Burrow of the Ratman, or My Feeble Attempt At Doing A 1E Rat-Themed Adventure (part 1)

At the time of me writing this, there's a adventure design contest going on over at B/X BLACKRAZOR called "Out of the Sewer".

(By the time you're reading this, it's probably over!)

I'm not participating - I don't have the time or the skills - but I will make a shot at it here in this post, describing my thought process along the way, since the contest touches on some things I've been thinking about lately. And sometimes it's more interesting to read about choices than the end result.

So, JB (the author of the blog) had some rules for the contest:

• Rat-themed
• Written for a particular D&D system
• Written for a particular level range
• Include a mapped dungeon of no less than 12 keyed areas

As a side-note - and this may only be because of some filter bubble on my part - I feel like during the last 1-2 years or so, there's been more writing about 1E/AD&D, and/or stuff about the importance of weight of coins and what that entails, exploration, etc etc., with blog posts such as Classic Vs. Treasure.

(Ok, that was only one, and that post isn't awfully old, but anyway!)

For me, with no experience with AD&D at all (even though I own all the "core" books from DMG to that Wilderness-book), it just feels interesting to dig into this almost scientifically. I'll try to explain!

A warning

This post will be unfocused as hell. This is like you and me listening to my brain reasoning about stuff it doesn't know anything about.

I'll try and break it up with the occasional rat doodle here and there.

How to start, or How not to start

Well, I've entered the One Page Dungeon Contest a couple of times (even won once!), but those were system agnostic (or very much "just a map and an idea, hope you have a good DM"). I figure if I were to design a 1E adventure, I needed to do it more "system focused", which meant digging into the books.

So in my head, there's currently these things spinning around, gathered from various places:

• Rats
  
• Gold for XP
• Coins have weight
• Things in a dungeon are weighted in gold
  
• Weight/gold ratio

I presume that each one of these items will give birth to additional stuff to consider - stuff that seasonal adventure designers do by heart without thinking - so like a rat I just started burrowing myself into the first one: rats.

Rats, or Everything Really

So I know that in a rat-themed adventure there needs to be some sort of connection to rats, obviously. But since I at this point didn't have any clear motif to my adventure, I just looked up "Rat" in the Monster Manual (pg. 81), because:

• If I was going to do this systematically, I must assume that "monsters" are more than something to 1) encounter, and 2) hit, and I can't assume anything about a 1E rat
  

Even though I've never played a 1E game before, I've flipped through these books enough times to know that the stat block is packed with information - all of which must mean something. So I couldn't just throw in a bunch of rats in a dungeon doodle because:

• How strong is one rat?
  
• What can a rat in 1E do?
• Or rather: what does a 1E DM expect of a 1E rat?

If you've done any programming, let me tell you that this adventure design project started to feel like recursive parsing; for every item discovered, two more were discovered and queued up for reading.

Anyway, reading the entry for "Rat, Giant (Sumatran)" gave me the following:

• 1-4 HP (I guess 2 HP in average), 5-50 appearing
•  This is were my lack of 1E knowledge starts to show: would this mean that if I put in 5 rats in my little dungeon, I should on one very basic level think of that as a 5*2=10 HP monster? Naturally, 5 rats will spread out etc. etc., but in terms of strength vis-à-vis a player? Meaning I should count backwards from this:
• What kind of player can defeat a 10 HP monster without much trouble?
  
• What about AC? Assume a tiny single rat with 1 HP but in plate mail with a shield? Or a enormous rat with 50 HP and basically no AC?
  
• They keep close to graveyards, so that they may feed on newly buried bodies
• ("Their burrows honeycomb many graveyards, ..." - I'm certainly not an expert on the English language, but that's how I interpret that archaic sentence at least)
• Hates fire!
• That I knew! Thank you, George Lucas
• Likes to swim!
• That I knew! Thank you, duck pond close to my home
  
• Avoids attacking strong parties, unless commanded by creatures such as wererats or vampires

That last bullet item gave me some ideas; should the adventure revolve around vampires? Or wererats? And what about character levels, should I fire up Google Sheets and start doing graphs so that everything is calculated correctly, like doing taxes?

The math made my head hurt, but I actually had an adventure idea now. But before we go into that, another rat doodle:

Stop thinking about rats, or The first puzzle

Since I'm a bear with a very small brain, I needed to stop thinking about AC/HP and their friends (sounds like a AC/DC tribute band). So I took my trusty notepad and pen, sat down and started thinking: treasures and their placement are vital, so maybe start there? Design the adventure bottom-up? Start with a single atom and build layers around it?

Start with a single simple treasure.

Well, I started thinking about the weight/gold ratio; coins found in a dungeon are easy to carry but don't give much of experience, so turning that around should give the premise for my basic puzzle: small item, worth a lot, weighs a lot:

• Small means it's easy to carry (not bulky)
• Worth a lot means the players wants it (e.g. they will pursue it, even if it's hard to reach)
• Weighs a lot means...well, this is just part of the puzzle, if used right
  

Maybe if I placed a tiny figurine, heavy as hell, worth a lot, on the other side of some bottomless body of water - it's easy for the players to get over the water, but harder to leave with the figurine since they may drop it on the way over.

Possible...?

Here's a initial sketch in Swedish I made (point 1 being the heavy figurine):

So maybe there once was a crude rope bridge across a deep shaft, and on the other side, a extremely valuable figurine on a pedestal. But then something flooded the halls, and the bridge collapsed.

Maybe...?

Wrapping it up, or Ending a post just because it's late

I think I'll stop here for now. In part 2 I'll explain what point 2 in the sketch above means, and maybe list some keywords that popped up in this post ("collapsed bridge" etc.) and build something around them.

Until next time!

Sourdoughing: an addendum to part 1, part 2½, and square hexworld (completing the tower and moving for-/on-/outward)

(First part, second part, or the complete series.)

Addendum to last post

Yes, last time we built a wizard's tower - belonging to the strange Lard Lord - but I forgot the last step in the tower building - rolling for debt!

So here goes: 1 - Nothing to worry about, no debt here. The wizard found the tower and managed to overtake it by turning the previous owner (also a wizard) into a frog (put the frog at the top floor - it's alive and has allies looking for it)

Ok, exciting - a frog! Let's put it at the top floor, and update our list of things known about this wizard and tower (last two bullet items):

• The wizard communicates with sirens
• The wizard constructs golems using lard and tangled weed
  
• The wizard is in custody of a small child of non-human origin
• The wizard is neglecting a lot of simple house chores due to the child
• The wizard is a lousy carpenter (see: entrance)
• A nearby earthworm is selling phony potion recipes to the wizard, hoping to eradicate all birds from the area
• The wizard is nicknamed "the Lard Lord" behind her back, although no one dares to call her that
• The previous owner - another wizard - was turned into a frog and is currently at the top floor, unknowingly to the current owner

 

The previous owner; watching, waiting, catching flies

With that out of the way, let's move forward!

Part 2½: Radius of impact, or I Don't Know How To Write Part 3

I have no idea where we should go from here, but I'm guessing we should be developing the surrounding area around the tower, using the bullet point items above. But does that mean zooming out, placing the tower locally like in a hex, or should we just rip off some "fact" above and then connect the dots?

Hmm, what if you place these dots of interest in an area, and a dot of interest (the tower in this case) has something like a "radius of impact/influence". I'm not talking about "this is the Tower of McMeanie, and so everything in its radius of impact are MEAN", but more of a influential thing, like how it affects trade and people's views on other stuff. I like more the idea of for instance the people of a small village in the vicinity (radius) of an Evil Tower having to cope with that; "yes, that McMeanie is horrifying, but it could be worse, possibly; at least now I know what I got." Or stuff like superstition.

(And sometimes these Towers of McMeanies have a very small radius; they want to be left alone/occluded from the world. Or maybe no one really cares about that place anymore.)

So you could define these dots of interest, along with their radius of impact/influence, and just randomly plot them on a canvas/piece of cardboard/left side of a boar. You could then assign different properties (i.e. nouns/verbs) to these radii, like "superstitious", "xenophobia", "greed", "health", "oppressed", and so on (a radius of impact should probably hold multiple properties).

The intersection of multiple radii could lead to interesting splats of information on the world, that have shaped that particular place and people (if static). I guess the PCs themselves each carry a "spotlight", e.g. a radius of impact attributed with different properties - and that is something that ripples through these static radii of the world.

OK, enough of me just making things up, I think we need a silly image here that are somewhat related to my ramblings:

Should our newly constructed tower - the tower of the Lard Lord - have a radius of impact? Yes. Should we define it now? Maybe? How would one define such a radius?

Well, first of, the radius needs a value and a unit. Since the tower is fixed in place (OR IS IT???) we could just count the radius in meters, I guess. So how big should it be? Well, we could reiterate the bullet points above, and see if any of them gives us any indication of an increase in radius, and potentially what kind of property we should add to our circle (i.e. the Lard Lord communicates with sirens, so maybe people in the radius are always on the lookout towards to sky, or avoid the water ways, or dislikes ladies wearing fur, etc.).

I don't think I'll add a radius now, since our little sourdoughing world doesn't really consist of anything besides this.

Intermission: It Puts the Tower In the World, or I Can't Do Hexes In Google Sheets

I've been reading some good advice on hexcrawling lately, which is something I have no experience with, but the idea behind it speaks to me, so I think I'll just try to cram this into here as well.

With the little caveat that I can't do hexagons in Google. But it doesn't matter, since 1) I want to keep this simple, 2) I don't think it really matters actually.

So this is the known world of sourdoughing at the moment:

I made the "Lard Lord" into a link, that just opens the adjacent spreadsheet tab "Wizard's Tower - the Lard Lord" (which is the same sheet I've been posting previously). It just seems silly not to take advantage of those technical aids available here.

Alright, next time we'll move on to part 3, where we'll start fleshing out something else (hopefully! Or maybe I'll just do an infinity series of "Addendum to Part 2½" and we'll never leave this square hex).

Eye see you

 

A very tall tower LOADING

 

(Hmm I think this should be linked somehow to PUTERPLANE)

Skellimaul/Mauleton

 

The skellimaul/mauleton carry its weapon - a stone maul that looks more like a greatclub because of reasons - with great disinterest; the weapon is cursed, and the skellimaul/mauleton is (almost) forever bound to it.

Skellimauls/mauletons is a by-product of the weapon's curse; the carrier is slowly transformed into its more undead appearance as time goes by, and is controlled by the parasitic weapon.

As time goes by, the wielder of the weapon turns more and more into a skeleton, turning weaker and weaker, until one day, it is unable to handle or even lift the heavy weapon, making them both stationary. When that happens, the weapon lifts its curse; the skeleton finally drops the weapon, and is free to do whatever (running away seems to be the most likely event), and the cursed maul is left alone, waiting for a new owner.

A wordless adventure

 

 

 

 

  (Here's the last image flipped, in case you don't want to break your neck:)

Literal Swedish translations makes a tiny location table

1. Perch swamp
2. Heritage bud
3. Children lake area
4. Fire croft
5. Fog home
6. Mire bay
7. Beauteous oath
8. Father's croft
9. Tranquillity home mountain
10. Free hammering
11. Wife reverse
12. Bird bay
13. Pelt swamp
14. Pelt rapids
15. Old string
16. Goat mountain
17. The stew
18. Double cream island
19. Green nock
20. Shark croft
21. Hand beer
22. Ocean rock strait
23. Weekend island
24. Whole ridge
25. Home lake
26. Side stitch isthmus
27. Heave island
28. Hear village
29. Gust end
30. Mud live
31. Ice branch
32. Ice take village
33. Hunter's know
34. Wolverine swamp
35. The man bed
36. Wedge
37. Nugget mountain
38. Charcoal bay
39. Cross hill
40. Cow bay headland
41. The king's bed
42. Randy bad
43. Crone island
44. Source ridge mountain
45. Flesh tag
46. Stock rapids
47. Famine
48. Look for rapids
49. Suffer croft
50. Little forest
51. Lime tree island deep
    
52. Goal meadow
53. Light water
54. The calm
55. Trickster headland
56. Tall ones rode
57. Tall stream
58. Ransom
59. Stomach goose
60. Stomach smile home
61. Thin
62. Grind well bay
63. Ant ridge
64. Moon gravy
65. Down village
66. Northern stream construction village
67. New maiden
68. Sneeze eating
69. Coin rapids
70. Stick croft
71. Pure current
72. Travel island
73. Pure iron
74. Mother's wood
75. The funnyness
76. Field flow
77. Rose eye
78. Square bay
79. Raw hill
80. Shrimp isthmus
81. Fox landing
82. Red stream isthmus
83. Smoke stream
84. Red ridge flow
85. Cairn tea
86. Roared bay
87. Hall town
88. Make inlet
89. One's croft
90. Shout croft
91. Tailor red village
92. Blame mountain
93. Battle isthmus
94. The little wall
95. Big pipes
96. The large scythe
97. Big harness village
98. Tooth lake castle
99. Crosswise rode
100. Beer indweller

 

(Follow the Swedish tag for more nonsense!)

The Dove: ten years anniversary

Ten years ago, I mixed up characters for words, and that poem led to a collection of sci-fi poems, that told the story of a spaceship that lost its way, a religious figure of techno-faith making passengers drink rocket fuel, a really bad captain, metamorphosis - and something more, it's been a while since I read it!

And I drew some pictures, and compiled it all into a sci-fi "horror" (I'm easily scared) story - and that was ten years ago - and you can get it here if you want to (it's free).

Some pages:

(We even turned one of the pages into a song, called Lily, named after a spambot in the story.)

Bird-ish shaman

 

Mechanized Ex-Baron von Spindelknochen

 

The von Spindelknochen were a strange bunch. Their favourite type of punishment were beheading (so much that they built a special type of chop-off-and-then-roll-to-a-special-moat-outside-the-castle device to speed things up, known as the Head Chopper, and then they had that problem with the necromancer that kept reanimate the skulls for her army and...but that's another story).

Where was I? Oh the von Spindelknochen, yes, strange bunch. They became even stranger when they had a visitor from the future - another von Spindelknochen it turned out, only too late, as you will see - that told all about how to prolong one's life.

Because, the visitor said, you don't really want to live through these medieval times. These dark ages.

The what now, the von Spindelknochen said.

This, the visitor said. The dark ages. Cold castles, diseases, wars, primitive ways of living. The most advanced thing you'll ever encounter in your entire life is a spoon.

A what now, the von Spindelknochen replied, because the only kitchen utensils they used were knifes since you could chop things off with those, and chopping off things were something the von Spindelknochen really liked.

Exactly! the visitor exclaimed. Five hundred years from now, humanity will travel across the planet through the skies, cutting clouds in half in large metallic, birdlike machines. Don't you want to experience that? Fast forward another five hundred years and humanity is no longer living on this planet, but on Mars, Venus - even Jupiter! And where I'm from, we've even escaped death itself.

Off with his head, the von Spindelknochen ordered, and within the second the visitor's head painted a blood red elliptic path through the air - and landed perfectly on a metallic disc - much like a tray - with small legs all round, that the visitor had brought with him apparently without anyone noticing.

The small tray started running, but the von Spindelknochen soon caught up with it (it wasn't awfully fast).

Oh the irony, the visitor's head managed to say just before the von Spindelknochen tore it off the tray and threw it out the window (and it was actually reanimated a couple of years later by that same necromancer and...but that's another story).

The tray

The tray keeps any head placed on it alive and fully functioning. It's a mechanized, Keep Aliver™-tray (with the optional Spider Legs module attached).

It was ironically invented (in the future), manufactured (in the future and also in the past after the first von Spindelknochen miraculously managed to reverse engineer it) and overly overused by the von Spindelknochen, who made a tradition - at their death beds - to chop off their own head and keep it alive on one of these discs.

The disc doesn't stop ageing though, something the first generations of von Spindelknochen learned the hard way. Though still alive, they more look like a bunch of tree stumps nowadays.