The Heroes of Brackleborn -- Game-Play Report (Sessions 9 and 10)

I took on a big writing project last week, so my work on the Deep Vaults has slowed to a crawl (although I completed my hazards table and am pretty happy with it...I will likely post that next). I’m getting jazzed about resuming my Wednesday night campaign, which is moving to Thursday nights every other week. Scheduling five adults for an entire evening on a regular basis is near-impossible, so I feel like we’ve really accomplished something. We’re also going to try to have at least one longer weekend game session each month. It warms my heart that the girls can’t wait to get back to slinging some dice.

After the last session’s light-hearted adventure (which I ended up naming “The Right Stuff”), I was ready to hit the players with a major shake-up to their reality. At this point in the campaign, we’d been playing a little over over three months and they got “the game.” Now it was time to show them what playing in a “campaign” was like.

To now, the setting’s background consisted mostly of rough bullet points, some of which I gave to the players at the start of the campaign—just some hooks to create points of recognition later. As I started prepping for this session, I added some details for the players to begin making choices. I knew they wanted to be closer to Emelia and her family, so I expanded on that portion of the setting for the players to explore.

I love to world-build, but whenever I start a new campaign, I immediately start looking for ways to subvert what I’ve presented and shake up the status quo. I’m not sure why I do that, but D&D needs dynamism, and the historical eras it emulates were certainly dynamic ones. Dungeons & Dragons could easily have been named Cash & Conflict, and both of those things come to the fore during these next  sessions.

This game-play report covers sessions 9 and 10, which occurred on 7/15 and 7/22, 2020.

Previously...

The girls lent a hand to the bakery moms, who needed help gathering ingredients for a feast to be held that night—an order commissioned by Lord Ferril, himself. Not only did doddering old Mr. Mulberry forget to place the order in a timely manner, as requested by the lord,but he also forgot to give the girls invitations to the feast, which is being held in their honor!

Despite the screw-ups, the heroes gathered the ingredients, the moms made the food, and everyone, along with Mr. Mulberry in tow, arrives at Brackleborn Keep on time.

The Heroes of Brackleborn -- Game-Play Report (Session 8)

My in-person Wednesday-night campaign is still on hiatus due to scheduling conflicts, but it looks like we'll be resuming the campaign in the next few weeks. One day, I'll be caught up with these gameplay reports. 

This particular session was super-fun and mostly spontaneous. The girls really latched on to Emelia, and they had some impressive role-playing moments with her and her father, Lord Ferril. I had decided to expand the party's involvement with the lord's affairs, since the girls seemed content to remain in the village and serve as its protectors.

I planned a "heavy" session with an important event to shake up the status quo and give the heroes a chance to step up and become major players in the town, but I wanted to give them a bit of a breather first, while also lulling them into a false sense of security. I came up with the idea for this adventure a few hours before the session as a series of amusing skill challenges and a test of their general organizational and time management abilities. It was also a good way to introduce more of the village and its townsfolk to the players. 

This session occurred on 07/08/20 (and now feels like a lifetime ago).

Previously…

Inside the goblin cave, the heroes slew several goblins and their boss, a hobgoblin called Gurd. They rescued Emelia from his clutches and recovered some stolen supplies, including four of the six stolen barrels of dwarf ale. They hurried back to Brackleborn Keep to reunite Emelia with the grateful Lord and Lady Ferril.

Development Diary: The Deep Vaults - Outer Gallery

Based on my sketch of the whole dungeon, I have completed maps for the Outer Gallery (both main and upper levels) and the Outer Vaults (East and West, main and upper levels)—six maps in all. I've started on the East and West Gallery maps, and have the Central Chamber and North Gallery sketched out. I've keyed the (mostly empty) Outer Gallery, as well as the Outer Vaults (West), and am working on the Outer Vaults (East).

The idea for the Outer Gallery is that it serves as the entrance/nexus point for the rest of the dungeon. The central part of the cavernous hall (which is 300 ft. long, 100-160 ft. wide, and 60 ft. high) has completely collapsed, meaning direct progress into the deeper dungeon is blocked off. 

The PCs will have to choose whether they want to start off on the ground floor or climb to the upper level balcony, and then whether they want to explore the passages into the Outer Vaults on the east side of the gallery or the west. Their chosen route through the Outer Vaults can lead them into either the East or West Gallery, or back into the northern half of the Outer (South) Gallery, on the other side of the collapse. This last area will be covered in the Central Chamber key.

This is the map of the main level of the Outer Gallery. It is the first area the PCs will enter upon descending an exterior shaft.

 

OVERVIEW

This entire complex was once a city inhabited by a race of subterranean humanoids called the Leng. The dungeon is actually made up of (10) different sections.

The main dungeon feature is a series of four gallery wings that form a cross radiating out from a central chamber. Each gallery wing is an open space 160 ft. wide by 300 ft. long at the floor level, shrinking to 100 ft. wide at the balcony level, which is 20 ft. above the main floor. Massive pillars hold up the gallery ceiling, which is 40 ft. high and flat.

Each wing is "separated" from the central chamber by a 20 ft. high, 30 ft. wide wall, atop which is a catwalk with no railing. Thus, the central chamber is 160 ft. square. 

In the quadrant area between each pair of gallery wings is a series of interconnected chambers—the remnants of the ancient Leng city. Each of these quadrants features a main and upper level with multiple access points into the two gallery wings it touches. Finding the routes between levels is one of the challenges of navigating each quadrant. The balconies/catwalks of the upper level provide another route to navigate the dungeon.

The tenth and final dungeon section is a sprawling series of flooded, cave-like passages and chambers beneath the city. This sub-level touches all other parts of the dungeon, and can be used to quickly reach more remote areas if the PCs can discover the paths. 

In addition to numerous hazards and threats found throughout the complex, the PCs will encounter various creature factions. The party’s interaction with these factions forms the basis for conflict in the dungeon.

There is very little in the way of traditional “loot” to be found in the vaults (coins, jewelry, etc.) Instead, the PCs will find remnants of the Leng’s advanced society, including bizarre crystal formations—some loose; others "blooming" in large clusters from the stone—as well as unknown materials and weird technologies powered by these crystals. Much of the value of these items is derived from their utility, rather than their inherent worth, so each item has an XP value associated with its discovery to compensate for the lack of conventional treasure.

INTERIOR FEATURES

The original architecture was of uniform construction, hewn from ancient bedrock to a high degree of precision and angularity. Throughout the dungeon, except where noted....

• Ceilings in passages and chambers are 10 ft. high and flat. There is 10 ft. of solid* stone between floors. (*There are actually lots of ducts and mechanisms within the stone, but this is not apparent.)

• The stonework is carved without ornamentation; a person familiar with stoneworking will notice that the tooling marks are strange (smooth ripples instead of angular chisel marks).

• Perfect angles once joined every seam between floors, walls, and ceilings, but the seismic event that created the rift has fractured the stone, forming large cracks and fissures in every surface, shifting whole sections of the dungeon, and even collapsing portions of it.

• As a result of the Leng’s curious biology, there are no stairs between levels—only ramps and elevator platforms.

• There are no doors, although most thresholds between passage and room (where a door might be) feature a 3-in. wide band of translucent crystal embedded in the stone. It takes great effort to destroy or remove the crystal.

• Any stone objects or furnishings are carved directly from the surrounding rock. They are not separate pieces that can be moved.

• Streams of water trickle from the many cracks in the ceiling and walls, then pool on the floor and drain away through more cracks. The whole atmosphere in the dungeon is cool and moist, and the wet makes it difficult to track creatures as there is little dust and any tracks quickly wash away.

The key to this area is under the break...

Development Diary: Deep Vault Factions

I've completed outlines for each faction—some raw notes for reference as I develop the dungeon. These may be tweaked over the next couple of weeks if new ideas present themselves, but I feel like these are fairly well baked. One of my goals is to not go too deep into the backgrounds. The players won't know/discover much of it anyway, so all I need are the surface details to flesh the rest out in my mind.

Since my previous overview of the dungeon, I've decided to add a fifth faction to the mix, although they're an edge case. In developing the Leng as villains, I've decided to reduce their numbers and make them physically limited, though technologically strong. The physical limitations will also help explain some of the strange architecture found in the vaults (such as no stairs or steps, only ramps). To supplement their threat, I gave the Leng some minions which they have enslaved: hordes of (easily-killed) gibberlings (Fiend Folio) and a few (sort-of) trolls. 

Both creature types are mindless and totally under the thrall of their Leng masters, but whereas the trolls are only found in the Leng's territory, the gibberlings are likely to be encountered throughout the dungeon without any Leng present. I'm also upgrading the gibberlings from the boring old FF version to make them a little more vicious and creepy, so I want to have a playbook for them to follow.

The following factions are all present within the Deep Vaults (in likely order of appearance). The PCs will be seen as rivals by the Dungeon Raiders; all other factions will simply view the party members as more Dungeon Raiders (in terms of their motives)...

Development Diary: The Deep Vaults

As I quickly ramp up a new megadungeon to run for my friend Jeff's campaign, I want to write down the mental steps I take throughout the development phase. My other current projects include development of two large-scale dungeons, plus prep for a Norse-style run at the G-series of classic adventures—all of which feature fairly standard D&D tropes—so I'm looking to do something fresh for this dungeon, with creatures and races I don't use often.

Also, the dungeon I picked to run for Jeff is tagged for the 3-6 level range (our characters are currently 2nd-4th). Jeff named it "The Deep Vaults" on the campaign map—a title he generated with no particular context intended. But I like it..."deep" sounds dangerous and mysterious and vaults can be rooms or caves, so I have lots of design choices. More than anything, I want this dungeon to feel alien and weird. I love mashing-up sci-fi and fantasy: stuff like Thundaar and Land of the Lost, as well as adventures like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and, in recent years, the excellent and inspired Anomalous Subsurface Environment.

(In fact, I considered just reskinning ASE for this, but as I was re-reading the modules, the big-picture setting of ASE is so vital to the inner workings of the dungeon that I felt the adventure would be lacking if I stripped all that great material out. If this dungeon goes over well with the guys, I might throw ASE onto my pile of future campaigns to run.)

Before going into a new design, I always like to lay out a set of principles...simple bullet points that define what the adventure will be about, and provide me with "bumpers" to nudge me back on target as I inevitably start to incorporate every kitchen-sink idea I can come up with. The list of goals might get tweaked during the design process, but this step always helps me get started.

For The Deep Vaults, I wrote out this list of design goals (the latter of which are pretty common megadungeon guidelines, but it still helps to say it—plus I want to really dial up #4 to high levels of interactivity and impact)...

1. No standard D&D monsters...use either weird, rarely-used ones or newly-created ones.
2. The PCs' relationship to the various dungeon factions should have an impact on play.
   
3. No standard traps or puzzle rooms; instead use environmental hazards and weird-tech challenges.
4. The dungeon environment must be interactive and have an impact on play.
5. Treasure is not straightforward; rather, the "loot" is in figuring out Leng technology and recovering valuable materials that are found in unusual forms (a spool of gold wire instead of gold coins, a tool made of sapphire, etc.)
   
6. The dungeon must be re-stockable, but ultimately could be "cleared" with great effort.

New Year, New Campaign(s)

Between the holidays, a sick girlfriend and two sets of sick parents, and a sudden rush of writing projects that came out of nowhere, December took a toll on my blog writing. With my Brackleborn campaign still on hiatus due to scheduling difficulties and my regular Tuesday night campaign currently being DM'ed by one of the other guys, I've spent a lot of time revisiting old ideas and figuring out what I want to do next.

I've done a ton of work on my Moormist Manor material and, in going through it all, realized I had an entire undead funhouse dungeon (because you can't spell funeral without spelling fun first) just sitting there in my files gathering dust. I based the quite-extensive dungeon on the classic Universal Pictures gothic-horror movies (Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein, Mummy, et al) and called it "Monster Mansion." It's not the most original idea, but I had a great time writing it and had completely forgotten how much work I'd done on it. I decided to shelve Moormist for awhile to polish up Monster Mansion.

So, I now have a wizard's ancestral manor house as a megadungeon-based campaign and an undead manor house as a kilodungeon-based campaign. Two big houses, two very different concepts, but still a lot of similar ideas and environments. Both are unfinished, but enough development is done that I could easily start a campaign in either one and fill in any missing gaps as we went along. I still intend to publish that material here in the blog, but before I could get to that point I got distracted in November with yet another campaign idea.

I've long wanted to run TSR's original G1-3 Giants modules leading into D1-3 (but skipping Q1), especially after reading Greyhawk Grognard's incredible dive into the secret lore behind the modules and their connection to Gygax's never-realized version of Temple of Elemental Evil. My concept is to run it in a Norse-style barbarian setting, with limited technology and resources for the players to draw upon (basically, the characters would be defending their clan's territory from the Jotuns' depredations). Behind it all would be the Svartálfar, the dark elves, who plot the invasion and subjugation of the surface world (perhaps aided by a god of elemental evil).

A few years ago, I DM'ed a really successful campaign based in my world's version of a Viking-style realm called The Cold March. It only ran for a year or so and had a sandbox-style opening, but the players developed it into an epic quest for justice and revenge that ended for their 8th-level characters in a satisfying way (for  players and DM). My guys still regularly talk about it and I personally feel it was my best work in 40 years of running games. My concern about revisiting these characters for the Against the Giants campaign would be that I might step on (and potentially ruin) the legacy of that earlier campaign.

So, new characters then... This brings up another problem which is that my Roll20 players seem to lack motivation to care about a "bigger story." The Cold March campaign worked so well because at the beginning the players seized upon a very simple idea: revenge, and then worked it to its inevitable conclusion. Everything else that happened for the rest of the campaign was an offshoot of that one choice made by the players. The Giants modules have a deeper story going on, however, and I want to take advantage of that. I have to come up with a good hook that will cause the players (not the characters) to WANT to solve the mystery of the giant's raids, rather than just go kill them until they stop (which, to be fair, is a perfectly valid strategy for members of a barbarian culture).

Then I had an idea...

Prior to 2012, I ran a 20-year (off and on) low-fantasy campaign based on a classic, pseudo-European feudal setting, with influences from Celtic and Welsh cultures and a heavy dose of Arthurian myth. That particular campaign also saw me develop a homebrew set of rules for harvesting terrain hexes and managing fiefs (which each of the players ultimately did). The system worked very well and I was proud of it, but it was ultimately too complex for my players' tastes/capabilities and I ended up doing 90% of the bookkeeping for every player AND all the surrounding NPC-run fiefs. Great system...too much work for me.

If I took my core fief rules, however, and boiled the mechanics down to a few essential functions (aided by the low-tech barbarian setting), and then merged it with the Against the Giants campaign, I could have the players assume the roles of jarls rather than individual heroes. It would be up to the player-jarls to manage their domains and develop warriors and heroes to meet the giantish threat from the mountains. The conceit would be that each player-jarl contributes members to an adventuring party, which would then run through the modules almost as pre-gens or NPCs. This would also alleviate the sting of the high attrition factor of the modules, in that the players wouldn't be losing "characters" so much as assets, while their actual character (the jarl) remains safe back in his domain's mead-hall.

So inspired, I shelved Monster Mansion in mid-December and began refining my fief rules. It was another big burst of creative energy that made a ton of progress. I now have the core system finished and am fine-tuning the details (things like developing tables to cover random Events, as well as turn-based procedures for how the jarls interact with each other). The outlines of the campaign setting are also done and, again, I could probably start this campaign tomorrow and be fine finishing the rest of the pieces as we went along.

But then...record scratch...another creative opportunity arose that sparked my imagination.

I swap DM duties with Jeff, one of my Tuesday night players—sometimes for a few months, sometimes longer. This helps both of us scratch our worldbuilder itches and also get to enjoy playing on occasion. Both of us have been frustrated by our group of long-time players, who, with the advent of computer games and MMOs, have grown largely incurious, and difficult to inspire or enchant. They want things spoon-fed to them in ways that our sometimes-convoluted storylines and intricate setting details don't easily allow. In delving into the OSR movement, I came to realize that the problem was on the DM side. Jeff and I were developing campaigns WE wanted to play in, but not necessarily ones in which our players were enthused to play.

As I began integrating OSR game theory into my own style of running my Wednesday-night Brackleborn campaign, I've turned Jeff on to some of the same ideas. We've had long Discord chats discussing what kind of campaigns we could run that would both stimulate our players and ourselves, while reducing the amount of time and work we put into running each week. Our goal is to get the players to reassume the role of decision-makers and sort-of force them to take the reins of the player side of the campaign.

It's been a revelation for both of us and, together, we workshopped a simple megadungeon concept which Jeff has developed into a full campaign. I would be the exemplar to show the other guys how an old-school game is played...which should be part of their genetic memory, because this is how we used to play.

The base concept is that a normal, low-fantasy city was beset by a seismic event that formed a rift which split the city into two halves. The walls of this rift were seen to have many cave-like openings which led into a mysterious network of passages and chambers filled with monsters and treasure. We player-characters have come to the city and joined one of several expeditionary companies that have formed to investigate and plunder the various catacombs unearthed by the event. Pretty bog-standard D&D...

Jeff runs it using a mix of random encounter tables and keyed rooms, and the deadliness factor is HIGH. In 10 sessions we've lost three characters and had to flee for our lives numerous times. I've had a glorious time as a player and Jeff has reported how much fun he is having as well, once he built up the confidence to just wing it. While discussing the most recent session, he expressed a desire to play in the dungeon and asked if I would be willing to run one of the rift complexes (which are separated into "danger" zones based on character level ranges).

I readily volunteered, knowing I already have (yet) another megadungeon in my back pocket. Beneath the capital city of Remedios in my campaign world, lies a series of ever-shifting catacombs which are the remnants of an ancient city that was once part of a highly-advanced society. The deeper one goes beneath the "modern" city of Remedios, the weirder things get and the more ancient technology the PCs discover/interact with. I have tons of unused material for this megadungeon to export over, so for the last week, I have been developing this new concept, which I will probably start running sometime in March.

The new dungeon is called "The Deep Vaults," and, as I intend to do with each of the projects outlined above, I will start posting that material here as I work through the development process. I intend to give myself one month to get the dungeon levels drawn and keyed, leaving me another 4-6 weeks to fine-tune and prep materials for Roll20. 

My blogging goal is to do at least one post per week, and I do not lack for material. Time is the one component that I think most bloggers wish they had more of, though.

My next post will be tomorrow, however...Part 1 of The Deep Vaults: The Sketch!

The Heroes of Brackleborn -- Game-Play Report (Session 7)

My Wednesday night campaign remains on temporary hiatus. We're hoping to get an extended weekend session sometime this month. I intended to use the hiatus to catch up these reports to the current timeline (Session 43), but that plan never quite materialized. This session occurred on 06/17/20.

Previously…

The party defeated a goblin ambush and found a hidden trail to their lair, a pair of cave openings into a hillside deep in the woods.