The Anthrophage

Yes, I know it should more properly be Anthropophage, but when I hear that I think of an ogre or something. Anyway, here's a monster for Uz.

The anthrophage is a strange creature found near certain alien wrecks in the Wastes of Rust.  While comparatively easy to destroy, their ability to reproduce by infecting victims means they are widely feared by the inhabitants of Uz - or at least those who travel into the wastes. They appear as a large dodecahedron atop a shining screw with spindly legs.  Despite their glittering appearance, all of their body parts are organic.

Anthrophage

AC 7 [12], HD 1, Attk 1x (drill special) THAC0 18 [+1] MV 90’ (30’) SV D10 W11 P12 B 13 S14 (4), AL Neutral, XP 13 NA 1d4 (2d6) TT Nil

• Virus: The drill of an anthrophage injects the victim with a strange substance. They must make a save vs death or explode into a number of anthrophage equal to their HD in 1d3 rounds.
• Derived: Anthrophage will not and cannot attack nonhuman entities.  Priests, regardless of mutation level, count as human for the purposes of this attack.
• Short Lifespan: Anthrophagi can only live for 1d6 weeks.

Mastering the Megadungeon Take 2: Tips for 5e

My First Megadungeon

My first attempt at this received some flak for using some Old School D&D blogosphere jargon terms.  I'm going to try to do better about that this time and make it more friendly for people who haven't been reading about these things for a decade now.  What better way to do that than to talk about how to make them for the latest version of D&D?

I am not going to cover why you would ever make a megadungeon in this post, but may handle it later if there is interest.  Instead I'm going to assume you already see the fun in exploring a big, weird space and in making one to be explored.  Based on your hypothetical desire to run this style of game, I'm going to assume you would benefit from a houserule: half xp for monsters but you get 1xp per 1gp of treasure found.  This will, hopefully, encourage players to spend resources going deeper into the dungeon to find treasure instead of trying to play the world's weirdest version of Rainbow Six.

Another assumption I'm making is that you want to follow the traditional megadungeon model where the level of the dungeon is roughly equivalent to the level of the PCs exploring it.  Unfortunately, this is difficult in 5e given the nature of low levels.  A fix I recommend (and that I use in the 5e version of Nightwick Abbey) is to have the first level of the dungeon have challenges for characters levels 1-3, and then each level after that is equal to one character (so dungeon level 2 is for character level 4, 3 is for 5, etc.).  If you have c. 70 rooms on a level this should work fine with the other methods mentioned in this post.

Nightwick Abbey was inspired by films such as the Blind Dead.

As I said in the first post, if you want to run your megadungeon for a long time and not get too bored with it, you're gonna need to have a theme that resonates with you.  The old "built by a mad wizard" potentially allows for a wide variety of potential content but may not grab you enough to work on it in the long term. My two most developed megadungeons (Nightwick Abbey and the Uz undercity) were based on the midcentury horror cinema I liked. A Tolkien fan might want to do a riff on the ruins of the Pits of Utumno or Angband. A fan of classic sci fi may want to do some version of the huge Krell machine in Forbidden Planet. Someone who is more familiar with the works of the big three pulp authors might want to base their dungeons on Mt Voormithadreth or the city in "Red Nails." There are a lot of possibilities but the important thing is that they resonate with you and are broad enough in terms of genre that you can draw from a wide variety of sources.

Once you have determined you're overall theme, you'll need themes for the different levels of your dungeon.  Gygax suggested starting with 6 levels, but I think 3 is plenty and you can get by even with one with the judicious use of something like the Greyhawk Construction Company (in Nightwick I used purple mist). Each level should have a theme, like "the catacombs," "the sunless garden," "the orc spawning pits," "the house of portals," etc. This theme should fit within the broader theme of the dungeon (catacombs in a haunted abbey, for example) but provide a different flavor from the levels adjoining it.  Each sub area should also fit within this theme.

Your New Best Friends

But what the hell do I mean by sub area? Your dungeon is going to be made up of smaller complexes with themes connected together on a level that has a theme in a dungeon that has a theme. M A R Barker, the creator of Tekumel, called these "Saturday Night Specials" - the dungeons within a dungeon.  What I did for Nightwick Abbey, and what i recommend for your first time, is that you generate a level using a 4 x 3 set of dungeon geomorphs like those created by Dyson Logos. His geomorphs and those of his imitators are 10x10 sections of dungeon that all have exits at the same points so that they can easily be connected into larger complexes.  Using Dave's Mapper can help you make a level with very little effort, and you can replace geomorphs that don't fit the theme very easily.  However, you'll most likely need to add the connections to other levels to the map in the forms of staircases, ladders, pits, chutes, etc. I cheated with Nightwick Abbey and made the nature of the dungeon such that space is bent within it and thus the stairs didn't need to match up. You could also draw your own, which I have done with more recent iterations of Nightwick Abbey.

There are of course other ways to create these sub-complexes, but we're going to stick with geomorphs right now because tools like the ones above make them easy to work with.  If you follow my advice, you should have about 12 geomorphs (with the open edged option on Dave's Mapper) to come up with sub area ideas for.  Now some of your complexes might just be "storage" or some similarly vague thing like that that doesn't differentiate that geomorph much from the background themes of the level and the dungeon as a whole.  That's fine, but you'll definitely want at least a few that are very unique.  The more you have generally the better.

But What's Inside a Room?

To stock any dungeon, I use the following algorithm to quiet my body thetans: between 1/3 and 1/2 of the rooms will have monsters in them. This number is taken from old school D&D but I find it works just as well in 5e.  I use a set of monster types including Bosses, Sub Bosses, Grunts, and Mooks.  The CRs of these will be dependent on dungeon level. For every thirty rooms I have 1 boss encounter, 2 sub boss encounters, 3 grunt encounters, and 4 mook encounters.  I've found that 12 geomorphs usually works out to 75-90 rooms, so a given level is likely to have three sets totaling 3 boss encounters, 6 sub boss encounters, 9 grunt encounters, and 12 mook encounters.  I tend to determine these encounters based on the whole level, but one could hypothetically stock every geomorph with a smaller version of this setup; however, I find this produces too many boss encounters, so I use total dungeon rooms to determine how many monsters exist.

There will be a number of rooms with treasure in them equal to the number of rooms with monsters in them.  Half of these will be a room that already has a monster, and half will be rooms where the treasure is merely hidden, trapped, or unguarded.  To determine the total amount of treasure in a dungeon level, I generate treasure as though the level was the lair of each boss on that level.  Typically this means 2-3 bosses. Look at their CR, and then roll in the DMG or pick based on whatever method you prefer the amount of treasure they would get for a creature of that CR.  I recommend then using courtney's treasure document to divide treasure into parcels and make the stacks of money something more interesting.  I then group these parcels into however many hoards I need to sprinkle around the dungeon (again equal to the number of monster encounters) and sprinkle them based on what I think is appropriate.

The map to a metroidvania, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

I hope to do an example of this kind of stocking soon, but this post is already one of my longest and I still have another topic to cover: Metroidvanias. This is a style of video game that has nonlinear paths but some are only accessible after certain progress is made in the game.  Usually this is in the form of new powers granted to the character that allow them to overcome previous obstacles; however, for D&D megadungeons I recommend just using interesting keys. Have areas on some levels that can't be accessed until a key is found or an object manipulated on a lower level.  This can make having to go through previously cleared areas to get to new dungeon levels more interesting because the players may realize "wait a minute, there's something still to be explored on this level and we just found that weird octagon stone like the hole in that wall."

I love that kind of stuff but it has a potential problem.  The first several times I tried to implement it, the PCs found the key before they found the lock and ended up selling it between delves. This is part of why I specify that the key should be on a lower level than what it unlocks.  It is still possible they'll sell or get rid of a key before using it, not realizing its true value, but sometimes it's more interesting if a door remains secret forever. If it wasn't, why have secrets in the first place?

Mastering the Megadungeon

Several months ago I got the idea for this post when a person on the Swords & Wizardry G+ group asked for advice on making a megadungeon.  I have two - Nightwick Abbey and Uz's Undercity - and I have run them quite a lot.  By my (probably flawed) math, I have run Nightwick alone for more sessions than James ran his original Dwimmermount campaign and online playtests combined.   My online group often asserts that megadungeons are my bread and butter.  Presumably I've learned something about making them and running them in all that time, and this is my attempt to try to organize that learning.

A megadungeon needs a theme.  The standard theme is, of course, "a wizard built it for weird wizard reasons."  That is a fine one and allows for a wide variety encounters, tricks, and traps, but for reasons I will reveal later I don't think its necessarily the best idea.  I think you need something stronger - more particular to the dungeon.  Make sure the theme is something that speaks to you.  It needs to come from some kind of media you don't mind revisiting to draw from the well when you're not in the mood or stuck for ideas.  For me that meant horror movies.

It is also important for levels and sublevels to have themes that, while tied to the dungeon as a whole, make them unique.  One of the bigger problems with the first version of Nightwick Abbey is the first level showed all of its cards too early.  The "new"* version instead has much more themed levels - a cloister, a garden, torture chambers, catacombs, etc. - that help the DM and the players keep from getting bored.  It also means there's a greater sense of discovery because either the thing you discovered is new and interesting (a new level with a different theme) or it hints at something about the level currently being explored.

The Player's Map of First Level of Nightwick Abbey.  Letter Designations were Assigned by Players.

I use geomorphs for Nightwick and the Pettigrew Papers for Uz, and both of these sources allow me to have micro-themes within the bigger themes of the level and the dungeon.  In the case of Nightwick Abbey each geomorph has a broad description of what it is before I start stocking it.  The geomorphs have since become fairly obvious to the online group - who keep track of their divisions, but I'm not so much bothered by that.  Geomorphs are a very easy way to Jaquays your dungeon.

Stocking algorithms are incredibly important to the way I design dungeons and run games in general.  The main reason I use them is the help keep the voices in my head quiet, but I think its worth commenting on how they affect my games.  Once I have assigned a geomorph/pettigrew complex a theme I divide the number of rooms in it by three (always rounding up if I have to).  That gives me the number of rooms with monsters in them.  Then I use Courtney's Treasure Tables to generate an equal number of small caches (1d3 treasure parcels each).  Half of these will go in rooms with monsters, a quarter of the ones without monsters will be trapped, and a quarter will just be free treasure.  If the theme of the geomorph/complex necessitates a boss monster then I will increase their treasure parcels to the 4 + 1d4 - 2 one.  I give each geomorph or complex a special if I can think of one.  If I can't think of one then in the case of Nightwick Abbey I don't sweat it that much because Nightwick's entire operating mode is a special.**

On the level map I posted there are only maybe two truly empty rooms.  Only 1/3 of the rooms have a monster encounter, but the rooms without them often have elaborate decorations or clues as to the nature of the dungeon.  These are usually based on the geomorph, level, or dungeon theme.  This is why it is important to have a very personalized theme: when you're stocking an 80 room level, eventually you will run out of ideas; however, if the themes you've picked are resonant enough with your brain you should be able to fill in the gaps with something.  It also important to remember that something is better than nothing.  All D&D is hackwork and a half-assed idea that gets your game on the table is better than a perfect one that takes months.

Imma Stock all the Rooms!

Back in the dim antiquity of 2009 when I first started thinking about the dungeon that would become Nightwick Abbey, there were a lot of hot takes saying that megadungeons needed to be huge.  At the time I felt that Nightwick was too small but was unwilling to enlarge it due to laziness. Then I ran level one.  For five years.  ~77 rooms got me about 5 years of play without my needing to make a second level (though I kept promising I would).  Experience with the Uz Undercity - which is a little less traditionally designed - has convinced me that 60 - 80 rooms a level is plenty mega for players to get lost and have plenty of options to explore.  I wouldn't advise trying to get by with just one level, but the current version of Nightwick has 2 60 - 80 room levels and two ~30 room sublevels.  This has been enough prep that I haven't touched it in two years and it seems like I may not have to for a long while yet.

One thing to remember is to restock your content.  A simple version I use is that a room restocks on a 1-2 on the dice.  The first week after the room has been explored you roll a d20, the next week a d12, then a d8, then a d6, then a d4 and you roll that d4 for each additional week until it restocks.  This has worked very well for me, when I remember to do it.

I'll end with some pictures of my "Nightwick Abbey Prototype" - the graph composition notebook I keep my dungeon notes in.

*It is some years old.

**It's a living dungeon that shifts when the PCs do things it doesn't like.

Uz: Looking For Players

In the distant time of the Future/Past, men lived and loved... and died!  In the deserts of the dawn of time and the doom of the world, man built the greatest city of all.  Uz! The First City of Men. Uz! Whose horrid fire god called for the sacrifice of babes.  Uz! Whose armies stretched across the Desert of Demons.  Uz! Whose towering ziggurats blotted out the sun.

You've read about it, now experience it for yourself.  See Mu-Tants, the slave race from an alien planet long destroyed!  Visit the forgotten ruins of the Wastes of Rust!  Tremble in terror at the excesses of the Dero, savage beings from the Earth's core!  Gasp at the unspeakable rites of Moloch! Witness the last days of Man!

Do you have what it takes to survive in... UZ?!*

Uz is coming to a G+ Hangout near you every Monday at 8:30 CDT.  For more information contact me at [email protected]

*Based on theories developed by the finest minds of the History Channel.

Uz Divine Intervention Rules

I proposed these rules a bit more than a week ago and as of the last session they've been used in the campaign so they're official.  Here they are for the benefit of the general public.

While many past/future scholars view the "gods" of Uz as little more than powerful aliens, it is difficult to argue that those beings of the future/past do not possess powers well beyond the physical limits of human beings.

In addition to the "gifts" granted to their priests in the form of magic and mutations, gods may also show their favor on mortals as Moloch did on Uz and His Sons.  To gain the favor of a god, a sacrifice is required in a place that has an established psychic link with the deity, such as a temple or sacred grotto.  For every 100gp in value, the supplicant gains 1% to a future divine intervention roll.  Every HD in creatures or humans sacrificed provides 10%.

Divine intervention can be sought in order to gain a reroll on a saving throw, attack, or an extra die of damage.  However, in order to gain this benefit, the player must first throw percentile dice.  If the percentile dice show a number that is less than or equal to the percent gained from various sacrifices, the amount of orgone pumped into the god's pleasure sack has been sufficient and you gain the benefit.  If not, then you don't.  After such a roll, the percentage resets.

Priests of at least 4th level may also uses sacrifices to consecrate an area, creating a psychic connection with the god in question.  This requires HD sacrifices - gold will not due.  Once the priest views his sacrifices as acceptable, they are slain and percentile dice are thrown in the normal manner.  If the roll is successful, the area may now act as a temple for purposes of memorizing spells and for using divine intervention.

Uzite Law

Uzite law is primarily interested in the settlement of disputes.  While today the law extends to all social strata, it was originally meant to curtail violence between the cities noble houses, which still exert a great amount of power today.  In the days of Uz of Uz, First King of Uz, the other nobles who joined him in the founding of the city - guided by the Fuel-Less Fire of Moloch - did not always see eye to eye.  They and their families would often quarrel and commit horribly violent acts in response to perceived slights.  Those affiliated with the victim would then retaliate with even worse acts, and thus a blood-feud would threaten to tear the First City of Men apart.

At some point - Phutians claim that it was during the Phutian occupation, but Uzites vehemently dispute this - one of the kings decided to create a strict code of law for the purpose of adjudicating these disputes without the nead for a blood-feud.  This system worked so well - or at least it did in the eyes of the noble houses - that it has been extended to even cover disputes between slaves and foreigners.  In this system, the accuser must bring the accused before a judge.  The judge then hears both sides and finally rules in accordance with the byzantine case law that develops in a city that has existed for several thousand years.  Punishment is then executed by the accuser or the accuser's family - unless of course the accused is found innocent in which case the punishment is then turned on the accuser himself!

The instances of case law and the punishments that accompany them are based on a strict heirarchy.  Nobles are treated as superior to freemen and slaves, and thus punishments for crimes against them are more severe.  Typical crimes against nobles are punished on an "eye for an eye" basis, but disputes between nobles might change this if the nobles are practically of different ranks.  A lesser son of the house of Adompha would, for example, be punished quite severly for harming Mari-Adab, but the inverse would likely lead to only a public censure for the Prince of Pleasures.

Commoners and slaves are typically charged money for their offenses, unless they are against a noble of course.  This even includes crimes such as murder, as the nobles believe that allowing commoners - or worse, slaves - an outlet for sanctioned violence would put silly ideas in there heads. 

Foreigners are even lower in this heirarchy than slaves.  They are almost always convicted of crimes and regardless of the severity of their offense the punishment always involves mutilation if not downright execution.  Interestingly, this is not based onlong lines of lineage as it is often true that Phutians have lived in the city longer than some who would call themselves Uzites.  Instead, the accused or accuser must provide witnesses to their provinence, which is often difficult if one is dragged in bonds before a court.

This system results in some interesting peculiarities.  First, petty theft - while technically illegal - is allowed to occur since it would be a hassle to involve the king's court.  As such, one would do well to guard one's purse carefully while enjoying one of the vintages of Ilion in one of the city's many wine-houses or shopping for goods along the Street of Sins.  Second, mob violence is surprisingly common since the law does little to address Uz's underlying problems.  This is less true during the reign of a strong king, but Dagazar I has had a short reign by Uzite standards and sits rather precariously on his throne.  Finally, blasphemy and witchcraft are the only crimes not treated with this system because they are tried in special temple courts.  The nature of these courts is mysterious to most Uzites, and few that have ever stood before them have lived to discuss the proceedings.

The Mocking Ones

Mocking One
No. Appearing: 1d6 (3d6)
Armor Class: As Leather and Shield
Hit Dice: 2
Movement: 90'
Attacks: Slam (no damage but Paralysis) or Claw
Special: Paralyzing Slime, Mimicry
Morale: 7
Alignment: Neutral

The mocking ones are strange creatures born eons ago in the great underworlds of ancient Mars.  In the distant time before the Deluge, they may have come to Earth through any trades humans may have once had with the martians, or simply on martian warships.  On Earth they live much as the did on Mars, squatting in underground ruins and caverns of suitable size to support their eating habits.

They appear as enormous balls of pallid white flesh with rudimentary eyes and mouths.  Their arms are little more than flippers or rude tendrils covered with a milky yellow substance.  Their legs are thin and strangely black and squamous, ending in sharp talons.  They are known for their strange gait, which is obviously caused by their unusual body shape.

Mocking ones are master mimics of sound, and can produce a wide variety of noises through the strange undulations of their mouth and vibrations from deep within their fleshy mass.  Sight unseen, it is nearly impossible for humans to differentiate the sounds made by a mocking one from those made by the thing they are imitating.  Since they tend to live in underground/dungeon environments, the sounds they produce range from such things as doors slamming, humans screaming in agony, the bellowing of ancient monsters, or the din of battle.  A group of these creatures would make a strange set of sounds indeed!

These calls are typically used for matting, with particularly hard to replicate dungeon sounds presumably being more impressive to the females of the species.  It also sometimes has the effect of luring in prey, which mocking ones typically first subdue with their paralyzing flippers (paralyzation lasts 3d6 rounds, though a subsquent save made while still paralyzed may lengthen this time to 3d6 turns).  After all creatures are paralyzed, and not before, the mocking ones will begin to slowly dismantle their meal with their claws and mouth, dealing 1d3 damage each round.

Fable of a Failed Race

When Uz of Uz First King of Uz found the Fuel-Less Fire on the banks of the River of Life, It told him of the marvels and wonders of the Desert of Demons and the Worlds Beyond Counting.  With the Fire's words he lived many lives in strange lands on strange worlds.  When the Fire's words ceased he built the First City of Men.

But there was one place in all his lives that he did not tread, for the Fire had warned him.  North of the Sea of Salt was, and is, a land that is the dwelling place of Mot, and no man should venture there.  But men did.  There they built a city.  Jerah, City of the Worm squatted hideously on the banks of the Sea of Salt.  The men of That Place dealt in death and their ghoul-priests reveled and sang litanies to He Who Must Be Obeyed, a strange and almost forgotten aspect of the Dweller in Darkness.  They said He taught laws older than time, older than Fire.  The Laws of the Fretting Worm were harsh and demanding and the soldier-fanatics of Jerah spread them as far as the Almodad, the Jewel of the Desert.

The women of That Place bore an intolerable yoke the likes of which is unseen in this day even among the savage Phutians.  Daily were members of their sex cast into His maw and great and terrible was their suffering.  In their sorrow and horror they called out and they were heard by Li-Lit of the Night.  For the first time She Who is Over Her Slaughtering Block came down from the high mountains with daggers of light.  She struck at Mot and thus did Death strike Death.  In the City of the Warrior Women, known to the men of Uz as New Jerah, they say that She Who Devours Infants made Mot blind and cast him back into the Dark.

Now Jerah is no more.  The ruins of that smashed city still remain like bleached bones on the shore, but only fools venture to the place where He Who Pulls into His Gullet dwells.   

Musings on my home group and my DMing style

Last weekend, a member of my home group ran a one shot game using the final D&D Next playtest packet, and I have to say I was impressed.  I found the system general simple enough for me to like it and also that several things it did, such as backgrounds and the way profeciencies work, closely mirrored things I have been wanting to implement in my S&W games as part of an attempt to make them more like WFRP.  Naturally, I soon turned my thoughts towards how I would modify the system to run a Dark Country game for my home group.

But home groups are funny things.  The G+ group that I've been playing with for the past two years, aside from being very patient with my constant flitting from one setting to the next, has also really really dug the Dark Country.  This should come as no surprise as they're made up of people who saw my add for the Dark Country G+ game and went "that sounds awesome. Sign me up!"  My Hattiesburg group is, instead, made up of close friends I've had since high school.  Because the group is based around our friendship rather than our taste in particular kinds of fantasy games, this means there are some differences

Some players in my home group have never liked the Dark Country, and before last night I was never entirely sure why, even if I had inklings.  Sure, some did, but the ones that didn't often were the ones who were most invested in the idea of playing D&D, so if they aren't having a good time it kinda drags the whole thing down.  After discussing what I wanted to run with my players last night, I discovered the reasons that they don't like my Nightwick game.

The first, and this was primarily the complaint of a single player - though one who is, again, one of the ones who tends to get invested and thus his complaint is probably worth considering - is that my constant need to limit character options in an attempt to get a specific tone is damaging to game balance, since the game assumes that all options are in play.  I don't particularly agree with this, since I think that D&D was, is, and hopefully will always be set up as a tool box for individual groups.  Using all the tools in the toolbox is the quickest way to Boring Town imaginable, as it leads to the high fantasy nonsense one sees in post Forgotten Realms D&D.  What you leave out is, at least to my eye, just as important as what you put in.

The other complaint, which I think was more broadly held, is that the Dark Country was too shitty, and that there was little sense of progress in the Nightwick Abbey games I've run for them.  The most obvious reason for this is a problem I've noticed with my own DMing style over the last year or so: I treat the setting as a noose slowly tightening around the PCs' collective neck.  This might not sound like such a bad thing, but I noticed in my Cocanha playtests of Feudal Anarchy that it lead to the G+ group sometimes feeling like they could take nothing but missteps, and in my G+ Dark Country game it eventually led to my having to advance the timeline of the setting by several months in order to avoid all of the adventures suddenly becoming solely about procuring food for the village of Nightwick.  This is a problem, I realize its a problem, and I'm trying to figure out ways to fix it.

More importantly though, talking to my players helped me realize another issue they were having, and I think that certain G+ players such as Robert and Zak were having is that Nightwick Abbey's very nature means that one doesn't feel like any progress is happening.  In other megadungeons, the dungeon is mostly a static environment.  I don't mean that the monsters don't move or that there aren't active factions in the dungeon.  I mean the dungeon itself isn't alive.  Nightwick Abbey is.  So in Greyhawk or Dwimmermount or whatever, clearing an area might not be permanent, but you at least feel like you did something.  In Nightwick, on the other hand, the dungeon is still living and still mad at you and still vomiting up monsters, so there's little sense that anything got done, regardless of how much you mapped.

This is something I previously hadn't considered, and would explain my home group's general preference for Uz over Nightwick, even if it often contradicts the problem of limited player options I first identified.  There's more of a sense of progress in clearing out a level of the Uz undercity.

Last night I discussed a number of possible options with my players, noting that I would prefer to run something that I made because the thing that I enjoy about the classic D&D settings is that they were created through play.  The organizations and historical events in them are a combination of the creativity of the players and the DM, and that is super cool.

So initially I pitched the Wilderlands, since, for that group, there a large part of what I would be doing for that setting was created through play.  In my old 3e game, several of their characters are legends if not out and out (minor) gods, and my wife destroyed a giant robot that was rampaging through the CSIO (my co-DM used the stats for the Tarrasque) by rolling 3 20s in a row* while only level 6, ensuring both the immortality of her character and, by the collapsing of the giant robot, the destruction of large sections of that famous city.  So the changes made by player character action would, hypothetically loom large over any future Wilderlands campaigns.

But my tastes have changed since I ran the Wilderlands in college.  Back then I was primarily interested in Late Antiquity, my intellectual imagination fired by the works of Walter Goffart and Patrick Geary, not to mention Jordanes and Bede.  And while I do still clearly enjoy pre-medieval fantasy settings, my tastes, both intellectually and in terms of fantasy fiction, have turned more towards things related to the high to late Middle Ages.  I like knights and guilds and medieval depictions of the Devil and fortified manors and even the Church.  These are largely incompatible with both the Wilderlands as generally conceived, and, more importantly, the Wilderlands as it is likely remembered by my players.

So I'm not really sure what to do.  My G+ players, particularly Michael, Huth, and Zzarchov, would likely prefer that I keep running the Dark Country (and to a lesser extent the Terran Directorate) until Christ in His glory comes to sit in judgement, and I greatly appreciate those players, but as Chris Kutalik has noted on several occasions, there is something about the experience of playing with a face to face group that is just better, even if G+ is a great deal better than other forms of digital gaming.

*I never remember if this was a houserule or an actual rule, but we always said in my group that 3 20s in a row meant that the thing was auto-dead regardless of other factors, much like the similar rule in EPT.

A Grand Tour of the First City of Men: Houses of Ill Repute

Many of the neighborhoods in the Lower City and the Docks contain small alehouses meant to service slaves and freemen in the employ of the various noble houses.  These are typically stocked by the house that has the most power in that respective neighborhood, and since this is the case they usually have only beer or mead and other cheap intoxicants that are easily made in the farmland around Uz.  They are typically open-air affairs that are adjacent to a small building which stores the beer.  Carousing rolls made at one of these establishments are made on a d4.

The Wine House of Barahm-Sin is a famous haunt of drunkards and adventurers.  It is where each session of the game is assumed to start unless I am told otherwise.  It is owned by a Getherite who believes himself to be a living god and is one of the only places where men can debauch that is not owned by one of the noble houses.  Barahm-Sin typically serves the strange turquoise wine of Ilion but can provide other, more exotic intoxicants should the need arise.  Carousing rolls made here are made on a d6.

The Temple of She of the Silken Thighs possesses perhaps the most infamous brothel in all of Uz.  It is a temple celebrating an obscure aspect of Li-Lit of the Night, though some argue that it might actually be a cohort of that goddess or possibly even a deified priestess of the goddess from a long forgotten age.  Like all brothels, the Temple of She of the Silken Thighs also trades in a number of intoxicants not available elsewhere - including, it is said - strange rays that provide the user with infinite pleasure.  Carousing rolls made here are on a d8.

Some of the newer noble houses that build their squat palaces on the Acropolis posses marble bathhouses and pleasure domes designed to display the wealth of the owners as well as provide them with a place to engage in their deranged fantasies. They can provide the carouser with all manner of foreign and otherworldly pleasures.  Access to these is restricted to the nobility, and thus any adventurers wishing to join in the debauchery must either be very close associates with one of the houses - preferably the one whose pleasure dome they wish to access - or become nobility themselves through deeds performed in the underworld or abroad.  Carousing rolls made at one of these establishments are made on a d10.

The Pleasure Palace of Mari-Adab outshines all others in opulence and the turpitudes available to its clients are utterly unmentionable.  Carousing rolls made here are made on a d12.

Right now, each of these use the standard mishaps chart, but once I've done more work on the adventure sites I hope to be able to give each one its own particular set of perils.

In the next part of the tour, I'll discuss notable homes whose owners the PCs might wish to befriend or rob, including the manses of some notable sorcerers.

Uz Session 3 Highlight Reel

Another Uz game happened...

• No slaves were taken this time.
• Much of the session included trying to trick Ubara the Man-god's new hirelings into doing things for the party.
• The party spent most of the time exploring a set of doors that lead off a massive hallway leading to tomb of Uz of Uz. They eventually figured out that these were his concubines and wives.  The key difference seemed to be the garb and grave goods accompanying the different women, as well as the fate of their children - which was depicted on the walls of their tomb.  His "wives" seemed to produce strange beings resembling martians while the concubines' children were cast into the Fuel-Less Fire.
• The party constructed "the Fire Lance of the Ancient Hyperzepherians," which was just two spears tied together with a torch at the end.  They used this to kill a number of corpse worms they had previously found in this part of the dungeon.
• In the room beyond they found a necklace that depicted some "beetle-men" as one of the players called them, as well as a number of artifacts that seemed to be designed by someone who had seen technological items but didn't exactly know how they work.  All the sarcophagi they've found so far in this dungeon - with the notable exception of the one belonging to Uz of Uz - seem to be modeled on "Hypersleep Pods."
• Messing around with one of the sarcophagi belonging to the concubines caused a strange beam to scan over the party - putting the priest Waw and one of the hirelings to sleep.  It then started an alarm which summoned a whole bunch of monsters - presumably dessicated corpses covered in strange, glowing runes the party had previously encountered.  Luckily, Waw had cast hold portal on the entrance to the hall before falling asleep, and they were able to break the alarm before the creatures were able to break in.
• The tombs contained depictions of Uz involved in various sexual acts with his wives and concubines.  The party made rubbings of these in hopes of selling them later to some perverse collector.
• No one in the party - including the hirelings - died.  Good for them.

Next week I'll be running A Very Nightwick Christmas instead of Uz, and I'm not sure if we'll pick back up with Uz after that or go back to Nightwick Abbey.  Only time will tell.

How Many Notes Do You Need?

The answer to the question posed in the title is, obviously, "however many works for you;" however, a recent post by Ian Burns on G+ has me wonder how many notes I need.  Ian posted a "confession" that he had spent three days making the entirety of his infamous Vats of Mazarin dungeon.  In total, he spent about 12 hours on the thing - which is more than I've spent on the first level of Nightwick Abbey at any one time, but the fact that he has multiple levels with roughly the same number of rooms has me wishing to improve my stocking efficiency.

When I first started running Nightwick Abbey  I used a hyper-minimalist map key.  I had even sparser notes than James used for his Dwimmermount game.  I typically only marked rooms that had monsters, traps or specials, and all the others didn't even have numbers placed on them.  I might write a sentence or two to explain a "special," but monsters and traps rarely got more than the number there were, the amount of HP they had, and how much damage they dealt.  I winged most of the other details on the fly, which usually worked out but eventually I would start to contradict myself.  In fact, part of the reason Nightwick Abbey might be sentient is that I wanted to explain why shit I had previously described was different.

I ended up changing my note-taking method when I started to run my version of Castle Greyhawk.  Since there were about 150 rooms on the first level, I needed to try harder to make them seem different from one another.  I also needed to be reminded more often of what those differences are, and so my keys started to get much longer and every room got its own entry.

When I started running Nightwick Abbey on G+, I adopted the same method I had used to note rooms in Castle Greyhawk.  I keep the key on a google doc and update the room descriptions every time the party changes something - assuming I remember to do so.  I also used this method when I stocked my Uz dungeons.  Here is an example of what it looks like:

A.2 Shrine of Manugal of the Setting Sun

1. Antechamber: This room is made of plain mud brick in the typical Uzite style and is not decorated in any way.  Along the north and south walls are several cages that once held human sacrifices.
Monster: None
Treasure: Nil

2. Outer Hall: The walls and columns of this chamber depict scenes of everyday life.  The city depicted, while Uzite, is actually Old Jerah.  The southernmost column depicts people being born while the northernmost depicts people being slaughtered.
Monster: None
Treasure: Nil

3. Inner Hall: Unlike the last chambers, this one is painted completely black, and it strangely appears to even dim light sources brought inside.  The columns and walls are completely smooth.  The only carved decoration is the massive statue of Manugal, made from a polished black stone of unknown origin.
Monster: None
Treasure: Nil

4. Sacrificial Chamber: Like area 3, this room is painted with a strange, black paint that seems to dim light.  Pillars are lined with strange, pale green stones.  If anyone is slain in this chamber the stones will light up.  Bones and dessicated corpses litter the floor.
Monster: 5 Vortlups (HP 7, 6, 8, 8, 10)
Treasure: 40gp, 4 pale-green gems (200gp each)

---

The problem with this method is that it takes me way too long to stock something. This is why I've become interested in Ian's Mazarin key. It seems to be a good middle ground between the two extremes that I've tried. It has just enough to allow me to remember what's supposed to be in there without having to design so much in advance that it takes me a month to work on a level.

A Grand Tour of the First City of Men: Part One

Uz, the First City of Men, is roughly divided into four parts.  The first part is the Acropolis that looms high over the rest of the city.  It is here that one may find the large, marble temples to the deities of the Uzites with their golden domes and their squat columns.  While the inner workings of these temples are secret to all those except for Priests of the 7th Circle, they still provide quite a few services for lesser priests and laymen.  The service that is likely to be of most interest to adventurers are the libraries of cylindrical texts that each temple maintains.  These texts typically concern the nature and history of their deity and related entities, though it is assumed by most secular scholars and wizards that the most accurate texts are hidden away from the public and reserved only for priests of the highest circles.

The Acropolis is also home to many of the palaces of the cities noble houses.  Most of the population of Uz belongs to a noble house in one way or another - with foreigners and the small minority of freemen that make up the adventuring classes being the only exceptions.  It is only with the cooperation of these houses that King Dagazar is able to maintain any order in his realm, and it is they who are responsible for the complex system of conflict resolution that serves as the "law" in Uz.  Their palaces are typically multi-building compounds bustling with slaves and free craftsmen that serve as clients to the larger house.

While there are at least a few free neighborhoods on the Acropolis, most of the free people and even many of the slaves actually live in its shadow.  The Lower City is the second part of Uz and it is the largest part of the city-proper.  It contains most of the cities markets, wine houses, hostels, and houses.  Many of the neighborhoods within the Lower City are associated with the noble houses of the Acropolis; however, one neighborhood is under a completely separate jurisdiction.  The Street of Sins is actually divided up among a large number of Getherite Slave Lords that use its market to sell their goods.

The Docs lie outside the walls of the city and are poorer even than the worst sections of the Lower City.  There are few markets here, and most of the people who live here are slaves who unload cargo for their noble masters; however, this is also a common place for foreigners to remain when not attending to their business within the city.  In fact, until the capture of Uz by the Phutians - many kings ago - those not of Uzite lineage were confined to this quarter unless they were in the service of one of the great houses.

Finally there is the large suburban area that surrounds the First City of Men.  This is where the copious farms are located that provide the grain and meat animals eaten with in the city.  Most of these farms are worked by slaves in the service of one of the noble houses - which usually have an accompanying villa to manage the nearby farms.  These suburbs spread for a days ride along the arable land near the river, which is about 20 miles at its widest and about 10 miles at its most narrow.

In the next post, I will discuss places where the PCs can debauch as well as the homes of several notable "wizards" that live within the city.

Uz Acropolis Session 2 Highlight Real

Uz of Uz as Depicted in the Complex Most Recently Explored by the Party

So I ran Uz again on Friday...

• Once again the party went on two expeditions, the first of which involved capturing slaves.  This time the slaves were three humans who apparently had fairly high HD (between 2 and 4) and were operating in the dungeon without torches.  They fetched a fair price.
• During the next outing, the party encountered a fearsome nekelmu, though it seemed as scared of they party as they were of it so they both backed off.
• They explored another structure made of that same strange, red rock.  It turned out this was a catacomb filled with strange skeletons.  Many belonged to children that had their skulls forcibly elongated, but there were also three tombs that contained crystaline-looking plastic skeletons of figures roughly 5'5" in height with completely smooth, elongated craniums.
• One of the PCs was killed by "ghourii" - the mindless ghouls of the undercity - in one of the few deaths that I've felt bad about in a while.  She tried to take out this mechanism that was controlling it's mind that she thought would make it more friendly, but it actually just allowed the creature to leave the room.
• After seeing several of the paintings that decorated the catacomb, the players are pretty sure that Uz of Uz was both John Carter of Mars and a space marine.

That's it for now.  I also just ran the face to face group through the dungeon, and they seemed to like it a lot. I'll likely be running both groups for it for the foreseeable future.

Uz Returns! Session Highlights

Map courtesy of Mike D

Friday I ran Uz again for the first time in several months.  I've decided to run a minicampaign in which the PCs explore the undercity beneath Uz's acropolis.  For this session, I had only one "point completed," and I let them know that upfront.  Luckily, they didn't find any of the level's exits so it was a non-issue.  Anyway, here are the good bits from the session:

• There were two expeditions: one really short one and then one longer one.
• The first expedition saw the party capture a large number of slaves - forcing me to reevaluate how I'll be giving xp for treasure in the future.  One of the characters that had participated in the previous Uz sessions managed to level up.
• The short one ended when the PCs were trying to get their captives to the surface.  They were accosted by a small party of men and decided to just climb up the rope rather than deal with them.  One of the PCs threw a hireling down the shaft to buy them some time.  They then heard a his, a strangely electrical noise, and then the shriek of the hireling.
• Nundar tried to silence the captives by breaking their jaw so that they couldn't defend themselves in court.  This resulted in several of the slaves' deaths.  These were thrown down the shaft.
• Many of the PCs spent the lucre they gained from the sale of the captives on carousing.  Those that lost money did so due to gambling debts.  Must've been a wild night at the Wine House of Barahm-Sin.
• The second expedition saw the party enter with quite a few more hirelings including Antiochus the peltast and "Dave" the slinger.
• When they returned to the dungeon, they didn't find any of the captives' corpses, but they did find their old hireling - entirely skinned!
• After exploring around what seemed to be a strangely well preserved city street, they bumped into a nest of Maggot Men!  This continues my habit of trying to kill people with monsters they told me about (or drew, in this case).
• One of the PCs tried to light the maggot men on fire but only succeeded in lighting up his boots.  He was then killed when Nundar misaimed a rock and hit him in the back of the head.  Alas, poor Balzac, we hardly knew you.
• The party then started exploring an area which Eshimur quickly realized was the Temple-Tomb of Uz of Uz himself!  The whole thing was made of a strange, red rock unfamiliar to all present.
• They saw pictures of pickup trucks, martians, and glyphs telling them to CONSUME and OBEY.
• The last encounter came when they were investigating a lesser tomb that branched off the inner hall of the Temple-Tomb.  This was filled with dead bodies, and the bodies they soon found were filled with corpse worms.  They ended up fleeing from these rather than fighting them.

Anyway, I had fun and I hope the players did too.  This session has made me rethink some (fairly minor) things about my presentation of Uz, and I think that's a good thing.  Hopefully I'll be running another session next Friday.

Two New Uz Monsters

I've missed Monster Monday for two weeks in a row, so to make up for that, here are two monsters that make Uz a horrible place to live:

Corpse Worms
No. Appearing: 1d6
Armor Class: 14
Hit Dice: 1
Movement: 90’
Attacks: 1 (proboscis)
Morale: 8
Alignment: Neutral

Corpse worms are awful scavengers found in the various caves, ruins, and undercities of the Future-Past.  They appear as worms roughly six feet in length and three inches in width.  The face of a corpse worm is a hard, blunted point ringed with fleshy holes.  Their skin is slimy and incredibly tough, and it is possible that they are a synthetic creation of the Reptoids.

Corpse worms attack by thrusting their face into their opponent’s belly, eyes, or other soft regions like a sickening harpoon.  After a successful hit, a corpse worm deals automatic damage every round thereafter until the worm has slain its victim.  Thereafter, it will stay in the victim’s body digesting its internal organs.  They will only leave the body when finished - which takes several days - or if disturbed in some way.

Grabbing a corpse worm with one’s hands is ill advised.  They secrete a strong acid from their skin that will do one die of damage to anyone with bare hands.  If some sort of gauntlet or armor is worn, it will dissolve in 1d6 rounds, dealing 1 point of damage to the wearer once the process is completed.

Glassy Things
No. Appearing: 1d4
Armor Class: 16
Hit Dice: 4
Movement: 90’
Attacks: 1 (claw, bite or mucous)
Morale: 9
Alignment: Neutral
 
Glassy things haunt the upper levels of the Uz undercity.  It is believed to be a martian predator, and it is possible that these creatures swarm the martian tunnels deep below the city of Uz.  They are large, six-legged creatures whose body is made of a warbly, transparent substance.  The glassy thing’s body is almost in the shape of an onion, while its legs are long and tapered.  Its head is little more than a blunt snout ending in a open maw ringed with glistening, transparent teeth.  Its eyes, while small, are adept at seeing in the dark and pick up a spectrum utterly alien to man.

On either side of the glassy thing’s body are sacks filled with a horrible mucous.  It can propel jets of this mucous up to 120’.  This mucous contains a toxin that forces those hit by it to make a saving throw or be paralyzed for 2d6 turns.  This is the way by which glassy things hunt their prey.

Uz G+ Session 1 Report

Yesterday, I ran Uz for the second time on G+.  The reason this is "Session 1" is that it's the first time I ran it during the time slot it will normally appear in and I had a considerably larger party.

Map by Mike D

I started writing a really long session report, but it became apparent rather quickly that it was pretty tedious and no one was going to read it.  So here are the highlights from the session instead:

• Waw, Priest of Kothar, managed to get the party past some guards who were patrolling the undercity entrance by threatening what they love most: their pension.
• As with the first session, there was quite a bit of philosophizing by the characters, particularly on matters relating to death and Mot's insatiable maw.
• The party explored what appeared to be some kind of tomb or temple complex dedicated to Manugal, the Judge of the Dead.  Almost all the depictions of this goddess were flanked by figures with large, spherical heads, four sets of wings, and strange arm bands that would look to a modern observer not unlike a wristwatch.
• They found a bunch of statues of those dome-headed guys, and the statues shot that red laser that turns non-gold metals and flesh into goop.  This party was considerably better at getting pas these than the Hattiesburg group was when dealing with similar traps.  This was particularly due to the quick thinking of Waw and Aka the Bloodstained.
• Every time I've rolled on the SBVD critical table so far, someone has died.  Alas, Juba son of Juba!  Oh, and that hireling too I guess.
• Eshimur, Priest of "Nobody Important Really," was able to warn the party that the Eternal Servants - zombie-type guys whit weird tattoos - had to be burned in order to keep them from reanimating.  I had hoped someone would just chop them up or something so I could have little hands crawling around, but such is life.
• Unlike the tombs that were explored in the first session, the tombs the party explored this time had already been looted.  This greatly perplexed Ubara the Man-God and Eshimur.
• Ubara warned his party not to enter a particular room because it contained a grisly scene.  Why he was so disturbed by it is unknown.
• The party also bumped into a number of Phutian bandits that were trying to loot the complex as well.  They killed one of the Phutians by activating one of those statue-laser-traps, and the other three surrendered.  These were sold into slavery.
• Maggot men are hideously disgusting, and the party was not willing to let their bodies lie dead for fear that smaller monsters might pop out of them.

Running Uz again has been a really fun experience, and something about designing stuff for those sessions excites me in a way that Nightwick Abbey sometimes doesn't.  I think it's because it's in such a primordial state at this point that I get to see where it's going to go and be surprised by it along with everyone else.

Uzite Slave and Hireling Tables

Here are more things for Uzite PCs to spend money on. Once again I'm stealing from better minds, in this case MAR Barker.

Uzite Slaves and Hirelings
Uzite society is by no means egalitarian.  Slavery is a legally enshrined institution used to punish criminals and captured enemies as well as a way to settle debts.  The slave market most familiar to the PCs would be the Great Slave Market on the Street of Sins, which runs between a particularly slummy neighborhood and passes the Wine House of Baram-Sin. To determine the number of slaves available at the market in a given week, consult the chart below.

Slaves Available

Type of Slave	0	1	1d6	1d20	2d20	1d100	Cost (gp)
Servant boy or girl	1-5	6-20	21-50	51-80	81-95	96-00	150
Unskilled Labor	1-30	31-40	41-60	61-90	91-00	-	200
Skilled Labor	1-50	51-70	71-95	96-00	-	-	5,000
Overseer	1-60	61-80	81-00	-	-	-	8,000
Man-at-arms	1-60	61-75	76-95	96-00	-	-	5,000
Courtesan	1-60	61-85	86-95	96-00	-	-	20,000
Special*	1-70	71-90	91-99	00	-	-	15,000

Servant boys and girls  typically serve as cupbearers or house servants.  They are very common among Uzite elites, but are not usually found in adventuring parties.  Unlike the other available slaves and laborers, their base morale is 3.

Unskilled laborers can perform menial tasks that require little training.  The ones most familiar to PCs are likely torchbearers and porters.

Skilled laborers can perform crafts smithing, piloting a boat, or training animals.

Overseers are specifically selected to keep other slaves in line.  While technically a slave position, they are usually considered part of the household in a way slaves are not.

Men-at-arms are captured soldiers that have been sold into slavery.  To determine the type roll 1d6: 1-2 - Spearmen 3 - Slinger 4 - Peltast 5 - Archer 6 - Noble.

Courtesans are exactly what it says on the tin.

Special slaves are typically nonhumans that have been captured by slavers.*

If the PCs wish to sell a captured opponent into slavery, assume that Getherite slavers will purchase him or her for 1/10 their market value.  This should be modified by the campaign circumstances.

Free laborers and warriors also will offer their services to adventurers.  To determine how many of each type is available in a given week, consult the charts below.

Free Labor Available

Type of Laborer	0	1	1d6	2d6	1d20	Cost (gp)
Unskilled	1-30	31-50	51-90	91-95	96-00	1d100
Skilled	1-50	51-70	71-95	96-00	-	1d100 x 3
Noble	1-70	71-85	86-95	96-00	-	1d100 x 5

Noble laborers rarely perform physical labor and instead can serve as interpreters, translators, sages, poets, assassins, etc.

Free Warriors Available

Type of Warrior	0	1	1d6	2d6	1d20	2d20	Cost (gp)
Spearman	1-30	31-50	51-70	71-85	86-95	96-00	1d100
Slinger	1-40	41-60	61-80	81-95	96-00	-	1d100 x 2
Peltast	1-50	51-70	71-85	86-99	00	-	1d100 x 3
Archer	1-60	61-80	81-95	96-00	-	-	1d100 x 4
Noble	1-70	71-85	86-99	00	-	-	1d100 x 5

Spearmen are armed with a axe or dagger (1-3/4-6), a spear, a wicker shield, and light armor.  They have a 30% chance of having a helmet.

Slingers ar armed with light armor, a sling, 20 stones, and a dagger.  They have a 30% chance of having a wicker shield and a 15% chance of having a helmet.

Peltasts are armed with light armor, swords, 3 throwing spears, and a wicker shield.

Archers are armed with medium armor, bows, 20 arrows, and swords.  They have a 50% chance of having a helmet.

Noble warriors are always armed with a sword, two spears, a bronze shield, heavy armor, and a helmet.

Note that Cost for free laborers and warriors assumes a monthly salary.  If a PC wishes to hire them for only a single expedition, assume that their cost goes up by one degree.  Thus, a Peltast will charge 1d100 x 4 gp and a linkman would charge 1d100 x 3 gp for a single outing.  Nobles, whether laborers or warriors, will always charge 1d100 x 10 gp for single adventures.

A Google doc containing these tables is available here.

*There is currently no table for generating what type of nonhuman is for sale.  This will be rectified shortly.