Encumbrance: The Beauty of the ____________

I am now, officially, a huge fan of the blank.

A couple weeks ago, walking into school from my truck, I found myself carrying four wooden dowels of various lengths, two bags of large marshmallows, my lunch box with a one-liter water bottle clipped to it, four pieces of posterboard rolled together, a camera, a 13 gallon trashbag full of miniature terrain (very light, very bulky).

Although my total load was insignificant (maybe 10 lbs), as I did the one-finger pull to open the door and get into the building, it was clear that I was carrying about as much as I could in terms of bulk.

you must know nodwick

I like to set some limits when it comes to how much players can have their characters haul around in my role-playing games, but assigning every piece of treasure or gear an encumbrance value and/or weight to track is way more granularity and record keeping than I'm up for in my recreation.  Delta at Delta's D&D Hotspot has created a neat, thematic encumbrance system, and it's fine for gearing up at the start of an adventure, but really I want something that can allow players to quickly self-adjudicate in situations like ...

"I want to take a spear from the frog-guys"

"I want to carry the potion and the monkey-mace"

"If I drop my shield can I take the elf's bow now that he's dead?"

"Can I just bring the whole chest along?"

Dagger for Kids (Brave Halfling Publishing) has no system for tracking weight or encumbrance; the game is aiming for a much more minimalist style of play; so I had to find something I could live with that was rules-lite, intuitive, and self-managed.

I offer for your consideration ... _______________ ... the humble blank.

Want to carry an extra weapon?

That takes a blank.

Pack some rope along?

That's a blank too.

Find a sack of coins at the bottom of a chest?

Yup.  A blank.

Each of my Dagger for Kids character sheets has six of these lovely blanks preprinted on them.  Call them "equipment slots" or "inventory spaces" or whatever.  My student-players know how to use them intuitively and don't even need to be told, "If you've filled them all then you can't carry anything else unless you drop something first."

.

Using blanks -- inflexible, severe, and abstract as hit points -- adds a delightful layer to the dungeon-exploration game: we award experience for treasure successfully recovered from the dungeon only to the character actually carrying it.  So, often as not, every valuable find requires players to choose between dropping a piece of gear to pick up loot, or keeping the tools they may need but passing up on the best source of experience points.

I like my student players to think about things like: "If I drop my lantern in exchange for a sack of coins, will our remaining torches last long enough to get us back out?  Should I dump the iron spikes instead?  What if we get chased by a monster and need to jam a door shut?"

As you may have guessed, my dungeons end up being littered with discarded gear -- for a reason -- which is awesome.  Groups of explorers also find that they have to stash treasure in the dungeon with plans to return and recover it later, which can lead to the creation of player-generated cryptic notes and treasure maps!

Some items, like that big treasure chest, may require two or even three slots, while tiny items, like rings and broaches, don't require one.  As a GM, I assign treasures both a value in gold pieces / experience points and a number of equipment slots that it occupies.  This encourages evaluative thinking as players pick which items to carry along.  Want to lug your friend's body out for proper burial?  Better be ready to get rid of some gear to free up the three blanks you'll need.

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In this experience-for-treasure-carried, six-item-only approach, henchmen, linkboys, porters and other non-combatants take on a distinct value ("Squire, my mace!").  Since characters in Dagger for Kids don't have any ability scores (no strength or charisma stats for e.g.), I've toyed with the idea of using character level to determine a maximum number of retainers.

As an aside, in my middle school games, all standard starting equipment and weapons are "free" -- explorers are assumed to come from among members of a social class that can bear arms and risk exploring the underworld rather than spending their days laboring in the fields.

Here are some of the requests my last batch of middle schoolers made when thinking about their starting equipment:

"Can I have ...

a grappling hook?

a rope?

some dynamite?

a radio?

rope arrows, can I get some rope arrows?

a slab of meat, like a big steak?

a horse?

some matches?

an extra torch?

something that can burn ... some oil?

a bandage.  If I put a bandage on does that give me back my hit points?

a katana -- it's NOT just a sword

a javelin or a spear

some antivenom

some kind of healing potion or something

some food -- does food heal wounds when you eat it?

an extra wand.  If I have two wands does it let me cast an extra spell?"

lifted here

Ah, a new generation of would-be power-gamers in the making!

Teens vs B4 The Lost City

pic accessed at Rexque Futurus

For the second week of Adventure Games Camp, I was scheduled to run 20 more hours of tabletop role-playing for a fresh batch of a dozen rising 6th-8th graders.  I knew I wanted to continue exploring the ruined city of Bawal Bayan in its pulp jungle setting, but wanted to keep things fresh and interesting too ... it couldn't all be frolicking with white apes ...







So I flipped around in B1-9 In Search of Adventure, that often disappointing 1987 digest of Basic-series D&D modules, and realized that for all the acclaim that it gets among the old school gaming crowd, I'd never actually run Tom Moldvay's B4 The Lost City -- heresy!



What better opportunity to mend my ways?

I yanked B4's step-pyramid out of the desert, plunked her down in the temple district of Bawal Bayan, and dispensed with the "lost and dying of thirst" railroad opening (which is swell as railroads go ... water as treasure is a nice twist), just leaving a secret door open and letting teenage curiosity run its course.

I made a few other decisions at the outset:

• I'd only deal with the first 5 tiers of the ziggurat
• I'd tie this adventure to the emergent plotline of the prior week: the Yuan-Ti ritual interrupted prior was a rite of Zargon.  With the temple well now collapsed, the degenerate serpent-men were seeking a new way below Bawal Bayan to reestablish contact with their foul patron.
• All the Cynidiceans would be warped into inhuman monsters to sidestep some ethical questions.  They were twisted by the influence of Zargon, but maintain a facade of humanity, assisted by their custom of never uncovering the face.
• I'd use a random chart to determine reactions when Cynidiceans met strangers with "naked faces": disgust, fear, titillation, etc.
• Apart from some cosmetic changes, I'd run the 50 keyed encounters as-written (monster placement, AC, hit points, attack routines, treasure, save or die poison, etc.), all dice rolled openly.
• The adventurers could leave the ziggurat and go explore other parts of the city if they so desired -- nothing but curiosity and excitement would hold them there. 
• We'd use Dagger for Kids as our rules set.  Apart from equipment, characters would only have three stats: armor class, hit points, and a saving throw (15+)

 Here are the sketches that I made while running the adventure:

The topmost level of the ziggurat.  I enclosed the three statues
within a shrine and ruled that the doors were corroded shut.
1' x 1' air shafts perforated the sloping walls ...
the perfect invitation for giant bees.

Left of the stair,
a secret door
stood slightly ajar.

Closer inspection revealed that the body
pinned in the threshold wasn't human.

Beyond the door, their first trapped room!
No fatalities yet, but a lesson in caution.

Down the corroded rungs of the ladder,
the next layer of the ziggurat
felt like a maze.

Dangerous creatures had crept down
the air shafts to propagate in the darkness.
Were they birds, bats, insects?

Not everything left behind by
the ancient builders was foul.
Limbs extended from the copper
orbs and they tried to talk in
scratchy, unintelligible voices.
[ I replaced B4's sprites with these modron-inspired fellows ]  

Like their masks,
the statue of their god
showed far more craft
than the "Gormites"
seemed capable of.

The hunched, masked acolytes claimed
that the world beyond the ziggurat had been destroyed
and believed the giant bees were divine messengers.

It was easy to trick the slow-witted Gormites and subdue them with a sleep spell.
Beneath their masks,  however, they weren't human at all!

 

The 3rd level down contained a rotating corridor.
Defeated Gormites made checking for traps easier!

Serpent-men, apparently servants
of a power called "Zargon",
trailed the explorers into
the ziggurat and laid an ambush.

Another cult of degenerate remnants from the
ancient city, the Children of Usamagiras were
diminutive and could only speak in whispers.
They feared the daylight, but their system of
bronze mirrors allowed them to reflect starlight
onto their pentagonal altar.  The explorers
dubbed them, "creepy wizard babies".

The Daughters of Maradura
were xenophobic and warlike.
They also wielded the sharpened
bones of their severed left arms
as ritual weapons*.  They agreed
not to attack, but only if the
explorers brought the heads of
slain Zargonites as tribute.

[I lifted this disturbing little idea from Monster Manual Sewn From Pants] 

Where to find Zargonites?

Down below the catacomb level of course!
The very first tomb was that of a court fool.
His spring-loaded sarcophagus hinted of the
decadence that had rotted the city from its roots
and the explorers most certainly did not approve.

Magic, brass urns teleported their contents back
to the fool's tomb.  The clever adventurers pried
the urns loose and rolled them along with the party
to provide a ready-made escape hatch!
 

A labyrinth of trapped tombs nearly proved more trouble than it was worth,
especially when the novice explorers had their very first run-in with ghouls.

The jaguar-club was guarded by animated
skeletons.  What was special about it?

Five levels down now ... things were getting
increasingly dangerous!  Animated, magnetic
iron warrior-statues, living stone dragon-
gargoyles who couldn't be harmed by mortal
weapons, more traps, and when the wizard
tried on that strangely preserved robe,
he was dominated by the mind of an ancient
priest from before the fall, obsessed with
destroying the leader of the "new" heretical
cult of Zargon.

The wizard's face began to turn silvery and smooth.

A shining mace, recovered from the catacombs,
helped the dwarf pound his way through foes
until the gargoyles tore him to bits.

At last, only an elf (she utterly fearless) and the possessed wizard (he compelled)
dared probe deeper into the ziggurat.  Their walk below the earth became increasingly dream-like as they entered the halls of the ancient city's last remnants.

 GM: Beyond the door you find a chamber in which a large number of masked people mingle.  Some recline as they consume that bitter, grey bread you saw the others eating before while others listen to a speaker reciting poetry about the final days before the destruction of the city, "before the new age brought by our Lord Zargon."  When they see you [rolling dice] many of them begin to laugh.  "Oh, what a delicious joke!  Oh, you've outdone yourselves with this latest jest!  Bare-face indeed ... she looks so real too."

Wizard: Okay yeah, we're so funny, ha, ha.

Elf: Should we cast a sleep spell on them and sneak past them?

Wizard: I don't have any first level spells left, do you?

Elf: I can only cast web.

Wizard: Let's just play along and head for that door.

GM: As you pass through the room they start to applaud.

Wizard: We love you too.  Hail Zargon.

GM: In the next room more masked figures are gathered around a wheel playing some type of strange game.  They seem to be gambling based on their spins of the wheel, but the evidence suggests that apart from winning piles of jade tokens that sometimes the players are killed. [rolling dice] "What do you want?"

.

Wizard: We are the secret police of Zargon.  We are here because we've heard some disturbing things about this game ... 

GM: "Nonsense.  Everything is as it should be here."

Wizard: Oh, I doubt that ...

Elf: Well maybe if you gave us something, we'd say that the inspection is over and we could just go.

Not only were the explorers successful in bluffing their way past the gamblers but, through their questioning, they also identified the bottle that they had acquired earlier as a potion of "Eternal Slumber" (its match, along with a potion called "The Delight" was being used in the game and gamblers were sometimes required to drink the poison).

Soon they had bluffed their way into the heavily guarded Shrine of Zargon to confront the evil priest.  Even as they entered, the wizard's face completed its transformation into the smiling, silver features of Usamagiras, the Star Sage, foe of Zargon!

GM: There are about fifteen masked figures in the room, being led in hymns to Zargon by their black-robed, gold-masked priest.

Wizard: We bring a message from Zargon!

GM: [rolling dice] "Why do you have the face of our enemy?  How dare you enter this place?"

Elf: He was cursed to have that face until he delivers Zargon's message.

Wizard: Yes, Zargon will show that he is supreme over all the other guys ... like Gorm ... and those other guys.

Elf: Zargon has a special message, but it is only for the high priest.  The rest of you must leave.

GM: [rolling dice] "Do as he says."

Wizard: Zargon says that an entire new world is coming -- that Zargon is going to make a new world and he has chosen you to be its leader, but first you must pass a test.  (I give him the potion of Eternal Slumber)  You have to drink this.

GM: "That is the potion of Eternal Slumber."

Wizard: Yes, if you have enough faith then Zargon will allow you to overcome its effects.  He will give you the power to rise again in a more powerful form.  Only then will you be worthy to rule his new world.

GM: [rolling dice] "Um, okay ..."

One dead priest of Zargon later, and the wizard had pulled on the gold mask and raiments of the evil cleric.  The pair confined their looting to the body itself, realizing perhaps that they had used up more than their share of luck already.  A quick reverse march was executed and each encounter was begun with an authoritative "Hail Zargon!" to clear the way.  Before long they escaped back up to the third level and from there they were able to beat a hasty retreat out of the ziggurat.

Some take away:

• B4 The Lost City made for an incredibly fun romp
• weird creature placement was easily handled with a few cosmetic changes
• the traps, while basic, were surprisingly engaging and varied
• the coin-based treasure was boring but was easy to re-skin on the fly
• I assumed that, with the average character having only 5 hit points, that this would be a bloodbath.  Instead, out of 12 characters, usually venturing down in groups of four, we only had 4 fatalities.
• By handling the ziggurat and chambers beneath like a Half-Life bunker, it can be dropped into just about any setting
• While I've already shown that Dagger for Kids can get the job done, there was no point at which it couldn't do everything that the writer required of it to run this module -- in fact, after the first session or two, I basically forgot that we weren't playing D&D
• Saving throws = great catch all.  Though I never used them this way in years past, I think Ray "Dungeoncraft" Winninger was the first I heard suggest using saving throws as more than a way to decide if the poison was lethal.  Trying to jump a pit, bluff an enemy, catch a handhold while slipping, avoid a green slime, pull a magnetized sword free?  Make a saving throw!  It becomes a sort of level-based, generic dungeoneering skill.

The Forbidden City: An Adventure Log - Part III

After a brief rest at The Century Tree, Hale the Elf was joined by two dwarves and a wizard.  The group headed for The Plaza of the Sun to investigate the shimmering magical effect that had been spotted there prior, but not long after setting out they encountered several giant bees.  One huge bee alighted upon a dwarf's helm.  The expressions and voices at the table couldn't possibly have been much different if the bee was real and not just imaginary:

photo from this site

"We should run!"

"Hit it!"

"No!  No, hold still ... don't move."

"Just. Don't. Panic."

"Okay, I stand still."

GM: "The bee probes the edge of your helm, its wings still beating.  You can hear its chitinous legs scratching against the steel."

"I just stand there."

"Cast a Sleep Spell!"

"Yeah, okay.  I cast Sleep."

As the wizard invoked his spell, the bees quieted and grew still and the dwarf slumped to the ground.  The explorers flirted with the idea of trying to dispatch the giant insects, but in the end decided that the risk of waking them was too great and so collected the recumbent dwarf and made a hasty retreat.

pic from JuJuBeeHoney.com

At The Plaza of the Sun the group's wizard was partially roasted after investigating a huge mosaic sigil, but gained a new spell in the balance, so despite the blisters and lack of eyebrows he considered it a gain.

After a brief round of hide-and-seek with some well-camouflaged mongrelmen, the group made their way to the massive bronze sandals of The Fallen Colossus.  This location has attracted more attention from my student players that most features of Bawal Bayan.  Perhaps it is because the massive feet pose unspoken questions: What did the Colossus look like before it fell?  What did it signify that was worth such a massive undertaking?  Was the metal giant of any practical use, or did it just stand there?  

about 100% chance that I was influenced by this ...

Tapping revealed that each huge foot made a slightly different tone.  The dwarves were hoisted up for a look, and sure enough, one disembodied foot was filled with jade-green water whereas the other was both hollow and empty, drained by a silt-clogged grating beneath the giant heel.  After some rearranging, the dwarves set to work dredging the water-filled foot with a grappling hook, hoping to snare something shiny.  Meanwhile Hale and the wizard dropped down into the other foot to investigate.

"No!  Okay now you guys are stuck and if you need help we can't reach you -- we're both dwarves."

"Oh well."

"Can't you just climb up a rope or something and help us?"

"Yeah, just use your grappling hook."

"Well, we're busy over here."

Ducking low to explore the shadowy recesses of the Colossus's toes, Hale made a discovery: a little, wrinkled man sat cross-legged upon the sand, his long earlobes almost touching the tops of his skinny shoulders.  To either side of him sat a small, wooden box.

"Hello?"

GM: "Onlee-wun."

"What?"

GM: "Onlee-wun."

"Oh!  You have to pick one of the boxes."

"You should just stab him and take them both."

"No, I bet he'll go all ninja-master on you if you do.  He'll run along the wall and be like, 'Waaaa!' and chop your head off."

"Okay.  Which one should I pick?"

"Pick the left one -- always pick the left one."

Hale smiled nervously as he stepped forward and selected the left-hand box.  It opened to reveal a fist-sized glass globe in which a silvery-green leaf was suspended.

"Cool."

Having searched a bit more, the wizard called for the dwarves to help him out of the huge bronze foot.  Meanwhile the pair had gotten into a tussle with a green slime, but had resolved things and cast their still-dripping hook across to the neighboring foot.  A quick swing later and they adjusted their hook before dangling the rope down for Hale and the wizard to climb.  The wizard clambered up but, even as he tried to follow, Hale found himself shrinking -- his hands growing so small that he couldn't easily grasp the rope.

"Dude, you are shrinking!"

"I know, help me up!"

[GM whispers something to Hale's player]

"Only one."

"What?"

"He's turning into the little man!"

"Only one."

"Your stuck in there forever man."

"Only one. Only one."

"I'm not going back in there."

"Only one."

With a sigh, Hale soon resigned himself to a life spent squatting within the dim confines of the huge, hollow foot and he went to sit in the shade.  Then one of the dwarves spoke up ...

.

"Wait, I haven't picked one yet and I didn't come in with you guys."

"Only one."

"I'm going to climb down and go pick the right one this time."

As Hale looked on, the dwarf flipped open the right-hand box and plucked out the small, crystalline spider nestled inside.  He admired it briefly before stashing it in his pack and climbing back out of the foot.

"Only one."

The wizard was suddenly uncertain.

"I haven't picked one yet either ..."

"Only one."

"Yeah, you should go."

"Um ... okay."

"Only one! Only one!"

He returned to the toes where Hale sat and, after repeated urgings, chose the left-hand box, which again contained the silvery-green leaf suspended in glass.  Hale disappeared in a wink and found himself lying on the stony ground between the feet of the Colossus.  Inside the foot, the wizard had already begun to shrink, his features shifting.

"Are you guys going to ... I mean ... Only one?  Guys?  Guys?"

"I'm not going back in there."

"Nope, not me."

With little more than a shrug, the remaining explorers retreated, climbing out of the crater and leaving the wizard to contemplate his fate.

photo access at cultured.com

As our week drew to a close, Hale would return to The Forbidden City one more time with several other companions, this time making for the cobra-hooded Sphinx that dominated the southeastern corner of the crater.  He kept a diligent lookout during the difficult fording of stream in which one dwarf was nearly swept away, and led the way as the group skirted The Temple Plaza (where earlier explorers had interrupted a dreadful Yuan-Ti ritual).

  

Following the edge of some ancient, half-clogged canals, blind luck brought Hale and the others to precisely the same crumbling house where Victoria the Dwarf finally brought the rogue wizard to bay and slew the blackguard months before.  Poking around, the dwarf and a knight found the wizard's old escape tunnel ... a mere earthen crawlspace and started to scout it, but Hale and the other elf who had joined them were eager to arrive at the Sphinx and so, once the knight was tugged free from where he had gotten stuck, the group pressed onward.  Had they but known, another couple yards along the crawlspace they would have come across a lumpish obstruction ... an entire sack of treasure that Victoria had been forced to leave behind before making her daring, solo escape from the ruined city.

Hale and the others arrived at the Sphinx and, thanks to the help of the astute dwarf, found the secret door that let them descend into the chambers below.  Those halls contained a weird, fun house dungeon of the classic style, complete with revolving corridors, talking stone faces, gruesome traps, and giant swinging platforms.  

After another elf fell to a trap, the three survivors realized that it was time to have a serious conversation about whether to head back across the ruined city and the safety of camp or explore still deeper ... with the week of camp wrapping up, if they wanted any chance of being able to make it out of the jungle and back to their waiting ships [where the gold they had won in their adventures would be added to their team totals to determine the winning team of the week-long tournament] they would have to depart right at that moment.

They put it to a vote ... and all three voted to stay in the dungeon beneath The Forbidden City, sacrificing their chances of escape and their chances to influence the outcome of the broader competition, just in order to explore just a few more rooms ... to look behind one more door ... to navigate past one more trap ...

And there you have.  These last three posts make up the entire known adventuring career of Hale the Elf and represent one young person's introduction to that weird, fringe hobby that is tabletop role-playing.  Though I sent him home with his first d20, a miniature, and a copy of Dagger for Kids, I don't know if Hale's player or any of his 15 peers will ever choose to play tabletop games again, or if this week will quickly be buried under other interests and opportunities.  

Still, it was a privilege and a joy to get to see faces light up each time they solved a puzzle and hear the collective groans from the table when each new challenge was presented ... really, it was the closest I think you can get to recapturing the wonder and thrill of opening those old boxed sets for the very first time, or marveling over the strange dice ("How many sides does it have?").

Who knows, maybe lightning will strike twice and, though I only had them for a week, one of these students will make a deeper connection with this odd little hobby that has done so much to shape the way that I think, learn, and communicate.