Quick Dungeon Cheat Sheet

Make a dungeon in ten minutes, using this grid and two dice:

Instructions: 

1. Fill in a name for each of the following roles:

Entrance:

Level Boss:

Major Minions:

Minor Minions 1:

Minor Minions 2:

Scavenger:

Undead:

Vermin:

Interloper:

Ambusher:

Potential Ally:

Refuge:

Trap:

Impassable 1:

Impassable 2:

Impassable 3:

Dangerous Passage 1:

Weapon Resource:

Water Resource:

Boss Resource:

Boss's Bane:

For example:

Entrance: Pit descending from surface

Level Boss: Ogre Mage

Major Minions: Gnolls

Minor Minions 1: Human wizards

Minor Minions 2: Dwarf mercenaries

Scavenger: Carrion crawlers

Undead: Wraiths

Vermin: Centipedes

Interloper: Party of were rat thieves

Ambusher: Huge spider

Potential Ally: Naga

Refuge: Room with lockable door

Trap: Collapsing ceiling

Impassable 1: Solid Rock

Impassable 2: Collapsed Tunnel

Impassable 3: Coal Fire with Sinkhole

Dangerous Passage 1: Swing rope over stalagmite-filled chasm

Dangerous Passage 2: Wooden walkway over hot mud pits

Weapon Resource: Quiver of arrows

Water Resource: Old well room

Boss Resource: Magic font of clairaudience/clairvoyance

Boss's Bane: The oracular head of his old master, whom he betrayed

2. Use the 6 x 6 grid to represent the dungeon or draw it for yourself.

Roll 2 dice and use one die for the tens column and one die for the ones column to get random values between 11 and 66 that correspond to the numbered squares. Roll once for each monster on the list and place it in that square. So if you roll a 3 and a 4 for the level boss, the level boss will live in square 34. If the same result comes up twice, bump that feature to the next empty square, going clockwise starting from the square above.

3. Add a random impassable boundary between two squares by rolling a d6 and a d6 once more. Draw a heavy line along the top edge of the resulting square. Roll again, except this time, the boundary is along the right side of the square. Keep going until you have four impassable boundaries. Ignore if the result is along the outside border of the grid.

Here's one actual result.

The Thief (Pencil Illustration)

Here's a sketch I made today, trying to channel some of my favorite 70s illustrators, especially Greg Irons and Dave Trampier.

(Free Stuff) OSR-Style Hand-Drawn Character Sheet

Sketched it out today, it's generic enough to be used with any retroclone.

Saving Charisma from being the Dump Stat in OSR-style Games

Last night I was browsing through my 2nd Ed. AD&D PHB and came across a fix I forgot I'd made for Charisma. It was pasted over a ghastly full-page illustration on page 18 that has driven many to the brink of insanity. I'm hardly alone in thinking that CHA got the shaft in early iterations of the game, and I imagine that lots of DMs had handcrafted fixes for it, because, well, we were encouraged to tinker with the rules back then.

1. Extra Proficiency Slots
Characters with high CHA scores receive additional initial non-weapon proficiency slots, which may only be spent on proficiencies that would be helped by having a high CHA:

CHA 13 = 1 extra slot
CHA 14 = 2 extra slots
CHA 15 = 3 extra slots
CHA 16 = 4 extra slots
CHA 17 = 5 extra slots
CHA 18 = 6 extra slots

Allowed Proficiencies:
General: Animal Training, Artistic Ability, Dancing, Etiquette, Heraldry, Singing
Priest: Local History
Rogue: Disguise
Warrior: Gaming

Characters with low CHA scores buy the above proficiencies at a higher rate:
CHA 3 = 5 slots
CHA 4 = 4 slots
CHA 5 = 3 slots
CHA 6 = 2 slots

2. Earn Followers Early
Characters with a high CHA score get their followers at lower levels of experience than other characters, while characters with low CHA must wait longer

(There follows a complex table which I won't reproduce). You could probably do it this way:

CHA 3 = get followers 3 levels late
CHA 4 = get followers 2 levels late
CHA 5 - get followers 1 level late
CHA 16 = get followers 1 level early
CHA 17 = get followers 2 levels early
CHA 18 = get followers 3 levels early

I remember that it made having a low CHA somewhat more annoying and gave you at least some incentive to make CHA a high stat. I should say we used Method V for character generation at the time (4d6, dump low die, arrange stats in desired order).

Hope you find it useful. 

Pigpimples Academy of Spellcraft and Sorcery: the RPG

So we were finishing up a dungeon adventure a few weeks ago and one kid says, "We should do a Harry Potter game!" Shouts of "Yes!" and "I get to be Hermione!"

So I set myself a goal of one week to modify the DungeonTeller rules for a game of adolescent hijinks at a magical boarding school. If you don't like the HP books, then go watch the finale of Breaking Bad or some Sunday Night Football. Otherwise, keep reading.

I didn't want the young players fighting over who gets to play whom from the books, so I decided to set the game 20 years after the last book, when the children of the main characters are themselves heading off to school on that damned train. Unlike in real life, the kids get to choose their parents: one decided to be the daughter of HP and GW, the other of RW and HG. So I guess they're cousins.

In terms of stats, I came up with four key ones: Courage, Wit, Heart, and Power, which correspond to the four houses (Gryf, Ravenc., Hufflep., and Slyth). You have six points to spend, but you have to put at least three points into one stat to ensure you get assigned to that house. Both players chose Courage and ended up in Gryf. I think it would be a good idea from the outset to canvass the players to find out which house the PCs are going to belong to. Wonder what a Slytherin campaign would be like?

For actions, I did a modified dungeonteller action list:

Aim
Brew (potions)
Concentrate
Dodge
Fly (on a broomstick)
Incant
Muscle
Notice
Sneak
Talk

Each player could choose a pet/familiar for their PC that gives them a +1/+1 bonus to a couple of actions. A cat, for example, gives you +1 Notice/+1 Sneak when it's with you.

The spell list had to be just right, because I'm running the game for a couple of experts. Fortunately, the HP wiki has the spell lists done by year learned and all I had to do was sort them into the seven spell types: charms, curses, hexes, jinxes, and so on. Each spell type requires a different pair of stats/actions for the number of dice you roll. To cast a charm, for example, you get to roll your Incant dice plus your Talk dice, whereas for a transfiguration spell it's Incant + Wit.

Characters in HP are often tired out from studying/practicing. The health system in the game gives you checkboxes in five descending states of health: refreshed (+1 die to checks), okay (+0), tired (-1), knackered (-2), and out cold (ZZZ). I created a cool mechanic where the LOWER you set your default health state, the MORE "practice points" you get to add to individual spells that you've been studying. So if you're Hermione-level studious, you are knackered all the time but you may be a whiz (or a which) with your favorite spells.

For spell duel/combat, the caster rolls to cast the spell and then needs to make an Aim roll vs. the target's Dodge to actually hit. It worked pretty well. One player used Wingardium Leviosa to raise the other's robes over her head, and she countered with an Aguamenti jet of water to the aggressor's face. We haven't had any serious combat yet.

We did a Quidditch game with lots of Fly, Dodge, Notice, and Aim, and Sneak rolls as needed. It was in a narrative style and not strictly play by play until the crucial moment when one player (her team's Seeker) had to race the other Seeker to the snitch while avoiding bludgers aimed at her by the beaters.

At the end of the game session they got to add an action die to one action of their choice but ONLY if they had used that action in-game.

As for the plot, it centered around them befriending an orphan who was another first-year. They figured out that she had been sneaking out at night and with some clever skulduggery tracked the girl to the mirror of Erised, where she had seen a vision of her mother. What the players don't know is that the girl's mother was BELLATRIX LESTRANGE and her dad, YOU-KNOW-WHO, and Bellatrix's spirit is waiting to possess the girl as the first step to returning to power.

There was also a potion-ingredient hunt involving butterscotch, hippogriff feathers, and mandrake, and a visit with a certain gigantic groundskeeper to help him brood and hatch a pegasus egg.

We can't wait to continue the story and I'll share more after the next session.

3D Battle Map: The Waiting Room

Lever-activated pit trap included free of charge.

3D Battle Map: The Infested Cellar

by Doug Anderson, 2013.