Hat Goblin & Beastling Head Generator

We all love goblins. From Tolkien's evil and industrial goblins to Pathfinder's toothy gremlins, we have decades of tropes to pull from for our RPGs. Functionally, they work great in a game due to their size, familiarity, flexibility, and power scaling. 

But I do find in my own games there is a problem with goblins: there's too many of them and they all look the same! 

How do you keep track of thirty identical green gobbos? Saying Goblin 1, Goblin 2, etc., is boring, real-time positionality (the one on the left) is confusing, and giving them individual names is too much work and also stupid. 

My solution is to give them coloured hats. All goblins wear hats, and any given group of goblins has no repeated colours. Easy peasy. 

Another method is to give them all a different animal head. When I do this I call them Beastlings instead of goblins, but the stats and mischief remain the same. 

Enjoy this goblin hat and beastling head generator. The generator is thanks to Slight Adjustments, and a lot of content is stolen from other blogs, including Goblin Punch and this Reddit post.

Play Report - Slime Baroness (Session Four, Final Session)

Many months ago I played my final session in my dungeon 'Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep'. See my page here with the other play reports and the full series where I describe my process for writing this dungeon. This final report is long-delayed and much truncated, but I won't apologize. 

Extremely Brief Session Summary

• We started in town with a visit from the Baron himself (Baron Martingy) who promised them a new lordship over the Keep if they cleared out all the monsters. 
• I made three members of the Baron's retinue available as hirelings and they chose the priestess Bev Beetleman who had a healing prayer ability. 
• I mostly forget what happened but they blasted straight down to the final rooms where they busted through the False Tomb into the Sorcerer's Capsule room.
• They fought Lady Unterbranch and defeated her, winning the favour of the Slime Baroness. 

This was another fun, satisfying session. This particular group has been a bit sporadic and we wanted to play something else, so we made an effort to finish off this dungeon during this fourth session. I had lots of fun refereeing it, and I believe the ending was satisfying. However, they left a large part of the dungeon unexplored.

I think maybe I made this dungeon a bit too large. I'm still trying to find that sweet spot for a dungeon that can be fully (or mostly) cleared in just 2-3 sessions. This dungeon has about 60 rooms and they probably only visited half of them. 

Maybe next time I'll go for 30 rooms and see what happens. 

Quality Reusable Traps (d6)

When I prep for games, I appreciate resources that I can reuse.

I've written about this before with reusable dungeon maps. Another example is the same die roll table I use to help me stock dungeons. I also use Chris McDowall's Small Tables format for all my encounter tables (d6, 1-3 are three variations of a common creature, 4-5 are two variations of a uncommon creature, and 6 is something big and special).

So here are six reusable traps. The mechanism is simple and the details can be reflavoured again and again. I believe that you could use any of these traps with the exact same group of players at least twice before anyone would notice. Even if they do notice, that doesn't mean it's not fun. 

d6 Quality Reusable Traps

1. Glue Sword Pond: A pond/lake of clear water, at least eight feet deep. A magic/bejewelled sword is stuck at the bottom, quite visible from above. The sword is covered in a strong adhesive that isn’t soluble in water. This cannot be seen from above -- anyone grabbing the hilt is stuck fast. (Stolen wholesale from Prismatic Wasteland). 

Play Report - Slime Baroness (Session Three)

This is the third session report for my game where I ran two players through Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep, a dungeon of my own making. Click here to see the other play reports as well as my series detailing my full dungeon process for creating the dungeon. 

During Session One, my two players entered the Keep for the first time and explored the upper levels, discovering the Slime Baroness herself. In Session Two they explored the main level, and almost got dispatched completely by some flying pots and pans (RIP Henrietta the hireling). 

Now, in Session Three, they suited up with a new retinue of hirelings and descending into the lower levels. This is where the true fun began. 

My two characters were a Garden Wizard and a Butcher/Warrior. 

Highlights from Session Three: 

• I started the session by having them overhear some villagers outside the Butcher's house discuss the diamonds. These were found by the players in Session Two in the pocket of an undead brigand, but they hadn't sold them off for profit yet. 
• This was Rumour #3: the diamonds had been stolen by the brigands from the village hetman (leader) and the village needed them to pay off back taxes to the Baron. 
• The players bit this hook and immediately went to speak to the hetman (an NPC I had to make up on the spot) and suss out more information. 
• I said that the Baron desperately wanted the back taxes, and implied that anyone caught selling diamonds anywhere in the Barony would be investigated, as the theft had been long-reported since the Brigands' original arrival a month ago. 
• The Baron would be arriving in the village with his retinue in three days time. This was to kick their action into overdrive by putting a time limit on some stuff, and to force them to make a decision about the diamonds. 
• The Butcher and the Wizard then descended back into Unterbranch Keep, heading for the last bit of unexplored ground-level, i.e. the Armoury and Vault.

Play Report - Slime Baroness (Session Two)

Click here to see all the other sessions' play reports, as well as my blog post series on my full dungeon writing process for Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep. 

This session, my two players (a butcher warrior and a potentially-homeless garden wizard) headed down to the main level of Unterbranch Keep, got into a couple scuffles, went back and forth between the village to sell some treasure, and left a hireling to die after being struck in the neck by some flying pots and pans. 

Imagine one of these metal bois straight to the neck. Ouch. 

Highlights from Session Two: 

• They found a ton of treasure, including going back to the Chapel to pick up the golden eagle talon which they disregarded in Session One. 
• They made 1200sp selling treasure, which pleased them greatly.  
• They finally reached the Barbican, which should have been the first room they entered through the front door. 
• They fought the animated suits of armour and almost perished! I thought that this would have been an easy introductory fight to set the tone of Unterbranch Keep. 
• This was funny, given that they had easily dispatched the Slime Baroness herself in Session One, a fight which I had expected to come later in the delve, and at much greater risk of danger. 
• Their hireling fell in the snake door pit trap in front of the Grand Hall, but luckily they had tied a rope around her before sending her to investigate, so they pulled her out. 
• There has been a lot of stress about acquiring basic gear these two sessions, like rope and water. I regret the way I set up their starting gear. I should have just run gear like straight Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland: all expeditions are assumed to have lanterns, basic climbing, mapping, camping equipment, and rations.
• They fought the puppet brigands in the Grand Hall and found the pocketful of diamonds.
• They didn't roll the random rumour about the diamonds being stolen by the brigands so I'm going to introduce that information next session. 
• They have been making great use of the iron bee bracelet taken from Robert Fish the skeleton librarian. The ability to levitate an enemy up in the air and out of reach at the beginning of combat is excellent. Maybe their next enemy should have throwing knives. 
• They had their deadliest combat yet when they entered the Kitchens!
• Eight flying pots and pans doing d6 damage to everyone made quick work of Henrietta the hireling. The garden wizard was soon downed as well. 
• The butcher dragged out his unconscious companion, and I told him that if he went down to the village to seek medical attention, the hireling would die. 
• They were both fine with this (as any savvy adventurer should be) and abandoned poor Henrietta to her fate. 
• I had no idea this fight would be so difficult. We were playing Into the Odd style, without the ganging-up rule from Electric Bastionland. With that in place, it might have been different. 
• Very funny that a flying muffin tray to the neck killed the first adventurer, when a magical Slime Baroness and her minions barely made a scratch. 
• The local surgeon healed up the garden wizard (for a fee) and they rested for a day. 
• That is where we ended the session. They will probably hire someone else (maybe Henrietta's son who came to demand 100sp for his mother's funeral costs) and head back to the Keep for more treasure. 

Play Report - Slime Baroness (Session One)

You may have read my series documenting my full dungeon process, the results of which were the mid-size dungeon 'Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep.' 

I am now running two friends through this dungeon, and so far we're having lots of fun! 

**Update: click here to see the other session reports. **

This is how evil Unterbranch Keep seems if you listen to the tales of the villagers. 

Here are some highlights from play so far, including some reflections on my dungeon design and the formatting/processes:

Session One

• They started off immediately surprising me, by entering the Keep via climbing ivy through an upper window instead of walking through the front door. This was a delight, and they spent the whole first session on the upper level and roof. 
• Also almost immediately I found myself flipping back and forth in my printed copy to get to the encounter table. 
• This was a bit of a drag -- I think I might try having a truncated version reprinted as a running footer on each page. 
• They were so wary of traps/curses that they deliberately left some treasure sitting untouched. But in the Chapel the magician found a pot of poison which they later used to kill a goblin (by dipping a piece of jerky in the poison and bargaining for information), so that was very cool. 
• I almost always referee games using 'theatre of the mind.' I.e. if I'm playing online there is no Virtual Table Top (VTT), and if I'm playing IRL there is no battlemat or minis. 
• Neither of my players were mapping as they went, and I found it a bit difficult to relay the geography verbally. 
• Maybe next time I will request that somebody maps on graph paper as we go, as it might make things easier for everyone. 
• They found the Slime Baroness in her bath during the first session. 
• They were desperate to get some water (which they needed in order to take a rest) and the baths were the only place they had found it so far, so they were willing to fight. 
• The martial character Routed her minion slimes and made them flee, leaving only the Baroness. A couple of rounds of lucky/unlucky rolls in the players' favour, a clever use of the Weave spell to animate a rope in order to pull the magician unstuck from the wall, and a terrible Morale save for the Baroness, and she surrendered. 
• I was honestly shocked. I thought her high HP and the minions would have made it one of the most difficult fights in the dungeon, but they ended things confidently. 
• It really worked out though, because she gave them tons of information on the dungeon background (The Baroness came 33 years ago to slay the Lady in revenge for the death of her son, but got cursed by the Lady's magic breastplate and has been slimed). 
• They agreed to find and kill the Lady Unterbranch, as long as the Slime Baroness called off all her slimes. She agreed, but warned that her psychic slime connection did not extend throughout the whole Keep; certain slimes far away may not obey her. 

This is how I picture the Slime Baroness' minions. The ones in the Slime Bath are wearing towels instead of waiter clothes. Art by eloh. 

Bestiary for Penrod, Vol II.

A Bestiary for Penrod, Volume II. 

By Bo Slycrake

Read Volume I. here

The year of our beloved Princess Pippa's 80th birthday I spent travelling deep in the unnamed glacial valleys south of the infamous Giant Glacier valleys. Their southern cousins evoke far less awe in the populace but are no less dangerous, and in this writer's humble opinion are teeming with tens if not dozens more beasts fantastic. I had heard from a orphan child that in one valley there lay the ruins of a city from the ancient empire, and that is where I began my exploration. From there my journey spiralled outwards, where I witnessed such monsters and creatures as you would hardly believe. 

 1. Plague Ghost Locust Crier

Every schoolchild knows that the citizens of the ancient empire were fond of eating fried locusts, which they brought with them from Vesperey and farmed in long, low warehouses, and which street vendors sold from a huge iron skillet set over a fire pit. When politics or the plague (some historians argue both) collapsed the empire, the orphaned imperials brought the locusts back to Vesperey with them. But these locusts left behind their ghosts. 

All known ruins from the ancient empire are crawling with plague ghosts. Soldiers wandering the crumbling walls, schoolteachers lecturing to empty halls, servants carrying ghostly meals to thin air.

A plague ghost locust crier is the long-dead mad memory of a street vendor, and his ten thousand locust ghosts. The crier desperately wants customers, and the locusts—unable to eat for a thousand years—will try to consume all organic matter in their path. 

The crier floats slowly along, droning their sales pitch in the ancient tongue. When I came across the vendor in the wide boulevard of the city that I had been told about by the orphan, I was accosted with a desperate plea to purchase. Within a few moments, a swarm of ghost locusts followed, ravenous. I was lucky to escape with my life; not so lucky was my pack mule. I hope he is resting peacefully.  

Plague Ghost Locust Crier

• 2HD, ghostly finger d6, Armour 1.
• Ghosts are immune to normal weapons
• The locusts swarm and consume all organic material within 1 minute (cloth armour, food, horses, etc.)
• The locusts cannot be killed, only escaped from. 

2. Lead-Dead

In Piz there is a lead mine, which produces most of the lead in the region, mostly used to seal stained glass windows and to serve as witch's pots. When I was invited to dine with the owner of the mine, she told me that workers too long at the job sometimes get lead-sick: abdominal pain, sheen and pallor, loss of memory, delusions, and blue gums. Most of the time the workers take the first appearance of symptoms as a sign that they should retire, and they do so, without severance. 

Some stubborn miners try to hide their sickness, the proprietress told me as we delicately supped on sky-quail eggs, and they fight through the cramped stomach, cold sweats, and gritted teeth showing blue gums. When the delusions inevitably turn violent and the illness revealed, the other miners trap the lead-sick miner in the mine and seal off the top, leaving them alone to die of thirst, starvation, or madness. After a few weeks the mine is unsealed and their dead body is removed and buried. 

But in rare cases, she whispered, the mine has been unsealed and the sick miner has disappeared. The oldest workers, who have seen this happen, tell her that the lead-sick miner has delved deeper into the earth, even as their sickness grows. The lead now sustains them, their gums, tongue, lips, and eyes all turned blue, their bodies swelled and contorted, their teeth and fingernails coated in lead sheaths. When I visited the mine an elder foreman showed me a disused tunnel where I swear we spotted one such lead-dead, slinking by at the end of the tunnel, licking lead flakes off the wall, and desiring revenge on the comrades who locked them away. 

Lead-Dead

• 3HD, Lead bite or claw d8, Armour 1
• If you are bit with the lead teeth you will get lead poisoning, requiring a week of medical attention
• If you are dealt CD with the lead teeth you will succumb to lead madness, requiring restraint and a month of medical attention. 

Free the Demon Slaves: 2021 One Page Dungeon ContestEntry

For this year's One Page Dungeon Contest I collaborated with the excellent Horos from Horoscope Zine. He drew the map and we wrote the content together. 

Horos does a lot of cool art, adventures, and small game systems, so definitely check out his stuff! He has products on itch in both English and Portuguese. 

Link to the PDF for Free the Demon Slaves!

Free the Demon Slaves! Link to PDF above.

Dungeon Process: Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep (Part 6 - Revisions and Final Layout)

This is the sixth and final (long-delayed) post in my series documenting my full dungeon-writing process. I have had a lot of fun writing the Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep, and I hope my intentional reflection has been as insightful to read as it has been to write. 

Check out all the all the other posts in the series here.

Cover page of my dungeon: Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep

Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep

Link to the full PDF of the dungeon. 

Revisions

Checklist for my final pass:

• Spell check and proofing
• Check treasure values and locations
• Finalize maps (page numbers & room highlighting)
• Add page numbers to all room references
• Print test (B&W and colour)

Final Layout

Now that all content has been finalized and proofed, I could go back and update the maps with highlighting and page numbers. This was very satisfying to finally see come together. With 60 rooms, I'm almost certain I've probably made an error in there somewhere that I won't catch until I run the dungeon. 

Reflections

This process of intentional dungeon design and documenting my thoughts along the way has been very fun—and enlightening. 

Dungeon Process: Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep (Part 5 - Encounter Tables and Treasure)

In this fifth post of my dungeon process series, I will be writing the encounter tables and managing the treasure for Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep (SBLUK). 

Last time, I discussed Writing the Key. Check out the other parts of this series here. 

Encounter Tables

I decided to write only one encounter table for this whole dungeon. Often I find it compelling to write different tables for different levels. But this dungeon has very easy access between levels, the rooms are close together, and movement between areas is fast. 

I love writing Bastionland-style small tables for my random encounter tables. Basically it rolls on a d6, with three variations on a common creature, two variations on an uncommon creature, and one result for something rare and special. 

Here are the different creature types and 'factions' found in Unterbranch Keep:

• Animated objects
• Brigands (undead and animated)
• Slimes
• Goblins
• Ogres
• Miscellaneous creatures (carnivorous plant, goat kid, Mama Boar, servants, spiders, legsnake, etc.)

I believe that I have sufficient animated objects, brigands, and slimes placed throughout the Keep. So for my three common variations I will use Goblins:

1. Three Goblins (HD 1, DEX 15, knife d6, on CD it slices off an ear/eats a finger) eating something strange found in the room (e.g. legsnake eggs, plates, a tapestry). 
2. Ten Goblins (as above) carrying a large, heavy object towards the Goblin Crypt, p. X (e.g. bench, wardrobe, wheel of cheese).
3. One Goblin (as above) sleeping, with a child's hat over its face. 

Dungeon Process: Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep (Part 4 - Writing the Key)

Welcome to the fourth part of my series walking through my dungeon process in detail. Last time, I drew some maps and set out a layout for myself, and now I shall fill them with content. Check out the other posts in this series here. 

Here is a link to a PDF of what I have so far. 

The maps have incorrect highlighting and page numbers at the moment, as I won't go back and fix them until I'm certain of which content will stay on which page. 

All creature stats are for my Electric Bastionland/GLOG hack Catacombers. The stats would work in EB or Into the Odd with no conversion. All Hit Dice are d6, so just roll or use the average of 3hp per HD. If no STR, DEX, or CHA is listed that means it is 10. CD stands for Critical Damage, which a character takes after they've lost their HP and fail a STR save. 

Setting Up the Key

I started by labelling most of the rooms. I googled "medieval castle layout" a lot and tried to set up a series of rooms that would make sense for the vision I had in my mind of Unterbranch Keep. 

Some rooms I had ideas for their description in the key right off the bat. For example, I knew that the Barbican would have some animated suits of armour acting as guards, and that the Parlour would have a slime in it. Other rooms inspired content from their very nature. Obviously the Grand Hall would have a big feasting table and the Chapel would some benches and a dais. 

Room description for the Barbican

For other rooms I used my 'theme' tables from Part 1 - Theme and rolled once for each room. I even did this for many of the rooms which I already had ideas, just to keep sparking my mind. I also rolled on my custom dungeon stocking table to determine room contents (empty, creature, treasure, trap, etc). Obviously my spark tables have entries for certain creatures as well as "trap" and others, so sometimes I only rolled on either the spark tables or the dungeon table, depending on what I wanted. 

Writing Content

To fill out room contents I rely heavily on Tricks, Empty Rooms, and Basic Trap Design, by Courtney C. Campbell. It is probably my most-used RPG resource, and well worth the money spent on the PDF.

As I wrote more content the ideas started flowing more easily. I placed more slimes and darkly animated objects, and fleshed out a bit of the brigand stuff. I tried to place a lot of treasure in the lower dungeon levels and a lot of clues in the upper Keep levels, so players could figure out what was going on if they wanted to. 

Dungeon Process: Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep (Part 3 - Map and Layout)

This is part three in a series where I am walking through my dungeon process in detail. 

Last time, I wrote some Background and Rumours for my dungeon, "Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep." This post is about the layout and maps. Check out the other posts in this series here. 

I believe that high-quality layout can improve a dungeon immensely. Many RPG products are more like a textbook than a novel. The information is in the text, but the layout serves to move that information from the text to the referee's brain.  

I gathered a list of well-laid-out dungeons for inspiration (i.e. steal and copy). Some were solicited opinions from the OSR Discord, and all are real OSR/NSR darlings.

I am not a layout and graphic design expert, so this 'analysis' is really just me summarizing my opinion about what I like and don't like about the layout decisions made in these dungeons. 

Dungeon Layout Analyses

Incandescent Grottoes, by Gavin Norman

Gavin Norman made a name for himself in the OSR through his skilled re-formatting of BX D&D into the beloved Old School Essentials (OSE). His adventures are also well-liked. I have never played them but I've read reviews and session reports which make them seem very fun. However, I am interested in the layout, not content. 

It seems like most Nectrotic Gnome dungeons follow the same layout style, so I focused on the Incandescent Grottoes. All of the examples below are clipped from the free sample pages on DriveThruRPG. 

Tables at the beginning of The Incandescent Grottoes

Near the beginning are a few tables: Rumours, Treasure, Encounter Table. They take up a full page each for easy reading, and employ colour. Big bolded titles at the top of each page make it easy to find what you're looking for by quickly flipping pages or scrolling through a PDF. The body text is much smaller than the titles, but still easy to read. 

There are a few heading styles with a legible hierarchy: the big bolded ones at the top of the page, followed by the purple "Level 1" style, then the bolded version of the body text as headers for the table columns. A strong font hierarchy is a valuable asset in a dungeon product. We can also see beautiful art filling the gaps left blank, and the colour-shape page number markers. This is a great start. 

Room Key of the Incandescent Grottoes

Now the key. Here we see something clever: an inset map showing the rooms described on this particular spread. I really like this technique. It makes it possible to run everything from the book without flipping back and forth, and without printing a separate copy of the map. You can see the other reachable rooms, so when the players exit a room you know where they're going.

Dungeon Process: Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep (Part 2 - Background and Rumours)

This is the second post in a series documenting my full dungeon process. Check out the other posts in this series here. 

The background of a dungeon is important information for the referee to have. At the same time, long pages of dry backstory can really hinder the enjoyment of reading/running a pre-made dungeon. I often find my eyes glazing over three sentences into an adventure introduction before skipping ahead to the room key to see the goodies. 

Even long-winded room keys make me bored. It always boggles my mind to read a review on Bryce Lynch's blog and read "this eight page adventure features seven rooms." Less than one room per page? Insanity. I crammed the entirety of the 98-room Cherry Crypts into only fourteen pages (and that includes TWO copies of the map, and a couple pages of tables at the start). Obviously that's a little terse for some folks, but it works for me. I don't need to strive for that much concision for Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep: I want the layout to work in my favour more, and that often requires larger headings and white space. 

Some dungeons can be explained in a handful of words. Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep (SBLUK) could too, but it does contain some specific things going on that deserve a bit of explanation. 

Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep

High-Concept Background

"Unterbranch Keep sits atop a rocky promontory overlooking a backwater village and valley. It is common knowledge that the Keep has been abandoned and deeply haunted by slime and spirits for 33 years, ever since the Lady Unterbranch—a renowned warrior—went missing. At the last new moon, some brigands thundered into the valley, brigandized the innocent country folk, and retreated up to Unterbranch Keep; they have not been seen since."

This is the elevator pitch for the dungeon. Getting across basic information in only a few sentences. This allows the referee to picture the location in their mind, and start some wheels turning in regards to the possible creatures and contents. This isn't necessarily written to be read to the players, so it doesn't need to contain any explicit hooks (like mentioning treasure). It might be a good way to deliver the basic common knowledge regarding this locale, though. 

Dungeon Process: Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep (Part 1 - Theme)

Start of a Series

This is Part One of a six-part series documenting my full dungeon-writing process. The dungeon is called Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep. You can check out all six parts on this page here, and keep reading for the first post: Theme!

Introduction

Lately, I have been dungeon-obsessed. I spent a few months working on the Cherry Crypts, the largest dungeon I've made since probably high school. I ran my group through the majority of the rooms in four sessions (and had lots of fun). 

I have been reflecting on the lessons learned from designing and running that dungeon, and applying them to new projects. I made some one-pagers for my setting Penrod. I have also been very slowly outlining my eponymous megadungeon, The Lapidary City (post impending). 

Full Dungeon Process

And now I am working on a new project, which I will present in this multi-part series. Each post will deal with a step in my process. I am also using this as a way to think about the process itself: how should I make a map, what is the best way to write the key, what comes first—general or specific? Part of what I hope to accomplish is standardizing some of the things I do, making it easier for myself to write large dungeons. Goals for the finished product include:

• High-quality layout
• Original maps (of sufficient quality; I am no Dyson Logos)
• Unique and evocative writing and content
• Concision
• Build on the successes of my previous work
• Learn from the shortcomings of my previous work

This first post is about Theme. Dungeons, for me, are easier and more fun to write if I have a strong theme to work from. This theme can be complex and multi-layered, and also simple. For example, The Cherry Crypts were themed with druidic crypts, mad wizard leftovers, and the ice age. Definitely some disparate elements, but it provided me with touchstones as I wrote out the details. Not every single room and monster has to fit the theme; it just provides structure. 

Check out the other posts in this series here. 

Slime Baroness and the Lady of Unterbranch Keep

Unterbranch Keep sits atop a rocky promontory overlooking a backwater village and valley. It is common knowledge that the Keep has been abandoned and deeply haunted by slime and spirits for 33 years, ever since the Lady Unterbranch went missing. At the last new moon, some brigands thundered into the valley, brigandized the innocent country folk, and retreated up to Unterbranch Keep; they have not been seen since.

Encounter with a black pudding (Pixie Bledshaw, The Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor, Judges Guild, 1978)

Referee Reference Sheet

I made this sheet for myself. I had a hand-written version stuck on the wall above my desk for easy reference when I referee games online. But I decided to gussy it up (with some royalty free B&W art) and now I have this version printed out and stuck on the wall. 

The Monster Reaction table is taken from 1981 Moldvay Basic D&D. The Encounter Die is my version of the Overloaded Encounter Die (started by Necropraxis and riffed on by many other bloggers). 

Referee Reference Sheet

Play Report: the Cherry Crypts

Intro

I was able to run my regular group through my new dungeon The Cherry Crypts over the past few weeks. It took them four sessions to go through most of the dungeon, and they decided to leave after losing a party member to a tough fight. We will now return to our regular campaign, hopefully with some fond memories for the group, and some lessons learned for me. 

Evil flying cherry skull. Best pic I could find. 

Characters: 

Cribbage: halfling wizard obsessed with sketching maps. 

Briar: pixie druid who loves to fly around. 

Bozzy: frog-man ranger with a purple slime companion

Jim: big half-ogre barbarian (only joined for Sessions 2 & 3)

Kez: goblin warlock fond of hiding from all danger

Session 1

• The party entered the Cherry Crypts through room 15 ROYAL CRYPT, fought the King & Queen skeletons. Nobody succumbed to the poison herbs, but the goblin warlock’s familiar got clawed to death. 
• They went south and examined 16, 17, 18 CRYPTS and avoided the beetle swarm. The frog sent his slime familiar into 17 CAPTAIN CRYPT and it got enraged by the mood spell, but they enticed it out with some illusory metal (the slime likes to eat metal). 
• They headed west and started listening at some doors. Behind the door to 20 RUINED BREAK-ROOM they could hear three cherry pitlings fighting over something. The goblin cast Tongues and translated their strange language for everyone else. They were fighting over something they called their ‘shiny’ and talked about their dead dad (i.e. the wizard whose corpse is in 12 WIZARD PARLOUR). 

Seasons of Penrod: Four One-Page Dungeons

Given its continental temperate climatography, the Principality of Penrod enjoys four robust seasons. The year begins with an icy winter, with loads of snow and the birth of early goat kids. Next is spring, when flowers bloom and the flax is planted. Then comes summer, when noble families visit their lodges on pristine alpine lakeshores and the common folk are busy mowing hay. At last is autumn when folks harvest peas, honey, grapes and acorns. Thus the world turns around the sun and the gods smile upon those who labour under her light. 

But there are others who do not labour under the sun. They do not slaughter hogs in the winter, nor do they plant onions in the spring, shear sheep in the summer, nor take stock to market in the autumn. These people are noble-born, and thus free from a life of hard work and feudalism. 

You are one of these nobles. You have a gaggle of noble-born cousins with whom you hang out. Your shared Grandmother is the Countess of your little county. And while you don't have to labour in a field, you have labours of another kind. 

Roughly once each season, Grandmother gathers you in her parlour and bequeaths unto you a quest. You line up at the cupboard and grab your swords, spellbooks, and extremely fancy expensive leather walking boots, and head into the hinterlands on whatever dangerous adventure Grandmother sets you to. 

Behold, Four Seasonally-Themed Dungeons

Each one fitting on a single page. 

Winter - The Ice Tower of Evil Sorcerer Hank

Link to PDF. 

Winter - Ice Tower of Evil Sorcerer Hank

Dungeon Poem Challenge: Ice Troll Moon Abbey

Patrick Stuart issued a Dungeon Poem Challenge this week, and how could I not participate? I've been fascinated by the idea of dungeon-key-as-poetry in the past, as well as the idea of reusing a simple dungeon map.

My dungeon poem is:

Ice Troll Moon Abbey

Click the title above for a PDF version. 

I rotated the map and arranged everything into one page, just like the excellent entry from Coins & Scrolls. I am hoping to use this dungeon for a game with a group of friends who have only played a couple times before. They're not much for combat, and much more for social interactions and looking at weird stuff. So hopefully a giant talking panther and some moon iconography is weird enough for them. 

I am greatly looking forward to reading all the other Dungeon Poems. I haven't looked at any of them except for the Coins & Scrolls one, since I wanted to have the map be fresh and unspoiled in my mind. I might come edit this post linking to my favourites. 

A Bestiary for Penrod

The Principality of Penrod is pleasant state, ruled by Prince Pepin the Young, surrounded by jolly allies and good-natured rivals. Chief exports include timber, flax, tin, literary culture, and temperate fruits. A brutal king many many generations ago hated all the minority cultures of Penrod and so did his darndest to eradicate them by forcing the dominant language on the populace (on pain of death), thus solidifying the Penrodite culture as we know today: literate and unified. 

The Penrod of today is full of chipper flax farmers, timely tin miners, and flouncy quill-bearing fops in the capital, safe from the frigid foothills of the southern reaches, thick forest to the north, and sinister mountain peaks at the eastern border. And so—there are beasts abound. At these borderlands lurk creepies and crawlies, and in the liminal spaces of all human life (underground, beneath floorboards, in the walls, between specks of civilized light) dwell the horrors that shall consume us all. 

A Bestiary

1. Flaxenvaccim

When refuse from the flax harvest is piled at the edges and corners of the fields, and these fields lay adjacent to drained cranberry bogs and the hopeless cranberry pulp laid aside after being pushed through juicers and strainers, the rotting flax and cranberry mix and mingle, slowly birthing a Flaxenvaccim. 

This slim creature is fragile and wet—its bones are flax fibres and its flesh is cranberry jelly. Slop sloughs off as it walks, and it often has to stop to scoop bits of jelly back onto itself, or to affix a fallen flaxen fibula back onto its knee joint. When first born, they're usually the size of a small child, but proportioned like a human adult: two legs, two arms, a torso, and a lopsided head with no eyes or mouth. 

As they grow by feeding on god knows what, they solidify and gain strength and stiffness. Eventually they mature at about waist height, but never really gain full strength. They love to hide in fields and steal cats. 

The Cherry Crypts: a big ol' dungeon

I made a dungeon! I worked on this a lot over the holidays, and I finally polished it up and finished the key. At 98 rooms this certainly isn't a megadungeon. But it's big enough to fuel multiple sessions of play. There are lots of toys to play with. 

Enchanted gremlins made of cherry pits, trapped devils with whom to deal, treasure to steal, a wizard's corpse to loot, creatures frozen since the ice age to battle, dinosaurs to let loose, factions to fall into, and at least two rooms where it's snowing all the time. 

**EDIT** Some folks asked for a map with a white background. I put in an image below and updated the PDF to include both map versions. 

Cherry Crypts Map

White background map. 

Check out the full PDF (map + key) here and let me know what you think. I was able to run my regular group through this dungeon for four sessions and it was a lot of fun. Check out the play report here. 

The 'top' level of the dungeon is a set of ancient crypts buried beneath a grove of cherry trees. These crypts were probably built within the past few centuries, by a clan or two of druidic type folks. Lots of herbs and leather, plenty of rotten wooden doors and nature-themed fun. 

More recently, like within the past decade, a wizard made his lair in the crypts. He harvested cherry fruit to make enchanted wine, created little gremlin slaves out of mashed-together cherry pits, experimented on woodland creatures, and dabbled in a little devil summoning. Sometime in the last year, he was killed by his latest experiment: a giant ferret with three heads and dragonfly wings. Ever since, his botched experiment and the cherry pit gremlins have run amok on their own. 

The 'bottom' level of the dungeon is much older. I'm not sure exactly why they're connected, or how aware of the bottom level the druids (or wizard) were, or how far they explored. It was built thousands of years ago by a race of powerful sabretooth-tiger people (aka. the smilodons). It is part tomb, part fortress, and part cryogenic freezing chamber. 

The smilodon have very recently (maybe within the past few days) been awoken from their cryogenic sleep. Also dinosaurs. 

Some Design Notes:

• All Monster Stats are for my GLOG hack Catacombers, which is basically Electric Bastionland but with GLOG magic classes and gold-for-XP. 
• I made multiple entrances because I like that flexibility. I would say any of these entrances would make a good starting point for a delve. 
• I tried to Jaquay this dungeon to a high degree: there are plenty of loops, multiple entrances, two different ways to access the second level, and plenty of connections. 
• Each level has an encounter table. I'm assuming that you are rolling on this table every 10-20 in-game minutes, so pretty often. The last entry on each table is a wanderer from the other level, just to give some continuity. 
• I'm hoping to run this thing pretty soon, so I will add more about my thoughts.