The Irritating Problem of Shared-Walls Dungeon Maps

When I was a wee lad, let us say in the summer of '83 or '84, maybe, it was at that time in my life that I had been introduced to D&D and found in it a very useful tool for avoiding the tedium of day-to-day earthly life. Also, the Atari 2600 and my favorite game Adventure. Maybe a couple of others.

I also discovered graph paper, almost accidentally, and since I'd had a couple of modules in my collection my brain lit up like a Christmas tree! AHA I could make some dungeons, too, but what really happened was that I - maybe in an unhealthy way - would just draw mazes on the graph paper OVER AND OVER AND OVER and then give them to my grandparents who (godsblessum) were like non-plussed but cooperative. And they solved them, agreeably, and so I had to escalate the process, and I would put in rooms with treasure, and then traps, and the occasional monster and so what you would get is a lot like what we would call a dungeon these days, but pretty MAZE-y. I recall hours upon hours of sweaty NW Florida afternoons laboring over whether the squares were too similar, or maybe the paths were too linear, or whatever a young guy would have gotten into before he'd discovered other kinds of masturbatory exercises. Pretty soon, I burned out the pad of graph paper or found myself stymied or maybe I discovered the piano in the clubhouse room near the pool and tried to figure out how to play LET ME CALL YOU SWEETHEART. Maudlin.

Literally the same cover as the one I toiled at. You can find anything.

Anyways, maybe a year or two later, the Gold Box adventures (pool of radiance etc) and another favorite of mine TELENGARD came out on the c64 and we - my buddies and me - were into these day long affairs of maze-maze-maze-kill-kill-kill-maze-maze-maze and hey! who's to say it wasn't great? Not me, that's for sure! But I think I'd learned my lesson in terms of tedious mazes and I got to be irritated by the "Shared Wall" phenomenon. That is, when you use graph paper to make mazes the way I did, and you make them dense, the way I did, naturally your Grandad is gonna be like "Oh Man I just Drill Through This and Head For The Exit". The cheater.

Now - you cannot pull this sort of trick on a C64 - the in-game physics don't allow for Passwall or Dimension Door or whathave-you. So - always you're going to be presented with the spooky anxiety of SHIT MAYBE THEY WILL JUST CHOOSE TO DIG, OR HACK, OR ZAP THEIR WAY THROUGH THIS B

So, I drifted away to the more "moderner" way of doing it, which is to say I separate, now, my hallways and my walls so that there are no shared walls in there to dig through, or maybe a Xorn could do it or Purple Worm or something but not a hard-scrabble group of murderhobos.

But, Like, Why, Man? My grandpa is D-E-D (godsblessum) and I would applaud any party of miners who could pull of a feat like I've described. These little pencil lines on the graph paper in no way represent a adamantine/plascrete/duralloy surface. I guess they could. They're walls in the Mythic Underworld, bro! My old penchant for doodling twisty little passages (all alike) in between special treasure filled rooms is retrospectively LEGIT

Let us consider that on a piece of graph paper wherein one square = 10', then the line that represents a wall if you draw it that way is like perfect for your average interior wall in an office building which may really be like 8 inches thick but if an office was a dungeon (it kinda really is a DUNGEON comrades!) then any able-bodied murder hobo would skip all the traps and locks and stuck doors and just break those fucking walls the eff down. And you should let them! And all the monsters will come running and then the PCs will be eaten and maybe the next batch of PCs is not quite as dense.

I been noodling around with a system I stole from some OSR-type guys to make a long stretch of maze more logistically doable at the table. Frankly, a pen n paper tracing of the route is anticlimactic and further allows the viewing of my TOP SEKRIT MAP and so that's a no-no. This procedure uses a deck of cards and the players using PC skill or player knowledge to get through a set number of cards in order to exit the labyrinth. It's pretty clever (sadly I dint think of it) and ripe for hacking... Make a couple of awesome stretches of geomorphs interspersed with some procedural-simulated mazes which get easier with travelling and cost light/food/water/etc.? Now we're talking some Mythic Underworld.

Anyways, a paper-thin wall is not a barrier unless they agree it is. Or, unless it's made of very stern fantasy-type stuff.

Thinking of Perk Buy for DCC Characters

My presupposition, of course, is that if it's not broken then there is no need to fix it. I think that mixing and matching of skill sets is against the spirit of vanilla DCC - in which humans are humans and everybody has their niche.  All the easy old skool niches are covered, and any of the weird ones can get squooshed into the pre-existing class.  The Barbarian DEATHRAGEFURY is a little gauche, if you ask me, but I think it could be admirable done with a regular old Mighty Deed.  Same for Paladin shit (just be a cleric already - they get swords), and rangers are available with gnomes and bards in Crawl (maybe it was number 6).

Some folks don't like to play that way.  I offer you a link somewhere to see a list of a bunch of DCC Character Classes that might get you closer to where you want to be.  Go read it - I'll wait.  There, that's a lot of classes to think about, and I bet a good couple of handfuls have sprung up since that thing started to collect cobwebs on the internweb pipes.  Okay, thanks for coming.  I hope you stumble here again, sometime.

A selection of races that are, on the face of it, better than ELF or HALFLING

...

Eh?  What's that you say?  You want a Merman Warrior or an Elven Cleric or a Minotaur Thief?  Something like the original DCC classes but MOAR cool?

Allow me to scrutinize you askance, sir or madam or whatever, as it seems that what you want is all the cool stuff from DCC in addition to feats and perks and shit from 3.75 edition or whatever the Hel it is.  No offense, but why do you need all these lists?  Couldn't you just say "I'm a Dwarf essentially, but instead of stonework skills and gold-smell I have fangs and tree-travel" and have you a Mok?  Couldn't you and the other players and your DM just be like "Cool - eff it, I like it, let's play!"?

No - you persist in your need for a firm framework so everything is 'fair'.

Hmm. Alright.  You sure you don't want to just use DCC as a reference book and continue to play d20 or Pathfinder or whatever the kids play these days?  There are a vast number of modules that you can kludge into any form you want.  You could even use the DCC as a loose framework!

No?

Alright. Let's see what we can bubblegum-and-tape together, shall we? Essentially, you take some base character class that exists already and plop down some things and take some things away.  (except maybe the Wizard - the Wizard can already be weird enough to provide an almost infinite variation  DONT FUCK WITH THE WIZARD is a good rule of thumb)

I'm of the opinion that halflings are great in DCC mechanically, but sort of tedious for RP.  Dwarfs, also.  Elfs, ick.  Now, I'm getting back into Clerics after groking ASE and Petty Gods and all that good stuff, and so that leaves Warriors and Thieves.  Understanding the general DCC philosophy of open access to all the abilities at the start, as opposed to incremental improvements at levelling, blow a good wide selection of the things you want your character to do, right from the get-go, blow it all over the place.  If you want mighty deeds and spells, I say (hear me on this), just play a demigod and have all the powers and play some other game, already.  You will notice that elves are fighty and have full access to the spell list - but they got a neat limitations/mechanical problem to work around vis a vis iron problems.  I take this as a model - get a spare framework of stuff, drop something good on it, and then to even it out drop a problem to work around in play.  Clerics and Wizards already have this in spades.  It's my opinion that Deity Disapproval and Corruptions are good things - NAY GREAT THINGS - because it tacks on something weird and fun to roleplay through and drive your character with aside from all the KILL SHIT GET TREASURE RINSE REPEAT

So mighty deeds AND spells - Not in my campaign, bub, but maybe your 3.5 friendly Judge will allow it for a HJ or something.  Or, if you want mighty deeds and spells, then maybe mighty deeds on a ten sided die roll of 10, and a 1 or 2 is a critical fumble (this is a combat tumble mechanic for a Jester class).  Also, you get a limited selection of spells chosen by me, or the corruption range is like 1-8 instead of 1 or 2.  I mean, if you get greedy you need to pay a price, yeah?  My very own Deep One Hybrid class, which to my knowledge is a mere exercise in page layout and thinking about these mechanics which no one has ever actually played, has stealth skills and magic from cleric list and wizard list, and also the Innsmouth Look which is a sort of Tax.  The healing in water thing is a limitation - gotta get back to the ocean, or a murky pond, or whatever, Fishman...

Column A - Fun stuff

1) Luck mechanics (gain, regenerate, trade)
2) Attacks (claws, bites, squirts of insect semen, whatever (note - just seeing if you're paying attention))
3) Movement stuff (flight, levitation, tireless running, leap, swim, climb)
4) shape changing
5) a single spell, or a level of spells
6) wonky adventuring senses (gold smell, infravision, super duper hearing, spot-a-secret)
7) fun miscellaneous mechanics (tracking, bard song, monk type stuff from 1st ed.)
8) any of the perks from, say +Scott Mathis's Transylvanian Adventures

For Column A, a wide range of fun powers, feats, whatever - a jillion jillion sources could inform your choices.  Mutant Futures, Gamma World, Psionics, Robotics Charts,

Column B - Trade Offs

1) Any kind of corruption, minor, permanent, roleplayable
2) madness of any kind, things that compel a player to RP a thing
3) obligations (religious, ethical, whatever e.g. don't eat meat, never kill except in self-defense)
4) slow healing
5) limited but high number of hit points (I think GW did this with robots and androids)
6) any number of drawbacks mutations
7) for bigger awesome powers, the bigger kinds of permanent corruption
8) Decrease the Hit Die

I don't like to play GURPS much anymore, but I did as a kid, and I think you could take a couple of rules o thumb from the GURPS chargen process to design your class.  Forget about the stats and crap and just think about what kind of stuff you could have with a smorgasbord of GURPS books and, say, 50 points of Perks and Drawbacks.  Sky's practically the limit, here!

My opinion, though, is that you don't need any rules of thumb for this, you can kinda eyeball it and agree informally with the Judge on what is fair.  We've done it (me and Evan and the Mok).  Just remember the basic philosophy to get the whole gamut up front without any of the bullshit leveling mechanics other systems offer (let's be Frank shall we Frank, you want the perks to try we all know it, Frank, you want all teh Perks at Level 1).  "I'm  a fighter with four arms so 2 attacks per round, lots of Hit Points, and my skin is green and I have tusks!"  (A Thark)  "Okay, Thark - you can't wear armor better than AC 12 and your Agility and Personality can never be more than 12, either.  You're very big and you take up a whole rank in the dungeon rank and file by yourself, and you sure can't squeeze through any trapdoors."  Fair?  I think so.

this Thark and his mates are going to cut you, Homes

One really cool thing about a good number of the DCC module authors is thay they offer you ways to redo a funnel full of wonky weird character options when your regular party bites it.  +Daniel Bishop and +Jon Marr, in particular.  I can think of three different modules by Daniel that have weird races to play as just casually strewn about the text.  Just like regular humans plus X, minus Y.  Here is one - by the by - it's worth the price of entry just for the extra patrons, but the Moon Men are cool, too.

What are you doing, there, just reading?  Plumb the skeezy depths of the internet and give this dog some hunting room - I think this dog can hunt, I really do.

Promoting Desperation in Games - What I learned last year from DCC

<<I think I thought this up a couple of weeks ago, and it's been waiting for me to finish and publish it, so here goes, sort of a WHAT WORKS FOR ME PT. DIEUX although I haven't got the balls to implement these kinds of things all the way since it would be like TPK after TPK after TPK>>

One of the things that appeals to me about the OSR, particularly Barrowmaze and Stonehell and the ASE (I guess megadungeons in general), is the sense of desperation that comes with being a schmuck underground with a dull sword and a torch, and maybe a slightly bonkers religious friend and a guy/gal who tends to take things when nobody's looking.  I often feel desperate in real life, or at least I have in the past.  There were a couple of lean years where I was hungry all the time, penniless, and spending a good deal of time in the FSU Strozier Library at night looking for something.  I knew some Greek then, and Latin, and a meager smattering of Hebrew, and my dreams were infected with hunger and longing and the endless quiet of a half-empty dorm room.  I'd spend hours a day hunting for foot-notes in musty disused books, trying to synthesize my understanding of the Gnostic Heresies and POVRAY and Angband.  I may have been a little mad.  I would save up my dimes and nickels for a black bean sub at Subway back when they did that, and I sometimes prayed an atheist prayer that the Krishnas would come and try to convert the kids with free food... Looking back they was some weird times, yes.  But I was sharp as a tack, then.  It were the desperation that made me sharp, I think.  Maybe it was a burgeoning Krishna Consciousness or something.

There's no way my younger mind could have anticipated those real lean years from 1995 to (2014?) 1998... By that time I had given up on RPGs - our group had just tipped into 2nd edition and things started to seem dull to me.  We had tried Ravenloft, and Dark Sun, Spelljammer (very briefly).  I started a job and picked up the 1st Vampire WoD book to try and keep up with the group and then when they started to play it almost exclusively I bowed out into (get this) Necromunda.  I'm not about preying upon the weak and leaping tall buildings and blending seamlessly into the shadows.  I'm about the grotty, filth covered, desperate picking through goblin-stained rags looking for a couple of silver pieces to make all this poking around in the sewers worthwhile.  When I started to hang with the wrong kind of skinheads over the gaming table, I gave up tabletop gaming and RPGs entirely until about 2008 or so.

I don't need empowerment in my fantasy, really, I think maybe I need a similar situation in which I get some imaginary return on the dreariness of humdrum existence.  I guess maybe it is empowerment, of a kind.  Don't get me wrong - in my waking world I'm fairly fulfilled in that I'm happily married and have a great kid, and my day job allows that I make other peoples' lives marginally less dreary...  So, how do you (well, how do I) promote desperation in my games?  Somewhat more importantly, if others don't look for this in their games but look for something else, how ought I to mesh my deep psychological drives with theirs, so that we can have a fun time and get the thing we need?

1) Maybe the setting.  Barrowmaze appealed to me since resource-management and desperation is implicit.  Looking back, I think DCC isn't such a great match (for what I'm talking about here) since 1st level DCC characters are a little heftier and tricksy-er than other OSR types.  It's perfect for the funnel, though.  After a bunch of funnels, I find I'm worn out on it a little, but it's a hoot for the most part.

2) No permanent spell effects.  Continual light on a rock is a game breaker for resource-worrier types.

3) Spell limits that are a little heftier than what DCC has, so a modification to the system or else a significant ramping up of spell-resistance in encountered creatures, and a boost to the use of spells in humanoid/human NPCs.  I think making loss of the spell connected to any failed roll, or else 

4) CRUSHING DEATH AND GRIEF, SOAKED IN THE BLOOD OF THE TRESPASSING THIEF

5) Frequent random encounter rolls, but I think maybe tandem use of the reaction table to keep things interesting.  Murderhoboing all the other NPCs was hilarious but stymied my attempts to introduce sinister plots, kind of.

6) Bleed the characters of resources if they aren't used up quick enough.  Waves of zombies to get the PCs worried about lamp-oil.  Gusts of wind and dripping water for torches, crossbow-using undead for lanterns and lamps, monsters attracted to spell use and loud noises (It occurs to me that I am stealing all this from the intro to Barrowmaze I).  Gygax said you have to track time and make them sweat resources.  I came up on 1st ed. and YMMV of course.

7) Hideous awful curses, and not the regular vanilla kinds, on magic items.  A good peppering of weak magic weapons and tantalizing miscellaneous stuff right out of the Friday the 13th TV show.  So bad that PCs will hesitate every time they spend a charge.  I know this is not the kind of game everybody wants, but refer to the title of the article, if you will.
8) Grottiness.  This ain't Krynn, it's Newhon or Discworld.  You can die from disease and poison or malnourishment or fatigue.  Kinda sucks, but adventurers adventure so they don't starve, and they need money to fuel the benders they go on, and maybe save up a little at a time for that banded mail for an extra edge.  I was reading ACKS this morning, and it explains that a GP equals one month's worth of destitute subsistence for a peasant, so adventurers are naturally going down into crypts to find a couple of years' worth of wine, wo/men, and song.  I like that policy.  DCC states up front that most 0-level characters have never seen a GP up close.  I think it's in there, somewhere.
9) I don't think I feel great about purchased potions of healing/scrolls of cure light wounds.  Or neutralize poison/cure disease (maybe cure disease is okay, if it comes with a price...)  I want my magic to be a little weirder and more dangerous than that.  Is it okay I say that?
10) I dig the KEEP FIGHTING mechanics of WHFRP 1st ed. in which you can stay up fighting if you save vs. death, but you're incurring wounds and damage so bad that you may never adventure again without some kind of magical/divine assistance.  Or a wooden leg.  High level characters (i.e. 4th level) are riddled with scars and have excellent and thrilling stories to tell.  Necromunda and Mordheim were fun this way, if you went out of action you had a chance to just have been conked out and scrambled back to camp with a concussion and a good story.
11)  Come to think of it, maybe divine assistance isn't so meaningful until PCs reach a certain amount of importance in the world (i.e. never - Lovecraft's mechanistic materialism).  The gods are petty and jealous and underpowered, and arcane patrons are the same.  They want power in the material world and every follower is tested constantly and held to strict standards...  I like ASE's flavor in this way
12) Coins are rare and the high powered stuff like platinum is generally out of circulation - any treasure-y stuff a party finds is going to be chewed up by fences and pawnbrokers and banks and taxation.  That 1000 GP vase you found?  Likely to get broken on the way back and also if you don't have a trusted appraiser then you can expect about half of what it states in the guidebook.  Reaction rolls might make this better, but haggling may be role-played for better results.  Maybe people don't like roleplaying haggling anymore, I dunno.  You could lose the jewels to a pick pocket on the way to the fence!  Adventure!  I mean, what is the pickpocket skill for if not for NPCs to cut your purse?  Also, better be nice to your henchmen or they may just pull up the ropes and leave you down there...
13) TRAPS TRAPS TRAPS  a party full of anxious thieves is better and more fun than a party full of dead clerics and skewered dwarves (in DCC I bet this would be pretty slick).
14) Rust monsters ought to be as terrifying for a party as wights are, IMHO
15) +Zak Smith proposed a rule, I think, in which you voluntarily raised your fumble range in order to expand your crit range.  I think, amongst the number of other clever things the man has written and thunk up, this is one of the clearest uses of simple mechanics to add zest to the game that I ever heard of, since it promotes FUN.  He's really a very smart guy, and make no mistake.
16)  Speaking of crit ranges, maybe the monsters could use the same rule, and cause crits on 19 and 20, and (for DCC) bump up the crit die a couple of notches.  A simple skeleton could turn into a skeleton brimming with serious necromantic energies - feeling worried, with the smell of mould and hate floating around everywhere?
17) for undead, in DCC, you could do worse than unique-ify 'em with my own awesome d100 table (for some zest and laffs)
18) don't let the party just send henchies and hirelings headlong into disaster without reduction of morale, increase in difficulty hiring down the road at the very least, and it cost a share of the treasure for certain
19) if the party burns enough NPCs, then word travels fast and they get dogpiled by a couple of adventuring parties, also (but at least make it dramatic).  A party of murderhobos with a bad reputation is sure to get a comeuppance sooner or later

Right now I can't think of anything else but I'm sure a glancing over of the AD&D DMG later will spring some things into my brain.  I think after some reads of my blog nobody will want to play in a game I run from here out...