HtHaD2E: This Close To World Domination

This post covers the last 5 turns of my recent game of How To Host A Dungeon 2nd Edition. In the previous posts, we followed the rise and fall of a Dwarven City, and then a series of dungeon expansions in and around those ruins by successive waves or generations of monsters. Eventually, this culminated in an insectoid species -- known as "Antlings" -- accumulating enough Treasure to trigger the Age of Villainy. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)



Here is the map as it was when we left off:

Other groups on the map at this point include:

• A giant Pike that swallowed an Owlbear whole.
• A small Reclamation Colony of Dwarves, who have built an armory, reignited the old smelters and unearthed an Epic Magical Treasure.
• A high-level adventurer and his Ork henchman have set up camp in an old Dwarven drinking hall.
• An ork tribe that was once prosperous and powerful but is now stretched too thin.
• A warren of sneaky kobold thieves.

Per the rules as written, the Antlings had qualified to start The Empire, which is one of the two main forms of Villainy. Empires Ally and Annex other groups, and build Monuments and Universities. The Antlings are Mindless, so that's not a good match thematically.

Instead, I'll be using the other main form of Villain, which is The Horde. It's a perfect match for a colony of giant ants. (Alternately, I could have just narrated that the Antlings had evolved sentience, possibly a result of the weird fungus they were farming.)

As a Horde Villain, the Antlings will gain some new Actions each turn. Previously, they would Breed and Prepare every turn, and Harvest their Fungus Farm nearly every turn. On turns when they didn't Harvest, they could Explore or Fight. Now they always Scout new territory each turn, in addition to Breeding and Preparing. On turns when they don't Harvest or Explore or Fight, they can now alternately Rout tougher monsters, or sacrifice some of their own to Exterminate groups they outnumber. They always at first at the start of each Round, but at the end of the Round they get a Finishing move of Corrupting the Strata they are in if there's no one there to resist them. If they Corrupt all 7 underground Strata, they conquer the world and win the game.


Age of Villainy Set-Up:
We corrupt the Strata where the majority of the Antling tokens are. Visually, I went for a reddish mycelium growth, as if the Fungus Farm were spreading out of control through the rock.

What follows is mostly a stream-of-consciousness step-by-step playthrough of all 5 turns of the Age of Villainy in my recent game. I will put a summarized list of observations and proposed house-rules in another post later.

Age of Villainy - Turn 1: Antlings Horde, The Experts, Giant Pike, Dwarves, Kobolds, Orkz +Gnolls

Antlings Horde: Breed. Scout action expands their space by roughly 1 room in each direction, which means they fill some but not all of the rooms previously inhabited by the Owlbear, but will not reach the water until next turn. Prepare. Explore the rest of their main corrupted stratum by digging a tunnel towards the Demigod structures.

The Experts: Their monster card compels them to pick a Fight with one of the nearby Denizen groups. They attack the Dwarves, and their Ork henchman dies. So then they Recruit a new henchman from the Orkz, and that's enough of a drain on the Orkz population to eliminate the Orkz.

Giant Pike: Can't leave the water, and the Antlings didn't reach the water, so it just relocates to explore the other part of the subterranean ocean. I mark his original territory with "spawning bed" because I suspect he swims upstream in later turns.

Dwarves: Dwarves are playing a dangerous game. They Exploit the only remaining Ore on the map, which involves reopening passageways very close to the Adventuring Party. So it's in their best interests to Fight the interlopers, which they do, killing the new Ork henchman and leaving just the 1 Adventurer holding the old Drinking Hall.

Kobolds: They are pretty much doomed by their Explore requirement, sweet tooth for treasure, and the extinction of the Orkz. With all those factors, there's no way their mess of tunnels isn't going to hit that Fate Nexus booby trap that's been sitting there since the Primordial Era. Having found their Fate, the Kobolds are wiped out.

Orkz: Were eliminated before they could take their turn.

Gnolls: In the Age of Villainy, new Monsters spawn less frequently. Instead of being automatic each turn, it's based on whether or not any Monster groups were eliminated in the previous turn. Looking at my notes from the last play session, I see that the Owlbear was eaten by the Giant Pike in the previous turn, so I do spawn monsters this turn. It's Gnolls, and they rolled the ocean strata, so I figure the Giant Pike's migration has exposed their seaside home. They fight the Antlings and win, and then they Steal from the Pike. I draw a tunnel to the old Owlbear caves to be the route they use for both Actions. To give the Gnolls just a tiny bit of visual character, I decide all their rooms will have two support columns.

Antling Horde Finishing Move: They haven't yet spread far enough to trigger their finishing move, mostly because I chose to have them tunnel to the Demigod Hall with their Explore action. Next Turn, they'll most likely start corrupting the layers beneath them.



Age of Villainy - Turn 2: Antling Horde, Gnolls, Experts, Giant Pike, +Medusa

Antlings Horde: Breed. Scout in all directions, and drag the treasure they find in the Hall of the Demigod deeper into their nest. It's probably ambrosia or golden apples or something of the sort. They explore further down, penetrating pretty far since the Old Dwarven Loway is open and un-owned.

Gnolls: Fight the Antlings and kill one, cutting off their access to the sea. Breed, since they fought the Antlings last turn. Scout and expand their territory.

Experts: Fight the Dwarves, and with a lucky roll kill them despite the Armory bonus. Then, since it worked with the Orkz, they try to Recruit the survivors. This time it doesn't work, and they just end up giving their last treasure to the Dwarves for no gain.

Dwarves: There's no Ore left anywhere on the map, so they can neither Exploit nor Relocate to better lands. So they pick a Fight. The best odds are against the Antlings, so that's the risk they take, and they win!

Giant Pike: Hunts a Gnoll. Explores a deeper section of the water than was previously obvious.

Medusa: Spawns way down on Stratum 8 where there's no one to Hunt. Prepares. Scouts.

Antling Horde Finishing Move: They corrupt the Stratum directly below the hive, so the Antlings are 2/7ths of the way to world domination.



Age of Villainy: Turn 3 - Antling Horde, Experts, Gnolls, Medusa, Dwarves, Giant Pike,

Antling Horde: Breed. Prepare. Scout. Then they use the Horde-specific Exterminate Action to wipe out the Dwarves. It may seem wasteful or overkill, but the math of it makes sense. That single Dwarf, with his +1 on Fight, had about a 72% chance each turn to kill an Antling. Exterminate is a can't-fail Action that gets to ignore the Dwarves Fortification bonuses.  By wiping him out, the Antlings gain a Fortification of their own, making them much better at dealing with incursions from the Gnolls. Plus, by not Fighting the Gnolls this turn, they prevent the Giant Pike from Hunting them just a little bit longer. This isn't without some peril, as it drops the Antling Population briefly down to 2, before the second half of Exterminate bumps them back up to 3. Their numbers are dwindling, but they've gained a large portion of the map. They are at their most vulnerable for the rest of this turn, but it seems a worthwhile gamble.

The Experts: Fight the Antlings, and almost beat them. The Antlings have to spend their Special Bonus Star (from Preparing) in order to win. They do so, and that's the end of The so-called Experts.

Gnolls: Fight the Antlings, and lose thanks to the Fortification the Antlings have in their territory now. As they also fought last turn, they get to Breed and replace the population they just lost. Scout a little.

Medusa: No one to Hunt. Prepares. Scouts a little bit further up, and reorganizes into the area she scouted.

Dwarves: Dead before their turn comes up.

Giant Pike: Hunt a Gnoll. The Gnolls are in trouble now. If the Pike beats their Initiative next turn, they'll be wiped out.

Troglodytes: Enter in Strata 4. Start exploring a route up towards water. For some reason, I made their tunnels huge and their rooms small. Not sure what I was thinking. I'm pretty I did this part of the turn after midnight sometime last week, so exhaustion or insomnia-dellerium may have been to blame. If I use this map for an RPG adventure, I'll probably claim they worship some giant serpent-god, and this huge winding tunnel is carved in his honor.

Antlings Horde: Finishing Move: Corrupt strata 5 and 6. Now 4/7ths of the way to victory.



Age of Villainy Turn 4: Antlings, Giant Pike, Gnolls, Medusa, Troglodytes, +Starhelm ++Demonic Hordes

Antlings Horde: Breed. Prepare. Scout in all directions, making significant progress in directions where they don't have to tunnel and can just follow existing pathways. They are now approaching the Fate cave from two directions. Before they get there, they Fight the Troglodytes and kill some of them.

Giant Pike: Eats the last Gnoll, and has some Ants for desert.

Gnolls: Have been wiped out before their turn.

Medusa: Kills some Antlings. Then tries to Exploit Nexus, because it's a cool-sounding Action that I do believe is unique to the Medusa. Unfortunately, the Nexus on this map is the very lethal Fate Cave. Exploit uses the exploited resource to create a treasure. The Fate cave must have some reflective surfaces. Perhaps its a crystalline geode cave. She sees her own reflection, and Exploits herself into a statue-shaped treasure.

Troglodytes: There's no ore left on the map to Exploit, and they have a treasure to defend so they don't Relocate. They retaliate with their "Fight a monster that attacked us last turn" against the Antlings, and lose.

Starhelm: Monster groups were wiped out, so I draw a new card to replace them. I get Starhelm, which is a traveling order of Knights who specialize in hunting undead. They spawn in strata four. It's near the end of the game, so I just grab my old Adventurer tokens for them. They're actually more interesting than the other Adventurer groups, and if I wasn't obviously about 1 turn away from the end of the game, I would bother to treat them like a bigger deal. I figure they're too late to really trigger any of the cool things that make Starhelm unique, and it's just easier to use tokens I already have. They will, however, get to trigger their "When spawning" power. They need a foe to defeat, so I have to draw the first Undead monster in the deck and add it to the map. They can't Hunt Undead from their starting location, so they Relocate. They go to the Hall of the Demigod, and Build a Tomb for the fallen Godling. Well, maybe they can actually do a few of their cool Starhelm-exclusive tricks after all. These guys are already way more interesting than The (so-called) Experts.


Demonic Hordes: I was a little surprised to see the "Undead" Keyword on the Demonic Hordes, but in the context of placing an unholy enemy for Starhelm to hunt, it works. I rolled Strata 5, so they burst up from a volcanic rift to another plane. They then immediately relocate to a resource they can Exploit up in the old Gnoll area, blasting lightning-shaped tunnels to get there. In hindsight, maybe they should have gone to the Exploitable water around the Ancient Dwarven Statue, as it's much closer, could be reached mostly by existing tunnels, would slow down the Antling progress, and not run them through such hotly contested territory. However, I didn't think of that until after I'd already carved out the zig-zag tunnels they'd blasted into the landscape, and it was going to be too much work to undo that.


Antlings Horde: Finishing Move: Corrupt strata 7 and 8. Now 6/7ths of the way to victory. In order to extend it into both of the strata, they needed to relocate both of their remaining Population tokens to the frontiers of their expansion. Which is fine and legal, there was nothing requiring them to have a Queen chamber, or keep a Population there. If we want a story justification, perhaps the Queen has a sense that her fate awaits here in stratum 7.


My Villains are now down to just 2 Population, within Scouting range of Fate, and have just one Stratum between them and global domination. One way or another, the game is going to end next turn.



Age of Villainy: Turn 5: Antlings, Giant Pike, Demonic Horde, Troglodytes, Starhelm

Antlings Horde: Breed. Scout into Fate, and meet their doom. They came so close to winning it all, only to doom themselves.

Giant Pike: Eats a Demonic Horde. Explores and discovers a thin river where a surface creek feeds the underground seas.

Demonic Horde: Exploit the water. Breed. Explore - This is taking some minor liberty with the system, but as a sort of combination of their Exploit and Explore, I had them build a big pier or bridge out over the water.

Troglodytes: Just Breed.

Starhelm: Hunt 1 of the Demonic Horde automatically. Then Fight the remaining Demonic Horde and win! The Demonic Horde are wiped out! Which means the Order of Starhelm disbands and leaves the map for quests elsewhere.

Arguably, I should maybe spawn another Monster since there were eliminations this turn, but the game ends at the end of the turn, so it didn't seem worth it.

Antlings Horde Villain: Have been wiped out, so they don't get their Finishing Move... but I just couldn't resist firing off the mycelium corruption affect one more time, at a large scale, centered on the Fate cave.



At that stage, it doesn't look like a very usable map for an RPG, what with all that visual clutter, hardly any monsters, and treasures just piled up everywhere. Surprisingly, it took very little clean-up to get it in a usable state for D&D (or whatever other purpose you might need it for, like the setting of a novel). Once you've cleared the tokens out, all those labels of what used to be in areas become a legend of what is currently there at the start of your D&D campaign. Tweaking the transparency of a few layers, and shifting some a little further down the layer list only took a couple minutes, and let me shift the map into usable territory.

I'm actually really pleased with how this one turned out, there were a few points where I thought I'd ruined it, but layering all those extra greebly details transformed my crappy quick pixel sketches into more than the sum of the parts. Even the crazy coloring I used to designate areas ended up being less garish and awful in the final product that I thought it would.

Sometime soon I will put together a new post with a big summary of all the things that I'd like to house-rule or do differently next time I play. The game was a lot of fun, but the second edition has a few rough edges.

The Lifespan of a Dwarven Civilization

Here's a turn-by-turn recap of my second session of my first map of the second edition of How To Host A Dungeon. That was a mouthful. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)

Below is the tale of the growth of a tiny Dwarven settlement into a sprawling underground city with hydroelectric plants, elevators and a fortress keep.

My previous post covered the world set up, geological strata, and Primordial Age.

When I've finished this map, I'll share the final version in a post of its own, and a brief review of 2nd Ed or summation of the changes between editions. The post below is a pretty rough stream of consciousness of the second fifth of a game.

The founding of the settlement of Segun Edg

The dwarves start off with an entrance from one side of the map to the nearest ore. I almost screwed that up, because in 1st Edition the dig a shaft down from above the ore. I could have started my digging from the far side, and put the core of the colony in the middle of the map.



 The brown circles with a "D" are Dwarven population. The white circles are Treasures.

Year 1 - or, I guess it's just Turn 1 in the second edition. A new dwarf population token shows up, then the dwarves immediately mine the nearby ore deposit, netting a treasure token. I know from 1st Edition, that I should be building new rooms to house these. Which is good, because it took some hunting for me to find any indication of that in the rules. (It's on page 7, by the way. All the dwarf-specific instructions are page 14 and 15.) Hard for me to be certain if that's actually confusing for new players or not, but since the "build" section under dwarves doesn't mention it, I think there's at least a small chance this will bewilder the noobs. In first edition it was spelled out clearly on the page about the Dwarf civilization.

I draw in a mine, a dormitory and a vault. Then I get to the build section. Based on my 3 population, I can now build either a tomb or a workshop. That's new. In 1st Ed, Dwarf settlements followed a single scripted path, and were really only different based on the shape and placement of other features on the map. As discussed in my previous installment, the 2nd Ed map has twice as many features, so even if it was the same formula 2nd Ed would probably get slightly more variety. To my distinct pleasure, I see that every turn of Dwarf civilization I'll have a meaningful choice to make about what they create with their Build action! Right there, that's a huge advantage in the favor of the 2nd Ed. So I extend a tunnel up a level and draw in three little workshops in a row.

Turn 2 - You know what, I'm probably just going to call them years. Year 2. I liked that they were years in the previous edition. New Dwarves go into new dorms directly above the workshops. There's another ore vein right next to the workshops, so they Exploit that. I copied over my little mine doodle from the other space, and tweak it a little to better fit the shape of the second ore patch. And then I just kept doodling and put a little elevator in the tall shaft. It's not anything official from the game, but it seemed like a fun little detail to scribble in. I come around to build, and now have a choice between four different buildings that I qualify for. This is definitely more interesting than the first edition approach to this stage.

I chose a fortified Drinking Hall. The Dwarven lore on page 15 explain it is fortified to seal in drunken belligerent dwarves until they've vented their anger on each other. Nice touch. This counts as a fortification that will have mechanical impact in later eras, which the main reason why I chose it. The rules instruct us to mark the fortification with a chevron, so I put one on a banner between the crossed axes and coat of arms on the walls of the drinking hall, just below the giant kegs of booze.

Year 3 - The new dormitory is directly attached to the Drinking Hall, perhaps it's the barkeeper's apartment. Rather than build another generic vault, I decided that there's no reason why I can't just store the new treasure in one of the giant kegs in the hall. Perhaps their treasure is fine Dwarven spirits.

Population is at 5, so I've got a lot of options for the Build phase, and it's possible my choice here might unlock additional buildings for later turns. 2nd Ed is pretty great. I am feeling far more engaged right now than I ever would have been at this point in the old system. I choose the Power Plant, because it unlocks some fun stuff for later, and because this gives me a justification to go in an unexpected direction, nadir to the underground lake. Waterwheel and archimedes' screw, coming right up! The main conduit runs straight to the drinking hall, because that's the obvious heart of the colony.

Year 4 - Put the new dorm half way to the new mine, and added a shortcut direct to the Drinking Hall. Seemed like such a crossroad would be a good place for a house. A second Treasure went in the Drinking Hall since it's clearly doing good business. With 6 Population and a Power Plant, I had unlocked the option to Build the Underground Highway. At first I sketched it out as just a straight cut all at one elevation, and it was both boring and hard to accept as the output of one year (or other arbitrary time unit that corresponds to the time needed to build some workshops or a drinking hall). So I figured they'd probably save construction effort (at the cost of travelers having to go up a lot of stairs) by cutting along the banks of the lake, and using the pre-existing primordial tunnel for a long leg of the highway. This necessitated increasing the elevator from a few turns ago, so the dwarves would have access to their new road.

Year 5 - New mine where you'd expect it. Dormitory down by the power plant for staff. For the optional build choice we get a fortified citadel. I put it on the highway, so that it defends the civilization from anything that might come up from the caves. Like the drinking hall, this gives bonuses in combat, which are definitely not going to happen before this civilization dooms itself. But, again, this is establishing details that will improve the second half of the game.

Year 6 - The dormitory this time goes over near the citadel, as a barracks for reserve troops. I decide the next nearest ore is just barely within range for the Exploit action, and place a new mine. First edition was a lot more precise about how far they could tunnel, and that's one area I preferred in the old system. Second ed is less precise, and while it's great that leaves a lot of creative control in the player's hands, it also makes it less of a game.

During this Build phase, they officially become a City, and so I get to place some big landmark. I go for a huge statue of one of the founding fathers of the colony, partially submerged in the lake to show the superiority of Dwarven engineers and their ability to rise above the water. I expand the name to make it sound more impressive. Deciding Rokot is some Dwarven word for city or fortress, and relabel this end of the map The Dwarven City of Segun Edg Rokot. I also change the font to white, because that's the color of treasure and these industrious little dwarves have earned it.

Year 7 - They get to exploit the last ore, opening up a surface pit mine, and building nearby barracks. This year's treasure is stored in the great citadel fortress, representing a concentration of wealth to the military as access to the surface raises tensions.

They Build the Impossible Engine, which I make look like an enormous aeoliopile, The special effect of the Engine is that it gives them an immediate free build. For that I create a Furnace that will allow them to Exploit all those trees they're cutting down on the surface. This also helps decentralize the city a bit more, which will make its ruins matter more in later eras.

At this time, I realize I'm starting to really like this map, and I feel bad about "Segun Edg" being such an obvious "Second Age" / "Second Edition" riff. Like, if I wanted to use this as a D&D World, my players would probably make fun of the name, or it might undermine immersion. I'd already added "Rokot" to the end, so I just drop the "Edg" part and relabel it The Dwarven City of Rokot. It's a work in progress, okay?

Year 8 - This is guaranteed to be the final turn of the Dwarves. More about that in a moment, but first I have new dormitory to place, which I put on the upper west road between (but not too close to) the various mines. There's no major ore deposits left, but thanks to the Furnace, they can burn the forest biome for treasure. So I add another treasure vault near there as well, just off the elevator. Here's a picture of it with all the various tokens in place.







Now on to the end of civilization as we know it.

In the 1st Edition of the game, the Dwarven civilization almost always ended with the Dwarves "They Delve Too Deep" action, which has them dig a hole straight down off the bottom of the map. Since we have a Fate cave, they might alternately tunnel into it and die off early, but this was really rare, and only happened if your Fate cave's random position was really close to an ore source or you fudged the results a little to make it happen. It was also technically possible to run out of ore and have a slow population collapse, but I don't think I've ever actually seen that happen.



Dwarves are no longer as linear and predictable. In 1st Ed, especially the first printing, you could predict the entire map, course and end state of the Dwarven Civilization by just roughly measuring how far they were from a couple of features (like the bottom of the map). I actually had built a spreadsheet to calculate it so I could me skip the first few years, because it was far less interesting once you'd done that part once or twice. It would always end with Delving Too Deep, but there was never a Balrog payoff. *sigh*

In 2nd Ed, Delving Too Deep or hitting a Fate cave are still possible. But there are also two new options. If you built a powerplant, you can unlock the Industrial Accident event, and if you built a Smelter you can unlock The Dwarf War event.

We built a powerplant, so I figured I would try out the Industrial Accident. It says "Draw destruction and waste. Wreck stuff." So I did. The aeoliopile has broken free and fallen in it's chamber. The power wheel is blown off and sunk beneath the lake. There's some tunnel areas blasted open because of some high-pressure explosion, and the old east elevator is destroyed. I erased most of the ore from the mines as well, showing that they were mostly depleted by the dwarves, and possibly looted a bit as society crumbled.

I probably could have made the disaster more widespread and messed up the map worse. Next time, I guess.

So that's the Age of Dwarves for 2nd Edition How To Host A Dungeon. Here's a quick recap of what I thought about the new material.

Things I really liked about (this part of) the second edition:

• The Primordial Age has about twice as many interesting things on a typical map in the new edition.
• The geographical inspirations page has some neat stuff on it, and I wish I'd noticed it in time to incorporate it more.
• Dwarves are no longer as linear and predictable. The Dwarves had been the most tedious part of the game before, and now they're much more fun. It's probably impossible to get every room type on the map at the same time, so I think the Dwarven replayability is higher.
• I felt a lot more invested in this colony, and towards the end started actually making my little scribbled rooms a lot more interesting instead of just rushing through them.
• The new ways the Dwarves can collapse are fun. An industrial accident has the potential to really change your drawing. My devastation was on the small side, I probably could have justified much larger craters.
• Even though my colony started way over on the side, it impacted more of the map than is typical for 1st edition. The Dwarves changed the surface, and built a huge underground road that will be useful in later Ages of this map.
• The ability to theme your colony to fortifications or epic treasures is pretty cool, and may have subtle impact in later stages.

Things I liked better in first edition:

• Calling the turns Years, and further subdividing them into seasons where seasonally-themed things happened. That part felt a little more immersive in 1st ed.
• Exploring and tunneling distances were spelled out more precisely, and easy to find on the page about Dwarves. This appealed to me on a gamist level, as well as appreciating the clarity. HTHAD already had a lot of fudge factor, and now that's amplified in 2nd Ed. There were two turns where I dug a really long tunnel to get to the ore, and while that seems to be allowed in this edition, it's a little vague and felt cheap. More often than not, I'd rather there be a random die on the scale than my thumb on the scale.
• There used to be a short "The Great Disaster" phase immediately after the collapse of a Civilization. While it didn't always line up thematically with the Civilization-specific endings (which as noted above are much better in this edition), it was a nice unpredictable way to shake up the map between Eras. I miss that already, and may house-rule it back in next time. If I had noticed it was absent from this edition, I may have made my Industrial Accident have larger effects on the map.

Things I would have liked to see change, but didn't:

• In general, I would like to see more conflict in this early stage. The Dwarves built fortifications, and could have built a tomb, but Primordial Beasts are so rare that it's almost guaranteed these buildings won't use their special mechanics until after the Dwarves have left the map. That's a shame.
• It's a small thing, but I still really wish the "Delve Too Deep" event would put a Balrog (or other Alpha Predator) on the map.

Beneath the Sea of Krhuün

 I played another game of How To Host A Dungeon in bits and pieces of free time this past week. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.) As is the intent behind How To Host A Dungeon, the game creates enough backstory and complexity to a map that you could base an entire RPG campaign around it. This map has a single entrance to the underdark, with a pretty nasty gatekeeper. Once you get past it, you’re entering one of those Gygaxian murder complexes full of evil cults, horrible undead, and befuddling traps.

Here’s the final post-game map (click on it for a larger version), followed by some explanation of everything that happened on it:

The speckled dark brown in the background is dirt and rock (that much is probably obvious), and the squiggly paths of lighter brown and pale tan are rough tunnels through the earth. For most of the map, the lightest tunnels are the most traveled routes, and the darker tunnels are ancient paths now choked with debris. If you were using this map for an RPG, those darker tunnels would be slower-going, but less likely to be patrolled. Most of those old tunnels were hewn by a great demonic worm in a long-forgotten age, so they may have interesting physical features, such as tooth marks on rocks, or fossilized demon-spoor.

The one area where the meaning of the tunnel coloration doesn’t hold true is the great labyrinth of Vrenokrygia. This particularly long-lived Minotaur has dug multiple mazes on top of one another, and the photoshop transparency layers may have camouflaged that a little.

The more colorful (and generally more straight-edged and linear) portions of the map are constructions, with the color being coded to whichever civilization built them.

The history and regions of the map will be explained below, with a few snapshots of the map in its earlier sketcher stages during the game.

At the dawn of time, this part of the world was inhabited by a handful of races. Their civilizations all collapsed, but there may be remnants and descendants in the darker corners of the map.
Most numerous were the murderous demons and their barely-controlled tunnel-worm pet, but they wiped themselves out with bitter infighting.
From the dawn of time there slumbered here a dragon named Archovoraxis, who died repeatedly and was reborn many times over the millenia.
Lost also to the mists of time were three tribes of sneaky humanoid mongrels that would eventually evolve into hobgoblins.  

Long ago, this surface was populated by a loose coalition of humanoids known as The Red Hand. One of their old port fortresses remains, having been adopted as a landmark and variously maintained and explored by the current human government.

The surface is now dominated by The Golden Ward, a wealthy and benevolent human nation with a long tradition and great reach. Back when the world was a wilder place, they built a Great Wall to keep the barbarians at bay. Since then, they have expanded across the sea. The capital of the Golden Ward is far to the West, behind the Great Wall. They have extensive trade routes across the Sea of Kruün, and have built stilt-villages over the murky shallows along the coast.

Beneath the stockade was a winding tunnel to the ur-Hobgoblins with which The Red Hand intermingled. The first time The Golden Ward sent an excursion into this tunnel, it was ambushed by these primitive Monolith-worshipping Hobgoblins. The sunken fleet of The Red Hand lies beneath the bay near the fort, amidst the stilts of a Golden Ward coastal village.

To the East lies the tower of a greedy and powerful Geomancer. While a law-abiding member of the Golden Ward, he keeps secret to himself the knowledge that much of the Eastern colony lies upon an untapped Mithril deposit. Untold riches and opportunities are kept from his countrymen by his insistence on secrecy.

(As you can see in this map from much later in the game,) Mineral wealth abounds in this region. There’s another Mithril deposit further down, and known only to the Deep Dwarves. A huge coal vein runs through the middle of the map, with parts of it having been mined by Dark Elves, Deep Dwarves, and far more unusual things, such as the Fungaliths and the Infernal Automatons.

The Fungaliths were a race of silicon-based people who reproduced by spores. Combining the strength of rock, fecundity of mushrooms, and the intelligence of man, they had great potential. However, they were slow to grow, and slower still to adapt to new circumstances. Eventually they were defeated by their more violent neighbors, but their spores linger on in the cracks and recesses, and may one day flourish anew.

The Demons of the ancient world were brutal and domineering, but also cunning and inventive. They slew the dragon Archovoraxis and made a monument of his bones, a trophy of his hide. They mined coal to power great Infernal Engines, into which they bound their brothers. These sentient Demon-Machines had millenia to grind and burn until their spite was as hard as a diamond. Then, in the throes of bitter rage, the Diamond Spite broke free, forming a new body from its’ own embodied anger and the gears of the Engines. Thus was born the first of the Infernal Automatons, demon-possessed mechanical constructs.

The Dark Elves arrived in the region via a tunnel from the deepest levels of the underdark, fleeing a war with a powerful race of Sphinxes. They stumbled upon the great Demon Pits from the olden days, and though the plague it housed nearly killed them off, the treasures and knowledge of the Demons made the Dark Elves stronger. Those who survived became carriers of the plague, and they built a huge Death Palace, with a sacrificial pit to the depths of a great chasm. (I’m picturing something along the lines of the “Moon Door” in the Game of Thrones TV series.)

Though the Dark Elves were themselves refugees, they had no sympathy for those who came after them fleeing the same foe. A race of goodly Gnomes arrived on the tunnel, begging the Elves for refuge and assistance against their common enemy. The Elves showed them no mercy, slaughtering and enslaving and infecting until all that remained of the Gnomes was their magical Steamquartz, a powerful scrying stone which the Elves forced the last of the Gnomes to install in a high Observatory overlooking the Death Palace and the Demon Plague Pits.

The old foe did twice track the Elves down, in two different generations. Huge Sphinxes with great magic pushed their way past the Elven defenses, and slew dozens before being driven off into the Plague Pits. There they became sick and died. Eventually their corpses were looted by Elves who were immune to the disease. From the first Sphinx’s body, they brought back The Morbid Scroll, a wizardly tract on the power of life and death. Years later a second sphinx came from the same tunnel, attacked and was driven off to die of the plague. They found it’s body next to that of its predecessor, and clutched in it’s giant paw was The Crook of Revelations. It had used the Crook to etch three powerfully damning curses into the walls of the room.

That is to say, in two non-consecutive turns of the game, I rolled the arrival of the exact same monster type, at the exact same starting location, and both times it failed to defeat the Elves and “bounced” in the exact same direction to die of plague in the exact same room. That was some heavy deja vu. In fact, that starting location roll ended up happening again and again in the early turns of the Age of Monsters. In the first 5 turns of that era, Dark Elves, Gnomes and two Sphinxes all spawned in the same room, and each time the Dark Elves either won or tied the resulting conflict rolls.

The Dark Elves became increasingly obsessed with death and fate. They ruminated on these topics and dissected The Morbid Scroll. Their forges ran round the clock producing armaments and armors for prophecied wars. At times hermits or entire cults would wander off into the demon-carved tunnels of the world to seek the hidden truths. Most were never seen again, but the child of hermit returned to them one day.



Meanwhile, a powerful Minotaur had made it’s lair in the upper reaches of the tunnel system. Vrenokrygia, or Murderhoof as she is more commonly known on the surface, is powerful, industrious, and clever. She’s built many interweaving mazes as a base of operations. She frequently raids the Dark Elves, the Hobgoblins, and even the villages of The Golden Ward. Anyone seeking to enter or leave the Underdark must pass through her labyrinth. Though she cannot feast upon the Infernal Automatons, she enjoys taking them apart and using their scraps to decorate her mazes.

Pinched between the Dark Elves and Murderhoof, the Infernal Automatons turned to their mechanical insights for survival. They built a series of traps, including high-pressure flames, chutes and pits, and a diabolical Gemstone Trap in the image of their firstborn, The Diamond Spite. That portion of the underdark became a living death trap, with fragmented demons bound into ever gear and stone. They even made a giant mouth, through whose bellows the Engines could speak.

About this time, a child visited the Automatons. It was half-Elven, half-Demon, and very persuasive. It spoke of a great Temple to the Ancient Evil, which had been built by it’s parents deep in the dark bowels of the earth. It led The Diamond Spite to the temple, and convinced him to spread this new worship throughout his mechanical people. They were, after all, both the spawn of a Demon and something else. Flesh or metal, the Demon-half was what they had in common. The Diamond Spite ordered a Shrine of the new faith be built by his machines.

Not all of the Automatons accepted the new master. A small group split off and relocated to the Charnel Shrine built by their Demonic forbears. These fundamentalists felt the only good organic was a dead one. They drafted a plan to sneak up on the new Temple from an ancient disused tunnel, to slaughter the half-demon in his stupid organic sleep.

The child prophet did not rest, however. He went to his other people, the Dark Elves, and showed them the power that could be theirs if they just sold their souls a little. It was an easy victory, there was little distance left for the Dark Elves to fall. They adopted the new religion overnight, and built a Shrine that could only be accessed by crossing through the old Demon Pits. (The walkway also has a lovely view as the “moon-door” executions plummet by.)

However, the Dark Elves weren’t much for this “united in demonhood” nonsense. They were still petty, greedy, and violent. They marched on the Demon Engines, ripped The Diamond Spite apart, and stole the soulstone from which he drew his name. A war had begun.

Much as the coming of the Temple had splintered the Automatons, it now caused a schism in the Dark Elves. There were many schools of thought - the new Demon Shrine, the intellectual society organized around study of the Morbid Scroll, a different group of visionaries who focused on the Steamquartz, and the party of militants who ran the forges. Their political situation grew unstable, despite the economic prosperity.

Hetar Bacris, an Elven nobleman and scholar, led a portion of his people (and much of their treasure) on a pilgrimage deep into the ancient tunnels. He invested the wealth in a laboratory and a menagerie, and a magnificent tomb he said would survive the end of the world. There he murdered his own people with foul magic. Before their bodies grew cold, he committed suicide himself, and arose as a powerful Liche. Those who had followed him were animated as Undead Legions, for Hetar Bacris sought nothing less than absolute rule of all the world. He turned his attention away from his fleshy concerns, and let the menagerie become overgrown with pestilent Green Slime.

About that time, a small mining colony of Deep Dwarves arrived in the area, having been attracted by the sensation of activated Mithril (you can thank that Geomancer up on the surface). They would eventually mine out much of the Eastern edge of the map, but at this point they were barely noteworthy.

By this point, the Infernal Automatons had been destroyed. A few machines had mothballed themselves in dark corners, or hiddeen under a layer of Green Slime in the caves beneath the menagerie, but their society was shattered. Betrayed by the very Child that had converted them, they were slaughtered by an army of Dark Elves led by the Priest of the Temple. Only the great many traps they had littered their caves with kept the Demon Engines intact and unlooted.

Despite no longer having a (beating) heart, Hetar Bacris proved a powerful diplomat and politician. He pledged himself to the Temple of Evil, and won the support of both the Elves of his birth and the Temple’s demon-mixed hierarchy. His Legions grew, and undead slaves built great works of architecture with tools made from Automaton scrap. Everything was going perfectly according to plan. Even the dwarves seemed willing to be peaceful neighbors behind strong walls.

Unfortunately, there was a wildcard far above them. Vrenokrygia had developed a taste for man-flesh, and her increasingly-brazen raids wiped out two entire villages. The Golden Ward sent a battalion into her maze, and she slaughtered them single-handedly. This sort of danger could only be answered by Adventurers!

You might just stop there (at the map labeled Age of Villainy, Turn 3, Pre-Adventuring). If it’s a game-able map you’re looking for, to use with your favorite RPG, you can assume the PCs are the Adventurers who answer that call. They’ll start with a minotaur, and level-up into facing the complex confluence of several evil civilizations living in and below a demon-haunted death-trap.

Here’s an index of the named treasures that appear on some of the maps (along with their origins as sometimes that's not obvious).
T1 = Egg of Oblivion (Archovoraxis)
T2 = Mithril-flecked Dragonhide (Archovoraxis)
T3 = The Diamond Spite (Demon Engine)
T4 = Soul Oil (Demon Engine)
T5 = Steamquartz (Gnomish Lens) 
T6 = The Morbid Scroll (Sphinx Book of the Dead)
T7 = Spear of Doom (Adventuring Party)
T8 = Crook of Revelations (Sphinx Cursed Item)
T9 = Ioun Stone (Adventuring Party)
T10 = Flute of Domination (Adventuring Party)
T11 = Mask of the Glowing Wind (Adventuring Party)
T12 = Bill-Guisarme of Grace (Adventuring Party)
T13 = Staff of Adroitness (Adventuring Party)

For the majority of you who are _not_ going to run this as an RPG, here’s a few more paragraphs on how my game of How To Host A Dungeon came to its satisfying end:

Over the next few years, increasingly larger Adventuring Parties braved Murderhoof’s lair,  and the tunnels below it. Not a single one returned alive. They say someone killed the Minotaur, and the Adventurer’s would press below her maze. Many fell victim to the Infernal traps, but a few pushed onward to deal debilitating blows to the Dark Elves and the Temple Clergy.

In the end, the Adventurers would always die on the spears of the Undead Legions. These invasions of do-gooders happened with the changing of the seasons for 6 straight years.

Hetar Bacris was inundated with treasures and dismembered bodies, but his mortal supporters were gone.  The Temple had fallen before it’s missionaries could completely corrupt the Dwarves. They’d grown fractuous and chaotic, but were not yet fully controlled. Greedy and self-centered, and now distrustful of strangers. The Liche-King could not twist them to his will.

Too many corpses, not enough time or energy to animate them all. When the next wave of Adventurers came through in the 4th year, they slaughtered Hetar Bacris and his armies.

The Adventurers gathered up all of the treasure, their bags overflowing with the best plunder of four civilizations. They were tired and ragged when they met the Dwarves in their halls. Good ol’ trust-worthy dwarves. It seemed like as good a place as any to resupply, spend a little ill-gained coinage, and rest for the night. The Adventurers were never heard from again.

Blink, and the Age of Villainy is gone

Continuing the tale of my second game ever of How To Host A Dungeon.  In part one, the Dark Elf cities of Kharsoum and Leyban (and the Colony of Silla) burned themselves out in a hurry, and then a huge earthquake shattered the rock around them. In the second act, various monsters moved in to the ruins, and were hunted mercilessly by parties of roving adventurers. In this chapter, a new villain arises, shakes up the dungeon a bit, and then meets a quick demise. In the end, though, I've got a pretty cool map that I could use for D&D as the basis of a old-school dungeon with a rich history. So that's cool.

Link to First Post. Link to Second Post. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)

Here's the map as we last saw it:

Picking A Good Villain:

There’s four Villain options in the rules: the Thought Lord Cult, the Liche King, the Alpha Villain, and the Dungeon Master. You can either roll randomly, or pick the one that seems best suited to your map.

Our map is a little tricky. On average, we would have expected to see 1.3 adventuring parties in the first 8 turns of the Age of Monsters. Instead, we rolled up 3 parties, the last of whom wiped out most of the monsters on the map, and hoovered up most of the treasure. Whatever Villain we add is going to be facing serious resource shortages, and not have much of a buffer between them and any further do-gooder adventuring parties.

There aren’t enough monsters to fuel the Thought Cult’s sacrifices. It would die off very quickly.

The starting position (largest empty room) for the Dungeon Master is too close to the surface, and likely to result in a long unproductive battle of attrition with the Count that eats up all the resources and leaves the DM too vulnerable. The very first of the mandatory yearly Adventuring Parties of the Age of Villainy would almost certainly wipe the DM out.

I could make Count Laventhorpe an Alpha Villain, but there’s some potential issues with the way his “Zone of Control” would bounce around whenever Adventurers tried to kill him, thanks to the rules that I made up for him when a rolled a “12: Create your own” on the Alpha Predator chart. As a Minion of the Liche King his powers would still be interesting, but not likely to break the game the way they would if I made my unkillable Count into the big bad.


A Liche-King could work, with either Count Laventhorpe or the Magma Spirits as the Liche King’s primary Minion. It would be a slow start, due to the dungeon being cash-poor, and having very few tombs (one in Leyban, and if you’re generous the vampire’s coffin could count as a tomb - in fact, the version I put up on the How To Host A Dungeon Wiki specifically labels those escape rooms as Tombs). It's probably the best official option, but boy is it likely to make for long slow burn that takes forever to get anywhere. I'd rather save the Liche-King for use in some future tomb-ier map.


Thinking outside the box, another option would be to assume that last Adventuring Party was corrupted by the Great Flail of Melancholy they found in the Temple to Dame Chaos, and that one of them became the new Dungeon Master. This would start the DM with a lot of extra treasure, since they'd picked up 6 treasures via questing and pillaging. I would have to break the rules of placement as well, putting the DM’s HQ in old Kharsoum instead of the larger room abandoned by the vampire. While this is stretching the rules quite a bit to the benefit of the Villain, they’d also be facing a high difficulty due to how well-developed the surface kingdom is. (If the DM miraculously met his army size trigger on turn one, he’d still lose the war. He has to weaken the humans before facing them in the final confrontation if he wants to win.) I think this is the most interesting option. We want the game to be exciting, and this will do it. Thankfully, the game encourages you to ignore the dice if a more interesting choice is calling to you.

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Age of Villainy, Year 1: 

I named the villain Elzulgur Melanquish, Master of Dungeons. I rolled up his name from a mishmash of charts in Gary Gygax’s Extraordinary Book of Names. Elzulgur was the fighter of the adventuring party that just smashed it's way through the underworld. Only he and the party's wizard had survived, and they were both a little shadier than their companions. He was corrupted by the Great Flail. Hearing the voice of Dame Chaos herself, he returned to the ruins of Kharsoum, intent on restoring them to their former greatness.  Perhaps it should have been the Great Flail of Nostalgia, not Melancholy.

As Dungeon Master, he renovates old Kharsoum into a spiffy new HQ. He spends some money hiring human mercenaries (other adventurers he’s worked with before).  Renovates the Old Elf Road going west. The DM enslaves the Earthmen. Since this only used half his allowed expansion for the turn, the DM also constructs a new tunnel to the lower section of the Abandoned Merfolk Mines, and drains a room. The digging goal is to connect his new HQ to the Temple of Dame Chaos that changed his life. He also spends 1 treasure building a Laboratory for the Wizard from his old party.

Meanwhile, the Surface Humans get the fifth person in the castle, and send him out to make another farm. As mentioned in a previous post, I now suspect the rules actually intend you to create new peasants to run the farms, but I’d already run 6 or 7 turns the wrong and slower way, so I’ve decided to stand by it. I can see what the difference is like on my next play. This is not the sort of game where you stress yourself out trying to do everything just right. Tweaking and experimenting is much of the fun.

The Earthmen increase in number instead of taking a normal turn. They have been dominated by Elzulgur Melanquish, but he has not yet begun conscripting them for his army.

The tunnels between Count Laventhorpe and everyone else are longer than his hunting range. However, the way I wrote up the Earthmeld special ability for him allows him to encounter either the new human farm or the earthmen by melding through the dirt. (In hindsight, this may be over-powered and have some odd corner cases. The version I put up on the How To Host A Dungeon wiki yesterday left that part out to compensate. I’m gonna stick to my guns for what's left of this game, and see how it plays.) I could decide his target with a die roll, but I figure he probably hungers for human blood more than Earthmen dirt. Though there are a ton of humans on the surface, each construction has it’s own strength. So the farms are relatively vulnerable (+1 to the roll) whereas the castle and city are much stronger (currently +4 or +2 on their defense rolls). The minor lordling who was just recently awarded a small fief is devoured in the night.

The Magma Spirits continue to make their way up towards the Mithril ore. This “should” have been a random tunnel exploration, which could have sent them in any one of 9 (or more) directions. They were just so close, and given that they are fire-based mining creatures, it seemed hard to justify them choosing to go somewhere other than the direction that had an eternal flame and ore worth mining. It wasn’t in their zone of control at the start of the turn, so they can’t start mining it just yet, but it’s there for next time. While I was at it, I added some stairs to the shafts they’d dug. If they’re capable of mining, the "spirits" must have physical forms and thus probably legs. Plus, I think it just looks better with stairs.

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Adventurers!

At the end of every year in the Age of Villainy, an Adventuring Party shows up to seek out the big bad. Right off the bat I roll up a party of 6, which is quite possibly enough to end the game this turn if they go down the right tunnels. There was some temptation to ditch that roll, but no matter what happened, I knew this map was going to be hard on the Villain.

I decide to let random luck play it’s part, and the dice send them toward good ol’ Count Laventhorpe first. Perhaps on their way to the dungeon they passed by the bloody massacre at the farm house. They defeat him handily and take his treasure, but the Count escapes with his unlife once again by melding with the earth.
With everything cleared on the first level, I move the Adventurers to the waterfalls chokepoint, and roll to see which of many passages down they take after that. They go down the old Dark Elf exploratory shaft above Leyban and from there into the abandoned Merfolk canals, much like the previous party that ended up corrupted by Dame Chaos.
That leads down into the merfolk city that was built on the ruins of the Dark Elf Slave Pits, all of which the Villain just recently tunneled into, drained, and remodeled.
The adventurers push their way into the Dungeon Master’s Headquarters. They shatter his mercenary army in the first battle. Then they hunt down the DM himself, and take him out in a climactic confrontation. The Age of Villainy didn’t last very long at all. That's what he gets for building a crummy laboratory and expanding tunnels instead of focusing all his efforts on traps. Poor dumb DM.

There’s still a few monsters on the map, but they’re all lawfully-aligned, and very weak compared to the adventurers, so there doesn’t seem to be much point in playing out whatever clean-up might happen. Either the magma spirits hire the adventurers to kill the earthmen, or the earthmen hire the adventurers to kill the Count, whom they can’t reach. There’s at best a 1 in 12 chance the adventurers will lose to the strongest of the monster groups at this stage, and even if they do the game is basically over.


I mean, umm... hooray! Good triumphed, and the villains were vanquished! No questions about where my sympathies lay. No, sir-ee. Just another good guy here. No need to cast Detect Alignment when I'm around.

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Post-Mortem Report:

Fun game. Cool map. Documenting it for the web was a bit of work, but enjoyable.

The game worked best when it was inspiring me. Sometimes the random charts were perfect and provided unexpected results that really shook things up. Other times, I was better off over-ruling the charts and making my own calls. To the game designer’s credit, the rules encourage you to do just that.

Relying too much on the charts, or the strictest interpretations of the instructions didn’t always pay off. The Plague and Fate caves went unused the entire time, because with all those interconnected tunnels there was little reason for anyone to dig. I could have fudged the earthquake rolls, or taken more liberties in early turns to direct various groups into those hazards. Next time that sort of situation comes up, I probably will. Since this was only my second time playing the game, I wanted to see if any of the random rolls would actually hit those hazards, but I can see now that with certain layouts that just won’t be likely. I also might draw those caves larger, as being just 1 or 2 beads in size makes them not much more than a needle in a haystack.

Delver Groups in particular were an area that was a little disappointing as written. That last bit of mithril sat out there forever, and when I finally “cheated” to send the magma spirits at it it was too late to matter. This may be just a function of the earthquake creating so many tunnels for them to randomly explore, but that basic scenario seems likely to happen in many games. I'm not sure I'm quite capturing the layering effect of the tracing paper the core rules assume you'll be using instead of a computer. If I was to fade out or partially clog the caverns when new Ages start, there'd be more need for the Delving monsters to tunnel, and that might shake up the map some more. What few complaints I have could also probably be resolved by either fudging rolls more often, or at least weighting my random rolls a bit more. Simply doubling the odds that Delvers will explore any tunnel that leads to ore might well fix it. (I also went to the How To Host A Dungeon Wiki and added a homebrew Delver option that would be a little more aggressive about treasure-hunting.) It's easily fixed by any number of possible house-rules, and it's certainly not particularly broken if you don't house-rule. Some maps may even solve this problem on their own by virtue of random luck. Don't let this minor gripe discourage you from giving the excellent game a try.

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Using this Map elsewhere:

Here is a version of the map without tokens, in case anyone wants to use it as a basis for their D&D game or something.

The layout during that last turn seems like it has potential in that way. The vampire so close to the surface doesn’t exactly fit the “the deeper you go, the tougher the fights” paradigm of D&D, but other than that it’s set up to fit the laws of drama and provide some meaningful choices to the players. The Magma Spirits will need some fleshing out for an RPG, but the place has tons of history you can draw on. The dungeon is loosely organized into different regions, each with their own theme and flavor. There’s a couple of Dark Elf treasures waiting to be discovered, as well as little Timmy’s tragic remains. Few actual PC parties will be willing to take the underwater routes that my adventuring parties in the HTHAD game loved to access, but it’s there if they think outside the box (and comes complete with the body to loot if they make their spot checks while down there). You could bend the history a little bit to justify leaving a few merfolk, dark elves, trolls, etc (and as whatever species the feral slave beast were) on the map. The rough caverns and waterfalls are probably worth breaking out the hardcore dungeoneering rules for your system of choice, if such things exist. Or you could hand-wave that difficulty by saying the adventurers who came before you left ropes or ladders in place (like the little one I drew in the Misty Vale).

The Age Of Adventurers

Last week I started a digital game of How To Host A Dungeon, and posted the first few eras on this blog. Today, I'll continue that through the Age of Monsters.

Link to previous post. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)
Here's how the map looked after the Great Disaster that ended the Dark Elf Civilization of Kharsoum Leyban:

Everything is focused on the lower right of the map, and the Dark Elf palaces of Leyban, Kharsoum, and Silla are in a terrible shambles.

Now we start the Age of Monsters.

We had a few Monster Groups already on the map.

Descendents of the Rebel Elves: Officially these were Wandering Monsters, but I decided to fudge the rules a bit and make them Chaotic / Breeders. This seemed a good compromise to making them interesting and competitive without causing them to just repeat the mistakes of their kind. (If I’d made them Delvers like I proposed last week, they would have abandoned the colony at the end of the turn for lack of resources.)

Feral Slave Beasts: Straight-up Wandering Monsters. Nothing special about them, and I'm not entirely certain what sort of beasts they were.

The treasures on the map are mostly just random trinkets left over from the Dark Elf colonies, but T1 is a magic item named The Great Flail of Melancholy, and T2 is The Mithril Veil that adorns the statue of Dame Chaos in her Shrine in the ruins of Silla.

As we explore the timeline and maps of the Age of Monsters, we'll see that it's really the NPC Adventuring Parties that truly shape this Age.

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Age of Monsters, Year 1

A variety of Monster Groups arrive and make their initial lairs. At this point, the turns start to get complicated.

The first to arrive is the Surface Kingdoms of man. They build a Keep atop the cliff, and name it Castle Laventhorpe.

Monsters appear at random starting locations, and as it turns out I rolled up one of the flooded chambers in the middle of the map, from when the river got redirected. When something like that happens you've got a couple options. You can reroll, you can assume they build a bridge or drain the room, or you can consult the optional water and magma monster chart.

I did the later, and got Merfolk. They count as Delving monsters, and will rework the natural caverns around them into architectural marvels... which I'll probably turn into simple bubble-shaped chambers to keep things quick(ish) and easy. Merfolk may leave the water, but they always flood the rooms they choose to live in.


Next up are Earthmen in the lower left corner. Not "bring us to your leaders, earthman", but presumably some sort of elemental creature. The rules are pretty short, and don't waste words on detailed descriptions of the races, but I picture them as little clay people with heads not unlike diminutive Easter Island statues. These ones are Lawful in alignment. They count as Breeders, but I've decided to have them smooth the natural rock where-ever they go. When I drew in the earthquake caverns I made it very jagged, and I'd like the Earthmen to use their supernatural powers to wear it down a bit.

Lastly, there's a Vampire in the old dry riverbed. I was rolling for an Alpha Predator, and got a 12, which is 'create your own'. So I had to make up some minor rules for him. His alignment is "Hungry" and works for the most part like any other Alpha. However, he cannot cros running water in the same tunnel or room that he's in. If he ends his turn on the surface (which is unlikely) he'll die from sun exposure. He has typical D&D vampire powers to turn into a cloud of gas or various rodents, or to meld with the earth, and regenerate. So if anything would kill him, he instead moves straight down until the next empty room, or makes his own chamber after a 1/2 finger's length of earth-melding. He only really dies if this puts them in water, magma, or off the bottom of the map. Vampires can pass freely through raw earth and rock, encountering targets within range regardless of the walls between them. Those targets cannot choose to encounter him on their turns unless they have a path to his current lair.

I could have made a case for taking full turns with the Rebel Elves and the Slave Beasts, but their turns would be pretty minor in this set up, so I let it go for now.

I did however add some minor cosmetic details to the map, like white foam on the waterfalls.

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Age of Monsters, Year 2: 

The yearly event charts tell me a statue is discovered! I decide it's a Statue of the Earth God whose earthquake destroyed the Dark Elves. A huge Easter-Island-style rock head falls from the ceiling where it had watched them with contempt.
Each turn you roll on an event chart. Usually it generates some sort of monster group entering the map, but sometimes it does something else colorful, like reveal a previously unknown statue.

The Humans build a farm.
  The Elven Rebels accomplish very little. They breed, but then suffer losses to starvation. They expand their territory just a little, just past the edges of old Kharsoum.
  Slave Beasts from wander through the old Silla mines to the waterfall.
  Merfolk mine into the old mithril deposit, in an organized grid. They also smooth out their chambers and smooth/flood the areas on their doorstep. While this area had been previously mined, I figured having lava pour through it probably made the ore liquify and relocate. Getting one more ore out of deposit seems fine, but I probably won’t let them remine the other two parts. Let’s call this vein played out.
  Earthmen have no exits, so they get motivated and head towards the Statue of their Creator god at a rapid pace. They smooth all the rough stone they pass. They are skilled enough to mine past the waterfall without flooding the tunnels they connect to. They also technically breed and starve for net zero population growth.
  The Vampire hunts unsuccessfully, and relocates his lair to different cave in hopes of finding prey.
  The Elves and Earthmen seem destined for conflict, but it could be several turns off. The Merfolk are probably in the strongest position at the end of the year, despite their initial mine having dried up.

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Age of Monsters, Year 3:

This year sees the arrival of Human Miners near the middle of the surface layer. They are separate from surface kingdoms, but I’m interpreting the intent that they are allied or at least at peace with the castle. The rules could probably be clearer there, but the games light enough I can just rule as I see fit.

Surface Kingdoms build a second farm.
   Rebels breed and starve.    Slave Beasts stay put.
   Merfolk create a series of locks and fishladders downriver from the city. 
   Earthmen slowly expand their territory, zero population growth.
   The Vampire, so hungry, returns to his original lair. The miners are not yet close enough for him to Earthmeld to them, but they will soon.
   Human miners dig down, unaware of the danger below them.

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Age of Monsters, Year 4: 

Arrival of Trolls. Two immediately team up in the old dry river (their random placement put them adjacent to each other). The third shows up in deep caverns, and encounters Rebel Elves. The lone troll invader is immediately driven off, at the cost of half the elven numbers.

Humans build a third farm.
   Rebel Elves breed, and claim the Troll treasure. Bolstered by the captured resources, they restore their numbers and extend their perimeter closer to the Trolls they just chased out.
   Slave Beasts stay put.
   Merfolk extend east of their mines. They suffer some losses to slave beasts, but seal off and flood more chambers to expand their territory.
    Earthmen extend slowly. As breeders, they move fastest when there's only one direction to go, and spread more slowly when they border a lot of rooms or tunnels.
    Vampire was going to eat the miners, but since there’s now Trolls available, that’s a tastier snack. The trolls can’t hurt it. Literally half the trolls retreat, and then grow back their other halves.
    Human Miners break into tunnels, and encounter the Vampire. They recognize him to be Count Laventhorpe, the great grandfather of the man who built the castle. He eats one of them.
   Dumbstruck and still regenerating from the recent Vampire attack, the two trolls in the west do nothing. The troll in the east heads further away from the elven rebels.

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Age of Monsters, Year 5:

A Party of Adventurers, three in number, enter the mines in search of loot and experience! They head down the mines, and “kill” Count Laventhorpe. The Count kills one of their party before going down. His Earthmeld power saves him. Per the rules I wrote up for it when I rolled the “12” that created him, he melds down a half-finger from his previous position, creating a new cavern there. This must be where his coffin was hidden. His zone of control is reset to the smaller cave.

The continue on to the Trolls, whom they dispatch and burn out. I roll on the Minor Features table, and discover the room where they built the bonfire for all the troll bits is forever after known as The Forsaken Chamber.

The fight leaves just a single Adventurer alive, so he gathers up the available treasure and leaves. He probably retires and becomes an innkeeper in some module somewhere.

The Rebel Elves actually increase their numbers, fueled by tasty Troll-flesh.
   Slave Beasts remain entranced by the waterfall.
   Merfolk expand their lock system further West.
   Earthmen expand in four directions, smoothing and expanding the tunnels as they go. They run into the Elves. After a brief hit and run skirmish, they steal the troll-goods from the Rebels.
   Count Laventhorpe melds through the earth in the shortest distance, and attacks the miners. It doesn’t go so well for the Count, who is driven off further down the halls. The area around his coffin is too dangerous, so he camps out in the smoke-stained Forsaken Chamber.
   Human miners dig out the large cavern that had been the Count’s previous rooms. They do not find his coffin.

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Age of Monsters, Year 6:

Arrival of the Magma Spirits. They burrow up from deep below the ruins of Leyban, and create a new Magma Pool at their start point.

Humans build a fourth farm, and I put this one at the base of the cliffs near the old earthquake cracks. Then I noticed the use of “place” versus “move” in the paragraphs for the surface kingdoms. That subtle wording suggests that the process is different when creating a new farm instead of merely populating one that had been raided by monsters (which hasn't happened this game). I decide to keep going with the rules as I had been doing, but resolve to handle things the other (faster) way in my next game. For now, this means the knights still aren’t ready to raid the underdark.

Rebel Elves are feeling penned in by the Earthmen and Trolls, so they attempt to dig an escape route to the old ruins of Leyban. They are surprised to discover Leyban’s flooded status. The river briefly diverts into old Kharsoum, and down the Old Elven Road. In the Chaos, the Elves steal about 1/3 of the wealth of the Merfolk when it washes into them. They lose a lot of territory to flooding.
   The Merfolk go to war with the Elves, and recover their treasure. Meanwhile the Merfolk engineers build a dam and a reservoir system to bring the river and the flooding back under control.
   Earthmen raid the Elves, but find they no longer have anything worth taking.
   The Trolls are washed down the Old Elf Road by the flooding.
   Count Laventhorpe attacks the Miners, who abandon much of their tools and wealth to escape.
   Miners expand away from the Vampire for a while, but when that fails to turn up any ore or  gems, they eventually work up the courage to try to hunt the old Count down. It goes poorly for them, and many miners die or quit and move away.
   Magma Spirits expand up from their starting pool, and create a large temple to house the Earth God Statue.

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Age of Monsters, Year 7:

I roll another Adventuring Party, but it's of minimum size (1 adventurer). A brave young soul from the farming village at the base of the cliff braves the caves near his home. Young Timothy falls down the well. Lassie the Feral Slave Beast runs off to get help. Or rather, as he is an Adventuring Party with only 1 member, and the Beast is a Wandering Monster, they destroy each other.
Any time the last of a monster group is wiped off the map, you can optionally roll on the Minor Features table to see what legacy they leave behind on the map. I rolled the Ever-Burning Flame, which I may place anywhere in the Feral Beasts former zone of control. Little Timmy must have brought a torch with him for light, and it probably sparked a natural gas explosion that killed the Feral Beasts. There’s some crack through which gas continues to flow and burn. That this is so close to the waterfall is unexpected, but not impossible (especially in a fantasy world).
A Treasure is left behind by the Adventuring Party. It’s some identifying keepsake, such as a locket with a picture of Timothy’s mother. I mark it on the map as Treasure T3.
 
The Humans at the castle organize a rescue party for poor little lost Timothy. This is, after all, the turn where they finally are supported and have 4 knights available. They head down the chasm at the base of the cliff and wander about for a while. The Excursion doesn’t find Timmy, or his locket, but they do find some decadent Dark Elf arts and crafts in the ruins of one of the old Silla palaces. They call this a rousing success, and the exciting rumors of buried treasure attracts more humans. The city of Drowfalls is founded before the end of the year. The local well, and city hall’s dungeon, both open into the underground river.


It's a year of war and daring raids. Rebel Elves retake a tiny bit of territory lost to the flooding, and then turn their attention to the Earthmen. Their raids recover the troll-wealth. The Merfolk push west, extending their locks right down to the Earthmen habitat. The resulting border dispute has high casualties. Earthmen then attack the Rebel Elves, and the battles are quite bloody. Both of these civilizations are getting very small, and the merfolk aren't that far behind them.

Count Laventhorpe eats the last miner. (As this is the last of the miner group, I again roll on the Minor Features chart.) The place where he died is forever after supernaturally cold.
Troll stays put and do nothing. Stupid troll.
Magma Spirits head up the hall towards the Mithral.

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Age of Monsters, Year 8:

   Yet another adventuring party comes to the dungeon. (This is the third time I’ve rolled a “6” on the yearly event chart, having done so on turns 5, 7 and now 8.  Our dungeon is running a little low on monsters and treasures at this point. This is very different from the game I played on paper.) This adventuring party has 4 members.
   The Adventuring Party travels from Drowfalls Dungeon through the underground river to the old Dark Elf Exploratory Shaft (instead of the waterfalls) down to the river again, and then over to the Merfolk dam. The Merfolk are Lawful, so they give the party a Quest instead of fighting them. The adventurers are guided through the flooded tunnels to battle the Elvish Rebels in the ruins of old Kharsoum. The Adventurers slaughter the remaining Dark Elves, and take their Troll-Goods. The return for the quest rewards, so the Merfolk pay them a Treasure.
   Setting out again, the adventuring party follows the Old Elf Road toward Leyban. The Troll on the route kills one of them before they destroy it.
   The Troll had been holding up in a place called the Misty Vale. It’s apparently a cavern that had eroded when the area had flooded in Year 6, rendered steamy by the magma pool just below it. (This was created by the Minor Features Chart).
   So then I remember that I needed to roll a Minor Feature for the Elvish Rebels, too. The roll produces a “Bed Chamber”. How very Dark-Elven. No wonder the rebels failed to spread their culture or do much of anything but breed. They converted one of the ancient houses of Kharsoum into a giant orgy pad. I expand the size of the room a bit, and give it a vaulted ceiling.
   The adventurers head over to the Magma Spirits, who are surprisingly lawful, and so they give the Adventurers a Quest, too. They are sent to attack the Merfolk, whom they’d previously done quest-work for. That’s player characters for you. Killing every NPC they meet. The adventurers commit mer-genocide, and loot the fishtanks. They do lose one of their own in the process, reducing their group down to 2 adventurers. The Magma Spirits fork over some treasure in payment.
    The two quests, and all the back and forth involved, has resulted in the Adventuring Party traveling through the narrow, rough tunnel connecting the Merfolk and Rebel Elves areas a minimum of five times.
    I roll on the Minor Features chart for the third time this turn, and end up with a the result “A Cask of Amontillado”. This classic Poe reference is not actually on the default chart, but was added as a consequence of a previous play session. Every time you roll on this particular chart, you’re encouraged to cross out the entry you use and replace it with an entry of your own devising. I’d seeded this one onto the chart during my first play of the game on paper last week, and am surprised to have it show up again so soon. So I cross it off, and add it to the map. The merfolk managed to seal an adventurer in a trap room and flood it. I place this just off the narrow flooded passage they went through so many times. It seems like a good place for an ambush or trap.
   Next (and finally) the adventurers head though the Torture Pit into the old Temple to Dame Chaos in what’s left of the ruins of Leyban. They get their hands on the Great Flail of Melancholy. This is pivotal. They’ve now gained six treasures in the course of this adventure, which is enough to trigger the transition to the Age of Villainy. I’m thinking they probably get corrupted by the horrible things they’ve seen and done. We’ll deal with that in the next installment.

The transition ends the Age of Monsters before the turn is finished, so the Earthmen, Vampire, and Magma Spirits all lose their turns for this year.