The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs
At one point, Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones is chased by cavemen up the side of a cliff. The way to turn this into a D&D encounter is to have your battlemat represent a vertical plane.
The battle starts with the PCs pursued by an overwhelming number of tough minions (they do 2x normal minion damage).
Everyone starts at one end of the battlemat (ground level). The PCs are trying to get to the other end of the battlemat (the top of the cliff).
Traversing most squares involves Climb checks. Drawn on the battlemat, however, are a maze of platforms connected by horizontal, diagonal, and vertical ladders. Movement along platforms and ladders follows normal walking rules.
On every platform is a stack of rocks. The rocks attack everyone in a vertical line when dropped; this is useful because the pursuing minions often line up vertically, especially when climbing ladders. PCs can also push ladders over, sending climbers to their deaths.
At the back of each ledge is a cave. The PCs don’t know whats in each cave, but the cavemen do. Some caves connect together; one has extra treasure; and one has an escape route from the encounter.
Subsystems – self-contained rulesets that didn’t interact with the rest of the rules – ran amok in 1st Edition and, by 4th edition, have mostly been removed. There is still a place for the subsystem in D&D. I like introducing one-shot mechanics to spice up a single encounter. Oxymoronically, I like to use a consistent structure for all my subsystems.
I use a mechanic I call “Saving Throw with Fumble and Crit”. I’ve tried to invent a cool acronym for it, but all I’ve come up with is either “F On Toast” (“Fumble Or Natural Twenty On A Saving Throw”) or “Stoat Ass” (“Saving Throw, One and Twenty are Super Special”). Let me know if you can think of an even more unacceptable acronym.
The basis of every “F On Toast/Stoat Ass” subsystem is a chart like this:
Make a d20 roll, plus any situational modifiers.
1 or less (or natural 1): Critical failure
2-9: Failure
10-19: Success
20+ (or natural 20): Critical success
The principles behind this chart are
a) that the 4e saving throw (essentially a coin flip that slightly favors the player) is a good generic mechanic, and
b) that “20 and 1 are Magic”.
I’ve used this subsystem template for my wilderness survival rules, mass combat rules, wandering monster rules, random treasure rules, and several other homegrown subsystems. It’s easy to explain to players, especially the second or third time the same structure is used. All you have to say is “Make a saving throw. Let me know if you crit or fumble.”
I’m working on Chapters 6, “Experience and Leveling”, and 7, “Spells, Tricks, and Powers”. Here’s a page from Chapter 6.
Mazes and Monsters Manual page 33
Introduction and Welcome!
Into imagination’s fury I plunge thee. Ride the storm and ye shall be enriched.
-The World of Synnibarr, page 1 (introduction)
Last week, I met a challenge to my Every Book’s a Sourcebook project: find D&D inspiration from the text of a Babysitters Club book. I read BSC #70, Stacey and the Cheerleaders, and used it to generate a great idea for a village heist adventure.
To prove how easy it is, here is a BONUS idea from Stacey and the Cheerleaders:
They stood there like statues, the goddesses of Gloom and Doom.
I think this quote describes some kids Stacey is babysitting; but what awesome statues it describes! Truly Anne M. Martin is a master fantasy world-builder.
The goddesses Gloom and Doom are the twin daughters of Lord Poison, the Dark Hand of Death. Their monumental white statues, mottled with red moss, stand at the entrance of Blood Pass. Travellers who enter Blood Pass offer fearful prayers to the goddesses. Nevertheless, sometimes a statue’s eyes flash, and a curse falls upon a traveller.
Whenever anyone enters Blood Pass, roll 2d20, one for each sister.
On a 1 on the first die, the traveller falls under the Curse of Gloom. From now on, every hour, the traveller must make a saving throw. If the traveller fails, he or she sinks into an hour-long Gloom, during which he or she will make no unassisted actions except to sit or lie down. If forced to walk, the Gloomy traveller is Slowed. A Gloomy traveller will resist being put on horseback, and will dismount at the earliest oppportunity. If attacked, a Gloomy traveller will do nothing but take the total defense action. The curse lifts after 24 hours have passed.
On a 1 on the second die, the traveller falls under the Curse of Doom. From now on, the traveller will lose one healing surge (or 1/4 of total HP) an hour. The only way to lift the curse is to arrive at the other end of Blood Pass, which takes ten hours of hard travel.
Worst-case scenario is that someone in the party receives a Gloom, slowing travel, and someone receives a Doom, providing serious consequences for delay. But, hey, that’s what you get for taking a cursed shortcut through the mountains.
Mike Mearls half-heartedly fulfilling his assignment to gush about the new D&D DM screen:
When Bart Carroll asked me to handle a Design & Development column on the new Deluxe Dungeon Master’s Screen, I wasn’t quite sure where to start. For my money, a DM’s screen needs the following key traits:
Opacity: A DM’s screen can’t screen anything if the players can simply look through it. Screen-Like Shape: The screen should be shaped like a screen, in that it is rather flat, narrow, and capable of standing immobile. Other shapes simply won’t do. For example, a spherical screen has the potential to roll around the table and perhaps crush the smaller sort of D&D player. Tall, But Not Too Tall: The ideal screen height blocks easy access to the DM’s notes (or lack thereof; the best screens make both the well-prepared and the “I’m completely making this up as I go” DMs indistinguishable). Too short, and the players keep finding all those secret doors and ambushes the DM set up. Too tall, and the DM is trapped behind, using finger puppets to portray the action. Probably Some Art and Tables: I say probably because while a lack of these features doesn’t speak to the actual utility of a screen in terms of hiding stuff from the players, it makes the difference between an actual DM’s screen and a flattened cardboard box.
It’s hard to be funny while you’re selling something. I think there’s a reason why Mike Mearls is the current D&D designer with a Cult of Personality.
Rolling a 20
We’ve been conditioned to salivate when we roll a natural 20. It’s very satisfying to crit on an attack roll, but on many other rolls, all we end up with is a regular success and a mouth full of saliva.
Whenever a natural 20 is just another success, I feel like it’s a failure of the game system. Example: initiative rolls. I’ve frequently heard PCs complain when they crit on an initiative roll: “Why couldn’t I save that 20 for when it mattered?”
I was once DMing for three players who each rolled a natural 20 on the same initiative roll. It was an astonishing one-in-8000 occurrence that, sadly, has no by-the-book game effects at all. I ruled that the players were so well-prepared for the combat that their opponents immediately surrendered. The PCs got full XP for the win. We still reminisce about that encounter.
D&D design principle: Natural 20 is magic. Every d20 roll – skills and initiative rolls as well as attack rolls – should have a benefit for rolling a natural 20: something more than just a success.
Rolling a 1 is the second most exciting roll in D&D. I don’t know why it is, but it always gets groans and laughs. In every group I’ve ever played with, players narrate how badly they failed. “My axe gets caught in the floor!” “My Dungeoneering check was so bad, I don’t even know I’m in a dungeon!”
Players are hungry for fumble mechanics!
Fumble rules are hard to write, though: there are a lot of pitfalls.
The natural-1 rules from the 4e Darksun books are pretty good fumble rules. They actually give characters a mechanical benefit – rerolling an attack – in exchange for a cinematic failure – breaking a weapon.
D&D design principle: Natural 1 is magic. Every d20 roll should have consequences for rolling a natural 1: consequences in addition to normal failure.
Do you guys use any cool fumble or crit effects for initiative rolls and skill checks? (Attack rolls and death saves already have special effects on a natural 20.)
Rules for helping Tom Hanks escaping the Mazed condition in chapter 5.
Look for 13 more pages of rules, 19 illustrations from the movie, and 1 screencap from Burton’s Hamlet.
Quests
The Quests chapter includes helpful rules like:
When you start a new hero, you will be much less powerful than your friends. Remind your comrades that it is their duty to babysit you for a few levels, until you are slightly less useless than you were. On the plus side, your uselessness may result in all the heroes being killed in the maze, in which case everyone will get to start over at level 1!
Combat
Sample from the Combat chapter:
Candles should be set up on and around the Game Board: their hypnotic flickering will help the players reach the psychologically vulnerable state in which Mazes and Monsters is the most fun!
Changes to chapters 1-3
After playtesting, I also made some rules changes to chapter 1-3: the surprisingly common situations where you roll a 11 (fumble) followed by a 12 (crit), or vice versa, is now called a “save,” and allows you to take a free turn if you do something other than what you were planning.
I also made fumbles less common, since they are sort of a drag, and ended up using something very like the D&D 3.5 rules for confirming critical hits. I didn’t plan it; it just sort of happened that way.
After my first Every Book’s a Sourcebook post, where I extrapolated a D&D adventure from the cover of a Babysitter’s Club book, my wife issued me a challenge: find D&D inspiration from the actual text of a Babysitters Club book.
I chose BSC #70, Stacey and the Cheerleaders, figuring that, if all else failed, I could just stat out some cheerleaders as ninth level monsters.
Luckily, it didn’t come to that. Stacey goes to a movie which could easily be turned into an adventure:
I hadn’t seen Mall Warriors 1, and I was concerned I might have missed something. Well, I needn’t have worried. A three year old could have followed the plot. It was about a group of teens who booby-trap a mall to catch a pair of world famous mall thieves.
Well, there are no malls in D&D, but we can easily move this to a village setting.
The village council receives a warning: “We will be stealing your precious village idol TONIGHT. There is nothing you can do to stop us. Signed, Kellik and Agia, the King and Queen of Thieves.”
Panicked, the village council hires the PCs to guard the idol. The DM warns the PCs that the two thieves are too strong to challenge in a straight fight – except, perhaps, alone and weakened.
The PCs have a few hours to complete their preparations, which may include hiding the idol, setting traps, and stationing a handful of useless village guard minions.
In this adventure, the DM should provide a lot of specific details the PCs can play off of: where are the equipment sheds, and what’s in them? What’s flammable? Where are the animals, especially the ones that make noise when strangers are about? Who’s aware of the PCs’ preparations – and how can the thieves get that information out of them?
The DM will have to secretly play the thieves, keeping track of what they are doing, keeping in mind their extremely high rogue skills and their limited knowledge of the PCs’ actions.
To keep this going for a full session, you probably have to allow the thieves to be slowed or caught by some of the PCs’ clever ideas; but the thieves have a lot of one-shot escape techniques they can deploy. In a reversal of normal D&D mechanics, the game is about NPC resource management.
To give the PCs some satisfaction as they wear down the thieves, it would be best if the PCs could watch the thieves’ resources being depleted. Maybe it’s common knowledge that, say, Kellik’s smoke-bomb gun holds three charges, and that every time Agia teleports, it consumes a portion of her health.
