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Friday, July 31, 2015
[Freebie] Lastward Town Map from "Venture Hold"
Let's round out the month with a free map. This is a town map from Venture Hold: A Dungeonteller Adventure. It shows a village built in the shell of a huge ruined keep. There are 8 dungeon levels under there. If you have Big Hexyland, it's marked on the Quibble Marches hex. You absolutely have my permission to relabel the map and use it in your own games (no commercial use please without permission).
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Spotlight on: Big Hexyland 2
Big Hexyland 2 Modular Fantasy World is the second PDF in my Big Hexyland series of customizable iso-view world maps. On this set I went nuts creating layers you could switch on and off, to hide or show individual terrain features. Some pages have 30 layers! There's also a coastline hex you can customize to make your own lakes and seas. I'm really happy with the result, and like everything I make, I use it in my own games. It's available here. Check out these beauties!
Monday, July 27, 2015
My Iso Battle Maps Available at DTRPG -- FREE!
Did these last year for the Winter Eternal Savage Worlds setting. They look like this and they are available here. Enjoy!
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
[Preview] Rock Opera '79 Metal Powers
Presented without comment, but you can glean little hints about the game mechanic here and there.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Join the Dungeonteller Con Squad and Get Free Stuff!
Hey, Dungeonteller GMs or game groups:
How does it work?
- Get a Dungeonteller game on the schedule/roster/program of an organized con.
- Send me a link to the con's web site so I can verify the game is on the schedule. Use the email embedded in the image below.
- I send you free stuff.
Peace out. Here's the email address to get in touch with me:
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
5 Narrative Details About Caves that will Give your Games some Grit
While I'm not a professional caver, I do love visiting tourist caves and reading about cave exploration. (My favorite non-fiction title in the genre is Blind Descent by James Tabor.) Here are 5 points about the nature of caves and caving that you can weave into your next subterranean adventure.
[Technical note: caves can be formed by lava, coastal wave action, and even acid-producing bacteria, but the vast majority are caused by slightly acidic water seeping into pre-existing cracks in a layer of limestone beneath the surface. It's these caves I'm describing in this post].
Caves are dark.
Obvious, right? But unless you've ever been in a cave and switched off your light source, you won't really appreciate the difference between, say, a darkened bedroom on a cloudy moonless night and absolute subterranean darkness, with nary a photon around to ping your rods and cones. Utter, unrelieved blackness works on the mind, it distorts perceptions of time and distance, and even when your light source is on, you can feel it crouching at the edge of your lamp's glow, like a wall of water intent on filling a void. When cavers switch off their lamps to conserve power during rest periods, it's not uncommon for their minds to start filling up the lack of sensory input with hallucinations, from dancing lights (yes) to fully-formed visions of faces and creatures looming in the dark. In a fantasy world, where you can't be sure if what you are seeing is a trick of the mind or a real menace, the darkness would threaten even more. A party of NPCs that rests in darkness to save on torches or light spells or lantern oil might just start freaking out after an hour or so, requiring Wisdom checks to stay calm.
Caves are wet and clammy.
Remember how I mentioned that most caves are formed by water action? In fantasy caves, water features are usually occasional nuisances or window dressing, but in a real cave, water is everywhere: flowing, gushing, seeping, trickling, and pooling, usually exactly where you want to be going. In nearly any steep ascent or descent in an active cave system, you're going to be climbing next to or even through a cascade of water. If you keep track of water rations in your game, I'd say that good sources of water in caves should be plentiful. That's one advantage.
It would be nice if the amount of water flowing through was at a constant rate, but remember, this water is largely runoff from rain. If the climate is at all seasonal, the cave will be a very different experience after a rain storm or during rainy season than in a drier time. Rapidly changing water levels make caves deadly.
It is nearly impossible to stay dry in a cave without specialized clothing. You and your gear are going to get soaked. And it's cold down there. Campers will recognize that cold + damp = hypothermia, a potentially fatal loss of core body temperature. Only the breeziest, most casual game systems can ignore the hostility of an environment like that. In Dungeonteller, you lose Luck (health/hp) every day you're in such an environment. A cave crawl could kill a party of PCs in a day or so even if they never meet so much as a goblin.
And because they're wet, caves are noisy.
Even a little water makes a lot of noise. Anything that wants to sneak up on you doesn't have to worry about being heard, and if you're a rogue, don't even bother to move silently when you're creeping up on a foe. If you want to talk to another party member, you're going to have to talk into their ear or shout at them above the ambient noise of the water. Not an ideal way of avoiding detection by cave creepies.
Caves don't respect the horizontal plane.
Levels? You must be joking. A real cave is a maze of angled crevices, holes, and caverns, and even in the larger voids, the floor won't be flat, unless seasonal floods are bringing in a nice soft carpet of sand or silt (just pray that you're not there in high water). On a larger scale, you do sometimes see a roughly horizontal alignment of chambers where water finds the way down blocked by a more resistant rock layer below. If you've ever seen my dungeon maps, you know that this is one of my big design points: that natural caves love to wander and connect at odd angles and tangents. Again, even in a casual game, climbing skill should come into play frequently in cave crawls.
Cave combat is hard.
In all but the largest voids, melee combat would be awkward. Room to swing is at a premium. If I were setting up a marching order, I would put one or two fighters in front with awl-pikes or short spears, and one or two in the back with their spears reversed in their hands to be ready to repel attack from the rear. I think the ideal cave weapon would be a spear that you could telescope or break down into several lengths. A couple spearmen could dominate a passage, with no worries about being flanked. Spell casters would become key in breaking such stalemates.
[Technical note: caves can be formed by lava, coastal wave action, and even acid-producing bacteria, but the vast majority are caused by slightly acidic water seeping into pre-existing cracks in a layer of limestone beneath the surface. It's these caves I'm describing in this post].
Caves are dark.
Obvious, right? But unless you've ever been in a cave and switched off your light source, you won't really appreciate the difference between, say, a darkened bedroom on a cloudy moonless night and absolute subterranean darkness, with nary a photon around to ping your rods and cones. Utter, unrelieved blackness works on the mind, it distorts perceptions of time and distance, and even when your light source is on, you can feel it crouching at the edge of your lamp's glow, like a wall of water intent on filling a void. When cavers switch off their lamps to conserve power during rest periods, it's not uncommon for their minds to start filling up the lack of sensory input with hallucinations, from dancing lights (yes) to fully-formed visions of faces and creatures looming in the dark. In a fantasy world, where you can't be sure if what you are seeing is a trick of the mind or a real menace, the darkness would threaten even more. A party of NPCs that rests in darkness to save on torches or light spells or lantern oil might just start freaking out after an hour or so, requiring Wisdom checks to stay calm.
Caves are wet and clammy.
Remember how I mentioned that most caves are formed by water action? In fantasy caves, water features are usually occasional nuisances or window dressing, but in a real cave, water is everywhere: flowing, gushing, seeping, trickling, and pooling, usually exactly where you want to be going. In nearly any steep ascent or descent in an active cave system, you're going to be climbing next to or even through a cascade of water. If you keep track of water rations in your game, I'd say that good sources of water in caves should be plentiful. That's one advantage.
It would be nice if the amount of water flowing through was at a constant rate, but remember, this water is largely runoff from rain. If the climate is at all seasonal, the cave will be a very different experience after a rain storm or during rainy season than in a drier time. Rapidly changing water levels make caves deadly.
It is nearly impossible to stay dry in a cave without specialized clothing. You and your gear are going to get soaked. And it's cold down there. Campers will recognize that cold + damp = hypothermia, a potentially fatal loss of core body temperature. Only the breeziest, most casual game systems can ignore the hostility of an environment like that. In Dungeonteller, you lose Luck (health/hp) every day you're in such an environment. A cave crawl could kill a party of PCs in a day or so even if they never meet so much as a goblin.
And because they're wet, caves are noisy.
Even a little water makes a lot of noise. Anything that wants to sneak up on you doesn't have to worry about being heard, and if you're a rogue, don't even bother to move silently when you're creeping up on a foe. If you want to talk to another party member, you're going to have to talk into their ear or shout at them above the ambient noise of the water. Not an ideal way of avoiding detection by cave creepies.
Caves don't respect the horizontal plane.
Levels? You must be joking. A real cave is a maze of angled crevices, holes, and caverns, and even in the larger voids, the floor won't be flat, unless seasonal floods are bringing in a nice soft carpet of sand or silt (just pray that you're not there in high water). On a larger scale, you do sometimes see a roughly horizontal alignment of chambers where water finds the way down blocked by a more resistant rock layer below. If you've ever seen my dungeon maps, you know that this is one of my big design points: that natural caves love to wander and connect at odd angles and tangents. Again, even in a casual game, climbing skill should come into play frequently in cave crawls.
Cave combat is hard.
In all but the largest voids, melee combat would be awkward. Room to swing is at a premium. If I were setting up a marching order, I would put one or two fighters in front with awl-pikes or short spears, and one or two in the back with their spears reversed in their hands to be ready to repel attack from the rear. I think the ideal cave weapon would be a spear that you could telescope or break down into several lengths. A couple spearmen could dominate a passage, with no worries about being flanked. Spell casters would become key in breaking such stalemates.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Amazing Labyrinth 1:1 Scale
I'm back from a two-week family vacation in Bavaria and the Swiss Alps. So many gaming inspirations... We made a side trip to Ravensburger Spieleland, a kid-friendly theme park created by the Eurogame company of the same name. Among the attractions was a life-size version of their Amazing Labyrinth game -- a dungeon maze with walls you can shift, fake doors (and real ones), slides, and cute fiberglass monsters.
When you enter, you get a time-stamped ticket. You have to find four named monsters in the maze and punch your ticket with the uniquely-shaped hole puncher found at each monster. If you can find all of them and get out within 4 minutes, you can get a pre-recorded cheer from the kiosk at the exit (honor system because Germany).
Enjoy the pics.
When you enter, you get a time-stamped ticket. You have to find four named monsters in the maze and punch your ticket with the uniquely-shaped hole puncher found at each monster. If you can find all of them and get out within 4 minutes, you can get a pre-recorded cheer from the kiosk at the exit (honor system because Germany).
Enjoy the pics.
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| Literally "Crazy Labyrinth" |
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| This guy makes fart sounds. |
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| Not sure the Fabio hair is working. |
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| Owlbear-sized owl. |
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