Just received Tim Short's most recent mini adventure, "Macceum Sewer," in pdf and dead tree versions. Tim, in his version, specifically laid out an area with no real history or objectives, created from a number of random table resources Tim had at hand. The adventure is populated with a fine selection of sewer denizens, and what treasure or items that may be found in the halls and rooms acts more as seeds for further adventures than goals within themselves... All and all a good little side-trek.
Support Tim's Patreon if you want to find some cool hand-drawn mini-adventures and eccentric NPCs in your mailbox...
So yeah, random. While I rarely go for the full-random mode, I've often used the random dungeon room stocking table out of B/X (original below) to at least get a first-cut at what's each room's theme before I start writing.
I'll shift things around and fudge as needed if I feel a space really needs a monster or something interesting to move whatever theme or narrative I might be scratching together.
And, any individual map of space can have multiple interpretations, so, sorry, Tim, I stole your map.
I took the sewer theme and intended to fill it with some typical inhabitants, albeit some not on Tim's adventure. Were-rats, it is. My random rolling put monsters in only two rooms, and only one with treasure (actually, the only treasure in the whole place). And really, were-rats? Gotta do better than that. So they serve something a bit more nasty. And there's a bit of a complication with serving this particular big-bad, but our rats have found a way around it. And I trickled a bit more treasure in, because we have to keep those mooks interested...
So have a look, this is also my first attempt at a zine format - so comments are welcome.
A brief posting inspired by the Bogeyman's Cave - creating a dungeon of approximately 10 features in a 30-minute time limit. Elements were to include:
A Hook
General Background
3 Combat Encounters
3 "Empty" Rooms
2 Traps
1 NPC
1 Weird Thing To Experiment With
Some Treasure
A Magic Item
So here we go - a list of areas/features created in 30 minutes, scrawled in a notebook, followed by a very rough line-and-arrow conceptual map of the listed spaces and critter locations:
Hook/background: A temple and tome is rumored to contain a piece of a
star.Worshipers used to attend to it,
but the place has an accursed aura since a necromancer was interred there.Guardians magical and undead occupy the
space.
Pool (NPC) – Is occupied by a bored nereid (save vs charm, etc. or
be stuck telling her stories until you starve).She may be cajoled and bribed to provide what info she knows about the
tomb.Her knowledge is limited, other
than that a magic trap guards the temple, and that the wight has hidden himself.With a high reaction roll/success, she will
provide a water-smoothed stone from the pond, assuring that it will protect the
party.
Trap 1 – A pair of columns flank the entrance.Crossing between them will break a magic
‘beam’ causing them to crash together (2d8 damage).Unless one is carrying the nereid’s pretty
rock.
Trap 2- Spikey pit trap protects the false tomb
Combat 1 – Caryatid columns (2) guard the temple space
Combat 2 – Behind a secret door is a chamber of the true
tomb: Undead guardians commanded by the big-bad protect the true tomb (6
skeletal champions or equivalent (2HD, disadvantage on turning)
Combat 3 – 5HD Wight ex-necromancer lurks in his tomb.
Weird – A levitating, spinning stone occupies the center of
the temple space.The stone can not be
disturbed or interfered with.A dispel magic or equivalent will remove
its levitation.The stone is a meteor
(50lbs), and of value to those who craft meteoric iron.
Empty 1 – An entry foyer past the columns is capped by a transparent
dome, bathing the area in fabulous, golden light, even at night.
Empty 2 – A vault of grave goods – long since despoiled and
raided.
Empty 3 – A false tomb, meant to lure and distract those
from the real tomb.“treasure” consists
of empty chests and cheaply gilded items.
Magic Item - The wight wields a scepter (as +1 mace).The scepter may be used to command undead once per day, and
contains 1d3 necromancer spells (3d4 total charges).Each spell cast from the scepter requires a
save vs spells or lose one point of CHA from the “stench of death”
Treasure
On the body of the Wight: 18 pp, 700 gp black pearl, other
grave goods 1000gp, gems worth 7,9,30,70,90 gp
Having a creative burst here, or more likely, finally transcribing a few ideas into a somewhat publishable format. Really, you don't want to try to read my notes.
Back to Mr. Matt Jackson's contributions to the map ecosystem, his "Barrowmound 10." Per his notes, the tomb side resulted in a case of mummy rot in his home game... My victims, er, adventures, will be sent to make sure that the tomb is undisturbed, but find something else disturbing in a pair of recently-dug caverns...
Well I have a few things in the pipeline, and its time to translate my scribbled notes to legible text, followed by making that text somewhat coherent.
So today we visit the lovely Sapphire Vault of Mr. Logos, as he described it, "... the Sapphire Vault appears to have been part of some larger structure at one point – the construction of which is significantly beyond the skills of the current inhabitants. Access to the vault is via one of two small caves on the cliff-face – the smaller cave being about 12 feet above the larger and used primarily as a look-out for invaders, looters, and adventurers." I upgraded his foul goblinoids to degraded lizardfolk and went from there...
So here's the thing. Cleric is my favorite old school class to play. I like the combination of support spells/miracles, plus being able to thwack things now and then. And occasionally hamming it up like some travelling preacher.
But then Dan Collins goes and talks about how and why he's eliminated clerics from his house rules.
HERETIC! (goes looking for firewood and an appropriate burning stake...)
Ok, with that out of the way... I'm actually treading into game design theory here... careful now....
So yeah. No clerics. Per Dan, if the original inspirational literature - Leiber, Tolkien, Vance, etc. - is devoid of the miraculous healer or armored priest. Using our bog-standard faux European medieval trope, that role is shoehorned in from the Christian clergy and mythology, with a bit of Crusader thrown in. So the cleric is anachronistic with respect to the source material. Depending on the campaign/world-building environment that a group's game explores, there may not be a place for a cleric in a classic fighter/thief/mage trope.
Soooo... reflecting on that and Tim Kask's commentary - Hit points were not designed or intended as strictly physical damage, but an ambiguous combination of physical damage, skill, luck, and fatigue that can compound prior to receiving a potentially fatal blow.
The sparring match referenced by Tim:
Other good examples: Gotta have some classic Flynn and Rathbone - chewing scenery, taking falls, dodging, wearing one another down...
Or Rob Roy, with superficial damage and exhaustion stacking up prior to Rob Roy getting that critical with only a few HP left?
Therefore, it seems that the cleric's cure light wounds, etc. is inconsistent with the original concept of hit points, since HP aren't directly coupled to physical damage. Also, if hit points are a combination of the above listed conditions, does it make sense that a PC would only recover, at most, a few hit points with a night's rest?
So then, what do we do without a 'healer' in the party? How do we figuratively catch our breaths and regain some of those nebulous hit points?
Treading into potentially heretical OSR territory, let's look at 5e for another pair of mechanics, the short and long rests:
Short Rest
A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.
A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a short rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains Hit Points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest, as explained below.
Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost Hit Points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.
A character can’t benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.
So here goes something totally untested and unproven. No warranty stated or implied:
OSR Short Rest: Regain one hit point per level (+CON bonus) up to max HP. Mages may attempt to regain spent spells (only ones previously memorized that day) using a successful saving throw vs spells per attempted spell recovered (shoehorning in a bit of an opportunity to help the mages, particularly low level, to be less of a one-hit wonder).
OSR Long Rest Idea 1: Roll one HD per level (+CON bonus) (up to max HP). Spell selection/memorization as per normal.
OSR Long Rest Idea 2: Roll 1HD plus 1 HP/level (+CON bonus). Spell selection/memorization as per normal.
Even with a long rest, and excepting the use of healing potions or some other mechanic, there should still be the potential for hit point attrition as the adventure continues - fatigue, healing wounds, poor food, etc. add up.
After all, an adventure is analogous to an expedition, and these guys are shedding hit points like nobody's business...
Pardon this ramble - written up Saturday morning after one cup of coffee and a night of ruminating on the above commentaries. Let me know what you think - is this a workable option for a world without clerics?
P.S.
Well, maybe there is one classic literature (er, film) 'Cleric' - but he wasn't much of a healer....
