Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #4
It’s been a minute! Read reports #1, #2, and #3 of my ongoing open-table megadungeon campaign project, working-titled “Pandemonium.”
13th Day of the Month of Grief
Our party consists of:
Sōt III, Butcher of Bugs, Roller of Rugs, Fighter 3; a haggard knight missing his left ear, clad in bone mail-and-plate, wielding Righty, his unmagical but very notched longsword.
Old Iron Grip, Magic-User 2; a recently-recovered illusionist, his medical bills and carousing cash paid for by a comrade, now sporting an iron left hand, a wooden peg left leg, and missing his left ear.
The Eldest Orphan of Forsaken, Fighter 2; a shockingly clean and well-dressed sporting a mohawk and very fancy boots.
Caspar, Magic-User 1; a gloomy, morose, but oddly friendly necromancer clad in a white sheet.
The party descended into the depths, straight to the second level. They messed about with the golden skull, woke it up, and it set itself on fire before flying away cackling; Caspar attempted to ghostwalk and accidentally died for a short while instead; found a hidden trapdoor falling onto spikes; ran into a cautious-if-polite dwarf (Sōt III speaks Dwarvish); and lowered Old Iron Grip down to the spikes to recover some treasure and a mysterious reddish bone key.
Given that Caspar still laid dead, they decided to drag him back to the surface and wait. He recovered some hours later.
14th Day of the Month of Grief
Going below once again, the party: recovered some lost gear; ran into some yellow ooze; heard mention of an elemental from some skeletons; Caspar lied to the skeletons, claiming he was a leader; and ran afoul of some orcs. The orcs seemed quite durable, even immortal: many bore hideous wounds yet seemed quite calm, and one was just a head, but still talked.
The party bargained with the orcs (the Eldest Orphan speaks Goblinoid, which orcs speak), trading knowledge of the secret elevator previously discovered for dwarf bodies. After tangling with some skeletons (having seen through Caspar’s deception), the party dragged the dwarf corpses back to the goblins, to uphold their stairs-for-dwarves deal. The goblins rejected the dwarves—they wanted living bodies, not corpses. Dejected, the party returned to the surface.
15th Day of the Month of Grief
After some shuffling in the Forsaken Inn, a new party descended:
Tarkus, Magic-User 1; a black-clad necromancer—last delve, he seemingly died after drinking a potion, and a seemingly-identical Tarkus stepped out from an alternate dimension.
Vetch, Fighter 1; a genial, ambling tourist, newly out of retirement.
Little Guy, Magic-User 1; a heavily-mustachioed conjurer, muscular and sporting crimson tattoos.
After getting some advice on the maps and dangers from the Eldest Orphan, who was conveniently in the Inn’s taproom (my roommate walked by), the party descended. They: ran into skeletons on the steps to level 2 and convinced them to fight the goblins upstairs; jammed the golden skull into Little Guy’s pocket dimension; cracked open a couple of sarcophagi and tangled with a yellow ooze but also claimed quite a bit of treasure; woke up Zagan the Old, a giant skeleton friendly to a previous party (Vetch took a photo); and retreated back to the surface.
16th Day of the Month of Grief
After offering advice to the previous party, the Eldest Orphan of Forsaken decided to join this group.
They went below to discover that skeletons had taken over the room leading to the stairs to the second level from the goblins—which the goblins had promised to control and allow the party access through. The party bothered the goblins, who raised a band of fighters and rousted the skeletons; the party descended to level 2.
The party immediately went to the secret elevator shaft they’d previously discovered, and lowered Vetch down with some 200’ of rope. At the bottom, Vetch found a large elevator platform with a crank on it, which he dutifully cranked, raising the elevator.
Little Guy, his nerves failing and his body quaking, decided to return to the surface alone (my friend had to leave early). Unfortunately, as Little Guy departed, he almost immediately ran into some kind of invisible wind-monster, which promptly sucked the air out of his lungs and left him gasping, then dead. Thus ended Little Guy.
Meanwhile, the other three—Tarkus, Vetch, and the Eldest Orphan—lowered the elevator back down, with them three on it. At the bottom, they discovered a large metal door set with patterns of bone, similar to what they’d seen above. Tarkus attempted to pick the lock but fumbled it, and a blade suddenly sheared out, slicing off three fingers on his right hand! After blocking the blade-slit with a shield, he kept working, eventually opening the door.
The party found themselves faced with a wooden wall and the sound of rhythmic metal scraping. Peeking around the wall, they gazed into an armory, where two four-armed humanoids sharpened two blades apiece simultaneously. Rather than tangle with these individuals, the party retreated back up the elevator.
From there, the party: offered Tarkus’s fingers to an undead divine figure called “the Judge of Kings;” raised an orc zombie; discovered a room with a shrine; realized the shrine was trapped with poison gas, which they burned; discovered the steps up to the shrine were trapped, too, slicing up the zombie; and eventually used a ladder to skip the steps and reach the shrine. Inside was a great deal of treasure, a strange icon of a broken gravestone, and a note reading “But a taste of good things to come.”
Retreating, the party ran into Little Guy’s corpse, which they stashed in a caved-in hallway. Vetch took his gold, promising it for his eventual successor, whoever that may be.
Back at the surface, the party spent their winnings, celebrating raucously. As they leveled up, they took on titles: the Eldest Orphan became The Eldest Orphan of Forsaken for Eternity, Vetch became Paparazzo Vetch, and Tarkus became Tarkus Two-Fingers.
17th Day of the Month of Grief
Synthesizing the previous parties, three adventurers went down:
Sōt III, Butcher of Bugs, Roller of Rugs, Fighter 3; still haggard, still clad in bone, still missing his left ear, still wielding Righty.
Paparazzo Vetch, Fighter 2; camera-wielding tourist increasingly interested in dungeon ecology.
Sabine, Fighter 1; a burly veteran soldier, seemingly old and young at the same time.
After getting Sabine up to speed on their adventures thus far and planning their route, the party descended. They: went straight to level 2; rummaged through Little Guy’s gear; left Vetch’s photo of Zagan the Old next to his crypt; ran into some friendly dwarves; helped the dwarves fight a band of orcs, wherein Vetch slaughtered a half-dozen singlehandedly; grabbed a bunch of still-living orc heads (wired or nailed shut to stop them biting or talking); then suddenly were ambushed by a group of corpse crawlers!
The crawlers rapidly paralyzed all but one of the dwarves, who fled, and Vetch. Sōt went to rescue Vetch, but was paralyzed as well. Sabine retreated, leaving the dwarves and her comrades to be slowly consumed by the crawlers. She ran back to the nearby skeleton shrine, and begged the skeletons for help: they agreed, but asked that the party would recover the dwarves’ fabled treasure for them in exchange. Sabine, with no other options, agreed.
The skeletons raised some zombie orcs and dwarves, then stormed in, driving back the crawlers handily. Sabine dragged the paralyzed Vetch and Sōt back to (relative) safety. While waiting, various dwarves kept arriving to check in, including two mechanical-armor-clad engineers who, upon realizing both arrived on the same job, began arguing viciously with each other.
After Sōt and Vetch recovered from their paralysis, the party: went back to the chamber where they believed the invisible air elemental lived; sealed the door but for the keyhole; mocked and baited it (Sabine speaks Zephyrean); and then managed to trap it inside an oilskin bag. They searched the room, found treasure, and took both treasure and air-elemental-bag-bomb back to the surface. They gave the goblins the three still-living orc heads—as orcs regrow over time—thus paying their debt of hostages for the week and ensuring safe passage to the second floor for another week.
Vetch, with a suspiciously-large amount of gold handy, partied hard and reached level 3, becoming Paparazzo Vetch the Orcbreaker.
18th Day of the Month of Grief
Our party consists of:
The Eldest Orphan of Forsaken for Eternity, Fighter 3; still noble, still mohawked, still extremely clean, still not a notch on any of his weapons.
Paparazzo Vetch the Orcbreaker, Fighter 3; now clad in scavenged armor and wielding a battle-axe, suspiciously rich.
Tarkus Two-Fingers, Magic-User 2; black-clad necromancer, now missing three fingers on his right hand.
Keviin, Fighter 1; the rookie burglar, still quite fresh.
After descending, the party: told the goblins about a secret passage on a map they found of goblin territory; feigned death Tarkus and Vetch to speak the Corpsetongue; semi-accidentally raised a skeleton presumably-named Isaakios; discovered dangerous dwarvish wall-slamming traps; examined a huge hole in the floor and thought they saw water below; and found a merchant! The merchant, clad head-to-toe in paper and parchment, gave his name as Textus, Master Scrivener, and offered six scrolls for sale. The party, pooling together their funds, purchased a scroll of magic dome in the Corpsetongue and a scroll of passwall in Void, which they paid Textus extra to translate into the Corpsetongue as well: Tarkus promptly claimed both, declaring himself an aspiring dark lord.
After, they found a room full of gas that induced lightheadedness with a shrine in it, which they raided, including a strange note reading “Acid, Fire, Strangulation.” Taking their winnings, the party retreated to the surface, and Tarkus transcribed his new spells, going deeply into debt to his comrades. Isaakios, Tarkus’s skeleton, declined, staying below to examine the mysterious golden skull.
19th Day of the Month of Grief
After Tarkus feigned his death once more, the party went below, straight to the second floor. The golden skull, which had consistently reappeared (even after being pocket dimension’d for a day by the late Little Guy), was missing, replaced with an ordinary skull.
Unsure of what to make of this, the party proceeded. They: realized Sōt’s red-bone key opened the iron doors to the secret elevator; distracted corpse crawlers with orc meat; and discovered a different merchant in the same room as Textus. This merchant, wearing a treasure chest for a helmet and carrying a huge pack, named himself as Curus, Master Peddler, and offered a variety of magical items and trinkets. The party, pooling their funds, purchased a miser’s flute to draw coins, a set of donkey legs to allow objects to walk, and a necklace of fireballs with 5 beads. Then, Tarkus attempted to passwall to a nearby chamber but failed, instead accidentally discovering a secret vertical shaft, from which daylight shone down. The party believed it the well in the town of Forsaken leading to the water below, but didn’t confirm for certain.
After, they: correctly passwall’d into an orc armory; learned that orcs all grow from great Allmother Brood; ran afoul of an orc magician and three horrible gibbering orc-flesh-hybrid-beasts; then lobbed a fireball from the new necklace into the corpse crawlers’ nest, promptly incinerating all of them. After looting the treasure, they realized that, according to their hand-drawn map, there should be a single wall between the room containing the now-ordinary skull and the merchant’s chamber: opened up, it’d be a huge shortcut. But alas, after passwalling again, they discovered it to be a distance of 10’—a huge distance to tunnel through substrate.
Still, after several hours away, Curus’s stock had refreshed, and the party purchased a Lagash sapling, which grows apples when watered with blood, and a folding boat. Tarkus raised two skeletons and commanded them to tunnel for the duration of their unlife, then the party returned to the surface.
Will the company manage to pay their debt to the undead for rescuing Sōt and Vetch by finding the treasure of the dwarves? What enemies will burn beneath their next 4 fireballs? What lies below, at the bottom of the secret well-shaft? Find out next time.
Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #3
Recently, I started an open-table megadungeon campaign using a megadungeon I’m working on, working-titled “Pandemonium.”
9th Day of the Month of Grief
Our party consists of:
Sōt III, Butcher of Bugs, Fighter 2; a scraggly, haggard knight missing his left ear, clad in mail-and-plate made from bone, wielding Righty, his unmagical but heavily-notched longsword.
Erasmus Karl, Fighter 1; an amiable, balding tourist taking photographs for his travel [b]log readers back home.
Shrike, Fighter 1; a sickly, cursed outlander clad in a robe of black feathers, wielding a whip.
Keviin, Fighter 1; a haunted, ex-mercenary burglar.
The party descended into the depths; went to the goblin camp and handed over a clay goblin icon they retrieved previously, depicting a goblin head made of many, smaller goblin heads. In exchange, they were granted leave to attend the lectures of Khilo, High Sage, and Bokho, Great Pedant—the two most-senior goblin academics in the camp, each clad in mortarboards and academic capes.
They sat through long lectures on metaphysics, little understood (none of the party speaks Goblinoid); volunteered for “baby lessons;” were sent to pick mushrooms; and eventually found a goblin academic who spoke the Nine Forked Tongues, the language of demons, which Shrike speaks. After some questioning regarding goblin lore and the much-mysterious Goblinscholar, the Forked Tongue-speaking goblin asked if Shrike would like to “become” a goblin. Shrike agreed, as did Erasmus, and they were led away, deeper into the goblin camp—but not before leaving behind Erasmus’s Polaris-demon camera with 7 photos’ worth left.
There, the goblin academics produced a strange syringe made from an unusual metal. After withdrawing something from the ear of a twitchy, attending goblin, they injected the syringe into Shrike’s right ear. After convulsing and twitching for a minute, Shrike was led away. Despite this strangeness, Erasmus volunteered as well, and suffered the same fate.
After waiting for a long time, Sōt and Keviin decided to leave. The goblins did not return their companions.
10th Day of the Month of Grief
Two newcomers arrived in town to join Sōt and Keviin:
The Eldest Orphan, Fighter 1; a rich-dressed noble with a fancy mohawk.
Snuffet, Magic-User 1; a sleepy, shaved-head stoner transmuter.
Together, the party went back down; attended goblin lecture for several more hours (both Snuffet and the Eldest Orphan conveniently speak Goblinoid); went to goblin lunch (terrible); Snuffet snuck a photograph of a spell from Khilo the High Sage’s dissertation-spellbook; and then struck a deal with the High Sage and Great Pedant. If the party provides 3 dwarves (or orcs, or ghouls) to be turned into goblins, the goblins will clear a previously-skeleton-held chamber to allow access down a flight of stairs. The party accepted the deal, with one week to complete the kidnappings.
The party descended the stairs; found a suspicious lever on the staircase; raided some sarcophagi for treasure; discovered a strange golden skull with ruby eyes on a plinth in a room full of burned bones; realized the stair-lever turned the stairs to a ramp; and decided to keep their winnings and retreat home. Once back at the Forsaken Inn, Snuffet examined the photograph of Khilo’s spellbook, determined it to be dominate, and transcribed it into his own clay-tablet spellbook.
11th Day of the Month of Grief
Comprised of old and new faces, our party consists of:
Sōt III, Butcher of Bugs, Fighter 2; still scraggly, still clad in bone mail-and-plate, still down his right ear, still wielding Righty.
One the Only (pronounced “own”), Fighter 2; a drunken, hungover, spear-wielding soldier.
Snuffet, Magic-User 1; a sleepy, shaved-head stoner transmuter now with a new spell.
The Eldest Orphan, Fighter 1; an increasingly-edgy noble with a mohawk.
After some shopping and loaning of silver, the party descended. They talked with the new goblin guards of the stairs down; realized the goblins might not be trustworthy; went down the same stairs; found a yellow ooze and set it on fire; found a very large room covered in an equally-large carpet; and discovered a crypt beneath the carpet, which they raided for a great deal of treasure, a map of an unknown dungeon area, a feather that points towards danger, and a pair of cursed boots of devouring.
Taking their winnings, the party retreated back upstairs to spend it all on booze, coke, and fast floozies. The Eldest Orphan and Snuffet both reached Level 2, taking on the titles The Eldest Orphan of Forsaken and Snuffet the Pointer, as Snuffet placed the danger-pointing feather into his cap.
12th Day of the Month of Grief
After descending once more, the party: rolled up the giant carpet; found a room with an almost-certain teleportation circle inscribed with circles in seven languages, only some of which could be understood; found an enormous giant-sized sarcophagus labeled “Zagan the Old” in Colossal (which Snuffet reads); met a whole bucket of skeleton mages, only placated after One offered wine at their shrine; found a hallway with some oddly-placed columns; and discovered a Scooby Doo secret rotating door!
Going through the secret door, the party discovered a large metal door decorated with patterns of human bone, and a large, ominous keyhole. Rather than try to pick it, the party decided to wait so Snuffet could ritually (and thus safely) cast knock. Hidden in their secret hallway, the hour passed without incident: Snuffed knocked and the door opened. Inside awaited a wide, square, deep hole, with four thick chains descending along each corner—a hidden elevator! Descended currently, and with no means to call it up, but a valuable shortcut nonetheless.
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed through the walls, along with a Colossal voice calling “Who dares disturb my slumber?!” The party returned to the room with the giant sarcophagus to discover a huge silver-crowned skeleton inside, mostly unable to escape his tomb but very able to swipe his giant skeletal arms at passers-by. After some discussion and learning that Zagan yearned mostly to sleep peacefully and was quite forgetful, the party offered a solution: in exchange for Zagan’s treasure, they would provide him with blankets. Traveling back and forth, the party cut up large swathes of the carpet in the previous chamber, swapping each new blanket for treasure: silver, gold, a map (which they recognized as the goblin camp, including some unexpected hidden areas), a creepy jester mask, and a pair of fancy magical boots. After briefly tangling with some kind of invisible wind monster that almost killed the Eldest Orphan, the party took their winnings and returned home—their longest descent yet, just over 4 hours beneath the Forsaken Inn.
Spending his winnings, Sōt reached level 3, taking on the title TBD. (It was late and we were tired.)
Where does the secret elevator go? Will Zagan the Old ever get a good eternity’s sleep? What will Sōt III choose as his Level 3 title? Find out next time.
Which Rules Elide?
Can rules elide what doesn’t exist?
In a word: no. But not for the reason you think.
When Jared talks about “rules eliding,” he refers to endogenous rules—that is, “game rules.” Mechanistic, computational, rulesy-rules. “Longswords deal 1d6 damage,” for example.
In 1983, Gary Alan Fine published a great book called Shared Fantasy, which among other things described what Fine calls “frame theory.” 25 years later, Markus Montola wrote an amazing paper called “The Invisible Rules of Roleplaying,” which expanded and clarified Fine’s frames.
Together, Fine and Montola describe three frames of play in TTRPGs, which players frequently and seamlessly move between:
- Primary/Exogenous frame: the real, physical, actual world, where we’re people sitting around a table together, rolling dice and eating Cheetos. Exogenous rules are things like “try to show up on time” and “don’t throw dice at each other.”
- Game/Endogenous frame: the mechanical, systemic frame, all numbers and crunch, where we’re bundles of stats. Endogenous rules are things like “roll 1d20 under ST to avoid the fireball” and “it takes 3,000XP to reach level 3.”
- Fictional/Diegetic frame: the imaginary, fictional world, where we’re adventurers slaying dragons and raiding tombs. Diegetic rules are things like “gravity” or “if you don’t eat, you’ll get hungry and eventually die,” but also “if you stand in the light of the full moon, you’ll transform into a wolf.” (And also things like “weapons are forbidden inside city walls,” but that’s for another time.)
Players shift between these frames all the time. Watch your table and you’ll see them (and yourself) do it.
Okay, so, three frames, three kinds of rules. In typical parlance, when we talk about “the rules of the game,” we usually mean the endogenous rules, the ones that determine longsword damage and chances to pick locks and so on.
It’s these rules that Jared describes as eliding. When you pick a lock without dice, where you just describe all the tumblers and pins and picks and things and see what works, you’re more or less cutting out the endogenous rules entirely*. You can play a whole session or campaign like this, actually: it’s the premise of Thriftomancer’s fascinating Null. But! When you simply roll 1d6 to pick a lock (an endogenous rule), you’re eliding the fictional world (the diegetic rule). Endogenous rules are summaries, overviews, skimmings-over of more complicated fictional rules. Most of the time, this is fine and dandy. Fiddling with tumblers is complicated and annoying—as is, say, trying to figure out exactly how many pitons fit in a backpack, or how big a laceration a battle-ax inflicts to the soft tissue of the bicep. All of these are complicated and annoying (but also pretty important to the fictional world we’re playing in) so we write some rules to breeze through them and get back to the stuff we actually care about. Each time you write an endogenous rule, you make a summarized representation of a more complex fictional world—you elide the fictional world.
So, what about stuff that doesn’t exist in our world? Axes and backpacks and lockpicks all exist in our, but what about magic? The argument goes that, because magic doesn’t exist in our world, we need to write endogenous rules about how it works, because otherwise it wouldn’t exist in the fictional world, right? Right? Wrong.
Here’s what diegetic rules for magic might look like:
Take a carnelian at least one fingernail’s width in diameter and grind it to powder in a mortar & pestle. Stand in a circle of pink chalk no more than ten paces across. Eat the cooked heart of a salamander killed before the last full moon, recite the phrase ”llaberif llaberif llaberif” in a loud voice, then blow the powdered carnelian outward. When you next inhale, the powdered carnelian explodes with fire like a tree struck by lightning. Only those inside the circle of pink chalk remain safe.
Or even more simply:
After deeply memorizing the arcane words of the spell, spend 5 seconds with your eyes closed in deep focus, murmuring the words and extending your hand, and a globe of fire shoots out of your fingertips.
Fireball! No dice, no wizard levels, no spell slots, just raw magic. This rule isn’t true in our world, obviously, but in writing this in to our imaginary fictional world, we make it part of the game. You could port this to any endogenous ruleset and it would work identically (assuming their fictional world has carnelians, chalk, fire, etc). Luke Gearing does something similar for magic in Wolves Upon the Coast, and it entirely changes how magic feels and operates compared to standard elf-games.
When game designers write an endogenous spell description for fireball (6d6 dmg., 120’, 20’ radius), they use those endogenous rules as a shorthand for saying “hey yeah so if you’re a wizard and you memorize this spell or whatever so you can create a ball of fire from your fingertips or something, anyway here’s the math.” Those endogenous fireball rules elide the complicated fictional reality of what it means to cast fireball, the magic spell. D&D’s magic system provokes so many arguments online because it’s become unmoored from its fictional reality—it used to be based on Jack Vance’s stuff, but that went out of style years ago, and now nerds online constantly argue about how best to retrofit their game worlds to fit these isolated magic rules.
Endogenous rules elide, in every case; when it looks like they aren’t, when it looks like they’re somehow creating, dig a little deeper to find what fictional complexities they’re papering over. And next time you create a setting far different from our own, ask yourself: are endogenous game rules really the best way to communicate this world?
*A note: I actually argue that Montola’s three rules of roleplaying (world, power, character) are endogenous in and of themselves; roleplaying games hinge on them as the means of providing inefficiency for the game itself (under Suitsian definitions). These rules don’t elide, unlike every other endogenous rule, because they’re non-simulative and nonrepresentational. But they also are fundamental to roleplaying and don’t-elide in equal measure across more or less every roleplaying game, thus making them largely irrelevant when examining the difference between endogenous rulesets. Some day I’ll write a paper talking more about this.
Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #2
Recently, I started an open-table megadungeon campaign using a megadungeon I’m working on, working-titled “Pandemonium.”
This report covers session three and four. You can find the report for sessions one and two here.
6th Day of the Month of Grief
Our party consists of:
Sōt III, Fighter 1; a scraggly, sinewy knight, clad in bone mail-and-plate, missing his left ear.
Little Al, Magic-User 1; an old wizard magically de-aged to a teenager, covered in gnarly tattoos.
Just before descending beneath the Forsaken Inn, Little Al located gold, catching a momentary ping somewhere deeper on the first floor, near an area they’d already explored.
The two went below. They tangled with some beaky-brick monsters; marked their bricks with a chisel; found a nest of spark flies; then proceeded to fight many spark flies.
Midway through the fight, a spark fly stung Little Al directly in the forehead, piercing the skull. He collapsed, his forehead swelling unpleasantly as fluid leaked out. Sōt dragged him away from the nest and fought off the last of the spark flies, but the damage was done: Little Al’s brain swelled, killing him quickly. Thus ended Little Al.
Sōt returned to the surface just in time to meet a drunken soldier about to head down. The soldier’s name was One, pronounced “own,” and he needed to pay off gambling debts. Lacking other companions, Sōt accepted One’s help and the two descended.
The two nibbled spark fly carcass and found it extremely spicy; slew the last of the spark flies; shattered their nest in search of treasure; discovered an obscured hallway behind the nest; found an altar in a hidden chamber; prayed at the altar then raided it for gold, silver, gemstone rings, and a scroll written in Mycologue, the tongue of fungi. They also discovered a secret passage out of the altar room, leading to a hidden door inside an upright sarcophagus.
After returning to the surface with their loot, both Sōt and One reached Level 2! Sōt assumed the title “Butcher of Bugs” and One the title “the Only.”
7th Day of the Month of Grief
Sōt and One went below once more. They returned to the secret sarcophagus chamber; activated an obvious trap to lower a giant block in the hallway; ran into some goblins and offered them a spicy spark fly, which was so spicy as to seemingly kill the goblin; fought many goblins in a narrow, gore-filled chokepoint; found a trapdoor descending lower and propped it open; then fled a gelatinous cube that dissolved their weapons.
8th Day of the Month of Grief
With One off drinking away his loot, a new party formed, including faces old and new:
Sōt III, the Butcher of Bugs, Fighter 2; a scraggly and gangly knight clad in bone mail-and-plate, missing a left ear.
Tarkus, Magic-User 1; a tall, broad necromancer in name only, having recently lost all of his gear including the knucklebones that served as his spellbook.
Bonkers, Fighter 1; a quiet, monk-like knight, brother to the still-in-recovery Chonkers.
Shrike, Fighter 1; a sickly, cursed, feather-clad outlander.
Erasmus Karl, Fighter 1; a balding, cheerful tourist.
Mustard, Magic-User 1; a young, muscular, overly peppy conjurer.
After quickly handing all spare gear over to Tarkus, the party headed below. They moved towards the known goblin camp; Erasmus played an increasingly-high-stakes game of Goblin Poker with the guards, requiring a mortarboard-wearing goblin to come adjudicate; a giant hermit crab snuck into Bonker’s pack, who adopted it as a pet; and the party burst in right as Erasmus snapped a photo using his Polaris-demon camera.
After a quick victory over the half-blind goblins, more goblins seemed imminent, so Mustard conjured webs to block the hallways and buy time. Using their bought time, Tarkus dragged away the Goblin Poker winnings, and Mustard drew a circle of holy water, then summoned an angel.
The angel, a six-eyed six-winged being with skin like brass floating upside down, did not share a language with the party. Mustard and Shrike, both speaking the Nine Forked Tongues of daemons, attempted to communicate a little, but this only confused and angered the angel. Mustard stepped into the circle of holy water and was seized by the angel, lightning shooting up their arm, then collapsed into unconsciousness. As the party retreated from the slowly-encroaching goblins, Bonkers broke the circle of holy water, whereupon the angel seized the unconscious Mustard and vanished with both of them in a blaze of light. Thus ended Mustard.
Thinking quickly, the party left a trail of discarded Goblin Poker loot towards the location of several unfriendly skeletons. The goblins took the bait and a battle ensued, leaving the party free to explore. The party took the opportunity to retreat, running afoul of some skeletons, including a black-clad mage, whose knucklebone-spellbook Tarkus reclaimed (after Erasmus took another photo).
After returning to the surface, the party recruited another new arrival, a droopy, brooding translocator named Ketchup. Bonkers dropped off his new hermit crab pack pet with his recovering brother, Chonkers; some re-equipping occured; Sōt prayed for victory; and the party went below.
Tarkus talked to some very friendly skeletons; they met the skeleton underboss, another black-clad mage who wasn’t as nice; a battle ensued. After rushing down the mage, Bonkers, on the front line, proceeded to lose his left middle finger and then his entire left leg, collapsing into unconsciousness. As he collapsed and skeletons burst through the gap, one stabbed Tarkus in the chest, puncturing his lungs.
Dispatching the other skeletons, the party plugged the hole in Tarkus’s lungs with an air bladder, buying precious minutes; they cauterized Bonkers’s leg with a torch. Tarkus, desperate, began casting every spell he had, hoping to get lucky; instead, he accidentally infected Bonkers’s stump with gangrene.
In desperation, Shrike fed Tarkus a strange purple-and-orange potion, at which point Tarkus collapsed, dead, only to have another, different Tarkus step out from nowhere, mostly unharmed. This new Tarkus, largely the same but subtly somehow different, rapidly cauterized Bonkers’s stump, and the party beat a hasty retreat to the surface.
Will this new replacement-Tarkus turn out to be friend or foe? Will anyone but Sōt ever manage to find treasure? Which new third brother will step up as both Bonkers and Chonkers recover from their wounds? Find out next time.
Pandemonium Megadungeon Session Report #1
Recently, I started an open-table megadungeon campaign using a megadungeon I’m working on, working-titled “Pandemonium.”
This report covers the first two sessions.
A vast, ancient dungeon lies beneath the town of Forsaken, at the far northern edge of the world. Many heroes went below in ages past, never to return. Food is sorely limited in Forsaken: Imperial decree dictates an allotment of only 60 meals per month for adventurers going below, and no other food is available for purchase.
1st Day of the Month of Grief
Our party consists of:
Old Grip, Magic-User 1; a salty and shady illusionist.
Sōt II, Fighter 1; a scraggly and gangly burglar.
The Forsaken Inn’s ancient innkeeper led the adventurers down the inn’s sub-basement, where a heavy door sat covered in chains, locks, and bars.
When the party returned from the dungeons, the innkeeper explained, she said she’d wait 10 minutes after their knock before unlocking the door—enough time to ensure any pursuing monsters could kill and eat them, then turn around and head back down.
After some last-minute shopping, Old Grip and Sōt went down. They cracked open some sarcophagi; unleashed a black ooze they ended up setting on fire; lost their armor to said ooze; recovered the possibly-edible ooze remnants; and retreated back upstairs.
A few hours later, they went below once more. They opened more sarcophagi; fought some glowing bugs that severed Old Grip’s wrist tendons and drank half of Sōt’s oil; found a goblin with a giant hole in their chest who died after it was pointed out (Old Grip speaks Goblinoid); found a weird shrine depicting a goblin head made of other, smaller goblin heads, which they promptly raided for some money and two shiny brass ingots; then went back to the surface.
2nd Day of the Month of Grief
Old Grip and Sōt II headed below once more. They found some maybe-friendly skeletons; got chased by a gelatinous cube, slowing it by barring a door it began to dissolve; Old Grip got his leg bitten off by a beaked brick mimic monster; Sōt retreated dragging Grip as goblins came up the hallway.
Caught between a gelatinous cube on one side and goblins on the other, Old Grip cast invisibility twice, miscasting twice. An ear and a hand vanished into thin air, leaving bloody stumps, and Grip lost his ability to see other sighted creatures for several hours. The cube and goblins burst in near-simultaneously, the goblins fled, the cube gave chase, and the adventurers slowly hobbled back to the surface.
3rd Day of the Month of Grief
Old Grip, missing an ear, a leg, and a hand, couldn’t afford medical treatment and so decided to rest. Three new adventurers arrived, now making the party:
Sōt II, Fighter 1; a scraggly and gangly burglar, now slightly richer.
Shrike, Fighter 1; a sick, cursed, feather-clad outlander.
Tarkus, Magic-User 1; a tall, broad necromancer.
Chonkers, Fighter 1; a quiet, nimble ranger.
After some more shopping and Tarkus death warding himself, they went below. They chatted with some very friendly skeletons (Tarkus speaks the Corpsetongue); bickered about marching order; pushed deeper than they’d gone before, into earthen tunnels; and got trapped between a locked door and 10 goblins.
A fight ensued, centered around a bear trap Chonkers placed down earlier: Sōt and Shrike held the front line, killing a few goblins; they failed to knock a goblin into the bear trap; Chonkers loosed arrows, but the goblins sometimes seemed to fail to die. A knife whistled through the air, catching Chonkers’s hand, leaving it useless. A goblin hacked off Sōt’s arm, he collapsed into unconsciousness, and fell straight onto the bear trap, which promptly snapped shut and crushed his skull. Thus ended Sōt II.
The goblins surged forward, overwhelming Chonkers and leaving him unconscious and dying; Tarkus, fearing the worst, cast feign death on himself and played dead. Suddenly, Shrike lashed out with his whip, slaying three goblins in quick succession; the remaining 5 goblins panicked. Two fled, but three keeled over, seemingly dead despite being untouched. Shrike stabbed each of them to be sure, then he and Tarkus dragged the armless, unconscious Chonkers back to the surface, narrowly talking their way past a skeleton mage.
4th Day of the Month of Grief
Chonkers, missing a hand and unable to pay for healing, decided to refrain from going below—he’ll be back in a couple of months. Fortunately, two new adventurers arrived that same morning:
Sōt III, Fighter 1; a suspiciously-familiar scraggly and gangly man, but now a knight.
Bonkers, Fighter 1; the quiet, monk-like brother of Chonkers (a day behind), also a knight.
After the knights prayed, the four went below. They aggravated some skeletons; accidentally inhaled poison gas from a sarcophagus; found two scrolls, one in Stonespeak that Tarkus half-understood (he speaks Dwarvish) as something about time and movement and the other entirely incomprehensible; found a secret door and forced it open; fought two skeleton mages in quick succession; raided a sarcophagus for a whole bunch of money, some jewelry, a suit of mail-and-plate made from yellow bone, and six different potions.
Feeling successful, the party returned to the surface, sold off the loot, and sniffed some potions to uncertain results. Despite his misgivings as a knight, Sōt III decided to don the bone armor. Several party members decided to blow their new wealth on booze, new clothes, and loose hotties, thus gaining some XP (but not enough to level up).
5th Day of the Month of Grief
The same four—Sōt III, Shrike, Tarkus, and Bonkers—went below, Tarkus spending several hours to death ward everyone. They delved further than they’d ever gone before, into goblin territory; Bonkers drank an unknown potion and became two-dimensional; they ambushed some goblins; found a room full packs and odd clicking sounds, and discovered one sack full of goblinshit; Bonkers drank another unknown potion to seemingly no effect; then they antagonized many goblins.
A battle ensued as dozens of goblins poured in. The party held for a time but began to falter as the goblins continued to add to the swell and their death wards expended; Sōt drank an unknown potion and went deaf, then coincidentally lost an ear to a goblin knife. The party decided to flee. They ran, the goblins in pursuit.
They used a sarcophagus lid against a door and set the door on fire to buy time, then split up: just before they split, Tarkus drank another unknown potion and told the other three to “fly, you fools”—Sōt, Bonkers, and Shrike, feeling oddly compelled, fled to the secret hallway they discovered yesterday and closed the door. Tarkus feigned death and recruited a collection of skeletons to go fight the goblins, which they did. The skeletons promptly lost, Tarkus played dead again, and the goblins stripped him of all of his gear. The party then reunited and returned to the surface.
Will the adventurers avenge Sōt II and defeat the goblins? Will Tarkus reclaim his lost gear? Will they ever find enough gold to level up? Find out next time.
What’s On Kickstarter Right Now?
Today is January 30th, 2024. ZineMonth & ZineQuest start in about 48 hours. In the vague popular wisdom, January is thought of as a slow month for Kickstarter. Let’s see what’s on Kickstarter’s “Tabletop Games” section right now.
Currently, there are 389(!) active tabletop games projects live on Kickstarter, which I’ve sorted according to my vague, loose categories. I’ve also added how many of them are funded vs unfunded, and how many are using AI (either declared so, or so obvious I could clock it in just a glance). After listing them, I’ll offer some thoughts at the end.
In order, there are:
- 90 miniatures, models, or STLs. 82 funded, 8 unfunded; 1 using AI (for some promo art).
- 80 standalone board or card games. 43 funded, 37 unfunded; 12 using AI.
- 37 5e splats: monsters, spells, items, and other stuff. 34 funded, 3 unfunded; 15 using AI.
- 26 5e adventures. 22 funded, 4 unfunded; 12 using AI.
- 24 ~sexy~ miniatures, models, or STLs. 22 funded, 2 unfunded; no AI.
- 23 non-5e RPG splats: monsters, spells, items, and other stuff. 18 funded, 5 unfunded; 3 using AI.
- 17 new RPG systems. 11 funded, 6 unfunded; 3 using AI.
- 14 board game expansions, editions, or reprints. 13 funded, 1 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 10 new editions or reprints of existing RPG systems. 8 funded, 2 unfunded; no AI.
- 10 maps, physical or for VTTs. 8 funded, 2 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 8 dice accessories: towers, boxes, mats, and so on. 6 funded, 2 unfunded; no AI.
- 8 non-5e RPG adventures. 4 funded, 4 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 6 “hilarious” party games. 1 funded, 5 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 5 conventions, events, or stores. 4 funded, 1 unfunded; no AI.
- 4 dice. 3 funded, 1 unfunded; no AI.
- 4 coins, tokens, or other counters. 2 funded, 2 unfunded; no AI.
- 3 tarot decks. 1 funded, 2 unfunded; 1 using AI.
- 2 TCG/CCGs. 1 funded, 1 unfunded; no AI.
- 2 puzzle books. 2 funded; no AI.
- 16 miscellaneous other projects. Plushies, playing cards, model backdrop art, a digital board game thing, book tabs, a gaming table, card sleeves, a Traveller audiobook, bookends (I think?), a YouTube channel, meeples, paper standups, stock art, a travel backgammon board, a vertical chess board, and clay sculptures. 11 funded, 5 unfunded; no AI.
Right now, the top ten most-funded projects include three standalone board games, two board game expansions, two 5e splats, a set of miniatures, a CCG, and the YouTube channel.
Some Thoughts
If you’d asked me to guess how many live projects there were on Kickstarter this morning, I’d have guessed between 100 and 150. The fact that there are close to 400 shocks me—this little dive took about three times as long as I was expecting.
What strikes me most about all of this is how much trash there is on Kickstarter. Granted, I’m almost exclusively into RPGs, and I’m a known snob, but even still it astounds me how much just random junk clutter there is floating around. I sorted these projects by Newest to collect all of this data, and the amount of time I spent just trawling through cheapo STL files, AI-generated 5e DriveThru splats, and derivative board games was mind-numbing. Almost all of these had extremely low funding goals—most under a thousand dollars, some even under a hundred dollars.
Of the things I was interested in, mainly the adventures and new RPG systems, it was extremely difficult to find the stuff I might be interested. I’ve been using Kickstarter regularly for about five years now; I’ve run seven projects and backed 57, pretty much all of which are tabletop RPG-related. My three “recommended picks” on the games page are a 5e adventure, a reprint of Big Eyes, Small Mouth, and a card game. My “Discover -> Recommended for Me” page is a little better—some OSE zines, a CY_BORG expansion, the new Goodman DCC hack—but still is filled with 5e AI crap and big-box reprints of existing systems.
Of my last four projects (two OSR splats, a Mothership adventure, and a 5e splat), only about 15-25% of my backers came from inside Kickstarter itself—the rest were from outside sources. The 5e project had the highest number of those. I don’t know what the giant hundreds-of-thousands big-box board games’ stats look like, but I would be willing to bet they’re not that much higher. Kickstarter projects always flash huge numbers, sure, but few game companies release internal numbers outside of Kickstarter. There’s no great way to tell how a board game sells in a “on Kickstarter” vs “off Kickstarter” match-up.
What all of this suggests to me is that Kickstarter is a bad platform for what it advertises itself to be. All those STL files and 5e AI books have goals in the low hundreds—they don’t need the crowdfunding, their projects have budgets in the single digits. Those big-box board games—they obviously don’t need the crowdfunding, they’re coming from publishers with a dozen-plus games under their belt. But the projects that do need the crowdfunding? The little experimental board games and the tiny RPG zine adventures? They’re getting lost in the wash.
Is this really the platform we want to tie ourselves to? Is the best place for scrappy indie projects that need cash actually here? Kickstarter?