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. 

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. 

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)