Veins of the Earth - Workshop

'Queen Mab's Palace' will be moving to layout soon. My gigantic review of Hugh Cooks 'Chronicles of and Age of Darkness' is done. What will False Machine be working on next?

Veins of the Earth - Remastered

And by working on, I mean that I have started work, not that we have a book ready right now. This is the beginning of a long process. 

The new Veins will probably be A4, to fit in with other False Machine books, and will have new content, a new layout, hopefully some new images.

But what needs to be added? What needs to be changed? What didn't work for people last time? I have some ideas but I also want your input.

Drop your comments

•  At the Substack [https://substack.com/@pjamesstuart] 
•  The Blog [falsemachine.blogspot.com]
•  My Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/pjamesstuart]
•  Twitter [x.com/pjamesstuart] 
•  Emails to pjamesstuart@gmail.com 
•  Or even reviews and analysis on your own blogs and channels.

What Reads Like Shit But Plays WELL?

 At some point this blog had something to do with Dungeons and Dragons or something,.. tum te tum the OHHH ESSHH AYR? I think I found those words scratched behind a pillar in a forgotten language in a sertaline dream I had.

In an act of remembrance for whatever this Blog used to be, and out of interest - plumbing, dredging the minds of my audience, and from my own curiosity, I have a query;

What reads badly but plays well?

Here is a picture for you;

Marcel Roux Offering to Moloch, 1908

(ripped off from the blog 'Monster Brains')

A few examples, largely from discussions I have had with friends who read and used things I didn't like the look of. Castle Xyntillan did not appeal to me at all from the text but multiple people have told me "No it plays like hot shit at the table, great fun." Likewise Ravenloft, the villain-is-ASDA-Dracula, sounds awful to me but again many many people say the opposite in play.

(I leave the definitions of "bad", "plays well" and the discussion of what we are talking about exactly (I'm imagining adventures but willing to accept a reasonably wide spectrum of 'similar things' around that), deliberately open. If you want to talk about what 'bad' means to you so you can define it better then do so, please don't argue with each other over definitions of what 'bad' is, its tiring for me.)

What Pops an NPC?

 I am putting together some NPCs for a thing and am having the usual problems: limited space, lots of information to deliver etc, etc.

So I come to you, the sacred few, and subtly, silently, sneakily, I hook up my brain-hose to your skulls.

When you read an NPC - what is it that makes them POP off the page, and you think "Yes I can run this, I know immediately how to do it"?


A few axis of investigation;

- Looks, vividness/simplicity of description.

- How many signifiers is too many?

- Behavioural quirks; too heavy, too loose and vague?

- What's useful for imagining them, for helping players imagine and remember them, and for portraying them, which might be a slightly different axis.

- Motivations, the want/don't want lines. How simple do we want their wants to be?  Like specific objects = like "a pie", personal qualities like "to be complimented", very general social motivators like "high position, dominance"? and how quickly do we want these wants and don't wants to be integrated into play?

It depends a lot, doesn't it, on how long we expect that NPC to stick around.

Right now I'm trying to put together a kind of 'night market', or something like a fey market
with lots and lots of potential contacts to create a sense of overflowing possibilities but also many possible sources of information about a complex world to which the PCs are being introduced. But at the same time, I don't have a lot of space to hang about and probably few to none of these people will be sticking around later.

Many should be possible sources of information but I don't want them to be like vending machines, where they give "as you know your father, the king" speeches, neither do I want them to be too hard to deal with, as I want the PCs to be able to soak up a lot of info about the setting, and for people to feel particular, yet not to have any heavy drama this early on.

Its a lot of demands on the idea and then when I come to it I will probably end up just eyeballing it. 

NEVERTHELESS.

I am interested in what worked for you, books and adventures you thought were good, blog posts you thought were good, personal experiences etc.

PICTURE!

Got nothing to do with this post, pretty great though!

Ten Years of False Machine

 Yes, at 14:50 (UK time) tonight, it will be ten years exactly since I started the False Machine Blog with this Vampire Table.

I should probably do something for the anniversary, I was thinking maybe a 'clip show' of old posts or something. 

Anyone have any ideas or desires?

I FEEL SLIGHTLY BETTER NOW

Numbered lists, it seems, are the key, and the chance to talk about your game. By this magic is the Engagement Beast, that translucent, slippery and protean creature, summoned to serve the needs of man. (i.e. this man; me).

Behold! You have sacrificed to me the hecatombs of your honeyed data, and as I sniff the sweet meat-stained ashes rising from your mundane material sphere, relax back into the vast and silken pillows of my own ego and rest my feet upon the cloud of my own glorious genius, I shalt not ignore thy fervent offerings.

 

INTERESTING MISCELLANY

Something that fascinated me was the strange ecology of virtual and IRL systems which, seem to be very common with online RPG people.

Flavio Costantini

I would half imagine that at this point there would be some sort of 'killer app' for running games, some combination of systems which does most of what everyone needs and which has become the 'main method', with other alternates occupying minority positions, but this seems not to have happened.

Instead there is a kind of ecology of varied sites, tools and methods which different people use in different ways, even the same people using different combinations of various tools and methods depending on the games they are running or the games they are in. I quite like the general feel and idea of this, though I would struggle to come up with an intellectualised reason for doing so.

Discord is a main channel, for voice play, some camera play, and for sharing documents and discussing the game, rolling via an app AND IRL seems not uncommon, shared whiteboards, google docs, google sheets, google slides, 'owlbear rodeo' 'rolld20', 'Foundry VTT', spreadsheets for tracking, pen and paper, shared pdfs AND physical copies of texts, sometimes sketch maps via shared boards and sometimes theatre of the mind.

An example comment about IRL play;

"Jack17 May 2021 at 18:03

6. I set up World Anvil to keep track of campaign information but almost immediately stopped using it. We organised sessions on a facebook page. I used a laptop to keep track of notes and play atmospheric music. We had a physical book for the rules themselves. I had a whiteboard near the table which I used to draw important info (maps of the situation, notes, clocks, etc)."

 

 

WHAT SYNTHESIS CAN BE DRAWN FROM THIS?

I suppose, for people like me worried about the virtual consuming the physical, (and if the comments given are representative, which = who knows), there seems to be a natural tendency for holistic virtual integration, which is bullshit phrasing but let me see if I can clear it up;

People are pretty good generally at finding and choosing the tools which will help them run the games they want the way they want

and it looks like they don't overuse them, or, taken as a whole, strongly prioritise methods into a 'one true way'.

Furthermore, its highly common for people gaming through a wire to strongly integrate IRL assets, (joyless language but); virtual gamers will often roll dice, buy books and use them alongside PDFs, even send letters and create little objects. Similarly, people playing in real life will pick up and ue a wide variety of virtual methods, from having a laptop open to play mood music, to a file and background sharing deal, to facebook pages for organisation.

So my Nightmare vision of 'dead file' pdfs stacking up in peoples hard-drives like the victims of a plague, seems, on the balance of evidence given, to be largely an illusion. People prioritising IRL play seem to be naturally adapting and integrating virtual elements without letting go of core IRL tactile and social interactions, and people playing virtually seem to have little trouble dealing with real dice, real books and sometimes developing more complex hardcopy exchanges which do not replace virtual alternatives but actually sit alongside them, and there doesn't seem to be any single dominating cultural force or True Format which sets that standards and rules everything else but instead a vast archipelago of means and methods which can be pulled from and integrated a number of ways

 

LEAVES ME HOPEFUL

Evelyn de Morgan

My ratty mind would have expected more alienation, for the virtual to have consumed the real and reduced it to sessile pseudo-activity - a mere mumming of gaming rather than the real thing, for pdfs to have eaten books, or for books to go unread, for there to be some quiet invisible dominating corporation with its fingers in everything, smiling falsely through the gritted teeth of the marketing beast, (which arguably does exist with content but not necessarily with means and methods of play).

So... I'm forced to say...

I...

I was wrong less correct than anticipated.

Instead of fulfilling my darkest visions, Humanity has, (THIS TIME, DON'T GET COMPLACENT), exceeded my expectations and things are not actually (AS) awful (as predicted - YET).

 

Obscurity

 
Oh the dreams of my youth - 

Fritz Schwimbeck

I imagined a book set within the crazed city of the Dero, layed out like a garbled choose-your-own-adventure book, with no index and no contents, and with at least some looping paths (the book would never tell the DM or the players when these had locked into place), some places and encounters simply images, tables, lines of text, single questions - an old man approaches and looks at you with a queer look. An automated service which would text your phone from an untraceable number, asking for information from the Dero city, which you could then text back and which would lead to new combinations of possibility. 

A character in the book whispers to the player and asks them to make a call..

Trapped inside a city of the mad, layered with conspiracies, illusions and false realities. Stage sets, brain engines. Both the DM and the Players would fall into an indescribable relationship of exploration, deception, fear and mutual suspicion. (but always with the promise, the temptation, the possibility that you could perhaps escape) "Give me the book!" a player would cry - reach out and take it, making themselves the DM, but quickly becoming utterly lost in the text. 

And yes you could turn the book upside down - differing encounters and an alternate page system, the sense of being trapped in the city of the crazed mind-wizards and the frustration of dealing with this impossible and nightmarishly obscure text, all merging into one glorious whole.

Such dreams I had of the artistic utility of incoherence

It was a different age, a time both darker and more pure, and I a different man. 

Fritz Schwimbeck

I have a strange relationship with obscurity. Its only really that stygian shield that makes something special, notable, rare; the rites of the Orthodox church, happening behind a screen so you can barely see them. Without that, we decay into Critical Role, into 5e, a system which I don't loathe, but the perceived culture around it......

In fact I need the stygian shield of obscurity, even as I try to throw it off. Peering out of the shadows before slinking in again, gesturing mysteriously with a pale finger. What a performance.

I really wanted to make books that people actually used. I fetishize real-life books and fear PDF's because I am dogged with the fear that they will become dead files simply resting in a drive somewhere and doing nothing. As I currently have a tonne of unread and unused files cast across multiple drives.

So I wonder now, if more people have actually played old DCO rather than new DCO? Probably yes - partly because new DCO is designed specifically for in-person play and in-person leafing through - and that is a situation which will rarely be occurring becasue of Corona. My imagined perfect state of play cannot take place. But even without that, what if it becomes simply a fetish book for the shelf - the physical version of the lost and hidden PDF?

In furtherance to that trouble; a querying lance of light; questions for YOU, yes YOU, the reader reading this..

Horacio Salinas Blach

1. What games are you actually running or playing in?

2. Are you playing in person or online? 

3. How many people?

4. How regular?

5. If online, how long* is each session?

>6. And what combination of digital and material tools and sources are actually being used and HOW?

Gather round, my greybearded fellowship, come closer to the fire. Warm yourself a little, for I have a proposal for you. A quest, if you will. An expedition into the very depths. Don't be afraid, it is only... an adventure..

aleksander karcz

You like adventures don't you?

..

Its coming up on the ten-year anniversary of this blog, which was itself quite "late to the party" of the O.S.R. 

The OSR which has itself died and been reborn more times than a Hindu cosmos. The culture has moved on, from the ancient Forge through the age of the Purple City, still living but driven now to madness and a culture of purge upon purge, to the rise of the Red Bazaar, Constant-Con (does anyone remember that?) FLAILSNAILS, the rise and rule the Mad Titan and his banishment to the negative zone, the great migration to the Halls of Discord, Zuckerbergs Labyrinth of Pain and the Screeching Azure Cage.

Much has passed that was once known and much is forgotten that was spoken in ages gone. By the secret of the undying self-necromancy at its heart the OSR has lived many lives, died, and grown again from its own ruins.

Fritz Schwimbeck (thanks to Monster Brains)

In fact, we might say that in digital terms, the OSR is itself a Dungeon. A network of forgotten digital links and lost blog posts burrowed from the ancient forums and the old Forge.

I was there! I was there when arnold posted about a melon tree. But even that was not so long ago, there are much deeper relics, and darker halls...

The original Monsters and Manuals post references StoryGames Rules and RPG.NET!! 

Fritz Schwimbeck

But his second post quickly moves us to familiar ground;

"Let me explain why. I loathed, and continue to loathe, the 3rd edition of D&D and its bastard, scurrilous, spoiled and badly-brought up offspring, edition 3.5. They have no redeeming features for me; everything from the rules to the writing to the art makes me positively cringe to even think about"

Ah yes, classic Noisms.

Who now remembers Joesky the Dungeon Brawler?

Or Straits of Anian? (last seen 2014!)

How about Valley of the Blue Snails!  last seen 2010! We only had three short years!

Jeffs Game Blog goes back to 2004!, but there is  a tripod blog going even further back!

MY CHALLENGE

My challenge to you; go forth into the forgotten halls of the OSR. Seek the treasures of the ancient world and drag those glimmering shards into the nacreous light of our dying reality so that we, the mutated survivors of 'The Current Circumstances' may dance about them, flapping our wattled mouthparts, waving our stubbed and sore-pocked limbs as we chant praises to the secret powers of a forgotten ageof wonders we lack now the capacity to even comprehend! 

Yet still we may regard them, and paw them with our fur-matted and crook-boned hands, wishing hungrily for the might and power of that lost eon!

Delve too greedily and too deep! (be careful to mine around the antimatter corpse of the fallen Titan).

-

Fritz Schwimbeck

(one touch may destroy you)

Tell me! Tell us all!

What are the oldest posts you remember?

What should be known of the first posts of ancient blogs, made when the world was still young? And what things about them might strike the eye strangely to a traveller from current times?

What are the blogs on your blogroll with the most distant updates, yet still you cannot quite let them go?

Perhaps even mark those mouldering walls with a comment to speak of your passage and to tell those time-wreathed spirits, forgotten now even by the gods; "Ay, men, or things that dream themselves men, still live!"

Dare you enter a hobby which is itself a dungeon? A culture which feeds on death so that it may never truly die? The Ghoul Craft? Dare you enter..

 The Crypt of the OSR

Fritz Schwimbeck

Sticky Goblins

Yes, the title was a lie to draw you in. This is actually a game-design post. As an apology, have this thematically-correct image;

WHAT LEAD ME DOWN THIS TRAIN OF THOUGHT

For different books I've been working on I've been putting together different monsters, groups, characters and situations. One problem or difficulty I've come up against  is producing large numbers of encounters that are what I came to think of as 'sticky'.

What happened is that I found myself often repeating or cycling through similar patterns of encounter.

Originally I wanted encounters that were somewhat dramatic, or at least interesting within themselves, expressive of the character of different individuals and groups, had world-texture to them so experiencing them taught you about the world of the game or adventure, but were also not necessarily violent, though they might have the potential for violence within them, yet were also consequential.

That's a lot really, the density of concepts of what I was looking for maybe explains some of why I have found it so challenging.

After thinking about it a bit more I have broken it down into different kinds of 'stickiness' which, though actually pretty different, seem to mesh quite intuitively in play and design.

OPENESS - short term stickiness

The first is the openness, or the embracing nature of the encounter - how much its elements allow interaction, and how much they would *actually want* the PCs to interact.

Low openness would be; 

- You hear the sound of hoofbeats and enter a clearing to see two fully armoured knights encountered in the act of directly charging towards each other, lances levelled.

The Knights are presumably higher status than the PCs and they won't be happy if the PCs get in the way. Physically if the PCs do intervene then it will likely only lead to injury for them and the Knights as well. Afterwards, no-one will be happy with the PCs. So socially, politically and physically this is a situation that is very 'closed'. More like a scene from a film. You *could* push yourselves to interact but most of the logic of the situation is against it.

Very high openness might be; 

- A plump halfling screams as a greasy, naked goblin holds it down and tries to force cheese into its mouth. The Halfling is crying "The CHEESE! No! Not the CHEEEESE!" while the Goblin cackles madly.

So physically and socially both parties are much weaker than the PCs. It shouldn't be too hard to overpower them and stop this from happening. (Apart from the greasiness of the goblin). There are no weapons involved that you can see so its non-lethal. As opposed to the Knights, its seemingly unequal - the Goblin looks to be in the wrong and the Halfling looks like a victim. Also its over something ridiculous like cheese, which lowers the status of the encounter and so perhaps the fear of intervention.

I mean, very few D&D parties are going to just walk past the Cheese encounter. They will want to do something, even if its just to encourage the Goblin.

NEUTRALITY

A second quality is the non-neutral nature of the encounter. This something where if you leave it, there will be no big change. Like walking past a beggar in the street, you are technically guilty of ignoring every beggar you don't help but its probably not going to stick to you or turn up again in your life, or the world, in a noticeable way.

What’s a highly neutral encounter? Maybe something like;

- You see a group of destitute Orcs in the distance. In this game all Orcs are violent and bad, they never negotiate and always attack. This group is large. They are clearly migrating across an empty plain in the distance, from one land you don't know to another you also don't know. You have seen them and they haven't seen you. To avoid them, just stay still for a while then move on.

The Orcs are (in this setting) simply bad and always aggressive. You know exactly what they are going to do if they meet you and its always the same thing. There are a lot of them, so they might win a fight between you. They have no wealth so no immediate material award. They are going from a place you have no connection to, to another place you have no connection to across an empty place you have a slight connection to. They are interacting with nothing and dealing with them will probably change nothing you will ever learn about.

What’s and extremely non-neutral encounter? A 'polar' encounter?

- You are in a city in lockdown due to plague and overhear, then directly visually witness, a sexual assault between two relatively high-status individuals with their own networks. Say the son of the citys Guard captain and the daughter of the cities minority-ethnicity crime gang. Both individuals see that you have seen them.

So, this is going to be a thing whether you like it or not. Firstly it’s an immediate interaction happening right in front of you, in your personal space (so that’s more openness, but it also means 'you could have done something). It’s between two individuals who are connected to two groups who will definitely side with those individuals. Both of those groups have a major ability to affect your life in different ways. The city is locked-down and you can't leave. Even if you pretend you saw nothing neither individual will accept this and neither will their prospective groups. They NEED you on their side and will not accept a neutral position. neutrality will be considered opposition to them. Not only that but its a hot-button cultural issue in a contained, dangerous and resource-poor environment so your relationship with the various factions more-directly affects your ability to survive.

I have slipped over here into describing 'Consequences', the last part of my division, which illustrates either the difficulty and possible futility of taking a cartesian approach to the most human of games or just my own ill-discipline and stupidity.

Really in a 'lived reality' openness, neutrality and consequences will all interact and amplify/neutralise each other. If there was nothing you could *physically* have done, then there will be less polarity and less consequences;

"Hey you saw the two mega-giants fighting and did nothing."

"Aye, for they are fucking massive and I am but small."

"A reasonable response."

CONSEQUENCES - encounter tail or long term stickiness

The last is the tail of the encounter. The degree to which your action or inaction will affect the players and PCs afterwards.

This seems to relate most deeply to the containedness of the environment and social situation. The more tied the PCs are to a certain social and political milieux, and the more deeply connected the agents of the milieux are, or perhaps simply the greater their ability to project power, then the deeper the consequences.

Murder-Hobo PCs traipsing across an infinite world populated by atomised and individually weak groups will experience few consequences while relatively weak PCs trapped in a complex and closely connected world of powerful actors will experience deep consequences.

There is also the moral nature of the encounter itself of course.. Lets see what I can come up with for a very consequential encounter;

- You are in disguise as the missing Duke and his entourage. The city/castle is under siege. You see the Queen about to push the King down some stairs from behind. 

Hmm. What’s a super low-consequence encounter?

- You are marching along the Kings highway as night comes on. You are in the middle of a big host of travelling people. In the dirt by the side of the road you see a leprous peasant fighting a blind dog for a bone with a scrap of meat still attached.

Its night, or evening so you are nearly visually anonymous. There is a crowd so you have crowd/group anonymity. Its a road so everyone there is atomised somewhat from their usually social networks. The peasant and dog are both very low status, probably far below your own, which might increase the 'openness' of the encounter, it would be physically and socially easy to intervene, but means that neither are likely to have a consequential effect on your future. The diseased nature of the peasant and the fact that the dog is blind mean neither are likely to be useful or effectual in any way.

QUESTIONS

- What do you think of my division of concepts into openness, neutrality and consequences?

- Are neutrality/polarity [whether you interact or not has a big effect] and Consequences [the results of your interactions will stick to you long-term, even useful concepts, considering how bad and blurred my examples were?

- if not, why not?

- what tools of thought would you use to make encounters like this?

- what notable 'sticky' encounters do you remember from your own games?

- how much of each quality do you prefer in your own adventures and campaigns, and how does that relate to the kind of campaign or adventure? as in more naturalistic and long term, short punchy ones, city or rural based?

- Any novel, innovate or interesting ideas for generating different kinds of stickiness?

- I’m interesting in what differently-minded people might do with the same problem. What would an Arnoldish approach to stickyness be? Literal organic stickiness, mutation, some game-rule or diagetic artefact? I'm not a very 'D&D' D&D creator, so there should be many ways of applying consequences in particular that spring from magic or high-fantasy elements...

The Poem Dungeons Revealed

 Honestly I kinda forgot you guys existed.

Richard Tennant Cooper

(thanks to Monster Brains)

But behold! Some people actually responded to my post, and literally everyone who did a dungeon managed to produce something closer to my stated intent than I did.

(And thanks of course to Dyson Logos, whose map was the basis of the challenge.)

I shall link them in the order of their comments.

(No, as of 04.03.2021 they are still coming in so I will link them in reverse order so the newest one is always at the top.

Ablution

By Matthew Schmeer of RenderedPress. Our boy did an actual poem! And it looks like if you read it to the end and took notes it might even be near playable!

Shelter 15

An adventure for Death is the New Pink (now on sale) or Into the Odd. Vagabundork (Chaos Magick-User) from the blog Chaos Magic User brings us our second (I think) nuclear bunker quasi cold-war interpretation. This one with a slightly different political slant than the last;

"The booklet “The March of the Pigs”. It takes 1 day to read. Once per adventure, you can create 1d4+1 Molotov bombs using improvised materials (1d6 damage per roud to all inside the area; one extra point of damage to cops, sheriffs, soldiers, politicians and other enemies of freedom)."

THE TOMB OF BENDAN FAZIER 

The oldest of the Old-School, JB from BX Blackrazor bestows upon us this. Terse, minimal, classical materials. Do you need a lot of fancy bullshit to run an adventure? This dungeon says NO.

The Tower of the Red Dome

That's not what its actually called (I don't think it has a title), but your boi James Maliszewski of the blog Grognardia, has produced an ultra-minimal dungeon for the famous, and by many, considered quite difficult to access, world of Tékumel. He applied himself to the challenge of describing every element in no more than three lines.

The Undercellars

A lovely gothic and highly playable dungeon by Joseph Manola of 'Against the Wicked City'.

Not just the only creator brave enough to put a sex-cult in his dungeon but also an excellent 'forensic' dungeon (you can re-build the final events of the doomed cult) which rewards historical investigation, an elegant balance of investigatory and deceptive alternate methods with trad dungeon bashing and also something which, with ne or two tweaks, could be easily integrated into anything from a historical setting to a classic D&D world. Also an excellent example of clarity, brevity and prioritisation in text description making something very playable.

Terpsichorean Sodality of the Bird People

Brought to us by long-time commenter Solomon VK from World-Building and Wool-Gathering. 

"Monedulus Alleline, a man with the head of a jackdaw, paces nervously.. If surprised he will jump. He may be reciting prayers. He will give a cold welcome to newcomers. He is deeply worried about the coming rites, and dreads Vansittart's proposed alterations."

Nice.

Degenerates Art

We got another long one boys, this one from Louis Morris. 

"Please find attached my attempt at the Dungeon Poem Challenge. Not only is it much too late, I've also managed to ignore pretty much every element of the briefing except the map and possibly the word 'art' in 'artpunk'. That means it's comically long, not especially poetic, and probably not very functional either; it's meant to be system-agnostic, though it only really makes sense in a setting that's close to 20th/21st-century Earth. Given all this, you should obviously feel no obligation to mention it on the blog, though if you did want to put a link in a small addendum to the last post then that would be fine by me. I enjoyed making it anyhow!"

Don't worry Louis, ignoring pretty much all the instructions of the challenge is the norm here.

Likelihood of this being Kent in disguise? I'd say 1 in 6.

All 5's and 7's

Dan Sumpton of Peakrill actually did a poem! Its all haiku!

The Vulnerary House

Nick of Daayan Songs Translated brings us The Vulnerary House in both blog post and PDF form.

"- Who else? 1-a noblewoman begs her son to come with her. His gaze is unfocused. 2-a pregnant wife kneels at the feet of an old man who tousles her hair, gentle, yet absent 3-A boy hands an enthusiastically fashioned, yet crudely painted toy boat to a distant seeming man. The man weighs it momentarily, before pressing it back in the boy’s hands . 4-A woman, expressionless, head shaven, kisses a crying infant. She gifts the wailing swaddling to an old woman who nods and leaves, cooing to the child."

Party Cove

Your boy Peter Webb didn't use the right map but sent me this and I'm putting it up because I like him.

SkyChasm

Holy fucking fuck. Her Christmas Knight, the guy who writes extended comments on my blog longer than the posts themselves, brings us a precis of the ideas from some kind of epic Jack Vance/Gene Wolfe collaboration. Heaving with concepts and blistering on the boundary of glorious but terrifying near-unplayability (or is it?) this truly fucks the frame of the concept of 'Artpunk', whatever the fuck that currently means. 

The Great Ghoul Market

From your boy right here. Massively overwritten. Arguably not that artpunk. Did I even do an encounter table? Kinda. At least its a PDF. Patrick should try to remember his own concept next time.

The Court of Hell

Enthusiastic Skeleton Boys brings us 'The Court of Hell'. Down to two pages! Original concept! An image post and some actual illustrations! Another good contender.

The Song of Snow and Sun

Zzarchov! Our Lost God King turns in his mist-wreathed bed of tattered finery and from his battle-scarred fingers drifts 'The Song of Snow and Sun'. Its two dungeons in one! He did a PDF! He put a song in it!

“for any peasant girl,
lonely in the mortal world
Take the twilight ship to elsewhere
for any noble boy,
born and raised a castellan
take the twilight ship to elsewhere
the bard amidst the burning hall
the smell of wine, the siren’s call
a devilish grin, to rule the night
they march on and on, and on, and on”

The winner? Possibly.....

(I will not be announcing a winner but you can pick one yourselves if you like.)

Generic Laboratory

From 'Coins and Scrolls'. Finally you have a chance to join the Skerples train.

The Manteion

'I Don't Remember that Move brings us MASKS! You know its artpunk if there are needless masks. "skinless pink things like cave salamanders stir in the oily water. They attack if you try to help him." As true today as it was yesterday.

A Peer Beyond the Alchemical Aleph Null 

From the blog 'Foreign Planets' a dark-alchemy inspired dungeon in two versions. A 'Light' version for easy usability and a 'Dark' version for maximum pretension.

Clavicarcerum of the Scribe Jamesus

From the blog 'Whose Measure God Could Not Take, the Magma-Marred Clavicarcerum of the Scribe Jamesus. Ahh I remember when I could crank out mysterious stuff. Feels like a long time ago. He even has ferric snail in his.

Ice Troll Moon Abbey 

From the blog Lapidary Ossuary. A classic one-page dungeon.

If you want to read some dungeons, read through, and if you like something, talk about it here or somewhere else. (Also people can keep submitting....)

Dungeon Poem Challenge

 Dungeon Poem Challenge

I had this idea of, not a Gygaxian Democracy dungeon, but a kind of blog-ring alter-dungeon challenge thing

Take one of the more interesting (and SMALL) Dyson Logos maps.

This one (I like it because it has a river on it).

Original here.

And anyone who wants to; make a dungeon of this map.

Thats; everyone use this specific map 

I am going to try to do mine and will attempt to post it by Saturday or Sunday, and if anyone else wants to do one and tell me about it I will link it here. And we will see what everyone comes up with.

The general concept is; Artpunk plus functional. So original ideas preferred, as pretentious as you like, but minimal text, shaved right down, and functional as a dungeon for players without any extra context. But as much as possible, honed for beauty, interest and strangeness.

The link to 'poetry' being not the euphony structure or rhythm of the text, (though you can try that if you like), but the condensation of utility, beauty, meaning and originality into a functional and interesting micro-adventure. 

All those things traditionally being opposed or at least difficult to have at the same time.

To do as much as possible with as little text and information as possible

HELP ME PUT MYSELF INSIDE A CHILD

Ok I have reached a pause point with Goose-Gold & Goblins. I have spent.. well its coronatime so I have no idea how long I have actually spent doing this but it feels like I have spent quite a while filling out the bestiary with concepts for fifty non (or less) violent 'monsters'.

I have been doing that for so long that I feel like I lost my grip on the larger project somewhat. There is a lot to do, I intend this ultimately to be a pretty big book, or more like three books, D&D style.

Future topics to include building a 'household', magic, treasures, food and cooking, describing circles of familiarity and making friends, stuff about Strange Dangers like sickness, poison, curses, weather and seasons, magical events and poverty, a whole section on building dungeons/mazes, treasures. There is a lot to do.

But a key concept for the project is to have the best possible advice and ideas about running games for families, between generations, with children of different ages and with parents and children. 

I also need to know about child psychology, education and development to work out how to arrange rules and concepts in the book.

I know nothing about any of this so I am opening the Dread Portal, and asking for book reccomendations, and priority analysis of the books I have already listed to buy.

Here is my current list of books to consider buying.

Does the background intellectual capacity still exist in the OSR diaspora to even address this? And if it does is anyone still reading this blog who gives a damn? We shall see.

 If anyone in my audience knows much about the subjects in question then I am asking for advice about where to start, so I need advice on;

- Books or articles on Child Psychology, especially decent (sane) overviews of the topic.

- In particular, stuff about family games and playing games across generations and age groups, how children and adults of different ages play with each other.

- Games and entertainments which work well for children of different ages.

- Games which work with parents and children.

- Analysis about what children are like at different stages of development.

- What motivates them.

- What they can handle intellectually and emotionally.

- General howling at me about families, children, how I should or shouldn't be doing this, culture war stuff, yeah lets culture war it we may as well and its going to happen anyway.

A Dice Mechanic for Goose-Gold and Goblins

 Here are the older posts on Goose-Gold & Goblins;

Intro

Char Gen 

Crappy 1st attempt at Shinto

Shinto in Cumbria 

A World Without Violence 

Monster Brainstorm 

Goose-Gold & Goblins 

On twitter, @spookymeal did this charming illustration;

Now on to the prime reason for this particular post;

I hate designing games, I am terrible at it.

However, Goose-Gold & Goblins requires some kind of dice mechanic to power it, so I will have to either come up with, or, more likely, just pirate something. 

Hence this blog post, in which I appeal to my audience for assistance in either creating, or just stealing, a mechanic to power the game.

Since my desired result is very simple, the constraints which lead to it are rather complex. I will lay them out here.

ROLL AGAINST/ROLL UP

After reading this illuminating series of posts from Dreaming Dragon Slayer;

Rules and Dice

Animal Kingdom

Advancement

50/50 Resolution

Death

Violence

Deathlesness

In which he runs very simple D&D with his kids, I have been converted to his way of doing things;
The GM, (presumably the parent), rolls one die, then the player (presumably their kid) rolls another and tries to beat the parents roll.

Kids seem to really like rolling "to beat the dm", which I suppose counts for more if the DM is your dad.

I only want singular rolls, one die rolled against one number and you know the number you are rolling for, its open, right there on the table and you roll yourself, the roll is obvious, then you win or lose.
I know binary yes/know results might sound rough on kids but they are much easier to process and understand than more complex "you kinda win but sort of lose a bit" results, and hopefully GM advice and game process can help GooseMasters produce results which respect the nature of challenge and failure but which don't crush the spirit of the players.

NO MODIFIERS EVER!!!

Even if modifiers are small they are generally bad, especially for a Kids game. So leaving them out would strongly suggest improvement via die *size*. Having a bigger die to roll is immediately visible and *tangible* to children.

However, the complexities of the various probability curves are somewhat beyond me.

STANDARD DICE ONLY

Don't get me wrong the idea of producing a custom set of Zocchi dice, including a GooseMasters D7 with a rabid raging Goose in place of the 7, is tantalising.

Building the intermediate dies into the game also provides more granularity.

BUT, I want the game to be as accessible as possible, which mean no Zocchi.

MY IRRATIONAL DESIRE FOR A D20

I really like the probability curve of the D20, especially the fumble and crit results, they are just rare enough that the world still has a feeling of general verisimilitude but *just* possible enough that its worth taking a swing at even an unlikely result.

For me the probability cuve of the D20 with the 5% crit/fumble likelihood helps to create a lot of the storybook, slightly hectic, dangerous but slightly farce-like texture of a D&D world.

Go up the die sizes and I would say you generally get more "pseudo-naturalistic" results. Go down and I think you get something a bit lighter, more storybooky.

obviously my desire for a d20 curve conflicts totally with all of my other constraints.

SUPPORTING PCS WORKING TOGETHER

The idea of players being able to help each other, if that is diagetically appropriate, is pleasing to me.
Do I want it to be; you roll, and if you don't win, your friend can also add their roll (if they can think of a way to help)?

Or - you both roll together?

I think probably doing it sequentially is best? Its simpler.

The question of what to do if the GooseMaster rolls a 1 is still there. If we assume only single die then its always possible a player could also roll a 1. But if we are allowing 'assists' then if the players know the GooseMaster has rolled a one, if they can get help then they can roll without risk as they have two dice?

Maybe that's ok? How soft do I want to be here?

HOW TO DEAL WITH COMPLEX EVENTS??

What about complex interacting things which would otherwise use modifiers??

Presumably some classic OSR/Apocalypse World advice/guidance on when to roll, how to describe situations and arrange challenges etc would be appropriate and could cover this ground?

HOW TO DEAL WITH ADVANCEMENT?

Hopefully most of it should be tied into diagetic elements like additions to your house, improved resources, Goose-Gold (obv) wider alliances etc.

Otherwise the only advancement is hey - get a bigger die for this quality.

HOW DO THESE INTERACT WITH STATS?

Are my concepts for qualities awful? I kinda suspect that they are;

YOUNG or OLD
STRONG or DEFT
BIG or SMALL
NOTICE or ACT
THINK or FEEL
COURTEOUS or BOLD
ESCAPES –

Not necessarily bad for character *creation* but how do you meaningfully roll for being "Old"?
Likewise, the Courteous/Act axis makes sense for character creation and gives a decent image of a person but would I be better just ripping of Ryuutama with STR, DEX, INT and SPI.

What would a kid understand?

Its body parts isn't it? Because you learn to name those first in rhymes.

BIG & SMALL could stay perhaps, with BIG being used as STR and SMALL being used for stealth rolls, sneaking and hiding.

YOUNG or OLD could maybe stay, with YOUNG giving you more Escapes, and Old being a kind of magic-using, book-using score. Like you roll your 'Old' die to do magic and use books.

Also the idea that your Grandma can just naturally do magic seems appropriate, so if you are playing *as* your Grandma, or *a* Grandma, then knowing magic seems reasonable.

HANDS and FEET could be Dexterity, or deftness, or Skill, vs Speed.

CLEVER HANDS or FAST FEET? Is being able to move fast a reasonable exchange for all the ways hands can be useful?

COURTEOUS or BOLD - don't know if I want to put in a 'behaviour' stat, but I feel like this could work?

Maybe QUIET or LOUD? But that steps on using SMALL as a stealth die.

Other questions;

>> SHOULD I CHANGE OR REMOVE THE STATS

>> SHOULD I TRY TO RETAIN AS MUCH 'BACK-COMPATIBILITY' AS POSSIBLE TO KEEP THINGS OPEN TO THE BX-COMMONS?

Prospective GooseMasters, I leave the comments open for the no-doubt overflowig wisdom of your replies.

The Mystery of Backstory Castle

And the readaloud maze

The osr diaspora is now successful enough and dispersed enough that no-one is in any danger of perceiving me as a leader and I can slink back to my comfortable position of cackling goblin irritant

anyway, watching everyone talk about what lessons do we teach about doing dungeons

and whats the principals of a trap

and we have to teach people how to think for themselves and not be dorks

for without the TEACHING DUNGEON - HOW SHALT ANYONE KNOW HOW TO DUNGEON AT ALL??

actually I was pretty jelly about all the attention everyone elses teaching dungeons were getting
and wanted onto that bandwagon

but then I thought about it for a second and realised

• firstly that would be a lot of work
• second I'm not that good at dungeon design anyway
• thirdly isn;t the very nature of a teaching dungeon slightly boring anyway?

if you want to instil principals in people, isn't it a lot more fun to make...

THE WORST FUCKING DUNGEON EVER!!!

And so it was that I conceived the idea for Backstory Castle, home of the Readaloud Maze, created by the Wizard Bocht Techt purely to be some kind of fucking catastrophe that no-one ever went to

Or to be more precise I had the idea to have the idea of Backstory Castle. I didn't have any of the useful detail-like ideas about how it would work, instead I just thought of a dungeon that was just exactly and precisely the WORST in every possible way

as in, it taught exactly the wrong lessons, both to anyone reading it, anyone running it, and anyone playing in it

lets see if I can have any interesting ideas

I wonder how exquisitely bad we can make something

THE PATHETIC PRODUCTION

The Handout

Andrew Sherman5 May 2020 at 08:11

There is a 128 page handout with full color pages so it prints horribly. It contains a long rambling history of the locality, with multiple generations of unmemorable characters who have ruled for generations. Make sure you spot the clue on page 37!

Compulsary Tie-In Novels

subhuman5 May 2020 at 09:06

I expect there would be a novella's worth of flavor text about Goblin Boss Gloob's early life and how he came to serve Orc Boss Gark. So that when the climactic battle finally comes, we can see the fruition of this tale as Gloob stealthily fucks off while the PCs carve away Gark's 12hp.

Just like the RoS released important info through Fortnight, there are a series of Tie-In Novels about minor characters and (despite the insane lore dumps) you cannot understand the actions of major characters without buying and reading those novels.

Loathesome Layout

Mufn5 May 2020 at 15:35

Id suggest moving even further into the depths of meta-contrition: perverse layout decisions, pictures with text encroaching their borders, broken links, nested indicies scattered throughout the text, random font switch 60% through, all printed/laid out horizontally in tabloid/broadhsheet format

Awful Index 

DH!6 May 2020 at 04:14

What about an index? Misspeled of course, and sourced from an earlier draft so that only 25% of the page numbers actually align with the topics? Sorted by page number so looking anything up involves starting at the top and working your way down.

Malefic Map

Warren D.5 May 2020 at 18:20

There's a beautiful, full-color, high rez map of the hidden gardens, crystal trees, grottos, glimmering pools, with twist and turns- but its really just one long hallway stacked on top of itself like an intestinal diagram. Nothing out side of the "rooms" (which are just circular areas) are labeled because you can't really do anything with them (e.g. the colored pools are just that).

I think we can definitely combine these - so a giant, 100+ page handout. Its longer than the adventure,

Lets say its formatted for neither US Letter OR A4 size, but could be easily mistaken for either. And if you print it in the wrong format important information is lost.

Full colour - hi rez. Full family and legendary history of everything. Vital hidden clue.

Foul Font

Greyhawk Grognard6 May 2020 at 09:45

Print the whole thing in red ink on gray paper, in Fraktur font.

THE AWFUL AESTHETIC

Terrible Text Tone

• "Uh, hey guys" rambling convesational gamer dad text
• Daidacticly autistic hyperdense voice
• LORE DUMPS

Kyana6 May 2020 at 08:53

Fraternizing tone, something like "You surely know, oh gentle reader..."
Old memes or slang in writing.
introduce new, 'cool' words to address the readers or the process of play ("Playzzers" for simplest example); rename DM into something long and difficult to pronounce (Galactic Viceroy of Research Excellence, for the quick example) and never use any abbreviation, only the full title, in the text.

ONLY BEIGE OR VIRID PUKE

The only aesthetic tones in the adventure can be the most beige as fuck 5E-bait multiply-photocopied fantasy archetypes OR 'fuck you' low level but atavistic edgelord foultext - IT SUBVERTS YOUR EXPECTATIONS

"The Wizard Bocht Techt rises before you through a pillar of silvery smoke, silvery because it springs from the fountains of the feywild where Boch Techt learned this spell from his Elfen Maiden betrothed before the sad tragedy which seperated them in the Brown Eons many Oolthars (an orcish measure of time) ago. Techt is truly a hoary and sad figure with a long grey beard a tall conical cap upon which stars are ebroidered with a floppy brim. His robes are of the most midnight blue and flow around him like clothes hanging off an old man. They are also embroidered with mysteroius sigils of cryptic design [DC 15 Lore check to realise these sigils are in the language of the Eld Castle folk]. He wears fabulous but worn turkish slippers as if he came recently from his smokey study and smokes a DOUBLE BARRLED pile carved from old oak in the shape of a Griffons Claw (in memory of his defeat of such a beast during the Adventure of the Sleeping Ape), twin curls of silvery smoke as slivery as his sigils and his silver beard wind up from the griffin-clawed pipe his face smiles in a winsome yet also sad way as if weighted down by his many years of thinking about stuff but he has a mischevous gleam in his clever eye and carries a staff with a COCK ON IT BECAUSE THIS WIZARD FFFUUUUUUCCCCKS

"Greetings Adventurers" chuckles Bocht Techt, "hast though come to test mine maze?"

The wyzard wynks saucily.

"Or art thou down to fuck?"

POINTLESSLY RE-NAMED BUT STILL BEIGE AS FUCK MONSTERS!!

~ZOZ5 May 2020 at 22:14

Orcs and goblins? No, this castle has Skri'therzm and Mocron-Reiru, which are a race of brutish, chaotic humanoids and race of shorter, brutish, chaotic humanoids. And the skeletons are called "darkbone haunters".

Yes! Glark is no longer a Goblin but a Mocron-Reiru!

'Darkbone Hunters' is too perfect - this wins Bocht Techts most flavourful award.

THE INANE INFORMATION DESIGN

BAD BOXED TEXT has to be an absolute must on every page

this is a big deal - Jason Cordova is trying to bring this stuff back and ONLY I IN MY LONELY GENIUS stand in his way

someone has to destroy boxed text forever and that someone is me

so, every major element has to have readaloud boxed text and that text has to introduce every element with its deep historical and thematic meaning FIRST, and at LENGTH, with any useful elements last, and also totally hidden in the huge block of spoken text

"This abyssal chamber was not included on the original plans for Backstory Castle due to the Time God Oct spilling a cuppa Hot Joe onto the plans during his meaningful tussle with the Sorcerer Bocht Techt during the Ovulation Wars of the Nightmare Age, a period forgotten by all. Nevertheless the architect Moongold, (lover of the Elf Queen Hyacinth) used meaningful magic to uncover the room plans during a Sorrowing Moon. The light of that moon impregnated the structure of the ten by ten room giving it a deep and sorrowful cast, something unknown to its current goblin occupant (absent on a d6 roll of 1+) as the sorcery has leeched away over the eons leaving only stone which holds up the ivory plinth on which the goblin sleeps. The plinth was stolen and is missing, leaving no trace and the goblin is out searching for it. The theives of the plinth used a mind eating magic to disguise its theft and any attempt to scry its location leads to instant level drain. This room has doors which lead both in and out."

hmm, what else is terrible?

Rancid Room Keys

eldritch mouse6 May 2020 at 08:53

we're going to need room keys after the read aloud text, right? Each room in the dungeon should take up four to five pages in the book. The room keys need to be hyper detailed to the point that they become useless as keys.

Also, why not key 25% of the rooms in pseudo-hexadecimal.

Room 9A2E. Mocron-Reiru living quarters.
7 beds.
→ bed 1. Not made.
→ → old blanket.
→ → → red, made of torn cotton.
→ → → → tear in left hand corner.
→ bed 2. Made, not well though, as if the goblin-reiru was in a hurry to make it. Probably had about 2 minutes to make the bed, with a deviation allowance of 45 seconds.
→ → blanket of blue, cotton. Pillow is straw stuffed into a bag.
→ → → straw bag was made 6 months ago by the farmer Gusa'gel'del'tonathon. The More-Reigru stole the bag from the farmer while he was milking a cow named [cow #1, page xx]
→ Bed 6. Not a bed, actually a chest.
→ → made of water logged wood.
→ → → wood was soaked 2 days ago, swollen.
→ → → → hinges made of steel. lock clasp made of iron. Chest weighs 12 lbs and 40 grams when lifted.
→ → → → → inside is 8 kg of gold.

Lemons7 May 2020 at 01:56

"we're going to need room keys after the read aloud text, right?"
Ok, but consider, what if we didn't have room keys at all?

But alright, assuming room keys:
-Rooms missing a key entirely. It's not even 31. Tenth Kitchen, just Tenth Kitchen. (Yes we need a lot of kitchens, all similar and described in exquisite detail)
-Map keys referring to nonexistent rooms, obviously
-Skip a number, or a few. There is no room 52 on the map or in the entire adventure.
-There should be at least three different versions of room 51, all contradictory. (Was contradictory DM text mentioned already? A room needs to have a lich in it, and no lich in it at the same time.)

A few other ideas:
-NPC descriptions and NPC stats need to be at least 100 pages apart.
-This cannot use a gold or silver standard. It needs to have an electrum standard (a fact never mentioned anywhere), and a very elaborate money conversion system, with e.g. bronze coins worth 1/7th electrum. They're not referred as electrum or bronze of course, but with made-up names like "Third Dynasty grucats" and "sifs".
-Rename stats and classes for no reasons.
-Use a mix of multiple measurements. Feet and meters, lbs and kg and stones and slots.
-Somewhere in the dungeon there should be a portal to a whole world the DM must improvise out of thin air. What's the Grobulon Dimension? Fuck if I know, but it leads there. Or maybe a portal to literally anywhere. Take your setting's planet's map (you have a painfully detailed world map, right?) and roll coordinates at random! Oh, and 1d1000 years back in the past. Hope you have a detailed setting timeline.
-A magic item that mind controls the characters to railroad them into following The Plot.
-The big baddies use odiously powerful magic items (or tantalizing, really interesting items used in horrendously boring ways), which explicitly don't work (or outright disintegrate) if PCs use them, justified with obscure bullshit backstory reasons (if at all).
-OOOOH I FORGOT. Very important: the adventure needs a NPC that hires the party, then inevitably betrays them.
-(Also lots of traitorous monsters, and doppelgangers, so your players become paranoid forever.)

Timmy TrashPanda7 May 2020 at 07:53

Every detail of any room has a separate DC to notice any particular detail, and a further DC to a history or knowledge check to determine in universe connections. Despite ostensibly a beginner dungeon, the challenge of the checks seem to have been calculated to be impossible for all but a maxxed-out optimised build level 20 character.

"The room has a stone flagged floor coloured dark grey (DC 15 perception to notice floor) laid out in the pattern of the sacred circles of Glarenthil (DC 30 arcana check to recognise this), it is a different stone from the walls (DC 20, Dwarf characters who took the stonemason background from appendix C may add 3 to their check) showing that the floor was added later and belies the history told to the characters by the hidden scroll from room 1_C (DC 17 intelligence check to make this connection). A rusted chandelier swings from the ceiling (DC 35 perception to notice chandelier), the trap on the chandelier (8d6 lightning damage, dexterity save 20 for half) will immediately be triggered unless the chandelier is noticed, and power word to disarm it is spoken (DC 25 Arcana Check to recognise the trap is disarmed by a code word DC 40 History (Backstory Castle) needed to recognise the disarm word is the name of the Elf Queen Hyacinth). Across the room is a bookcase (DC 18 Perception to notice bookcase) filled with dusty tomes (DC 20 arcana check to notice that there is nothing of value in the books which contain 19 cp worth of paper each). Glathnark the Mocron-Reiru Assassin is hiding behind the bookcase (looking behind the bookcase and succeeding in a dc 50 spot check will reveal the assassin) and will spring out and assassinate (Death attack auto hit, crit on 3+) the last in marching order if the characters pass through the room to the door on the other side (DC 15 perception to notice other door)."

Tortuous Tables

Tables are;

Boring; result one = One Orc. Result Two = Two Orcs. Result Three = Three Orcs

To be properly boring tables have to have a lot of the same *kind* of thing in them, differeing only in absract numbering and in no other way;

So;

result A - "Fifteen Leather-Clad Orcs accompanied to two goblin scouts. The Orcs are loyal to the Orc Boss Gark and are searching the halls for intruders."

Result B - "twelve goblins accompanied by five ferocious orcs clad in leather armour. The Goblins are loyal to the Goblin Boss Gloob, who serves the Orc Boss Gark faithfully out of fear. The Orcs serve Gark directly and think themselves better than the Goblins. All are armed with random weapons. Damage - by weapon."


Tables must be split over multiple spreads, either extended laterally with columns going partially onto the next spread, or vertically with rows going onto the next spread, or BOTH!

Tables must be extremely recursive, that is, to complete the roll of any particualr result, you must have to roll on another table, in a different part of the book, which also requires you to roll on ANOTHER table.

The more immedaiately necessary the result is the more recursive the table must be. And even better, some tables have multiple PATHS of recursion - to complete them you have to go to two differnt places in the book and reassemble the results!

So, result B, "twelve goblins accompanied by five ferocious orcs clad in leather armour. The Goblins are loyal to the Goblin Boss Gloob, who serves the Orc Boss Gark failthfully out of fear. The Orcs serve Gark directly and think themselves better than the Goblins*. All are armed with random weapons*. Damage - by weapon."

*See - Orc Motivation Table
*See - Random Weapon table pages 302 to 305 [Obviously this is satire, in the real adventure, no page numbers would be mentioned, you would just have to flip until you find stuff

Vague, Undifferentiated and Uninventive Content

Table results have to be totally uninventive, nothing you couldn't have come up with yourself, and they must be vague enough that they bring no solid diagetically concepts to mind. They should be useless for immediate purposes, badly wieghted so they produce incoherent results over long-term play, and also be very boring to read as a matter of game prep.

An example of Vague Results below

ORC MOTIVATIONS; (two column)

This Orc feels;
1 Angry
2 Wrathful
3 Raging
4 Frustrated
5 Aggressive
6 Hateful
7 Like fighting
8 In a Dark Mood

About
1 Resources
2 Starvation
3 Greed
4 lack of food
5 The Orc is hungry
6 The orc is frustrated
7 The Orc wants something
8 What it doesn't have


That's all I got right now. Feel free to do my work for me add your own ideas below, or in a blog post of your own, in the popular longrunning gygaxian democracy experiment - The Mystery of Backstory Castle!

jamesnake6 May 2020 at 03:18

Half of the tables' results are some form of "dm choice" or "pick other two". Especially the most important treasures are not defined.

Mind-Crushing Monster Stats!

Cassie12 May 2020 at 07:41

I realise this is much too late, but an addition that would do wonders is if all the monster boxes vary by rule editions too. Darkbone Haunters are 3rd edition d&d, mocron-reiru are written with OD&D notation, each monster has an AC value, but you don't know if it's ascending ac or descending, some monsters use Target20 and some use THAC0 to attack. Some monsters have attack matrices (but not the same monsters that have OD&D notation).

THE APOCALYPTIC ADVENTURE DESIGN!

Nasty Nerfs!

Phlox6 May 2020 at 09:44

The only thing that is easy to find is a full page near the front of the adventure explaining all of the spells which are NOT ALLOWED in the dungeon. "Techt has enchanted the area so that teleporting instead does 2d8/2 damage to the caster. Techt has enchanted the area so that divination give incorrect information most of the time."

Souless Subsystems!

Kyana6 May 2020 at 08:53

In the adventure, or maybe a hangout, add a few new rule subsystem that emulate/simulate something in very minute and unnecessary details (such as mass breathing or camp-building, for example), and then insist that these rules variations are mandatory for this adventure, so players will have to learn and master them. Add one or two places in the adventure where these rules are absolutely essential for the victory, and then never bring them up ever again so at the end players will waste time learning and memorizing them.
Subsystems, of course, are either very bland or exceptionally intertwined or both.

Trash Traps!

The logic of traps and how they interact with the investigation of the imagined world is actually surprisingly subtle, with each version of doctrine having a different interaction with the players and DM and reaching its own meta-stasis over continued play - which actually makes forming a truly, exactly, nightmarishly BAD trap quite a complex equation

lets see what we can consider

Inconsistency - not only must the methodology of the traps be inconsistent *within the diagesis* i.e. it must make no sense when considering the structure of the imagined world

but it must also be inconstant as a matter of design

Types of Traps

the gygaxian tomb of horrors trap - something designed specifically for *adventureres* and to fuck over people who do stuff like D&D players, like HA HA HA YOU THOUGHT AHEAD YOU TWATS!!

the naturalistic vietcong trap - something designed in-world in exactly the way taht an in world agent would make it for in-world reasons - genuinely very hard to find and genuinely potentially deadly but since it follows the logic of that reality, something that can be learnt and ultimately accounted for

the chris mcdowall trap - potentially dangerous but always signalled in some form. The trap as 'problem' primarily, its danger only serving to force investigation and thought, a potential killer but not truly designed to kill

the storygames trap - a trap which is actually an 'event', like a bottle episode of a tv series set in a dungeon. potentially somewhat dangerous but primarily created to prompt complex DRAMA - I hope you wrote an EXTENSIVE BACKSTORY because now you will be reading it out at length to each other.

the NUMBERS trap - like that guy, I forget his name but he makes everything numbers? The torchbearer guy. This trap reduces one particular rules factor on your character sheet by a SPECIFIC NUMEBR oh fuck I hope you don't have to calibrate the equations in the excel sheet you are using to work out who the fuck you are!!

the "dick or dog" Raggi Trap - the trap which puts the pcs and the players into a dirtbag-spiderman style MORAL QUANDRY - do you release the RAPE VAMPIRE? or RAPE the MEAT BUYER? well you have to do ONE OR OTHE OTHER  or the WORLD WILL END!! BECAUSE OF YOU! ITS YOUR OWN FAULT FOR GOING ON AN ADVENTURE YOU FOOOOOOLS

Troubling Trap warnings and Stupid Expectation Setting

There have to be warnings about what kinds of trap you will be facing in Backstory Castle, and those warnings have to be (long and boring and readaloud boxed text of course) and probably also in riddle form, but they also have to be just useful enough that its worth listening to them - they will actially predict something about the traps.

And then they will fail totally because soemthing utterly incoherent will happen and none of it will make any sense.

Moronic Mono-Motivated Monsters

Only Orcs, Goblins, Skelingtons and RAPE ENGINES exist in Backstory Castle and there are sure as fuck no warnings about the last one.

And there are lots of Orcs and Goblins and Skeletons.

And the Goblins sure as fuck don't do anything interesting.

No monster in Backstory Castle wants anything except to stop you going through its room and they all wait in their rooms doing nothing but waiting until you arrive. No monster has any relation with any other. The Goblins have no tricks.

They do have backstory though. Individual and in-depth backstories.

Awful Encounters

Untill they aren't.

Unknown5 May 2020 at 18:25

Half of the place has careful encounter balance to ensure there's no actual risk of permanent player consequences (the horror!), and then the other half is full of "fuck you, you die instantly with no countermeasure" challenges, and there's no way to tell which is which amidst all the complex backstory and wording.

jamesnake6 May 2020 at 03:18

Many encounters have notes about adjusting the "difficulty", like "if you think your player are steamrolling the dungeon you can add 1d6 goblins in room 2B and 3d6 Mocron-Reiru in room XII"

The Oblidisideryptch6 May 2020 at 14:09

No matter what the players are doing, no matter how innocuous the situation is, randomly stop and ask them to detail their actions and locations exactly like they're about to be ambushed.
Sometimes they are. Sometimes it's a really bad trap. Sometimes you just let out a sigh and say "ok, let's move on". There is no pattern.
Also, combat is officially played out on a grid but the DM must ignore the grid and run it as theater of the mind without telling players. Or vice versa. Lots of "how long are your arms" questions and wankery involving what exactly a flail does to a shield in 1400's Brittany, France.

Turgid Treasures! 

yaldabaothOfficial6 May 2020 at 13:34

What about treasures? There ought to be just enough gold to make it feel like someone is making fun of you. 1d6 electrum pieces (electrum because it's a pain to manage) in a trapped chest?
A chest in every room with the same trap and the same reward perhaps?

I am reluctant to allow any meaningful treasures but I will accept - random piles of copper coins five meters deep. Half of the coins are actually a 3/4 copper/electrum mix (so you have to calculate the precise value. They have been painted to look like the copper coins which they are mixed in with. They have also been enchanted to explode if examined. The coins are also cursed.

Empty Rooms!

Room after room after room after room after room after room after room after room after room after room after room after BOOM CAMOFLAUGED RAPE ENGINE -

"I gotcha!" Chuckels Bocht Techt emerging from a hidden hole, "now thou are porke'd fore sure, unless thou answerest my mine riddles three!"

Evil Encumbrance!

baron von carson9 May 2020 at 21:03

What's the most fun part of dungeons? Tracking encumbrance. So this book will have it covered. It should go above and beyond and require the player to track their calorie intake, fatigue and hydration because all those things will impact how much they can carry.

Not sure how to track it? There will be maths equations the player has to use to track what their encumbrance level is. Half the rules are in the main book with the remaining rules in a supplement. The importance of tracking encumbrance is inconsistently linked to how some traps function. Progress is impossible without the excruciatingly detailed encumbrance rules.

YOU LIVE YOU DIE YOU LIVE AGAIN!

There is no escape from Backstory Castle! He he heeee

the Wizard Bocht Techt made a sorcery on it so that if you die in the Readaloud Maze you come back to life in a random place in the maze - just like Doom and the year 2020AD; the only way out is through!

Malcolm Wilson6 May 2020 at 09:49

Specifically detailed ending script, maybe with multiple options. But they're shitty, like a video game "which of these three levers do you pull" ending.

A long-winded and overly detailed explanation of What Happens Next that expects you to build your entire campaign around this dungeon. Intricate details about the plans of the various NPCs that leave no room for player interaction. The adventure railroads the GM.

Similarly long-winded "where to place this dungeon" section that covers where, exactly, down to the hex or grid coordinate, where you are SUPPOSED to place this dungeon in fifteen different published settings including specific NPCs who have But Thou Must'ed the PCs into entering the dungeon. Absolutely no advice on integrating it with a homebrew setting.