Reflecting on Fantasy Bestiaries

One of the best and worst things about Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was the Monster Manual and the Fiend Folio. They provided hours of entertainment to my younger brother and me outside of role-playing. My brother's copy of the Monster Manual was our very first exposure to role-playing games years before we knew what a role-playing game was. If it was a book filled with illustrations of monsters, we were fascinated by it. Once we started role-playing, it was a double-edged sword. It was a useful and inspiring resource for me as a Dungeon Master, but for my players (and for me when I was a player) it was an unintentional source of cheating. Hours of poring through monster descriptions is bound to give players an advantage and spoil the surprise. Alas, as in most forms of fiction, the surprise is at least half the fun. Even the new monsters introduced in adventure modules were destined to reappear in the Monster Manual 2, which would be devoured by DMs and players alike. Some were lucky enough to encounter the monsters as players before the book was published, but as more and more players discovered the hobby, they were destined to have their surprises spoiled by the availability of published statistics.

When Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG was first published, it asserted the importance of monsters as an element of the unknown. They were to be the subject of rumors if they were known at all, and player characters would be encountering them with little to no prior knowledge. This preserved the spirit of adventure prevalent in sword & sorcery fiction (one of the main inspirations of DCC RPG), and it enabled many players to relive the thrill of fantasy role-playing when they were first introduced to it and everything was new. Only a few monsters were included in the rule book to be used as a benchmark for judges to create their own. It seemed that manuals of monsters were antithetical to the spirit of DCC RPG, and yet its publisher, Goodman Games, is running a Kickstarter project for just such a tome entitled Dungeon Denizens, and I have backed it. Why? Am I suddenly feeling the grip of Ye Olde Fear of Missing Out? It may be a bit of that, but I think the more pertinent reason is that, unlike D&D, DCC RPG has less clearly defined levels of challenge in regard to monsters. I need more of these benchmarks mentioned in the rule book to help guide me in creating foes for this system. Regardless of which monsters from Dungeon Denizens I decide to use in the adventures I design, I will keep in mind the excellent advice from Chapter 9 (of DCC RPG) under the heading "Keeping Monsters Mysterious."

So, go ahead and back the Dungeon Denizens Kickstarter project, but if you're playing in one of my games, expect the unexpected.

Click here for information.

Fight or Fright

I just read "Morale, Fear, and Madness" in Archade's Tower, and I think it has some ideas worth testing at the table. I tend to avoid (or neglect using) rules that impose or restrict player character behavior, as I believe situations and the manner in which they are presented ought to be enough to motivate a player's actions, but this article reflects a similar desire to preserve player agency—albeit in a mechanical fashion—and I think it might be a useful alternative. I'll be rereading the relevant section in the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG rule book and pondering the topic.

Completely Unfathomable Completely Available

Behold!

The magnificent monstrosity that is Completely Unfathomable, consisting of Jason Sholtis' Operation Unfathomable and Odious Uplands, adapted and expanded for use with DCC RPG by Paul Wolfe, is now available in print and PDF right now, right here.

Complete!

Regarding the Recent RPG Industry Kerfuffle

Game rules themselves cannot be copyrighted. You never needed permission to publish something that is compatible with something else. Your game is yours to use as you see fit. Morality clauses are tools of oppression and weapons against self-expression justified by "good intentions." Adhering to "official rules" does not make your gameplay more or less valid in the hobby of role-playing games. Only the joy you get from engaging with the hobby validates it. You do not need a stamp of approval from anyone to create what you want to create or play the way you want to play. Your hobby is yours.

Crawling Toward New Spellcasting Options

For those who are interested in alternative interpretations of magic in Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, Reverend Dak of Crawl! has posted Practicable Magic: Reliable Spell Casting for DCC RPG. I think it's worth a try.

Heightening the Heightened: Abilities and Passive Mutations

Overall, I like the streamlined nature of the rules of Mutant Crawl Classics RPG, but sometimes the streamlining erases important details. One such detail is the nature of certain passive mutations. Mutations by their nature are things that stray from the norm. They are abnormal. So, why do some passive mutations have the possibility of yielding results that are indistinguable from the normal non-mutated range? Here, I am referring especially to mutations that have a chance of altering a character's ability scores, such as Heightened Intelligence. Unless the player rolls 20 or higher, the ability score improves by merely +1, +2, or +3. In many cases, the character might not even gain any tangible benefit. If the ability score were 9, for example, a +3 improvement wouldn't even boost it beyond the average range.

I have an alternative.

When rolling passive mutations such as Heightened Agility, Heightened Stamina, Heightened Strength, Heightened Intelligence, Dual Brain, etc., ability increases refer to the ability modifier rather than the ability score. The ability score is then increased to the threshold of that ability modifier.

For example, a mutant, manimal, or plantient with Intelligence 6 (−1) who acquires the Heightened Intelligence result, "The mutant's Intelligence score is increased by +1," now has Intelligence 9 (+0) because 9 is the minimum ability score at which the modifier becomes +0.

Granted, having one's low Intelligence raised to the dizzying heights of average seems at odds with the term Heightened Intelligence, but at least this method offers a guaranteed tangible benefit with each increase.

The Scope of the Megadungeon

Sean McCoy of Mothership fame has proposed a daily exercise called #Dungeon23. As he originally tweeted (in part) on 5 December 2022, "Megadungeon for 2023. 12 levels. 365 rooms. One room a day. Keep it all in a journal." One of his tips is, "Don’t overthink it. Don’t make a grand plan, just sit down each day and focus on writing a good dungeon room." That's my first stumbling block: Don't overthink it. I don't think I'm capable of not overthinking it. I need to know who made it, what function it serves (and perhaps what function it was originally intended to serve), where it is located, when it was built, how it was built, how adventurers will learn of its existence, and what is supposed to be there that will motivate adventurers to explore it. All of this information is essential to my design, but the advice is "Don't overthink it. Don't make a grand plan..." Without a grand plan, however, it will likely end up being a nonsensical funhouse dungeon, which is fine if that's your objective, but if that's the extent of your ambition, why bother to chart it in advance? Why not stock the dungeon as play progresses rather than wasting time on scores of rooms the player characters may never visit? You could devise the floorplan the same way, just barely ahead of their light source. You could even do it randomly via the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide (Appendix A: Random Dungeon Generation, pp. 169-173).

Of course someone like me will create a grand plan. That's where I find my motivation to create an environment for adventure. For exploration to be worthwhile, there must be reasons for things. There must be patterns that can be discerned by those who are observant. There must be facts that can be deduced by those with intelligence. Everything flows from purpose. Without a grand plan to guide my design, I might as well generate the entire dungeon with a click of the mouse.

This is not to discourage anyone who enjoys funhouse dungeons from creating their own fungeon one room at a time. This just speaks of my own inability to participate. Even if I can accept the funhouse aspect of it, I still need to rationalize why it exists the way it does, which leads me to the classic answer: mad archmages. Nearly anything that defies logic can be attributed to the whims of insane spellcasters. This might be a good excuse to revisit my old satirical setting, The World of Greyauk. Perhaps it is time to think about finally designing that megadungeon beneath Castle Greyauk...

Passive Mutations During Level Progression Alternative Rule

In Mutant Crawl Classics RPG, there is a rule on page 42 stating that a mutant character may choose to re-roll a passive mutation upon gaining a level and may burn Luck or use glowburn in the process. In practice, this gives a slim chance of improvement made somewhat greater only at the expense of Luck, which does not regenerate for mutants or manimals, or physical abilities (Strength, Agility, or Stamina), which regenerate slowly and probably not in time to prevent a character from suffering severe disadvantages during an adventure. In addition, there is a significant chance that a character's passive mutation will worsen.

The question I ask myself when I think about a rule is: Is this fun? ("Is this fair?" is another question I ask and is often linked to the first.) Is it fun to survive long enough to achieve the next level just to see one's passive mutation devolve or see it improve at the expense of one's general ability to survive? It seems contradictory. I can understand the risk involved in radiation exposure, which might be to the mutant's benefit or detriment, but that risk is part of the adventure itself, not a rule pertaining to levelling up. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if mutants and manimals could at least regenerate Luck even if it were only 1 point per day. For me, this rule is neither fun nor fair.

So, here's my house rule...

Each time a mutated character gains a level, the player may opt to re-roll a passive mutation. If the roll exceeds the current result, the character's passive mutation improves by one step. If the roll is a 1, the passive mutation regresses by one step. Otherwise, the passive mutation remains unchanged. Neither Luck nor glowburn may be used to alter results.

Idle Musing on Imagination

Some months ago, a friend bemoaned the fact that she had no visual imagination, which is to say, she found it impossible to visualize anything she read, which is why she avoided imaginative fiction such as fantasy and science fiction. In contrast, I find it so easy to visualize what I read that I typically feel as if I have been transported to another world and lose all awareness of my real world surroundings. When I am immersed in a book or an article, I can't even hear someone speaking to me until they tap me on the shoulder or cover what I'm reading with their hand. As it happens, these extreme experiences have names. Apparently, my friend has aphantasia, whereas I have hyperphantasia. It doesn't alter anything, but I find it interesting that a name exists for something I have always — in my case — taken for granted.

Table: Small Talk

Here is a meaningless little table for randomly generating topics of small talk, chit-chat, and casual conversation when the need arises, whether the adventurers are eavesdropping, actively participating, or overhear it in passing. How these topics may or may not lead to (or evolve into) adventure seeds is left to the reader's discretion. (I probably ought to have saved this for April of next year, but perhaps I can post a suitable variation when the time comes.)

Small Talk

Roll 1d20

The topic is...

1. Aches and pains.
2. Animals.
3. Astrology.
4. Conspiracies.
5. Crime.
6. Foreign lands.
7. Home remedies.
8. Illness or injury.
9. Legendary flora or fauna.
10. Love.
11. Luxury goods.
12. Relatives.
13. Religion.
14. Scandals.
15. The supernatural.
16. Tall tales.
17. Taxes.
18. War.
19. The weather.
20. Work.