have a Men at Arms going up to Franky’s PC (A known womanizer) when he was down to one HP or less and have him kick the PC real hard (KICK! That was for my sister. KICK and that was for my mother and STAB that was for my wife!)
I’m sure Franky would have loved it.
@ND: Swords and Wizardry is a special game as it represents a way of playing D&D at a time where Players were challenged, not characters. To refer to something you said in my last post, the PCs have very very basic stats. There are no skills and the Ability scores are, role playing indicators and scores you need to roll under with dice to accomplish something.
To that effect, the characters start with almost no substance because the player spent 10 minutes creating it (and all abilities are rolled randomly).
That substance is gained through play as the player chooses a personality based on the choice he/she makes as a player. You make stuff up and it becomes backstory.
As for the hirelings, well pit-traps are triggered randomly (a roll of 1-2 on a d6) for each character walking over one. The torch-boys sitting in the 2nd rank behind Franky’s PC happened to always be the ones to trigger the traps.
As for Meat-shields… both Men-at-Arms were slain when a group of Goblins circled around the dungeon and flanked the PCs from 2 sides. At that time, both Men at Arms were, a bit on purpose, holding back, letting the PCs deal with the goblins in the front.
The scene was kinda scary as the goblins mowed down the hirelings and charged toward the PCs.
@Chgowiz: Yeah, I just think I’m not the target audience for the module. I note what you say about comparing the QS to Matt’s adventure. I guess I’m just a guy who likes Busy dungeons ya know? I mean, I have DMed Temple of Elemental Evil (both versions), Against the Giant, the Slaver Series and many many more. I guess that now that I’ve reconnected with the Old School, I can start crafting my own stuff.
So yeah, there will be a next time… but with my own brew… or maybe Raggi’s adventures..
@ND: for the hireling i would say either low IQ or choice between certain death and probable death… The evil player will cut me to pieces if I don’t go forward. 😛
@ND and Yan: I forgot to mention that in the game we played, we used to original D&D Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic system. So no one was truly evil (except maybe PM, but he’s a sociopath in real life so he doesn’t count).
The game was all about low grade grifters and hustlers trying to make a fortune raiding a recently destroyed monastery. Not very heroic for sure.
@Colmarr – I struggle to understand how you can build a continuing narrative with that sort of turnover.
Well, if you assume the story is about the dead guys, then it would be tough. If the story is about the survivors… well, you can’t tell that one until the survivors have emerged.
I myself don’t see the fun in the story of characters who are predestined to experience the suspense of varying degrees of success and thrill to the wonders of labouriously balanced encounters.
Music and lyrics by GM fiat.
I have no doubt I could enjoy a S&W campaign, but I would need to work very hard on suppressing my natural approaching to RPing.
@David: It’s not that 4e couldn’t kill hirelings. It’s that 4e doesn’t HAVE hirelings, presumably for exactly that reason. The only people brave and/or skilled enough to go into harm’s way are the PCs.
@Chatty: Your comment about “loss” prompts another observation. I (and presumably others) have a relatively high level of emotional investment in my PCs. Ease of character generation does not in my mind make up for the loss of the initial PC. That would be less of an issue for those less invested than I.
@Chgowiz: It strikes me that the narrative you’re describing is the player’s narrative, not the character’s narrative.
I guess I have too much “storyteller” in my gaming makeup. I want a hero or heroes to be the bedrock of the entire story. Too much character death (resurrected or otherwise) interrupts that flow.
@Vincent Diakuw: But what if there are no survivors? What happens to the story when the last of the original PCs dies? Does it then become the story of the bad guy (because he’s the only common narrative element)? It just strikes me as odd.
I’m the first (maybe second) to admit that 4e is a game for storytellers who want the heroes to win. For whom the thrill is in how they win, not whether they win. Of course, dumb players can still get themselves TPKed quite easily, and when that happens 4e faces the same problems as every other system ever invented.
@Colmarr – EXACTLY! 🙂 And that narrative is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Their actions tell the story, not my railroad.
Interestingly, mythos and legends are FULL of death. We deal with it from the earliest myths – Gilgamesh and Enkidu. My characters form the basis of that story, including their deaths.
I guess it does come down to what you get out of the game. The game for me, and the people I play with, can handle the death and allow the players to still enjoy a wonderful game. 🙂
@Vincent Diakuw: But what if there are no survivors? What happens to the story when the last of the original PCs dies? Does it then become the story of the bad guy (because he’s the only common narrative element)? It just strikes me as odd.
I’m the first (maybe second) to admit that 4e is a game for storytellers who want the heroes to win. For whom the thrill is in how they win, not whether they win. Of course, dumb players can still get themselves TPKed quite easily, and when that happens 4e faces the same problems as every other system ever invented.
It’s a tribute to the community we have built here and in similar-run sites (like Chgowiz’s) that we can have an actual Player vs Character and 0e vs 4e discussions without having it devolve into a flame war . Kudos to all (although I didn’t fail to notice some tactical use of italics in a comment or two).
As I’ve said before, according to my current RPG tastes, S&W provides me with a minimalist ruleset that delivers the same classic D&D experience I had when I was 12, without the bulkiness of AD&D. It provides me with a game experience where the story emerges from play because we all chose to roll PCs and not invest ourselves up front. Yet the attachment builds up as the PC progresses in the adventure.
As for 4e, well yes I agree with the assessment that success is pre-destined. Especially in groups where the DM lags behind the players in terms of building challenges. I don’t mind this system because I don’t really care for TPKs… most GMs I’ve met would rather see PCs survive.
But scaring the shit out of players. Enough to trigger unusual behaviors in characters (like fleeing or considering sacrifice)…. that I know I can do easily in 4e.
Anyhoo, great discussions people, keep it up!
My players have gone from level 1-5 (almost at 6). So far no one has died, but I’ve had several encounters where it came down to death saves. Two occasions where someone failed 2 then kept succeeding on the third over several turns, and one where a Deva stayed alive only by rolling a 6 on his “memory of a thousand lifetimes” to make his final death save. Now *that* was suspenseful 🙂
I hate tpks, mostly because I’m a storyteller at heart and hate to see all those threads come unwound at once.
I’ve found that if I make an encounter at the appropriate XP budget it’s always an easy win for the PCs, so I always go over the limit to make it challenging.
stealing the old school hirelings *yoink* thanks.
Personally when i’m running a dungeon, especially a during a filler game. every single room has something in, a trap, an npc, a monster, a monster trap, an npc thats trapped a monster… but seriously i was running keep on the shadowfell for some fun and tossed in a baby black dragon, that was a paladin of bahamut. Some teen run aways on a romantic picnic, random on the spot puzzles (not proud of some of those). also i steal any ideas that my players come up with, ‘oh no i gurantee there is traps all over this corridor’ there is now.
Anyway thats my 2 cents. You should see how i run my new years eve games (i need a life!)
Whit
@Chatty:
But I don’t, and I definitely learned something today.
I haven’t been a player in ages, so I can’t say that I have a preference about PC death. But let me tell y’all a story… In a 3e game, my PC died at least 3 times before fourth level. I finally quit the game after he suffered two level drains. In the same encounter. And I wasn’t even there (house rule: earn half XP if another player runs your PC in your absence). Bad DM? Bad substitute player? Bad luck? Whatever, it was not fun, and I didn’t play again until 4e was released.
Old-school and new-school deliver different aesthetics to the table, and every player will have unique preferences. I’m currently on the fence, as DM. 4e is a great, solid system, but the speed of S&W is very appealing for my limited play schedule.
A couple of points WRT making old-school work:
It’s important to note that even 1st-level characters and their hirelings, played with a little cleverness, don’t have that high a death count. For example, the pit traps that killed your hirelings could almost certainly have been thwarted by probing the floor with a 10-foot pole – something that a highly experienced dungeoneer regards as almost second nature.
And suspicion is a good substitute for experience. Mostly due to Standard Operating Procedures invented by our paranoid nutjob of a ranger, my C&C group has now run ten or eleven sessions and explored quite a lot of the first megadungeon level without suffering a single PC casualty. The closest any character has ever come was when a fire beetle (now known by the sobriquet Razorjaw) bit through Thor the dwarf’s armor and punctured his lung, and that was the direct result of a stupid decision by the dwarf to engage with 1 hp left. Luckily for him, both the ranger and the player behind her had First Responder Training, and she came up with a way to save him. And two hirelings did bite it, but the group chose not to save them because they were running from something and hoped the bodies would provide a distraction. (Man, that was *cold*…)
As for the goblins… honestly, sometimes its better not to fight. And while this may suprise folks who are used to being able to kill three to four with a single character, in old-school games, kobolds and goblins are some of the nastiest 1st-level monsters! Intelligent enemies are always very dangerous foes. If the situation looked bad, it may have been worth retreating and missing the treasure (or even offering the gobbos a bribe) to let the group get away unhurt.
——
The corridors and doors problem is a common complaint. And ultimately, what it comes down to (And please don’t be offended by this: I don’t mean it harshly, and it’s a pretty common problem among DMs who like to overprepare) is a failure to describe the dungeon in an interesting way. When Chgowiz pointed out the popular guideline that generally only 25-30% of the rooms should have encounters in them, that DOESN’T mean that the ’empty’ rooms should be completely barren!
When I draw out new areas for my megadungeon campaign, I use a random table to partially decide what goes into the “filler rooms”. It looks like this:
The Almighty Dungeon Stocking Table: (1d100)
1-8 Hidden Treasure
9-11 Trapped Treasure
12-20 Trap Room
21-43 Interesting Room Feature
44-67 Essentially Empty
68-76 Wandering Monster Hangout
77-79 Wandering Monsters with Trap
80-84 Special Wandering Encounter
85-92 Monster Lair
93-95 Monster Lair with Trap
96-00 Special Monster Lair
(I should mention that when I say “lair” here, I mean lairs of unintelligent or very disorganized creatures. Any settlements of organized monster groups are placed by hand when I first draw the map.)
Now, 2/3 of those rooms will have no preset *monsters*, but only about 1/4 of them are actually *empty*. And even the empty rooms should have some good scenery in them. Here are two examples from my own notes that came up “Essentially Empty”:
34: Empty Cellar
This basement is completely empty save for random, inexplicably-placed piles of stones and rubble. Characters sitting around listening will hear ghostly hissing sounds that come and go, usually (75%), from behind them. These are caused by harmless pebbled chameleons that hide amongst the bricks and on the walls.
109: Crossroads
Gargoyles in the shape of stone serpents look down into this antechamber. The gargoyles are harmless, but are used as steam vents for machinery hidden in the walls.
It’s all about giving your players off little widgets to play with. The “Interesting Room Feature” is another of my favorite results. I had the party baffled for hours with this one:
39: Deadly, Apparently?
The pale corpse of the magician Kall lies in the middle of the room, with not even a mark on his body to indicate how he died. Kall’s body always lies in a different position anytime someone enters the room, and no matter how it is moved, mangled, or damaged, always reverts to a pristine condition.
Kall’s familiar, a minor wind spirit, didn’t think to put a clause to end its 100-year contract if the master dies. The creature has set up the whole thing as an entertaining prank while it waits out its term of service.
It’s also a relatively common among old-school module writers to include a few empty rooms so that you have space to build off the information they present. These extra rooms tend to give modules even *more* emptiness. I can’t speak for Matt Finch’s intentions in Tomb, but the classic example here is the Cave of the Unknown in Keep on the Borderlands, which the module outright says should lead to a dungeon of your own design. So that’s worth figuring in too.
The adventure openly states that it is low in description to allow us to dress it to our tastes. And maybe therein lies my fault. But the empty rooms were empty.
In your example, you have Gargoyles that can be played with, weird sounds and all kind of cool useless crap that will keep players guessing and occupied AND give me narrative juice to play with,
I can create such adventures… and I will next time I played. But Matt’s adventure didn’t provide such an ‘off the shelf’ experience.
Now in terms of pit traps… which I find retarded but a necessary element of the experience. From my interpretation of the rule, a Pole would only trigger a trap 2 in 6 times which is not a sure shot.
Plus having the game slowing down to a crawl in order to search each nook and crany for traps defeats, in my mind, the crazy fun part of playing. I remain a new Schooler that plays S&W to connect with the stuff I liked about D&D and to exude in the pleasure of a dead simple ruleset.
But I will houserule many things in my next adventure… to harness the power of simplicity and my current new School outlook on encounters/dungeons and such.
And that’s the true power of 0th edition.
Why do I have images of poor hireling ghosts coming back to take revenge on the players? :o)
As for the use of empty rooms : when there are no empty rooms, in an old school game, I come to miss it (though I don’t *really* like doors-monsters-treasures-traps settings) – the team needs a spot to rest at a certain point…
Eh, I wouldn’t call the dressing your fault, exactly – having to improvise that stuff is just one of those natural pitfalls of big dungeons that try to minimize their page count. One the one hand, they are nice and concise and cover lots of ground very quickly. On the other, they can be a little *too* conside for some folks. And that’s especially tricky if you are used to running adventures with more description and not accustomed to winging it so much.
But yeah, traps are tricky, and pit traps doubly so because they are a “gotcha!” trap. Most of the traps I use have a little warning, like a big bloodstain or scorched spot on the floor in front of the giant door, or a couple dozen crossbow bolts sticking in the side walls of the room, or a lot of dead guys around a choice piece of treasure. Something to warn the players that something’s up and something else to dare them to press their luck. But pit traps and the like generally don’t give clues beforehand (unless it’s the kind that you put under a rug or piles of sticks, leaves and straw all over the floor). You can’t necessarily clue into them, so they turn into “gotcha!” traps. And those *suck* if you don’t handle them with a little forgiveness.
The way I do it is basically like this: If you have a 10-foot pole or something similar, and someone is probing around with it, you move at half normal speed, but the pole automatically finds just about all tripwires, pits, pressure plates, and what have you. No questions asked. You don’t have to announce that you are probing everything all the time, as long as you are not being chased by monsters and have someone in front with the pole – Once you put that guy in the front of the marching order, it’s assumed. And it finds that stuff basically every time.
Where I do have gotcha traps become a problem is when you can’t move slowly and check things. When you are fleeing, or chasing someone, or didn’t come prepared. At that point, when care is no longer being taken, *then* you have a chance to trigger any gotchas you haven’t explicitly mentioned avoiding. “Gotcha!” traps serve to complicate problems that already exist, not as a worthy issue for a party in their own right, which is actually pretty similar to how 4e uses them.