The DOOM of the DARK is coming...

The Black Casket of Night has indeed been opened beneath our feet, soon, only days will remain!

I have been posting here and there about ‘Doom of the Dark’ for a while. Here is the full version;

After my encounter with Tunnels and Trolls, Amanda suggested that I publish the adventure I created for her and a few friends. This is that adventure, illustrated and layed out by Amanda Lee Franck.

Simple Zine

DOOM of the DARK is a 34 page zine containing a real-time adventure fit for an evenings entertainment. By the end of the night you will have either saved REALITY ITSELF, or doomed it to… the DARK.

The adventure is statted up for Tunnels and Trolls and designed for that playful vibe. Most of the working parts are built into the creatures and the location so anyone familiar with old school D&D should have little trouble running it in a BX-adjacent or Nu-OSR game.

Its not a super-difficult dungeon, though hopefully a fun one. Think somewhere between storybook and catastrophe.

U.S. and U.K. Print

False Machine is doing things a little differently with this one. We intend to print in both the U.K. and the U.S.A. One print will be sent to Spiral Galaxy in the United Kingdom and ship from there, the other will be sent to Flying Cloud in America and ship from there.

This means postage will hopefully be less of an insane nightmare for Americans and Canadians.

The Kickstarter will have options for the U.K. print and the U.S. print, so back for the print location most convenient for you! (& try not to screw it up!).

I am also putting in wholesale options for both prints, so if you run a shop and want ten copies you can back for one of those.

UnIdentical Twins

The two prints will not be exactly the same. The U.K. version will be an A5 zine and the U.S.A. version will be in ‘portrait’ (so a little longer and thinner). We (Amanda) designed the thing with this in mind so the difference in experience should be minimal.

If we make a lot on the Kickstarter we will crank up the print quality on both items, but the printers in the U.S. and U.K. don’t offer exactly the same paper weights etc. We will try to keep the quality of both zines as similar as possible.

50/50 profit split

Like almost all False Machine products, profits for Doom of the Dark will be split 50/50 between writer and artist, so if you are an Amandamaniac, or Franckophile, you will be supporting your artist by backing or buying.

A Real-Time Adventure

Vague concepts for single-night, Level-One, Real-Time adventures have been rolling around my head for a while. DOOM of the DARK is played in real-time; however much time the players take is how much the adventurers take, and there is a time-limit; you only have two to six hours to save the world!

There are also a bunch of diegetic elements included in the adventure to, bluntly, keep bumbling players doing what they are meant to be doing; SAVING THE WORLD IN UNDER SIX HOURS.

Hopefully this should be a fun time for two to six players running starting characters, and a relatively easy dungeon to run.

Quick Kickstarter

The Kickstarter opens on the 15th of May and runs for just over two weeks, ending on the 31st of May (U.K. time! So Mid-day for Americans).

If you want DOOM of the DARK at its initially low price of £8, or if you know someone who might, then you only have two weeks to back this thing or let them know!

The more backers we get the higher we will crank the print quality!

We hope for a print in mid-June and to start delivering towards the end of June.

CLICK HERE FOR THE KICKSTARTER 

A Review of 'Local Heroes' by Amanda Lee Franck

"put on a mysterious hat or a wizard robe or a regular robe"

(Disclosure; I am friends with the creator so you can add this review to the ever-expanding ‘OSR Circlejerk’ sub-category).

…

Local Heroes - is a 16-page PDF game that Amanda Lee Franck put out on her Patreon, so far you can only get it there! (Or on her Comradery, which is communist Patreon.)

A single-session game about about a single night; the players play themselves, the game-world is their own. They are given gifts and sent to fight a multidimensional monster which must be dead (banished) by dawn.

Imagining the Known

Character generation has already been done. In rules terms this means (unless you have that Fireman/Marine buddy) everyone has relatively ‘flat’ characters, and that everyone knows who everyone is, and that everyone knows what everyone can do. A basic exchange system exists to discourage inane min-maxing or self-delusion, though, since its near-assumed that the players will be a semi-familiar friend group, the honour system, and embarrassment, will be the more effective restriction.

The game begins (in-world) at midnight and the creature need only see the sun to win. Thankfully is is bent on wiping out the heroes opposing it and won’t just get a taxi out of town, and hopefully you are playing in Winter and dawn is many hours away.

What remains is planning and manipulating the environment and a small selection of magical tools. You get an hour of lead time - all those fragments of local knowledge can actually be utilised - zombie escape plans, the locations of building equipment and industrial machinery, of train tracks and ruined buildings, unfilled pits, canal locks, teetering long-term structural collapses, places that might be set on fire, walled gardens, funnel spaces, dead zones in the middle of vast roadworks, strange places difficult to get into or out of, water mains, electrical junctions and pylons, barbed wire, hardware stores, fire axe locations. Its a memory-and-play game for local residents.

As it pulls on local memories so much, and as the honour system and mutual knowledge are quite useful in shaping ‘character generation’, this is not a good ‘Con Game’ and therefore mildly unamerican - it is not highly systematised, depends on local knowledge, is not great for a mixed group of strangers meeting in a place unfamiliar to all, and might not work well in rural America, the south, or anywhere where gun ownership is common or widespread - your average game with a bunch of enthusiastic gun owners might be pretty short. (Or might not, the Monster is not always vulnerable to bullets).

The Multi-Stage Problem-Monster

There is only one enemy and you know its coming. It has a range of ten, or sometimes more, possible forms. Each form is that of a hero who opposed it in the past. It can change forms five times until it ‘slinks back into the void’ and and most forms have specific win conditions. (Though in most cases you can still beat it to death or smash it to bits.) One of the possible ‘transformations’ is a tower with three archers and a series of complex traps and environments inside. If the creature kills a PC’s it might take on their form.

The monster transforming into a place, then back again, is I think, new, (though if someone else has come up with it, I am sure you will tell me in the comments, or would have if this was 2015 and people still commented on things.)

Few of the forms can be straightforwardly fought, but then the special relics gifted to the team are barely weapons at all, but curious tools with strong specific game effects.

Parlour Game

While its not a ‘Con Game’, Local Heroes feels much more like something like ‘Werewolf’, a parlour game of problem-solving you could play with normies. They barely need to imagine anything at all, only recall who they are and where they live, and the Aristotelian compression of time and space, and single, set, obvious and declared win-condition (defeat the multidimensional monster in five of its forms, before sunrise, using these particular tools), hopefully nukes most decision paralysis. Its quite Dowlian in that sense.

'On Guard'

I am doing proper work, but all for things I cannot show. Here is a very basic concept for a kind of quiet, still, ‘para-venture’ made up of quiet, strange moments; only things which happen in the night.

The PCs are hired as the Night Watch for the rear entrance of a Magical Academy. Their shift runs from sunset to sunrise and their only job is to guard a particular door, manage entry, and, if there are more than three PCs, patrol the perimeter.

Pieter Neefs the Younger

Concepts

Stay In Place

The PC’s cannot move. They do not go anywhere. They have to stay by the door, stay alert and stay On Guard. In case of a serious emergency, they could perhaps, walk down the alleyways behind the college, to investigate a fire, a dying man, a crashed cart or the like, but they better be back On Guard fast. But there won’t be a ‘Serious Emergency’.

No Drama

Almost nothing dramatic happens. There are dramas, conspiracies and crimes happening in the College, in the city, in the night, but the PCs are simply ‘extras’ in these plots and happenings. A man runs down the alleyway, veers into a side-street. Then a second man, perhaps a Hero or Detective, runs the same way; “Did you see where he went?” The PCs can answer however they like. This will be the limit of their interaction. They do make some decisions, which will have some effect, but they are not the main event

Long Term Awareness

A long time is meant to pass. Certainly months, perhaps a few years. The PCs have to save up money (and not get fired). One effect of this is the depth and detail revealed by the ever increasing familiarity the PC’s have with their small patch of space.

This area, around the rear wall and the rear door, its locality, everything near it and everything they can see, hear and smell, everything they experience in this place, they perceive with incredible depth. The details of the alley itself, its shifts and changes over seasons. Its stones and flags. Details of the view - like 'Rear Window' they see the same view every night and grow accustomed to its patterns, so much that when they change (the wrong light going on at the wrong time, a dog that doesn't bark in the night), they notice. Details of the soundscape - they hear the city round them, night after night, and know its rhythms and patterns, from market nights (lots of rats from the lost produce), post-festivals (vomit and people passed out), the regular closing times of pubs nearby, the brawls and drama they hear on Saturdays, religious holidays and the timing of bells and sacred services, through months and seasons, all of this becomes deeply familiar to them, so much that if the pattern changes, they notice. And minor things; the fortunes of a stray cat (regular visitor), corrosion of the brickwork, (“somebody needs to have a look at that”), a broken drain, a banging gate a mile away.

Minor Situations

The PCs have a list of people who are allowed to go in and out, and are definitely meant to keep a list of anyone who does.

What if someone 'very important seeming' turns up, but they aren't on the list, but they say its ok? If the PCs don’t let them in, they could get into trouble, but if they do let them in, they could get into trouble for that. What if this sets a pattern and someone starts taking advantage? What if they offer a distaff bribe? What about horny students climbing the walls? What about the woman you see in her window? The noises from the sewer? The sound of a thief fleeing in the darkness a street away?

After the Night Watch by Erik Henningsen

What Kind of Characters?

The players could make PCs specifically for ‘On Guard’, but if incorporated into a wider campaign the ‘Player Characters’ of ‘On Guard’ could be;

· Old; PCs who have simply aged out of adventuring, but who are not so rich they can fully retire.

· Injured; PCs who received a substantial injury it will take time to heal. This could have permanently altered their employment prospects (‘Took an arrow to the Knee’) or they may simply need some time in a less-stressful position.

· Mentally Traumatised; or even cursed.

· Young; those who have not yet started their adventuring career, (and if they stay in this job, perhaps they never will).

· Under Cover/On The Lam; the Adventurers are hiding for some reason and have taken on false identities. Either as part of a larger scheme or simply to avoid the Law until the heat dies down.

If the PCs are still adventurers, they should have no particular scheme or idea in play regarding the College of Magic, or any nearby organisations. This would ruin the character of ‘On Guard’, which is meant, fundamentally, to be ‘about nothing’ or about what happens between and within people who are ‘doing nothing’.

Antoine Auguste Ernest Hébert - On Guard

The Rules of the Job

You stay On Guard from Sunset to Sunrise. This means in Summer, hours are short, but the work is easy as its warm. While in Winter, hours are LONG, and the work is hard, (but at least you get paid more).

You take over from the Late Shift, who are supposed to maintain the gate, the record and the Watch House, (but often don’t), and you hand over to the Morning Shift (who are often late).

There is a Gate, a smaller man-sized Gate within that gate, a Watch House within the walls (one room), and a Rear Perimeter (you are not meant to patrol the front of the building – it has, or is meant to have, magical defences and a small guard staff who are much better paid and uniformed than you. You would make the College look bad to be seen ‘out front’.

Duties

You have three duties, depending on how many players there are.

· First and most important; two Guards (in Uniform, with halberds (this is non-negotiable)), must always be ‘On Guard’ before the Rear Gate.

· If there are two more, they should patrol the rear of the College, slowly, quietly, roughly once an hour.

· If there are two more, making six, then two can sit in the Guard House. Its one room with no fire, (but you are allowed a brazier outside in winter).

· There is a ‘behavioural code’ meaning no ‘slovenly or disruptive’ behaviour, including no ‘leaning’, no ‘leaning of Halberds’, no smoking, drinking, fraternising, game or chatter. No pets – has been recently added.

· There will be surprise inspections and regular checking of paperwork.

General Equipment

 

· Hourglass – this tells you which hour of the Watch you are in. (Though Church bells throughout the night will do this too.)

· Small Gate Keys - which you receive, (or are meant to receive) from the Late Watch, and which you in turn hand over to the Morn Watch. These open the small gate-within-the-gate, not the large one.

· Entry List - particular names who are allowed in or out of the Rear Gate. In some cases these names have descriptions, special seals they are meant to have, riddles or even stranger things. This also changes for mysterious reasons. You are pretty sure the Late Shift have added some things on there as a joke.

· Passage Log - the names of everyone who did come in or out. You are meant to record all of these, along with the time, any pertinent details etc.

· Watch Log - where you report.. well anything that happens.

· Equipage Log – where you sign in and out confirming that you have received all this stuff. (Oddly, the Equipage Log itself is not noted in the Equipage Log.

· Ink and Pen – this freezes in winter, dries in summer and the Late Watch always use it up and don’t replace it.

· Three Lanterns and enough oil for two Lanterns for Eight hours. (One is meant to be spare and they do not adjust for Winter or Summer hours.)

· Brass Whistle – this indicates the Watch Commander, (a near meaningless rank).

· Bell – to be rung only in event of attack on the school, but if an attack is underway, it must be rung.

· Lot Tin – for choosing who goes on Watch/Patrol/Reserve with who. The ‘Watch Commander’ can decide this, but the College recommends you take lots for it, to avoid cliques forming.

Personal Equipment

 

· Morion Helm – Non optional. shared with the other Watches. Most Guards wear a coif of some kind which they own themselves.

· Chainmail – shared, has to be adjusted for each guard. (You are allowed to bring your own armour).

· Halberd – shared and non-optional. A Guard ‘On Guard’ or ‘On Patrol’ must have their halberd with them and specifically in their hands at all times. (This is impossible while also writing down names). The Halberd does have a hook-thing on it you can hang a lantern from. The Halberds are very top-heavy and uncomfortable to carry.

· Tabard – with the Symbol of the College. Again, non-optional.

There is also a general dress-code indicating you should be reasonably turned out, facial hair trimmed, clean and ‘give a good account of yourself’. Added is ‘No slender knives, incendiary devices or knuckledusters’. You are not specifically banned from smoking, though without an ‘incendiary device’, how can you light anything?

The Night Watchman by Karl Martin August Splitberger

Kinds Of Schedule

The substance of the game is made up of layered patterns of time. Rhythms of events sensed by the PCs, layered over and upon each other, each subtle changing according to circumstance of the time of the year.

Remember the deeper one gets into night, and the quieter everything becomes, the more sounds seem to carry. Sounds usually inaudible become more tangible. A single iron-wheeled cart several streets away is virtually inaudible in day, very striking after midnight.

The life of the City

 

· Last bars putting out, (these may have different characters).

· The last carriages leaving, wheels striking the cobblestones.

· Bells ringing.

· A dog that always barks when its master comes home.

· Garbage men making their rounds,

· Sewermen and Gongfarmers.

· Bakers arriving for work and their bakeries lighting up.

· The sound of single horses hooves moving at midnight.

· Traffic, the tramping of feet, of horses and cattle, dying away around sunset and building again before dawn.

· A dawn chorus when the sun rises.

Animal Life

 

· Stray cats.

· Stray dogs (rare).

· Rats in the street (where are they going to or from?).

· The occasional owl at night .

· Urban foxes.

· Lost stray or rare domestic animals, a lost pet from somewhere (maybe in the college, an escaped test subject)

· A run-away horse or donkey several streets away.

Plant Life

This changes more than anything season to season. Everything tangible to the PCs is very small, stuff people passing by likely wouldn't notice.

· Flowers growing in the wall.

· Weeds in the gaps in the paving stones out back.

· A small tree starts sprouting - pull it out?

· Things growing in the gutters of the buildings up above.

Slow-time senses

The things you would only notice if you were in a single place, listening and watching, for a long time, time after time.

The wind turning the weathervanes. Shifts in the winds sound as it moves its direction; from some angles it is displaced over the roofs, from others, funnelled by the streets and whooshes down your alleyway

The pulse of water running through drains in the minutes after a sudden shower. Anywhere dripping water lands just-so on a resonant surface, making a lout repetitive sound.

Any door or gate, within half a mile that swings regularly in wind. Even if the noise is slight, its rhythmic irregularity makes it highly noticeable in the middle of the night.

In the darkness, the ground only visible from the sheen of lamplight on wet cobbles, or the little pools between them, making a gridwork of light, the trail of particular snails across cobbles or bricks. the general prevalence of snails and slugs at certain times. A hedgehog!

Sounds of the Academy

What is even going on in there? It’s a magical Academy right? - and a Hogwarts style thing, so there are going to be students sleeping overnight, presumably broken up by house and gender, so you may have some Harry Potter little shit, or groups of little shits, running around in the night on some 'adventure'.

Overnight Experiments – it’s a research school as well, magical research I would think, so with some alchemical or ritual magics, you are going to need to be going all night, possibly over several days, and so have people attending to the 'reaction' or the 'summoning' all night.

Plus MIDNIGHT is always a magical time, so every night at midnight there is maybe going to be some chanting and/or some lighting or electricity going on.

Most astronomers would likely have to leave the city to observe, but you would see them leaving and coming back in the dawn.

Wizards making magical doors in the wall.

A well-known 'climbing spot' where students can get over the wall and go about in the city acting tough, thinking they are cool, and you can possibly get bribed by them

I probably need to do a whole section on bribery.

Possible monsters/vampires/doppelgangers trying to get in/out, like a guy who is clearly a pale jelly-like simulation of someone else, so you just don't let him in. (This would conflict with the ‘no drama’ rule.

Scharwache by Carl Spitzweg

How do you actually 'play' this game?

The actually-difficult part. There is a reason, after all, that no-one designs games like this. Ultimately this is not a thing where challenge is going to be a huge part of the game, people are largely going to be there because they want to be, but it still needs to be some part of the game. So far I have no actual plan, but only concepts….

Time is the Enemy

If Time really is the enemy, then any challenge of this adventure lies not necessarily in facing any particular event but in simply getting through the night. A failure state means what exactly? You get bored, fuck up, get your pay docked, get fired?

Don’t Be Noticed

A useful concept might be that at least one member of the crew is genuinely ‘hidden’, maybe an ex-criminal or in hiding from some other organisation, and they really don’t want anything to happen. In that sense, ‘getting through the night’, like getting through a bunch of nights, without being fired or reprimanded, but also without being noticed or remarked on, adds more of a gamic element.

Its tempting to make it so that every member of the crew has some particular reason for not being noticed, or a particular desire specifically for nothing exciting to happen. Making them all explicitly, or secretly anti-adventurers. But that alone makes this perhaps more of ‘game’ than I originally conceived it as being. (Though much more tangible to a wider audience.)

Near Real-Time

Concept – the game at its basic level is lived almost in ‘real time’. You simply live through the 'hours'. Most of the ‘action’ of the game is trying to find things to do that will ‘speed up’ time, while also not actually making you bad at your job or getting you into shit.

Betting Time

One concept is some kind of 'betting system' where the PCs can 'bet' time, but the more time they 'bet' the more likely they are to be inspected or to get something wrong somehow, thus throwing them back into ‘real time’, and/or giving them some kind of negative event.

Ways to ‘Accelerate’ Time

Perhaps you can accelerate time by telling each other stories, playing games of chess, (presumably inside the guard room), having random conversations etc. Maybe this could take advantage of the slightly sopophoric sleepy regular intonation of events – if PCs can have random conversations about the sound of a bell, or a dog barking, that’s fifteen minutes or half an hour taken off. This would be defeating time through role play.

A Boredom Score

Maybe the pcs have to roll (collectively) against boredom? Or to roll awareness, and if they succeed, they get a richer, more detailed story of the events of the watch, while if they fail, they get the bare information.

We can do this hour-by-hour with each hour being a separate roll, and with environmental effects and the various preparations for them also affecting this. Like - you are not meant to have a chair out here, or to lean against the wall, (a brazier is allowed in winter), but you can kind of fudge this by keeping a secret chair, or by covertly leaning against the wall, or leaning your Halberd against it, maybe this brings down your Boredom Score, or makes time faster, but with some secondary negative effect, getting caught or being punished some other way.

‘Islands’ of Events

The big problem with this information is that its NON INTERACTIVE (or much of it is). Maybe I could break the 'watch' up into 'islands' of minor interactable events, like a cat visits, someone throws up on the street, a visitor comes to the rear door, and simply have long chants of information between each 'event'.

……………………………………………….

Sébastien Bourdon, A Brawl in a Guard-room

Well, ‘design’ questions like this are part of the reason comment threads exist.

Loopy Tombs

 This poast was inspired partly by reading James Holloways 'Tome of Tombs' - a zine of Tomb creation which you can find here; https://james-holloway.itch.io/

A aid to generating tombs based partially on the creators IRL historical knowledge. 

Reading this I realised that the most interesting thing about most pseudo-real tombs, in terms of exploration and dungeoneering, is the context. 

In real-life tombs, at least anything under a pyramid in size, you go in and come out. the 'flow cart of possible exploration is very linear, though the paths within the tomb might seem winding.

Holloways Zine deals well with the creation of this context, but I was interested in crossing the streams somewhat, and thinking about reasons a pseudo-real Tomb might have the loops and choices we often desire in dungeon design.

What follows starts with pseudo-real reasons a Tomb might 'loop'; 'Living Beings', 'The Touch of Time' and 'Architectural Reasons', but rapidly spirals out of control into the whackiest possible sources for complex tomb layouts.

LIVING BEINGS

Giant Sloth - In an adventure beloved by few, I used the giant south American ground sloth burrowing in and about the tomb, creating a series of alternate passages which wove in and around the 'natural' pathways of the tomb. Many creatures burrow but few IRL creatures make man-sized burrows. If you wish to confine yourself to creatures that have lived, or that do live, I think its either the sloths or the Honey Badgers. (Place your answers in the comments). (Of course one living creature that does produce man-sized burrows, is man, which leads to the next entry.)

Lair of intelligent creatures - Its a classic for a reason. Clever beings lair, or have done, in the tomb, they have expanded the place, putting in their own obvious and hidden routes. 

THE TOUCH OF TIME

Massively overbuilt - Multiple religions or cultures have occupied this site and all built on it, or the same religion over a thousand years, (St Peters in Rome has an insane number of underground levels, each of which used to be the main level). This can also expand the 'tomb' laterally as the buildings placed over it expand.

Built onto, and partially collapsed into, deeper tomb or necropolis - They either didn't know it was there or simply forgot. Now the floors and stuff have fallen through into the deeper levels.

A river ran through it - or a stream really is all that’s necessary, and it may well have dried up since, but at some point during the life of the tomb, a water-course has shifted and run into it, drowning some areas, breaking through some walls, finding its way between places, and leaving unexpected routes.

Banyan forest - tomb is in a tropical environment, huge marvellous trees have infested the place, layering over and around, teasing aside the great stone blocks and opening strange ways between their complex root systems.

ARCHITECTURAL CHOICES

Maintenance Spaces - another thing I tried using in DBS; designer/creator access/trap reset tunnels for the architect themselves. If you want traps or any kind of complex 'effect' you may need complex mechanisms, or at least weights. To organise and set those up, you might need crawlspaces or other access spaces, that let you into the rear or back of rooms or setups.

Escape Route - the classic fear of being buried alive. Leaving an actual potential escape route for the 'corpse' should they be buried alive would effectively make a secondary network of tunnels or paths in the structure, leading directly from the body to the outside, but presumably very well camouflaged and perhaps only openable from within.

Spiritual Labyrinth - either to make sure the dead do not find their way out again or to baffle and disturb any negative spirits who might try to reach them, you build a complex labyrinth between the body and any possible exit. Spiritual - and therefore a bit different from a 'tomb robbers' labyrinth in that there may be no actual lethal traps or mortal deceptions, but may be a lot of complex religious trickery.

Double or triple fakes - I have used this myself previously. Just build a fake tomb, with fake treasures, then for people smart enough to see through that, build ANOTHER tomb, also fake, then an even-more-hidden third tomb, the real one, (this does not guarantee LOOPS though).

Palace for the Dead. It’s not enough to just have, for instance, a room or something, whoever is buried here will need an entire dead palace full of dead luxuries, all mirrored and replicated from the living world, which means their tomb will be a buried palace, with all the corridors and extra ways implied by that.

Mandala Map - the tomb has to be a physical map of the spiritual world as imagined by the deceased, so it’s like a giant mandala, embossed into physical reality. (Having some knowledge of this belief system would really help).

I should be able to think of something better than this, what are the...

VERY STRANGE, UNUSUAL AND MYSTERIOUS REASONS?

Cover to Manor of Infinite Forms by Tomb Mold

Time Loops – it’s a classic. If you die in the tomb you *don't* die in real life you just time loop back to certain 'save points', but some of these are so horrible - bounded on every side with impassable traps and dangers, that being trapped in them is a form of eternal undying madness.

Doors into Dream - certain symbols send you to sleep where you must navigate the tomb in dreams (the dream structure is significantly bigger).

Size Alteration and Rat Tunnels - rats have made their own paths, at the same time, eating the strange flesh of the tomb will shrink you down to their size, for a while. 

The Statues Came Alive -  and, unable to find their own way out, carved their own tunnels in the earth for their own reasons (seeking perhaps to get away from each other). It seems reasonable that the spirit of a god, or part of it, might come to inhabit, for a while, an image made for it, and perhaps it would be really annoyed at being stuck.

Reality-Distorting Artefact -  Sword of Leaves, or similar, is buried with the corpse. In combat and legend it simply cut through the space around it, granting semi-anime powers to its holder. After being stored for a few centuries doing nothing, its nature to warp space around it is creating labyrinthine structures from simple ones, nesting excess space in unobserved corners. Now residents are appealing for someone to actually go and rob the tomb; the extra space is leaking out into the surrounding community and breeding labyrinths and impossible spaces in corners. The sword should be fine so long as someone keeps it on the move, only starts leaking if you leave it in place for a century or more.

Builders Buried Alive - perhaps to keep the tombs location secret, its builders were buried alive within, but they reanimated and, consumed with their last memory, have kept digging and building in ghost and skeleton form, weaving the tomb ever deeper into earth and stone over the centuries.

Hell Itself - the resident was so exceptionally evil that the forces of hell tunnelled directly up from hell to grab their physical remains to which their soul was attached, the tomb is now fully interwoven with the distant outskirts of hell.

Religious Teleport – it’s a linear, maybe EXTREMELY linear, single long straight path with various doors, alcoves and statues along the way. The doors and other stuff can teleport you forward and back along the main route, meaning that 'in effect' the path is looped. We could call it 'The Long, Straight Dungeon', or the 'Five Mile Dungeon'.

Dickhead Teleport - tomb is physically linear though not to such an extreme sense as the five mile dungeon, but various items and interactions teleport you back to the 'starting area', meaning you have to keep transiting the same space trying to work out how to avoid or subvert the teleport effect.

Mirror World - various bronze mirrors in the tomb give access to the 'mirror tomb' which is basically a different (now spooky) version of the same thing, there are always two or more ways of encountering or dealing with everything now. When you leave, try to make sure you are in the actually-real-for-you version of reality.

Cancerous Brick - through curse, fluke or magical overflow, one particular brick or tile used in the construction of the tomb, has meta-cancer, meaning it will just keep replicating itself and the context of its placement over time, this means at a certain point the tomb now just dissolves into an insane mycelium web of brick or tile tunnels. The purpose of these tunnels is to *be tunnels*, simply to hold replications of the brick or tile. Dungeon chemotherapy might involve finding that one cancerous brick and smashing it, or smashing ALL the bricks or tiles - locals may have started invading the tomb to harvest the superfluity of bricks/tiles which now makes up their main local building material. Nothing can or will go wrong with this idea.

Djinn Dumping Ground - for whatever reason, whenever a certain Djinn or family of them are ordered to build or disassemble a castle or something, they need somewhere to store the stone, and have chosen here - they have built huge warrens and caverns of utterly random shit based on building materials from over many millennia covering the whole world, if they are uncorked somewhere and ordered to make something, they may turn up and start disassembling this stuff.

Gravity Shift - the long, spiralling yet linear way has a super-high ceiling and there are certain gravity shifting things in the tomb, or just ladders between the up and down, so that there are in essence two corridors or paths through, with one set of things and challenges on the 'bottom' and one on the 'top', meaning everything is technically looped.

Paths of Memory - various mosaics etc in the tomb represent the memories of the inhabitant and staring at them for a while can drag you into those memories AND - they are made too well so, like real memories, they interact and meet up at points, based on theme, mood, strong emotion or sensory factors (smell especially, which often unites memories), so that you can, deliberately or accidentally, move from one memory to another and emerge somewhere else in the tomb.

Queen Mab Lives!

 If you want to find out more, click here or the image below!

ere is your regular post, Autumn-themed for all of October;

Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands

1. The Candle and the Fog-Bound Bells.

A house moves through the fog like a ship, bells ringing from its highest hall. A curse comes with it from the past. A blessed candle shows the way to the house through the fog and once there, it lights the interior of the rotted mansion as it once was, revealing scenes that can solve the mystery of the curse. But while looking at the golden walls, take care for other things haunt the darkness.

2. The Giants Pantry

A giant has lifted the roof off the pantry and stolen the jam! And all the cheese, honey and preserved meat! That’s all we have to eat this winter! Someone has to go after that giant, take back the food, and somehow stop the Giant from coming back. At least his tracks should be easy to follow.

3. The Roc Migrates

A giant Roc has haunted the lands, but with Autumn, the bird has migrated (probably), South to warmer lands. Its nest must be full of all the treasure and goods of all the people it ate! It lies near the peak of a mighty mountain, ringed by the azure world. Storms are coming and Goblins are chasing the gold!

4. The Cursed Geese

Each night, honking Geese fly above the village as they migrate, and each night one or two people who hear their call are transformed into Geese and fly away with them! Someone has to go and get them back. The Charcoal-Burner tells you that the Geese live 'North of the Wind and West of the Moon', and there you must go to find the altered Geese and bring them home.

5. The Witches Pigs

Each night, winged pigs attack! Through sheer mass they barrel into houses, smashing windows and doors, snatching up children and the old, wreaking ruin! They are gone before the sun rises. Only the Anchorite knows the secret of the Pigs and the Witch they serve, a twice-bend crone who lives in a great Boot, along but for her Pigs.

6. The Town Returns

Out in the drowned bog, the spires and eves of a sunken village have always poked up through the glassy waters. Now, day by day, inch by inch, the sunken town is slowly rising from the bog, though the waters do not fall. Things are coming from the sunken town.

7. The Goblins Conker

The Goblin King is stealing homes, squatting in them and ruining everything before moving on. No-one can refuse his challenge to a conker-smashing contest and no-one can win against his devilish Conker - soaked in the blood of maidens and the bile of babes. Only a Conker from the tree which grows from St Aldhelms tomb can defeat the Goblin King, but that was lost in the forest an age ago.

8. The Wood-Nut Man

His brown face appears in the darkness beneath the boles of trees, his barky hands reach out to stroke the heads of truffle-hunting pigs, he feeds them his nuts and they speak in a deep and growling voice, the voice of the Wood Nut Man, to insist you do his will. There are things he needs, several and few, and you must have them before the snow falls.

9. A Gust of Bones

When the storm winds blow from the east we see skeletons in the wind. They grab onto spires, trees and the tops of towers, trying not to be swept away. When things calm down we have to go sweep them out of branches and cart them back to the graveyard, while they complain all the time. Someone must go west and have a word with whatever is making this wind!

10. The Devil in the Frost

Black, horned, hooved, arrow-tailed, sharp-toothed, goat-eyed and cloven tongued, he appears at dusk and dances from frozen puddle to frozen puddle - appearing only above the frozen waters, disappearing into gusts of leaves and piles of worms. He cuts, bites, spoils, spills and tells terrible lies - not even the strongest man can hold him! He laughs and cackles, saying "The frost is coming! The snow will fall! Hoo Hoo Hoo!"

11. The Smith Beneath the Tide

An inlet of the high, grey sea. A sea cave where waters churn. When the tide is high a fire burns beneath the water, hammer blows ring out with the waves and a smiths bold laughter echoes in the ocean all around, keeping the fishermen up at night. A rich man with long fingers will pay you good gold to steal something from that salty smith.

12. The Stained Skulls Verdigris Brass Ring

He comes down chimneys and into windows, popping out of wells, chattering his teeth, followed by a horde of dingy grey-black Geese who eat the seed. "My Verdigris Brass Ring!". No-one can get anything done and the floating skull is scaring the children. Will someone please find this Verdigris brass ring so this thing will shut up and go back to sleep!

Ride the Giants Development Blog, Part 2

 Part one here; http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2023/05/ride-giants-development-blog-1.html

The Speed of the Giants 

This matters not only in general gameplay but because the initial concept of the game was ‘a game in real time’; an adventure lasting two to three hours, with a gaming session lasting the same two to three hours. 

There would be some, but little, compression of time. The time-limit was meant to add impetus to the PCs choices and get them making decisions faster. It was also meant to add a bit of interest and challenge to the choices made. 

 

Estimating the Gait 

I began by asking people on Discord for advice on estimating the gait of the giants. That is, when one takes a step, how long is the step. 

If they stood up straight, the Giants are nearly 3,000 feet high. Hunched over as they are their heads are about 2,000 feet high. So I started with the step-length of an imaginary 3,000 foot high man. Using various mysterious means, including reverse-engineering an equation used by the police to derive height from step-length, the Discord homies came back with a step length of just under 1,300 feet per-step. 

That’s just under 400 metres per step or a little under a Kilometre per double-step. 

 

The Chronology of a Step 

Estimating the timing of each step is more difficult. Giants of this size are physically impossible anyway. Large long-legged animals have to take care of their steps as they can easily break their own legs with their weight. 

I essentially just ended up eyeballing it. Each step takes roughly a minute and a half. 90 seconds. 

10 to 15 seconds at the start for the weight to rise and the foot to accelerate, then 30 seconds in the air, then another 10 to 15 seconds landing time for the weight to fall, the foot to settle, and weight to be transferred through the hip to raise the other foot. 

I estimate the Giants are is moving roughly 14.4 feet per second. Which makes I think its total movement being just under 10 miles per hour. 

This sounds.. really not totally insane. Like a reasonable synthesis of the impossible and pseudo-realism. 

A good one-to-three rounds of slow-foot time for you to leap up and grab on. A big "whoosh" as you travel 400 meters in 30 seconds. Then the settle time at the end. 

So a human could run away from it, someone on horseback could run faster than it. It could be 'boarded', but with real difficulty as the foot is only slow and close to the ground for not that long. To match their speed a human would need to be jogging or running. To overtake you would need to run pretty fast or have a horse. 

And a continuous 10 mph walking speed sustained essentially forever, would be very hard to keep up with for a long period of time I think? 

 

 

Boarding the Giant 

If you were trying to ‘board’ a giants foot, you could probably catch up with it, via sprinting, or if you had a horse. The really dangerous part would be when the foot comes down. If the giant trod down onto something like the soil of a field, it might send up fountains of soil like an impact crater all around the foot. If the soil was wet or the water table was high, it might send up actual fountains or more likely, dangerous torrents of wet mud. 

In the area around the foot-fall it would be like an earthquake hit. The earth might crack open, or roll like waves. Horses might break their legs and men would fall to the ground. 

If you survive all that, you have about 15 seconds at the weight of the foot settles and transfers where it will be relatively still. 

All you need to do is get to the huge curved wall of the foot, I estimate it to be about a 100 foot climb, but you don’t need to make it immediately, just hang one, hang on hard. 

Because that foot is going to rise up into the air. Its lateral speed at its going to be about 15 miles an hour during the swing of the foot but its speed measured across the whole of its curve till it hits soil on the next step might be more like 20 miles per hour. 

Not insanely fast. But jarring as hell. Plus the angle of its motion is constantly curving and shifting. 

 

What Strait do they Cross? 

Depending on if or how much time we leave for organisation the actual giant-riding part of the game might range from one and a half hours to three hours. Lets assume two hours of actual giant-riding. 

Assuming ‘real time’ that means the Giants would travel about 20 miles. 

The idea of the game is that you only have the length of the game itself to solve the problem of the giants – by the end of the game they will have reached the Nightmare Continent and if you get off the giant after that you are DOOMED  

Looking for real-life places of roughly the right dimensions the first that comes to mind is the Dover strait. 

Between Dover and Calais is almost exactly 20 miles 

But nowhere near deep enough – its only 50 meters deep!

 

That’s only 164 feet! About up to the giants Knees! 

Well I suppose it’s acceptable – in their hunched over posture their knuckles will be grazing the ocean surface as they walk. It also gives the PCs a fair amount of time to get up over the knee. Though if they are still dicking about with that half-way through the mission is probably failed anyway. 

 

 

Climbing the Giants 

There are several problems; the linear nature of the directional choices on a larger scale, the curved, flowing and non-intuitive surface of the giant and the shifting position and orientation of the limbs. 

 

The Linear Nature of the Choices 

The main problem here is that the arrangement of the giants limbs is very much not like a dungeon. There are only a few routes and risks. Large parts are semi-visible from various points. 

Most of a limb-climb is just getting up that limb,  and to make the adventure interesting at all I would need to make actually falling off relatively rare. Instead I would have to produce something like the climbing in VotE; everyone can do it a bit and failure leads to ever more nightmarish fail-states without ever quite booting you off. 

Once a climb is begun, the route-choice is largely made and any tension or interest comes  more from how challenges are met than what they will be. 

 

The Curved and Flowing Surface 

Lets Envisage the Giants Skin -What is this like? A curved, slightly-flexing, rocky surface. Even ‘smooth’ parts are like a rocky, and in fact most of the giants skin is deeply corrugated. 

If you look down at the skin around your knuckles. If you make a claw with your hand so the skin bunches up there, all those little triangles and oblongs of skin where the lines of compression meet and cross. Image that as a karstic landscape, but much more wrinkly – like a very old persons skin, and much deeper in its corrugations. 

Smooth parts – like  a cobblestone road, but with the cobbles jagged and not smoothed. 

Intermediate parts – like clambering over or up large boulders. 

Very Crinkly parts – like clambering over and through sharp man-sized or larger boulders

Which tilt and grind together or apart – big enough that the gaps make an ‘interior of sorts. 

So the smooth parts are actually very easy to fall off & quite dangerous while the rough parts where the limbs meet – the crinkly places of our own bodies, are relatively safe – even though they are moving and flexing, there are many holds and handholds and spaces where you can place yourself to avoid falling off (these might be dynamic holds though). 

But, maybe if I think about the actual shape and details of each part of the leg, arm and side, and think deeply about how each might move I could come up with some general ideas or abstract some rules which would help to form encounter spaces, or interesting encounter ideas? 

 

The Shifting Gravity 

The limb orientations are shifting regularly from near-vertical to sloped, from climb to overhang, or from climb to scramble. 

Will you wait for the position of the limb to change - it could shift from overhang to climb, or from climb to scramble and the potential danger of an opposing encounter might grow larger or smaller if you are willing, or able, or forced to, wait. 

So that idea of having to make up, lose or gain time feels appropriate. 

OR - you hear movement, or sense something above you, and if you wait you might be able to get a better look - but that will cost you time. 

TIMING – if this is ‘real-life’ timing then there could be a metronome or something. Or you could time the giants steps minute by minute. 

I don’t know if someone’s done this before but if each 90 seconds is a real-life round and an in-game round, a single step of the giant. Could it be made to work? You would have to roll fast! 

 

 

Climbing a map of the muscle groups 

Another possibility is - making some kind of map of the MUSCLE GROUPS of the limbs and making THAT a sub-map of each ascent. 

like you can LEAP from one muscle group to another to avoid an encounter.

 

  

POSSIBLE DANGEROUS CLIMBING ENCOUNTERS 

These could be quite minor - the main danger is that they could drop you. They should also be 'rock beasts', cliff beasts really. (I didn’t put pigeons in as they suck.) 

Seagull-Griffons; micro-Griffons based on seagull heads and wings but with the bodies of racing dogs. That sounds sufficiently awful. 

Goats 

Condor-Riding Snow Monkeys – they bathe in the hot springs atop the giants backs and form a symbiotic relationship with the semi-intelligent condors, travelling on their backs and performing tasks involving fine motor control – they can crack open bones with flints and actually they have learned to work in close co-operation with the condors, the monkeys can pull open flaps of skin, bare muscle, expose the joints of dead animals, brace cutting surfaces and put flesh under tensile strain so it cuts more easily. 

SUPER-TICKS – these feed upon the giants magmic blood. [The giants are tectonic inside so their ‘spots’ or pimples might be popping lava and their sweat might be steam or thick bubbling oils. A walking mountain has to be generating a pretty serious amount of heat. The giants back – hot, even steaming, would carry a moving column or a trailing flag of hot air above and behind it, a layer or a stream of cloud following each of them like a pennant in the atmosphere as that pillar of air rises, cools and probably condenses. The heat of the giants would make them of much more fecund than many other forms of similar mountain.] The blood does cool quite a bit in them but it’s still pretty hot and dangerous. Plus this is still a tick as big as a man or maybe horse. 

Animated magical kites that won't die - These were the creation of some ancient empire of magicians far away who wanted to study the giants – the kites were so well made they have a basic self-repair function and can weave the substance of cloud into solidity to act as canvas or waxed paper to sustain them – the kites are more like solid memes, or paper golems, semi-intelligent but not really alive, men can ride them but their actions may be very unpredictable – possibly they will obey commands in the language of the long-dead wizards. They might do slightly bonkers A.I. stuff based on garbled comprehension of their original instructions.  

Dark Corridors

 Choice Theory 

So you come to a split in a dungeon, or you come to a room set with three portals, each seems to lead in a different direction but they seem identical. 

Depending on party and DM, game style and preference, you either just pick one, or have a little conference with the team, maybe looking at the map, or start asking weird questions like “what do the corridors smell like?” 

Whether this is a good or bad thing depends very much on the style of game and whether the needs and intuitions of the players and DM match. 

I intuit that the ‘actual’ Old School old school process had a lot more time for no-context choices, partly due to the prevalence of player-mapping, (easier to do in-person in a 70’s game session and which would be part of their problem-solving procedure), partly due to what I would expect to be longer more digressive gaming sessions and partly due to a somewhat harder more ‘masculine’ quality where its expected that some decisions will be tricky, oblique or apparently pointless, either due to pseudo-naturalism or a Gygaxian riddlemaster element. 

I intuit that a more ‘neo’ OSR scene would have shorter sessions, more likely to be online so player mapping harder, more likely to want events and drama condensed and with less tolerance for ‘dead’ time, unguided choice and apparently contextless decisions. 

Yet, in either situation, a choice must be made, and if the choice is to be informed at all then how shall it be so? There are greater context elements which can be brought into the question; general dungeon intel, the use of mapping, informers, magic and guides.

But what can be learned from the empty corridor itself? 

And as a corollary to that decision, what information can be imbued into  that apparently-empty corridor by the designer or DM? 

I will break our discussion into elements. In lived experience all of these will interrelate but I will try to cover those interrelations within each subject; 

·        AIR

·        SMELL

·        TEMPERATURE

·        LIFE

·        SOUND

·        STONE

 

Once I started to think about it I decided that a key dominating and synthesising element is AIRFLOW

so I will begin with that and discuss why.

Ernst Fuchs

 

Air

Based on my research for VotE, Caves and cave systems can differ hugely in temperature and airflow. 

This depends on whether the system massively intra-connected or isolated, if there is running water in the cave and the general temperature gradient around the cave. 

An isolated cave system with no big interconnections and no water flow within will often be a bit warm. An underground space with static air will often maintain a steady, not-quite-cold temperature. Mines, being closed systems and full of people and movement, are often hot. 

Conversely, a huge cave system with many exits will often have very strong airflows. Caves 'breathe', and any slight differences in temperature and pressure between its varied entries can create winds which can be focused and channelled by narrow passages in the system itself. 

Most caves are shaped by water and many have streams moving through them, this creates airflow

and often cools the cave. 

 

Dungeons vs Caves 

Dungeons are more likely to be smaller and contained and much more likely to be made of different materials with closed doors and other connectors and divisions within, but airflow can still tell the prospective dungeoneer a lot. 

Dungeons, specifically; the classic tomb buried under temperate soil, might not actually be cold. A tomb complex separate from any other dungeon, well if it’s a rainy area it might be damp, but not necessarily, it might be slightly warm, or at least no colder than the outside. 

[Question; have you actually been in an actual tomb complex? What was the temperature and airflow like?] 

An experienced dungeoneer, or the average Dwarf, should be able to make some decent guesses about the nature of a dungeon just by carefully feeling the airflow. If a system is 'breathing' with air flowing in or out after dawn or dusk; that suggests a system of considerable size. If the air flowing in or out is warmer or colder than the outside air that might indicate the presence of moving water within, or of something else that is cooling or warming the air within, (like, for instance, the presence of life, like Goblins or an Owlbear). 

Airflow is such a dominant factor because it effects the transmission of SMELL, SOUND and TEMPERATURE, all of which are strongly bound within the greater medium of Air. Conversely the absence of airflow is itself a strong negative signal which might not explicitly tell you much but does suggest that either this dungeon, or system, whatever it is, is either small and closed, or has doors and closing elements.

 

Smell! 

Smell is life! 

The key aspect of scent is that in almost every case it is indicative of the processes of life. A dungeon with intelligent things living in it for any period of time is going to STINK. 

The Food Sequence 

Acquisition, Storage, Preparation, Consumption and Disposal. 

Acquisition; alpha predators like monsters who drag prey back to the dungeon as a lair will leave the stink of blood wherever they are and repeated blood trails will lead to any feeding spot, as well as blood smears and fur snatched from carried prey. 

Anything bringing living or recently dead food back to the Dungeon from outside stands a good chance of leaving marks of some kind, especially since they will be tracing the same route each time to preparation or storage spaces. 

A lot of food smells or has a distinctive scent, and in a still-air environment that scent might remain in place for a long time. 

Storage; if left unattended, the rotting bodies of victims or prey will absolutely stink to high heaven. Even for unaltered human basic smell powers it should be pretty simple to find your way through a still-air environment to a rotting body. 

Poorly-stored non-meat foods can still rot, and will summon their own micro-environment of insects and small mammals, all of which can be sensed or traced. If there are mouse droppings, that’s a sign of something. 

Well-stored or dry foods are more complex, I imagine these as leaving little scent and few biomarkers. It might be that the presence of a particular dry and contained space might leave tangential markers but I am not sure. 

Preparation; if something is intelligent and eats cooked food, and/or just needs warmth or light, then there will be fire. If there is fire there must be smoke. If there is smoke it has to go somewhere. So either there is a chimney leading up out of this dungeon or the smoke is moving through the corridors which will leave traces stains, and scent. 

Consumption; large predatory animals will definitely leave bits and pieces here and there. Smaller more civilised beings might still leave scent, the wall-sweat of their respiration, residual warmth, stains, fragments and the small biomarkers that go along with them. 

Disposal; Poo. All of this stuff has to go somewhere and unless there are convenient rivers or pits then it is going to leave strong scent markers and all the small insects which emerge from feasting on the poo. And spiders, which feast on the flies, the webs of which will remain in place for a long time in a low airflow environment. 

tldr; any closed system which has living respiring and eating residents is going to stink. If there is airflow, then its strength and direction will effect where those smells go and how strong they are. Tracing those smells might be very useful for a dungeoneer. This is one thing that encourages me in the idea of bringing a bloodhound of some kind to the dungeon 

 

Temperature 

Warmth is co-dependent on airflow and the presence of life within a dungeon so many of the basic concepts have already been considered in those two sections. 

[Question; how much of a temperature differential can an average, or sensitive human being detect if they are paying attention? Could they intuit the presence of a living being occupying a room behind a door? Could they tell micro difference in temperature in the air between two identical corridors?] 

What about cold? Would any particular natural phenomena cause a dungeon to chill unexpectedly? The first thing that comes to mind is the presence of para-normal phenomena like Magic and the Undead. Both are often associated with rapid temperature drops. 

Conversely, super-beasts like dragons or elemental creatures might raise underground temperatures more than you would expect. 

 

Life 

Respiration 

SWEATY WALLS! Why are the walls of the dungeon dripping, dank, with the nitre, so beloved of Lovecraft? It may be water flow from outside but more likely the combination of water and warmth coves from living things in the dungeon. A system of closed stone with living things within it will naturally sweat, and drip, over time. 

What about the sweaty walls of a sleeping dragons cave? Why wasn’t the gold surrounding Smaug absolutely dripping with condensation? Maybe it was and that is what caused Bilbo to slip and slide around. Wet Hobbit action. 

[Question; have any of you actually been in an actual Dungeon, under an actual castle, working or not? Are they actually the cold, dark, dripping places of fiction?] 

I mean clearly they are made not to be comfortable, but surely actual temperature would depend on how much airflow there is, or the temperature of the living rock, if its carved into that. 

Would a dungeon under a living castle with locked doors and no windows, truly underground

actually be cold? Or might it be temperate? It would be damp I think due to the respiration of everyone above in the castle and their condensed breath dripping down.

 

Lichen, Moss, Mushrooms, Insects 

I feel like Gary must have at least conceived of a grand table of microflora and microfauna that might grow in a dungeon and have the required and likely temperature ranges, water needs, food sources, and, in the case of insects and small mammals, roaming distances. 

I am taking being a dungeon detective a bit too far here, into Forensic territory, BUT - IF you did actually know a lot about these micro-environments you could in theory tell quite a lot about a dungeon just from observing them as you went through. 

This should go for Rot as well, a microorganism which leaves sensory traces. A rot wizard could tell quite a lot about living systems. There is probably an opening somewhere for someone to produce a matrix of easy-to-use and 'read' pseudo-realistic dungeon microfauna, not for use as enemies or 'colour' but as a kind of spread of information that can be observed to tell what kind of things have gone on in a dungeon. 

This, because of its complexity, I think I know least about. I know a bit about cave fauna, but the secret of that is that, beyond a certain depth, there really isn’t much of it. Without light you get near-nothing and so far as I know, mushrooms will not actually grow on the cold limestone of a cave wall. 

[Question; does anyone out there know if lichen will grow in dark conditions? Or any such moss? Any fungal experts who can say which foods and temperature ranges are needed for fungal growth?]

 

Unknown Artist

 

Sound 

How does sound carry underground anyway? Irregularly I would think. It must depend a huge amount on the substance and layout of the place. Some shapes and materials I know just EAT sound, but in others, small sounds can travel a very long way. 

[Question; does anyone know about what kinds of stone, material or corridor shape interact how with various sounds? Do the stone walls and floors of a classic dungeon echo with footsteps of mocking laughter as Gothic novels claim? Can anyone confirm?] 

The most important matter must be FREQUENCEY. Specifically, is there anything in this dungeon that produces a low-bass sound, like stone scraping, or something huge moving or rolling? Those low frequency sounds travel a lot, through materials more than air. How many times on a quiet day have you realised a big truck is moving several street away, or a washing machine or other large device is working several rooms, or an entire property away? 

A sleeping dragon, for instance, will produce not only sweaty gold but probably a very deep, but soft, sound that might transmit strongly through stone. 

Doors opening and closing; if these are on hinges there is a good chance they will be badly maintained and so screech. They may also thud and slam. Stone doors may produce the deep frequency sounds that transmit so easily. 

Living things; the biomarkers we talked about in the ‘Smell’ section. Is there scampering? The buzzing of flies or mosquitoes? The crawling of insects? 

Consistent background sounds - Water should produce some kind of distant continual sound

likewise, wind changing outside the dungeon, rain, storms, these should produce some sort of effect, unless there are many portals between here and there. 

Is this place indeed as 'Silent as the Tomb'? If so that itself might be quite unusual.  In a state of such absolute silence it might be that very super-quiet noises which are usually indiscernible could become more prominent, like the crawling of a bug for instance, or the shifting of dust. 

At what distance and in what circumstances can we expect living inhabitants to produce discernible sound? 

 

by Art of Raman

Stone 

Or whatever material the dungeon is made of. 

You would probably need to know a lot about bricks, or slate flags, for micro differences in them to be useful in any way, but.... aren't dungeoneers (and Dwarves) exactly the type to pick up just such knowledge? 

What could we reasonably expect a skilled observer to pick up from various arrangements of building stone in separating corridors? Could they guess which corridor was built first? If one is a later addition to the other that should be obvious should it not? as well as the various skill and the resources available to the builders. 

A culture in decay producing less perfect masonry, or cutting into a stone-lined corridor with one lined with brick. 

What the hell are the roofs of these dungeons anyway? Logically they should be braced with wood, but that would decay (or would it?), so they should be either megaliths or arches. 

Does stone degrade over time (without use, probably not..?) but with use and perhaps dripping water, how does stone degrade? 

What stone would you even expect to be used in construction of a dungeon? Granite is too hard surely? I would expect bricks to be the most practical and affordable and bricks do crumble both from use but also from compression and freeze-thaw over time. 

Does sound echo across marble? How about light? In the Mersey tunnel near me, the roof has been covered with black tar or pitch. it was originally made with a white, reflective, opalescent roof to the tunnel. The idea was that it would reflect the lamps of vehicles and make the tunnel seem more full of light. Two problems; exhaust fumes blackened it, and where that didn't happen the improving strength of electric lights made the roof blindingly white so they had to paint if over. 

But if you were in a classic Carrera-marble tomb, with only lamps, it would be pretty relatively bright surely? There can't be many materials like that. Do we have any idea of the reflective nature of various kinds of stone? Would a difference between slate, bricks or granite slabs add or reduce 10 or 20 feet of visibility?

 

Viggo Johanson

 

21 Questions for Empty Corridors 

(This is my attempt to condense the discussion above into a simple set of concrete questions, more for Dungeon designers and DMs, in a style similar to Jeffs ’20 Questions for your Campaign World’.)

 

1.      Is the air still or does it flow?

2.      If there is airflow, where does it flow to or from, and at which times? (i.e. does it ‘breathe’ in and out as it warms and cools with dawn and dusk like a cave system might?).

3.      Is there moving water? If there is, does it cool the dungeon?

4.      Is it warmer or cooler than outside? Are any parts especially warm or cool?

5.      Are there living things eating, breathing and pooping in the dungeon?

6.      Do the walls sweat? Is there nitre?

7.      Is there a food store? Are there mice or insects?

8.      Is there fire in the dungeon? If so, where does the smoke go?

9.      Is there poop in the dungeon? Where? How strong is the smell?

10.   Is there rot in the dungeon? Are there flies?

11.   Do smells emanate evenly through still air or are they carried by airflow?

12.   If you followed the smells of blood, meat, smoke, spices or poop, where would they lead?

13.   Are their spiders in the dungeon? How stable and old are the webs and where?

14.   Do lichen, moss or fungi grow in the dungeon? If so where?

15.   Are there any sources of LOW FREQUENCY sound in the dungeon?

16.   Are there any permanent natural sounds like moving water or wind?

17.   Do voices, steps or door sounds transmit in a reliable way?

18.   Would the sound of fighting transmit and if so how far?

19.   If someone stays absolutely silent in the dungeon and listens, what do they hear?

20.   Are there obvious changes in construction? Like in materials, methods, age, wear etc?

21.   Do any of the above elements come into play at otherwise contextless choices in which door or corridor to take?