HtHaD 2ndEd: The Age of Monsters!

The Second Edition of How To Host A Dungeons features a radically different system for the Age Monsters. As with the Dwarven Civilization, the changes seem to maximize the variability and replayability of the new edition. Monsters are now on a deck of (print and play) cards, and each has their own list of behaviors, rather than falling into broad categories of monster with the same AI. The player also has a lot more control over monster behavior, which is both good and bad. It makes it a better tool for telling a story or creating just the dungeon layout you want, but those improvements come at the cost of being slightly less of a game. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)

At the start of the Age of Monsters, you shuffle all the monster cards, and deal out three for the first turn. I got two Alpha Monsters: a Worm and an Ogre. My third "monster" is a roaming party of 4 adventurers.

There are zero treasures on my board. None of the monsters I drew on the first turn start with any, and none of the choices I made for the Dwarves created any long-lasting Epic Treasures, either. None of these creatures Exploit ore, either. This means it will take many turns to trigger the Age of Villainy by Empire, and also in the early game a lot of Actions the use or target treasure won't be available.

The new rules really don't keep track of territory and range, and how far a monster can move is left up to your judgment. For this game I'm assuming they can move about the length of 1 finger (as measured in the previous system) if there's a clear, explored path with no intervening dangers. If they have to explore or tunnel, they'll get a lot less distance in a turn. This assumption works well in some situations, and in others it just kind of dragged out the game. Having played most of a game now, I think the rules actually intended there to be no range limitation, with no one ever failing to get where they wanted to go in a single turn. That's implied by the Relocate text, and probably would have made for a more exciting and shorter game. I wish the rules were more overt about that.

I also wish there were more subtypes of "Relocate" because it is used a little too broadly. There are a number of Monster cards that use one of Relocate, Scout or Explore that feel mislabeled. A party of Adventurers probably shouldn't be digging tunnels or really claiming territory at all, so it seems like the game would benefit from them having a movement Action that was different from Explore or Relocate. It's particularly egregious on The Experts, who as written sit in one place and dig new tunnels every turn. This bugged me so much that I ignored the rules as written for both Adventurer groups that showed up in my game.

I also wish there were more subtypes of "Relocate" because it is used a little too broadly. There are a number of Monster cards that use one of Relocate, Scout or Explore that feel mislabeled. A party of Adventurers probably shouldn't be digging tunnels or really claiming territory at all, so it seems like the game would benefit from them having a movement Action that was different from Explore or Relocate. It's particularly egregious on The Experts, who as written sit in one place and dig new tunnels every turn. This bugged me so much that I ignored the rules as written for both Adventurer groups that showed up in my game.

If you're just here for the review and house-rule suggestions, you can 

click here to skip the turn by turn analysis and go straight to my ruminations.

Turn 1: Initiative: Worm, Ogre, Adventurers

Worm: Digs towards the nearest water in search of food and a spot to nest. The lateral route opens up into a big ol' cave of lava from the Primordial era, so I reveal the nearby parts of that cave and then he changes direction. He doesn't get far enough to do any other actions on his list.

Ogre: There's nothing to eat in the old Dwarven drinking hall, so he relocates to a nearby room. He confuses the old bronze "impossible engine" for a big egg, and sets up camp there. He explores a little further down, but returns to the egg. To eat it now, or wait for it to hatch? That's a big think for the ogre.

Adventurers: Looking for adventure, they head down a mine and an old rickety elevator. They don't get far enough to accomplish anything more beneficial, and none of the follow-up actions are applicable.

Turn 2: Ogre, Worm, Adventurers, + Owlbear

Ogre: Gives up chewing on the bronze aeolipile and moves the banks of the small underground lake. Throws rocks at the old dwarf sculpture for a while, but can't figure out how to kill or eat it. Explores a bit of tunnel after he runs out of rocks.

Worm: Heads closer to the water. Because of my not initially understanding that there's intentionally no range limit on Relocate, the Worm didn't get as far as he probably should have.

Adventurers: Relocate to deeper in the dungeon. Again, probably should have moved further.

Owlbears: An Owlbear wanders in from the grasslands of the far left edge of the map, and moves up into the hills. There it finds a cave to use as a den, and scouts by digging to open up access to the nearby underground sea.

Turn 3: Worm, Owlbear, Ogre, Adventurers, + Antlings

Worm: Digs until he finds water, then builds a Nest. Routs the Ogre, driving him back to the Old Dwarven Drinking Hall.

Owlbear: Relocates to an island in the underground sea. Scouts around a bit, subsists on small blind cavefish.

Ogre: Hunts and eats of the four adventurers. Then he scouts out an escape route, since he's trapped between two opposing forces.

Adventurers: Have no good way to deal with the Ogre, so they relocate closer to the surface.

Antlings: Start with 3 Population, and our first Treasure of this Age. The giant ants Breed, then Explore towards the ruins of Segun Rokot.

The addition of the antlings to the map has made it all a lot more interesting. Exactly what happens next turn will matter greatly upon the initiative order in Turn 4.

Turn 4: Adventurers, Owlbear, Worm, Ogre, Antlings, + The Experts

Adventurers: Hear some noise in one of the old Dwarven vaults, and investigate. They pick a Fight with the Antlings, and lose.

Owlbear: Relocates from the island to the far shore. Scouts out some of the smaller caves at this end of the cavern, and discovers an opening to the surface.

Worm: Follows the scent of the Ogre, and short-cuts through the giant bronze tubes of the ruined Dwarven hydrothermal system. Despite bursting up from a floor grate in the Ogre's fortified lair, it fails to rout him a second time.

Ogre: That worm should have left him alone. Most creatures in the game with a Hunt action specify that it can only target Denizens or some other specific category of target. The Ogre's "ravenous hunger" implies the lack of targeting requirements is intentional on this creature. Since he wasn't routed, he turns the tables on the worm and devours it. After a nice meal, he Explores another possible escape route in case anything else ever bursts up from the floor of his home.

Antlings: Breed. They fight the Adventurers, and kill 1 of them. They then Explore, digging a tunnel all the way to that island in the sea.

This is actually something of a mistake on my part. When their Fight action finished, it should have ended their turn. By the time I realized it, I'd already drawn a big ol' tunnel on the page, and didn't want to delete it.

As you'll see in a future post, the existence of this Tunnel is what slows down the Antlings from becoming the Villain, turn after turn, and prolongs my game significantly. Little things can have huge ripple effects in How To Host A Dungeon, and that's kind of cool, even if it was brought to my attention because of what seemed like an innocuous mistake on my part.

The Experts: (These are a type of Adventurers, so I'm using the same color tokens for them, but technically if the two groups somehow meet, they aren't necessarily allied.) The Experts arrive in strata 4, so I have them enter via the old Dwarven Loway. Technically, they Explore this turn... but that seems like it should be some version of Relocate instead, so I'm treating it more like that. It doesn't really make sense for them to sit still unless they lose a fight, or to start building their own dungeon.

That's the end of the Fourth Turn, and we've had our first eliminations of the Age of Monsters. The Purple Worm was devoured by the Ogre. The first Adventurer group was reduced to just 1 Population, so they'll be Relocating off the map at the start of their next Turn.

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Things I Would Change

This seems like a nice moment for a few observations about the new edition. I love the idea of the "Monster Cards" providing different actions and priorities for each species. I like the way the initiative changes turn by turn and am pleased with how easy the card system makes it to know what part of the turn I'm on if I get interrupted and come back later. That's all pretty great.

However, the actual particulars of the Monster Cards themselves often leave a lot to be desired. They really could have benefited from some serious proofreading and blind playtesting. Here are a few things that seem really weird to me:

The rules for Fortifications and special bonus stars are inconsistently applied in the descriptions of the various Actions, so it's not easy to reference during play, and it can be hard to be certain if they are meant to apply to certain Actions or not. I think the intention is that Stars can be spent on any Conflict, but Fortifications only boost Fights (which are a type of Conflict). It seems strange to me that having Built some sort of fortress does not give you a defensive bonus against Extort, Hunt, or Steal.

Ogres should say "Hunt anything" if that's what is intended. One word (literally "anything") would have made it crystal clear, but without that I'm left wondering if it's really supposed to be able to kill other Alpha Predators or not. Compare that with the Owlbear, who has the same "always Hunt" but no statement about great hunger. Both of them have another way of dealing with Alpha Predators, so if it was intended that they can't eat Alphas, they still have things worth doing when they have an Alpha neighbor. Mechanically, it's going to be rare that they gain more from Ally or Trade with an Alpha than they would if they Hunt them, so it makes me wonder if maybe in some earlier edit of this edition the Hunt Action could only target Denizens.

Antlings should have Scout instead of Explore, or maybe have both options on their list. Scout would create tunnels that look more like an Ant farm, full of side passages and growing in every direction. At the start of this game, it felt like maybe Antlings could Breed too fast.  I eventually learned that their speed-breeding can be held in check by a single Alpha, so it's not game-breaking, but that brings up another question. Why don't Antlings have any way of driving off or killing an Alpha Monster? In the real world, ant colonies regularly swarm and devour creatures larger than themselves. Before my next game, I may give them another option that is a weakened version of the Swarm from the Horde Villain in 2nd Ed. Sacrifice some Population to Hunt or Rout an Alpha. Next time I play, I may make them "Always Scout" and "If we have killed a monster token this turn, Breed and Prepare." Then give them another option on their list of "Pupate: Requires * / Breed". That would keep them from popping up in a quiet corner of the map and triggering Villainy before even meeting their neighbors.

The Experts should have Relocate instead of Explore. As written, they just keep digging and expanding their territory instead of moving. That's so weird I ignored the instructions and made them behave more like Adventurers.

Why do owlbears Trade? It doesn't really break anything, but it doesn't make much sense, either. In general, the Owlbear card just confuses me. I get the Lords of Waterdeep joke, but there's a lot of strangeness on this card, and the particulars match neither D&D lore nor the Waterdeep boardgame. Scout has them drawing new caves nearly every turn: that seems more like what the Antlings should be doing. Trading with Alphas, and Ally with Animals don't really seem in-character for this species.

The system in the 1st Edition (all printings) had you start the Age of Monsters with 1 Delving Group, 1 Breeding Group, 1 Alpha Predator, and 1 Surface Kingdom. 2nd Edition does nothing to guarantee such a starting mix, and it suffers for it. I may have gotten a fluke in my opening draw, but having a Dungeon with 2 Alphas and some Adventurers makes a weird dynamic. Things started slowly, and many potential Actions were pointless or impossible for the first few turns. I also really miss the Surface Kingdoms. Next time I play, I may change the set-up for the Age of Monsters to call for specific types the way that 1st Edition did.

The next post will cover turns 5 to 11.

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.

How To Host A (Second Edition) Dungeon

As long time readers of this blog may recall, I really like the little solo-game / drawing project / dungeon creation tool called "How To Host A Dungeon". So I was excited to learn that a second edition had recently been published. I picked it up as part of the Bundle of Holding Solo Games collection that is available for a short while longer at https://bundleofholding.com

The original was lots of fun, and the only real criticism I had for it was that it could get a little repetitive if you weren't actively mixing it up with your own content (or cool ideas you saw at https://howtohostadungeon.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_Host_a_Dungeon_Wiki). The Dwarven Civilization and Dark Elf Civilization in particular tended to always produce very stock results with rules-as-written, and as a result the first third of the game could be a little dry after your third playthrough.  (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)

New content sounded great, so I picked it up and dove right in. Quite a bit has changed.

Right off the bat, one thing that's very different is the strata. The old version had you determine the location of landmarks in your primordial era by rolling dice onto your drawing. The number rolled determined what you were placing, and the spot the die stopped moving at set the location. This was a really fun system, but also felt kind of rigged. I played most of my maps digitally, so I had to kind of cludge a fix for it by numbering a grid onto my page. The new system gets rid of the "where the die lands" mechanic, and subdivides your map into geologic strata. You then roll up one primordial theme for each stratum. This is clean, and simple, and makes sure the resources and traps are evenly distributed across the map. So far, I think it's a pretty good system. With the old system is was possible to end up with all the interesting stuff packed into one little corner of the map sometimes, and that wasn't great. This seems like an improvement, and the lip-service to geology is a nice touch. The random strata structure I rolled was pretty simple and feels realistic enough.

For the primordial era of my first map of 2nd Ed, I only rolled things that could have come up in the 1st Edition as well. Likewise, my d20 roll for a nexus resulted in just the classic "fate" cave from 1st Ed. I was a little bummed at first, because I want to see the new stuff, like underground biomes.  I guess that saves some surprises for my second play through. It also gives me an opportunity to really compare the mechanisms of the two editions instead of just geeking out over new content. That focus on mechanical differences eventually won me around to accepting the rolls I'd made for the purposes of review.

My dice got streaky, and 3 of my 7 underground strata had magma features. These then involved rolls on sub-tables that filled in details of what sort of magma or water features I should draw. I got a magma river, a large lava pool, and a huge chamber with multiple smaller magma pools in it for the hot layers. I purposefully downplayed the magma river because I was concerned that three strata full of lava might not leave me enough playable space. Since I took the step to minimize it in drawing, I will no doubt roll nothing but Fire Elementals and Dragons who could have happily set up condos on that lavafront property.

Likewise, due to streaky dice, 2 of the 7 had water features. One water layer had a single large underground lake, and the other had a huge underground sea that was supposed to fill most of the stratum. I split the later into two parts with a narrow channel and a waterful, partly because it seemed like a fun little thing to draw, and partly so that half my surface map wouldn't be cut off from all the underground fun.

I like the ore entry that I rolled, that placed it in scattered clumps across a single stratum. That seems way better than the single large triangle of ore you'd often see in 1st ed. For my caves entry I rolled a single long tunnel.

For the surface strata, I rolled up three distinct biomes. So I stamped in a forest on one side of the mountain, and grassland on the other.

I planted the lethal nexus Fate cave just south of center of the map. In the middle so there'd be a chance of it wiping out civilizations, but far enough from the surface that it wouldn't do so too early and spoil the fun. This definitely seemed far better than the old system where I sometimes got Fate caves in remote corners of the map. Being restricted only in which strata to put things, and not where within the stratum seems pretty great. For the moment, I like how it balances the randomness with some player agency. I could, however, see how it might lead to very... I don't think "abusable" is the right word... some situations where the random pressure fails to manifest at all and player authorship steers the game with a heavy hand. I guess we'll see how it turns out.

Speaking of seeing, here's the shape of my map just before the dawn of civilization. It's not much to look at just yet, but I'm sure there's fun stuff coming up.

Another obvious point of comparison to 1st Edition is the number of things on the map at the end of the Primordial Age. In the previous edition, at this stage your map would almost always have exactly 3 features on it. Now, it will have anywhere from 7 to 9, and that seems like a huge improvement to the interest and variety of the map.

One thing I didn't make much use of was the "Geographical Inspirations" page in the new rules. It comes after the other strata information, so I'd already drawn everything before I even noticed it. It may have but more flavor in my magma sites, and a different color and a bit of story to my ore. I kinda wish I'd done that, but I don't wish it enough to undo what I've already saved. It's technically possible to get nothing but boring generic rolls on that page, so I'm not technically diverting from the range of possible results for 2nd Ed. I don't think it's badly skewing my experience or review, but I kinda wish I hadn't missed it. (Note to self: read ahead next time.)  Next map, I'll roll on that for each stratum before drawing anything, and see if it makes things more exciting.

Speaking of drawing, here's a few technical details of how I'm doing this. I've got Corel painter booted up because I don't do enough art to justify Adobe's pricetag.

I dropped in a background layer of light brown to be the barest, clearest dirt and rock in spots where caves and tunnels exist. I then copied that brown into a new layer directly on top of it, paint-bucketed it to a darker tone, and then set that darker layer down to 50% opacity. The plan is that each new age I'll drop in another layer on top, also at 30% to 50% opacity, and carve out with the eraser any tunnels or caves. This will preserve layered history, much the way the default rules assume you'd be doing with tracing paper. I'd used this method before (but with a different piece of software) and been happy with the results. The unmined areas should be much darker in the final layer.

To make the surface not quite so boring, especially in the early stages, I dropped in a rocky texture on the first half-opacity layer. I don't know if I'll preserve that through to the final version of the map or not, but at least for now it makes all the empty rock space more interesting than just a boring brown rectangle.

For the water and magma I hand painted in two or three tones. Scribbled, really, then did a glass distortion or marbling effect over it to mix the colors and create waves. Instant water! (Directions from the box: just add contents of this package of instant water to real water, and stir.)

It took me a little while to get things set up last night, so that's all I've got for now. I'll work on another layer or two tonight and report back in a few days when Dwarven Civilization has collapsed.

I can take that suspicious corkboard off my wall.

Just about have my Night's Black Agents: Dracula Dossier RPG campaign converted to online play via Roll20. Character sheets, handouts, "murder board" Adversary Map, the whole enchilada. Excited at the thought of getting to play again soon.

Not sure what I'll do with all the space this will free up in my living room. Maintaining a corkboard with NPC photos pinned and connected by colored strings has been a hallmark of my home for over 2 years. For once I won't be afraid to have my landlord drop by... well, I mean... except for the fear of contagion and quarantine.

GURPS GRUPS

Random thought: I really want Steve Jackson Games to get the license to the "Miri" episode of classic Trek, so they could make a super-specific guidebook to her disease-ridden world and it's splotchy purple adults. A sourcebook that would naturally be titled: GURPS GRUPS.

The PCs Have Sold Their Souls... Again

Quick update about my Night's Black Agent's campaign. I am a bastard GM. This weekend, I got two of the PCs to sell their souls to... well, not quite the devil, thankfully. They sold their character's souls to Graf Orlok (of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu). Still pretty bad. It was kind of surprising just how easily they went along with it. Player Characters do the darnedest things.

To be fair, there was an element of trickery on my part, in that the Renfield who brokered the deal over-acted and hammed it up so much they kind of took him to be a buffoon, and as a result the PCs under-estimated the entire situation. The cartoonish nature of the ritual's trappings made them lower their guard and play along when they should have been "nope"-ing the hell out of there.

I once had the opportunity to be within earshot of a real-life Masonic initiation ceremony when a friend who used to be a Mason took me out to a campground on a weekend when he thought there wasn't anything going on out there. I remember hearing the ruckus from across the park, and thinking: "Man, paranoid conspiracy theorists imagine that's some globe-dominating cabal of the Illuminati, but it's clearly just a bunch of goofy middle-aged white-guys LARPing in aprons. It would really suck if you drank the kool-aid, and psyched yourself up for selling your soul in exchange for the Higher Mysteries, only to get that silliness instead. What a let down that might be." And that germ of an idea stuck in my craw for years until I finally got a chance to use it in a game this weekend.

If we're hanging out some time, hit me up for the details. It's a pretty good yarn, but full of idiocy that would get taken out of context and offend or frighten someone if I threw it up on the interwebs.

(To explain the "...Again" in the title: about a year ago, one of the other PCs in this same campaign basically invited Mina Harker to attack her, and inadvertently gave the 100 year old English vampire bride the keys to her mind. They've been dealing with the fall-out from that ever since, but apparently didn't really learn from her mistakes.)

A little D&D over new years

At the end of the year we get together with some of my oldest dearest friends from back in the day. As usual, this resulted in a little bit of D&D. A total of 23 hours of D&D 5th Ed across 3 days. For most of that we had DM + 5 players, and for the last day of it there 7 players. It was a lot of fun.

As you may recall from my posts about gaming with this group a year ago, the PCs had rolled into a town called Whitspur and immediately found that something was terribly wrong there.

The landmark ancient tower that used to reach toward the heavens had been torn apart, leaving a tunnel in the middle of town. The local Duke had cordoned it off, and sent teams to explore the depths. Those teams came back with mysterious cuts of meat, which the Duke started selling at his Inn. Everyone who'd tried it raved about the delicious new food, and soon thereafter most of the town was physically addicted to the delicious rewards of the dungeon.

So my players dove straight in. I'd kind of intended there to be more investigative stuff going on in town, but they hopped a fence, burst into the dungeon, and disrupted the Duke's subterranean butcher-shop. Good for them.

In the process, they kind of got themselves stuck in the Dungeon. The Duke's men hadn't got a good look at them, but knew that some group had raided, killed a few of his guards in the process, and were well on their way to exposing and/or ending the unsavory bargain that the Duke had made with the intention of feeding his people. We left off a year ago, with them in the thick of things, and me having to keep very good records of what Dwarven Forge terrain pieces were laid out so I could rebuild a year later should they decide to backtrack. They'd explored a bit of dungeon, had their escape route cut off by the local guards, and discovered that the mystery meat was ghoul meat. There was a temple down in the dungeon, and the Duke was making some sort of regular sacrifice to it, which provided him with a ready supply of magically-produced ghouls.

I'd had a bunch of stuff prepped up in town that would have allowed them to discover the heart-breaking tale of the Duke's fall from grace. How he'd been hearing rumors of a big warlord and army coming from the West, and decided to tear open the old ruins in search of a weapon against the inevitable siege. What he found inside was an endless supply of ghouls, which, being a good and noble ruler, he wasn't about to unleash even on the worst enemy. However, it would at least solve the problems of the recent crop blight and inevitable food shortages that would come with a siege. Infinite meat might not be a superweapon, but it was a way to provision regardless of what happened outside it's walls. Who knew filet-of-ghoul was addictive, and his whole city would end up junkies and gluttons? I had this great back story worked out, difficult choices to be made, nuanced villains who certainly didn't think of themselves as villainous in the least (the Duke had a couple levels of Paladin under his belt)... I was really proud of myself. It was as if some great ancient evil had built this dungeon in anticipation of this exact turn of events. Those prophetic demony types are real good planners.

Then my players took the left turn at Albuquerque and dove straight into combat and a line of actions that seemed to make all my nuance not matter in the slightest. It was a fine pickle they'd gotten themselves into. But that's gaming. The script is not set, players have agency, and you can never be sure what direction things are going to go. You don't want all that prep to go to waste, but you can't force it on the players. It has to feel organic. Players absolutely have to have the power to go where you weren't expecting, or to decide that a given plotline just isn't for them. My players are especially good at going where I didn't expect, but I don't want to discourage them at all. I had a year to come up with a new story, or a way to make the original idea more appealing or accessible.

Thankfully, one of the players said his new girlfriend would like to join us this year. Her arrival gave me a way to still get them at least the most critical parts of the exposition that they'd missed by jumping straight down the hole. Better yet, it could be delivered by a PC instead of hoping they'd take some loose-lipped NPC prisoner, or gambling they might return to the surface and start following all my carefully constructed trail of clues.

When we left off a year ago, they didn't know what was in the next room of the dungeon, but they knew it was a room the Duke's men had already explored and used. So at the start of this year's mega-session, they found the new PC chained up in that room. I gave her a bare-bones one-page synopsis of things she'd found out about the Duke in her previous adventure that had ended with her locked in his dungeon. It wasn't the full mystery, really just a couple "gimme" clues they'd missed, because I didn't want to overwhelm the new player with too much detail. Turns out it was just enough to get the whole group talking and thinking about what was really going on here beyond just some monsters in a hole in the ground. This started the ball rolling. The PCs did a little more clue-collecting in the dungeon, found a hidden exit and got to see the blight on the countryside first hand, and then chased after more clues back in town. There was a long interview with a burned-out old Wizard who was a friend of the Duke's family. Some more clues at the edge of town, and later at a murder scene. A clandestine meeting with the Duke's right-hand-man by PCs wearing disguises. 23 hours worth of stuff. Long story short, this gave them enough of a goal and purpose that they even managed to extract a confession from the Duke before it was all over.

It was pretty great.

I should also mention that this group I get to game with in Portland is collectively just so much fun. Everybody leans hard into the role-playing, but also makes sure to leave room for fun and humor. We've got a crazy priestess of a heretical cult who recites randomly-generated platitudes like a walking fortune cookie; a conniving charlatan master-of-disguise that loves turning the tables on NPCs; an exceptionally short human fighter who gets real sensitive because everyone's always confusing him for a dwarf; and a cowbell-playing minotaur bard who cracked us all up with his "jazz hooves". The three new PCs (a dwarf paladin, and elvish druid and rogue) aren't quite as outrageous as those, but they were clearly defined and deeply played characters. They dove right into the deep end, and started swimming like pro's. Everyone was lively and remarkably focused... except for the moment when a character talked about the metaphysical taint on the Duke and everyone just lost it laughing for 5 very juvenile minutes. Tons of fun. Miss it already. December can't get here soon enough.

The Square Deal Saloon

Started a new RPG campaign just recently. The setting is more-or-less that of Shadows of Brimstone meets HBO's Deadwood. Two of the PCs collectively own a house-of-ill-repute in a boom-town, somewhere in the New Mexico Territory, just down the road from the smoking crater that is Brimstone. There's another competing saloon and gambling den in town, and a number of weird supernatural hijinks afoot. The other PC is one of their regular customers, who happens to work at the Telegraph Office.

For the first session I made some incoming Telegraph props. One was an actual message for one of the PCs, but the others are essentially plot coupons and nuggets of important information about sub-plots and opportunities, that the Telegraph Operator PC is obligated to make the rounds and deliver. It's working pretty well, as the PCs basically get to eavesdrop on everything going on in town. I made the community bustling with plotlines, colorful characters, and mysteries. It's meant to be layered and sandboxy, with the PCs getting to decide what things they want to stick their noses into, and whose pockets they wish to pick. So I've arranged all my subplots on a color-coded calendar (the first session is Wednesday, March 9th, 1887) that tracks how each storyline will progress if the players do nothing to interfere. I'm hoping they'll interfere frequently and with gusto. They seemed to love it, which is good, because I'm prepared to add a couple more Telegraphs each session for foreshadowing, character development, and clue-delivery.

The mechanics are a blend of Savage Worlds and the Drama System from Hillfolk, with some custom mechanics to emulate parts of Brimstone, and a few cool ideas lifted from other games I like. During character creation, I had the players choose from several small "fill-in-the-blank" quizzes I had prepared. Their answers to those questions let them define things in the town, name NPCs and establish relationships to them. Each of the quizzes had some mechanical benefit that it unlocked. For example, there was one that said: "There's a group of bandits causing trouble in the region. You used to ride with them, but had a falling out." It then listed two of the canonical Infamous Bandit Gangs from Shadows of Brimstone, and had the player choose which one they'd been part of. Then it said "someone in town knows your secret past. Who are they, and can you trust them?" It then gave a bonus on Guts and Riding skills, as befits someone who used to ride with a bunch of train-robbers. The player who chose this card was effectively embracing a western trope, getting a connection to something that's part of the official setting, and then given carte-blanche to invent and ally or foe in town. It worked great. We ended up with a really cool interlocking web of NPCs and plotlines.

I'm running this game at a friends' house, because one of the players is allergic to my cat. So I needed a good way to bring the game with me that doesn't involve me hauling the rulebooks to Savage Worlds, Deadlands, Hillfolk, and Shadows of Brimstone with me every week. So, I popped over to wikidot.com, and made myself a new GMing Notes wiki. It's a closed/private wiki, so I can just bring it up on my iPad.  All the most important rules are on there now, along with pages on every location, every NPC, those Telegraphs and other visual aides to show the players, and that color-coded plotline calendar that keeps me on top of what's likely to happen when. It's working pretty great thus far. I'm liking it enough I've begun adding my note files for my other two active RPG campaigns to the same wiki, so I'll have one highly-portable campaign database for all my future games.

The Great Pumpkins

I played in an 11-hour halloween one-shot last night, run by my friend Jeremy Hill. It was a solid game, lots of fun. Every player had 2 PCs, college students who were going to a Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch. Each of your two PCs would arrive in two different car pools.

Scenes bounced back and forth between these two groups. One group ran into bloodthirsty ghosts at the pumpkin patch. The other group's car broke down, and they ended up asking for help at a creepy old house a few miles down the road... a house full of cannibal cultists. They seemed to be two entirely separate adventures taking place on the same night but just a few miles apart, but we eventually learned that the cannibal cult were actually the ones responsible for stirring up the ghosts that the other groups was battling.

It was pretty nifty way to tell the story. Jumping back and forth between the two groups allowed some cool "cliffhanger" cuts. Because each player had a two characters (one in each group), every time we hit a dead end in one mystery investigation, we could cut away to the other group for a little while.

When we'd come back to the previous "dead-end" later, in the intervening break one player or another would always have come up with another option that we hadn't tried before. I feel like there were places where we would have otherwise gotten frustrated or locked up, but the scene-hopping just naturally shook us free of that every time. It organically encouraged us to think outside the box. What's more, switching between our two characters worked to give you a break, so the nearly 12-hour session seemed to flash by super fast. Without exception, each player chose radically different personality and character types for their two characters, which probably amplified this rejuvenating effect. It worked really well.

I'm seriously considering stealing this trick for my own games going forward. 

Three Cons, Old Friends, and a Boom

I have been busy as heck lately, and playing a lot of games.

Work sent me out to GenCon, were I ran demos of Shadows of Brimstone, Forbidden Fortress, Last Night On Earth, Fortune & Glory, and A Touch Of Evil. It was super fun and I love sharing and teaching many of my favorite games to total strangers... but it was also very exhausting because GenCon is a huge show with a million faces and a hundred thousand games.

In my off hours at the con, I played a couple of new games I hadn't tried before.

Incan Gold is a fun press-your-luck game that I reliably came in... well, certainly not winning, but not in last place, either, so I feel like I did okay for a newbie. The best part was that I got to play the game with my old friend Brendan Riley, who lives far away and I hadn't seen in several years, and my buddy Bill French. I never would have expected them to meet, given that they live in different states, but GenCon is a place of miracles.

Brendan's company Rattlebox Games is playtesting a game called Udder Chaos, the only competitive cow-milking game I've ever seen. It's fast and goofy and full of rhymes. It was light-hearted fun, and you'd be helping support a old friend of mine, so check it out if you get a chance.

One night at GenCon I played a party game called Buy The Rights, in which you get a random hand of high concepts and genres and have to make your best pitch about why producers should invest money with you. I hammed it up, basically role-playing as a different screenwriter or producer in each round, and it turns out that nonsense is a very successful strategy in this game.

The other fun new experience of this GenCon for me was Hellapagos, a party game that starts out fully cooperative and then suddenly very quickly descends into murder and sometimes cannibalism. It was a social game that really felt like the first season of Lost. Everyone was working together to build a raft and catch fish, except for a couple slackers who just raided the wreckage for personal treasures. Much fun was had by all, including those who died when suddenly everyone started scrambling for the limited space on the raft. I, as one of those horrible slackers who spent a lot of turns searching the wreck, found a decent supply of bullets, which I traded 1 at a time to the only person who had found a gun, in exchange for her using them on people other than myself. In the end, 3 of the 8 players, including myself, made it back to civilization to tell the story of how we were the sole survivors of the wreck. Just don't ask about the barbecue.


Shortly after getting back from GenCon, I packed my suitcase a second time and headed to my favorite little (~1,000 attendees) local gaming convention, Dragonflight. I had originally planned to just go for fun, but at the last minute agreed to volunteer to run the Story Games Lounge when the usual volunteer dropped out. As it turns out, volunteering to run the Story Games room is itself a lot of fun.


First day of Dragonflight Game Convention:

GM'd an awesome double-length Psi*Run for 7 players.

Explored an alien planet in The Quiet Year

Lost a game of Snake Oil to the dreaded Fraud card

Played "2 Rooms and a Boom" till my brains hurt. It's a great social-deduction game, kind of like "Are You A Werewolf?" except everyone gets to play the entire game and know one has to die until the last couple seconds.

Won a game of Jetpack Unicorn. Honestly, I'm not crazy about this game. I think Superfight does the same thing, but better.

Played some more 2 Rooms and a Boom. (Across 6 games I've now been on both teams a couple times, been the bomber and been an Ambassador.)

On Day 2 of Dragonflight:

 GM'd Og the caveman RPG for 5 players. No use big words play Og. The cavemen met The Doctor, and caused a regeneration.

GM'd another successful Psi*Run, for 4 new players. Hallucinatory madness derailed everything in a delightful way.

Hosted a giant marathon Microscope timeline for 6 players. It was epic! One of the best-developed, most fleshed-out microscope games I've ever seen. These new players really picked it up quickly and dove deep into the game.

That night, I got the band back together! Playing in Laura Mortensen's annual midnight Urchin game, as my recurring character, Rory Wanker of the formerly famous Rory Wanker and the Bloody Stickers. We're making a comeback, if only in my mind.

Other games played in the Story Game Lounge included more Quiet Year, some Zombie Cinema, and a few escapades of esteemed Baron Munchausen.

Day 3 of Dragonflight:

Played in a delightful Lego and d20s game run by Tim Beach. Two of the 5 players were kids, and they kept the game light-hearted and unpredictable. Tim did an amazing job of making the game work on the kids level and not lose the adults to boredom. Nearly all of my GMing experience in the last 20 years is with adults, but I can only imagine GMing for kids takes extra creativity, patience, and panache. Well done, sir.

Later that night:
I went to a birthday party at Zulu's game cafe. While there, we played a game of Dark Gothic. We all lost when the Shadows filled up in a sudden hurry. Quite the shame, as I was super close to winning, and probably could have done so in one to two more turns.


The next weekend:

Battlestar Galactica board game with old friends I hadn't seen in forever: Andy Collins, Gwen Kestrel, and Greg Collins (and their friend Ben). I was a frakking toaster the whole time, and I successfully destroyed the pathetic human fleet by breaking their morale. It was a solid game, and the humans came very close to winning. Possibly the closest game I've ever played of BSG. 

After that, we played Between Two Cities, which is a very clever cooperative drafting and tile-placement game where you're building a city together with the player on your right and simultaneously building another city together with the player on your left. I didn't do so good at this, coming in 4th out of 5th place. I love the entire-cooperative nature of the mechanics, and how that's counter-weighted by the scoring. It's a game that exists in a very unique head space. I want the players adjacent to me to do well, and any other players to do poorly, but I don't really have a way cause that second part. There's probably some deeper strategy I'm not seeing yet, but I can at least admire the novelty of this truly unique game.

We followed that up with Royal Turf. It's a Knizia game about horse racing and betting on horse racing. In the abstract the topic doesn't sound interesting to me at all, like if you said "want to play a game about racetrack betting?" I'd reply with "not unless it's Royal Turf". Every time I play it I feel like a) I'm really not very good at it,  and b) the game is surprisingly fun and enjoyable despite all that.

Then the wonderful Bobbie Hyde showed up to pick me up and we talked her into playing a round of Decrypto. It's a team code-guessing game, and we both really enjoyed it. If I didn't already own Codenames Duet, I would immediately rush out and by Decrypto. I feel Decrypto is a much better game than normal Codenames, but that makes it about equal with Codenames Duet (which is closer to codenames, but also generally a vastly improved version of Codenames itself).

So, it's been a summer cavalcade of new games and old friends. Pretty damn cool way to spend the days. And it ain't over yet. This weekend is PAX West! I will once again be running demos of Flying Frog adventure games. Sleep is for the weak.