A New Type Of Fighting

So, I'm not the first person to come up with this idea and I won't be the last, however it's sitting in my brain right now so now it's here. 

Anyway, the standard combat in D&D and the like often boils down to "I roll to hit" until one side runs out of blood. I know there's a lot of things that you can do to change this, and incentivizing out of the box behaviors is at the heart of the OSR, but with how often violence as a solution to problems seems to come up in roleplaying games it will too often get bogged down in "I roll, you roll" etc. 

I don't want to add in a whole bunch of new mechanics, codifying in rules the cool things you can do and by implication limiting what you can do to what is on your character sheet (5E already exists after all). In fact, I don't want to touch at all on the "doing cool stuff" bit of combat, this is just about a very boring slog combat being a little more interesting to run and be in. 

Design Principles

The principles of this little experiment are threefold:

1) To make combat more exciting, fun, and engaging for both players and GM

Pretty straightforward, any and all rules should facilitate fun and enjoyment, it's a game after all.

2) To offer more player agency through increased player choice

A core tenet of the OSR philosophy (at least as far as I am aware of it) is of player agency and player choice. I don't think necessarily adding more mechanics facilitates this, but I want to increase the number of opportunities that the players get to make meaningful choices.

3) To reduce GM paperwork

I'm both lazy and poorly organized. Offloading as much bookkeeping to my players as possible can only be a good thing for me (plus, there's more of them they have more processing power collectively). 

4) Shorter more brutal combat. 

I find combat generally a bit uninteresting; however, if combat is too easy for players it will become the default option, and if it is too hard it effectively removes it as an option altogether. So, making combat more dangerous and quicker is my ideal.

Player Facing Defence Mechanic

Have players roll for defence, rather than having a static number. Again, I am not the first to think of this (it is the default in GLOG I believe), but this idea incorporates my design principles for this so in it goes. 

First for the fun. Not a surprising observation, but players like rolling dice. So why not give them more of that? It gives a player a sense of accomplishment when they hit an enemy, but they don't feel as much if the enemy doesn't hit them (even though the exact same effort of equipment decisions, character build, and luck went into both), so why not have the "not getting hit" be a player facing test. 

I'm not about to hang my hat on that and be done, as just changing who is doing the rolling does not a more dynamic system make. I also want to increase player agency and reduce my paperwork. To this end I want to make a list of "defence options" for the players to choose from.

1) Dodge: Jumping back out of the way. Rolling basic agility/dexterity modified by how much stuff they have. This has the added bonus of making encumbrance a more central mechanic beyond how fast you move. The Wizard will definitely want Tenser's Floating Disc prepared in order to be able to remain unencumbered and dodge out of the way.

2) Parry: A roll with a weapon to parry blows out of the way. Pretty straightforward and using whatever skill you use to attack in hand-to-hand combat. Allows for bonuses for parrying daggers and the like.

3) Armour: A roll to try and get his where your armour absorbs the damage rather than you. I had been using armour in my game as damage reduction as I always found it a bit weird that armour made you harder to hit, but this idea sort of squares the circle for me. Better/more armour increases your chance of success with this roll, but more weight is going to reduce your dodge ability.

4) Shield: A roll to deflect the attack with your shield (if you have one), sort of a halfway between armour and parry it uses skill modified by the quality/size of the shield. Makes magic shields a lot more useful without making them overpowered.

5) Utilising the Environment: Finding some way to use the space that you are in to your advantage: ducking behind a pillar, rolling under a table, claiming the high ground, etc.

Well, that's fair enough you might say, but won't people just concentrate on rolling their most advantageous defence and have done? Once again turning combat into a roll-off slug fest? But wait, there's more:

Each type of defence can only be used once per combat

There are two exceptions to this, and the first is utilising the environment: each use of a different aspect of the environment counts as a unique defence action. This incentivizes thinking outside the box in terms of non-character sheet options, more of an opportunity to think of interesting things to do.

I also want to make fighters more fighty. The point about being a fighter after all is to be able to be better at fighting than other people, but that mostly comes as an increased to hit bonus (and anyone who has done any form of combat sport knows that there is more to knowing about fighting than that). So I am thinking that fighters get multiple uses of the different defence types.

Running out of defence options then will put a limit on fights without them becoming so dangerous that they are an unfun part of the game. Plus, there are several options for defence and a fight that lasts five rounds is already quite a slog.

This will additionally lead to more character choice in terms of equipment loadout; do you take the double handed sword which does huge damage, but by doing so go without a shield? Do you go without armour and shield, but have a dodge skill that so high you can dodge the first attack of anything? Use the awesome magical cattle prod that will electrocute things, but is incapable of parrying? Knowing most players to be conservative with their PCs lives, I do expect people just to stock up on as many defence options as possible but I could be surprised.

OUT OF RANGE AND COWERING

What to do when you run out of defence? I don't want there to be no other option than keep taking hits to the face, but I also don't want to force a party split, or to make a huge deal about it if some people do want to fight to the bitter end. I want there to be a choice of non-participation in the fight short of running away.

Being out of range is pretty simple, as it is running away a little bit. Out of range depends on the enemy, but mostly it means being far enough away that they could not hit you and also you could not hit them. This will of course depend on the monster; a dragon for firey breath, guards can have crossbows, a Poisonous Froad can grab you with its tongue, etc. so being out of range is situational. Being out of range is a trade-off in that you cannot hit the enemy, unless of course you brought a ranged weapon! This is always assuming there is someone else in combat with the monster, holding it there (if the entire party is out of range then why does the monster not simply walk over to the party to hit them, and if it can't due to a chasm or other obstacle then that's no longer a fight really is it).  

Assuming there is a situation where you cannot get out of range, and you have no defence left, and you can't/don't want to run away, and you don't want to just keep getting punched in the face, what do you do? Curl up into the fetal position and cry?

Like this

Well... yeah, kinda. It is well known that players are of the Commander Quincy Taggart school of combat, however if there is a more clearly defined route to surrender they may take it. If a character is Cowering they take no further part in the combat, but are also considered a non-threat and therefore not attacked. This means no jumping up and saying "Actually, I'm not Cowering now! I stab!" and no "I'm going to sneak off during the fight" If the combat ends in the party's favour, all well and good, but if they lose then the Cowering character is considered to be taken prisoner or otherwise at the opponent's mercy. No need to railroad into being captured if its a choice players can more easily take to save their character.

Some creatures this is obviously a bad idea (hungry manticore will hungry), but even creatures that wish to eat may be full after eating the rest of the party. 

MONSTERS DEAL STATIC DAMAGE

Again, not a revolutionary idea, other people have thought this up before me. This is mostly about less bookkeeping for me, and the reduction of anxiety of accidentally killing off PCs by high damage die rolls. I don't need to be resolved to let the dice fall where they may if the damage is always going to be the same.

Having static damage, as opposed to random die-based damage, allows for greater informational awareness and a greater ability to make an informed choice thus greater player agency. If a Dragon deals 10hp damage every turn on a failed defence rather than 1-10, you consider combats a lot more carefully and can better judge how long to stick it out before curling up into a terror soaked ball.

That said, variable damage can be interesting and it's not necessary to throw it out altogether. Perhaps to combine with the rolling for defence, there is a static damage ceiling for monsters and damage is taken commensurate by how much the defence was failed by. Turning it away from a binary damage/no damage and into a sliding scale that rewards better defence.

MONSTERS ATTACK EVERYONE EVERY ROUND

Ha! Didn't see that one coming, did you? This is mostly because I am lazy and can't be bothered keeping too detailed a track of where everyone is in a combat, but also to wear down the defence actions of the party faster and lead to swifter combats. Obviously this is taking into account the ideas of getting out of range and cowering into account.

When a monster attacks everyone every round there's a quick cost/benefit analysis if it doesn't get sandbagged after a round or two. This opens the door to having lower hit-point monsters still be very scary. In turn this incentivizes planning, ambushes, and being fully prepared (and with an escape plan) for any combat the PCs find themselves in.

It has the added bonus of making enemies easier to scale depending on party size. If you're like me and have a reasonably informal drop in/drop out game, it's near nigh impossible to balance encounters in prep as combat balance varies wildly depending on party size. However, with monsters attacking everyone every round, the monster scales itself to the party size.

This also fits well with a before enemies/after enemies binary initiative without worrying too much about the tactical layout of things. It also means finding a way to deny the enemy an attack for a round is far more valuable.

BRUTE SQUADS AS MONSTERS

What of the city guard? Or a skellington? Or lone bandit? Will we be turning every single NPC chump with a sword into a whirling death machine? To which I answer: of course not! I have a far lazier solution.

Keeping track of a bunch of individual initiatives, and nickel and dime attacks is very boring, and frankly too much work for me. So I am going to steal from one of my favourite game systems: 7th Sea 1st Ed. This game has a great mechanic of heroic combat, by grouping generic faceless goons mechanically into single large enemies. 

So rather than wondering where every individual mook is, we assume soldiers/skellingtons/skaven are swirling around jabbing where they can, throwing rocks, and otherwise making malicious nuisance of themselves. Every time they are hit, more of their number go down (represented by the hit points of the group)

The other idea I will steal from my beloved 7th Sea is that the power of the mob of goons is proportional to its health: the more health the more of them, and the more damage they do. It then follows that the less health they have the fewer of them there are and therefore the less damage they do. This is a bit more bookeeping, but I'm willing to take this one thing on the chin. Rough ballpark, for every 3 hp they have they do a damage? Maybe make it simpler, they do damage equal to their remaining HP. 

As for combating a group of PCs vs a single low powered goon: do you really need to run that? I mean, can't they all just jump him? I honestly don't think it comes up enough to worry about. Have a deadly assassin, towering evil knight, or other such champion as a single monster; otherwise just fold them in as the leader of the brute squad.

I'm not sure if this will necessarily be more fun, or easier for me to track, or anything I set out to do (probably needs a playtest), however it has been a fun little design experiment and I'm looking forwards to having a chance to run with it.

Everyone on the internet who cares about RPGs has read Arnold K's False Hydra (and if for some reason you haven't you should go read it now). In it he asks: 

'Can someone make a random table titled "What's the Deal With the Town?"' for the idea of generating random plot hooks for an episodic campaign in which the players are going from town to town facing new challenges and secrets monster-of-the-week style.'

And so, in tribute to the spectacular Arnold K, I present my very poor attempt at such a thing:

What's The Deal With This Town...?

(d100)

1. Groundhog day, everyone in the town is reliving the same day and everything resets at about three in the morning except for the party. Anyone renting a room will be arrested for having broken into the inn, anyone arrested will be turfed out and warned against playing around in guards' quarters less they end up in the cells for real. Any townsfolk wounded or killed will become alive and well, any visitors will not be so lucky.
   
2. A large construction project is going on, it is supposed to allow for better sunlight and rainfall. The town are being lied to, the most vocal of the project are actually a cult dedicated to subtly rearranging things to form a giant summoning circle to gain riches and wealth. The cult is being lied to, the leader of the cult has sold their soul to a demon and plans to buy it back with a ritual that will trade the demon the souls of all of the cult. The cult leader is being lied to, the ritual will actually summon the demon forth to feast on this plane of existence. The demon is being lied to... &c.
3. A town full of ghosts convinced they are still alive. 
4. False Hydra 
5. All of the town celebrates an annual "Feast of the Strangers." Of course the celebration is tonight and they are very welcoming to the honoured guests. The celebration culminates in barbecuing and eating the strangers.
6. All an illusion by a local tower wizard, all the inhabitants killed long ago and their reanimated corpses puppet things along disguised by the sorcerous glamour. 
7. Villainous cult to a Reptile God has overrun this town, currently they are mustering their strength in secret. They intend no harm to any wandering bands of adventurers as such would raise suspicion, however if any stumble across the truth the cult will kill to protect its secret. 
8. Unbeknownst to the inhabitants it is built on top of an ancient sleeping titan, the leviathan is starting to stir. 
9. A bountiful harvest is guaranteed so long as five young children are sacrificed every year in the fields to a local dark spirit. Children can come from this village or anywhere else, the spirit is not picky. Otherwise prosperous, cheerful, and has very good beer. 
10. All townspeople suffer from kleptomania, but each thinks that they are the only one so afflicted and wish to hide their terrible shameful secret.
11. The town is surrounded by a woods in which live terrible creatures, these creatures keep most bound forever to this town but are also an implacable barrier against threats from outside. The characters are an unexpected surprise, but maybe the creatures chose to let them through as new additions. The villagers live in a constant state of preparedness abiding by the rules which keep them safe: I. Let the Bad Colour not be seen, it attracts them. II. Never enter the woods, that is where they wait. III. Heed the warning bell, for they are coming
12. Two werewolves in town are gradually killing off the rest of the townsfolk at night, one by one. A tense town meeting is currently in progress to decide who to hang for suspicion of lycanthropy.
13. A vampiric patriarch, now a direct ancestor of every member of the town, shepherds the town according to his own design, arranging marriages, shaping careers, holding regular family meetings, and ensuring no-one ever leaves.  
14. The town is filled with people who have lost all sense of property and propriety. They hold all land in common and practice free love. They claim that the statue of the Virgin in the parish church came to life and has blessed them with immaculate lives, and that any are free to join. They seem really happy. The source of this is a succubus taking up at the church causing all around to forget all but carnal pleasure. Seems great until the harvest must come in...
    
15. A gang of organised criminals from the nearest large urban centre has taken to using this village as a base. All the villagers live in intimidation and fear, hoping that some outsider might rescue them from their plight, and will try to hint as much in coded terms to any heavily armed mercenaries who wander through. Keep in mind, they are being watched.
    
16. An Ancient and forgotten Empire built a weapons cache here many centuries ago. Things have begun to turn up in the soil. Often explosive things.
    
17. This village is renowned for its cheese production, a particularly moreish blue-veined variety. The mould within it is actually sentient and mind controlling compelling any that ingest a large amount to come to cultivate more cheese and trade it further. Once its control has grown large enough, who knows what its plans may be.
    
18. Evacuated several years ago for testing of the royal ordinance, or possibly the building of a dam that was never undertaken, or on some other Imperial or bureaucratic whim. Nobody here, completely empty yet still all well preserved as if the inhabitants had just vanished. Asking around in neighboring villages will reveal the story through the griping of displaced former residents.
    
19. Has a seasonal boxing tournament! Wager your coin or challenge for the title yourself, but be warned the reigning champ is the redoubtable "Take on All Comers" Griffin
    
20. Perfectly normal, except everyone has dog heads (in place of their usual human heads to clarify, and of a variety of breeds). If questioned, they will be mystified about what is meant, they appear to see no difference between themselves, their fellow villagers, and any non-canine headed visitors. Anyone who sleeps in the town wakes to find all the village now has human heads again...
    
21. The town is engaged in complex diplomatic talks with the intelligent rats that infest the town.
    
22. A space rock has fallen from the sky. Everyone in town is quite intrigued by it, almost too interested. At night worms slither from the rock and make their way into the ears of those sleeping in town, dissolving into their brain fluid and making them by degrees more and more obsessed with the stone. It will soon be venerated as a God.
23. Two rival witch clans living in the hills either side of the town are in the midst of a long-drawn-out feud. The town has become the battleground as each coven attempts to exert the maximum remote control over the people. The witches never leave their hill fastnesses, but their warring magics wash over the settlement. It is getting distressing for those that live here.
24. Actually a large sleeping mimic dreaming that it is a town. Careful examination of the inhabitants reveals that they are always connected to the ground even when walking about.
25. A troupe of players has also arrived in town, they will be presenting a play! It sounds wonderful, it's called "The King In Yellow"
    
26. Being terrorized by a monster that stalks the night. Already several households have relocated to get away from the terror. Really the "monster" is a local landowner that wishes to seize all the fields to create a latifundium, and they would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!
    
27. Pranksgiving is tonight! Many wild and zany tricks to occur and ridiculous lies to be spoke. The first rule of Pranksgiving, you don't talk about Pranksgiving
    
28. The town is gradually being replaced with Pod-people, but not all the way yet. From the outside, everything seems very peaceful and normal. Some villagers are starting to get the suspicion that something is wrong, but the Pod-people prioritize replacing those who might blow their cover.
29. The town is under the rule of a nearby Dragon which demands sacrifices and tribute at regular intervals. If the Dragon's cave is investigated, there is a very convincing life-size dragon puppet and the warren of Kobold extorting the town.
30. The entire town is owned by one merchant. All the land and businesses are in the merchant's control, and all those who work them are paid in tokens only exchangeable at the merchant's own businesses. The tokens paid are not quite enough to cover the costs of living, and all villagers (besides the Merchants enforcers) are sliding ever deeper into debt. People are getting desperate.
31. The inhabitants of this town are not human, but rather empty human shaped skin sacks inhabited by hives of bees. The bees usually puff out the skins, and their solid hive is found in the chest cavity. The town of Bee-people appear to be an otherwise normal town with a booming fruit and flower industry.
32. Ruled by benevolent undead. All of the senior magistrates are some form of undead skeleton creatures. They seem dedicated to the communal good and are working competently as civic administrators. What would happen if ill-intentioned Necromancer were to wander by?
33. Many villagers seem suspicious and wary of outsiders, they certainly don't want you poking your nose too far into that underground stone structure. Many have concealed snake tattoos and drop code phrases such as "The skin is shed, as are our burdens" and "The forked tongue whispers truth to those that would hear it". The evil snake cult in this town is just a front for local smuggling operations, and people will calm down if you can convince them that you are not an undercover tax assessor. [Spoiler: one of the villagers IS an undercover tax assessor!] 
34. There is something in the town that has been eating the local residents, a monster capable of taking on seemingly any form. Many have attempted to flee, but the thing can follow them out of town. The safest course seems to be staying in a group and so the citizenry is holed up in the largest building that will hold them all, but the thing could be any one of them.
35. The town is overjoyed because The Master is visiting this evening! Everyone seems very excited about this event and it is the cause of much preparation and to-do, The Master only comes by every few months after all. All are welcome to attend the coming of The Master who is a giant bird headed monster that steps out of a tear that opens in mid-air. The Master proceeds to consume half a dozen random villagers, to much rejoicing, and then returns through the dimensional rift. Any attempt to interfere is most unwelcome.
36. Someone is stealing the town, brick by brick. Things are constantly going missing: spoons, clothes, doors, large public buildings. Who is doing this, where are they taking things, and what will they next?
37. Everyone in town is visited by a vengeful ghost, scorned by her lover in life looking to haunt them after her death. The problem is, she doesn't have a clear idea about who her lover was and so is haunting out randomly in hopes of hitting the right target (further quizzing reveals contradictory fragmentary details, as well as an inference that she may never have had the courage to talk to her great love while she was alive). She is about eighty percent sure she is in the right general location/time period to find her former lover. 
38. Goblinwatch is tonight
39. Every night monstrous clawed footprints appear trekking all throughout the town. Nothing that could have left such terrible prints has been spotted, but everyone has a theory. 
40. Everyone in town owns a fox, they seem perfectly tame and friendly, some are even worn over the shoulders. "Where is your fox? You don't have a fox!? How gauche."
41. The Feast of Bread is this Day! Nothing weird, just a lot of bread. A LOT... 
42. The local King/Emperor/People's Glorious Leader is in need of an army and the recruiters are in town drumming up a regiment. They cajole, bribe, threaten, and sometimes press gang "volunteers" into the army. Some people are enthused, some are trying to claim unfitness, some will try to bribe their way out, some are hiding. It's a glorious day in the regiments! 
43. The harvest has failed, people are starving, inflation has hit hard, people are getting desperate. 
44. Fire! The killer of cities has come upon this place. A great conflagration is roaring through the town, people fleeing with their belongings, looting abandoned houses, attempting vainly to stop the spread. The whole thing is chaos. 
45. A giant monster has wandered into the town and laid down to take a nap in the main square. Other than some light property damage on the way in it hasn't done anything yet, but everyone is very certain not to make too much noise.
46. A necromancer with ideas of quick and easy wealth has raised skeleton workers to plow fields, spin wool, and otherwise work the industry of the town. He has been able to undercut the wages of living workers, putting them out of a job. People are poor, disaffected, and growing angry.
47. The town is entirely covered in wards and talismans to ward off the fair folk. Many small traders offer to sell the characters wards to attach to their possessions and persons at various levels of outrageous pricing. Apparently anything (or anyone) that does not have a ward attached vanishes overnight! Proof or specific examples are less forthcoming, but are you willing to take the risk?
48. Plagues by mice, swarms and swarms of them flood through the town. The streets are completely covered in a furry sea of bodies.  
49. An angry cloud has settled over the town. Occasionally it booms out "This displeases me!" and strikes out a lightning bolt. No-one has figured out yet what it wants. 
50. A Spell Called Catherine has just been published here. 
51. No-one in town is able to die. Opinions are mixed on this development. 
52. A local horrible goose is on the loose stealing things, scaring small children, and generally causing chaos.
53. The Festival of Love! Flowers and gift-giving in abundance! Fun, feasts, and frivolity! Just make sure no local traditions aren't misinterpreted, and you end up inadvertently accepting a proposal of marriage or something
54. A University town with students running rampant, some form of local rules breaking bonanza. All fun and games right now, but sooner or later something is going to sent tensions off into a full-blown Town vs Gown riot 
55. Town is completely taken over by a wave of puritanical iconoclasm. All colours are banned, all pastimes beyond prayer and labour outlawed, all images and art destroyed. Is it unusual religious fervor or something more sinister?
56. A tower is being built at the centre of town in an oddly alien style. The townsfolk are signally dedicated to its construction, even tearing building materials from their own dwelling. All of them look exhausted as if they have not slept in days. Apparently everyone in town woke a week ago from the same haunting dream with the irresistible urge to build the tower. It is about three quarters completed. 
57. Everyone in the town is wearing blindfolds (and often bumping into inanimate objects and people). If questioned they will warn that there are monsters infesting the region that kill by the sight of them. All will become distressed in the extreme if their blindfolds are removed for any reason. There does not seem to be any sign of these creatures. 
58. Local children have befriended some kind of Eldritch Horror. All darkness, shadows, tentacles, and claws. It loves the children and loves to play, but woe betide those who claim it to be time to go to bed or eat vegetables. 
59. A local relic/priceless museum piece/statue's head has been stolen! The missing item was a centre of civic pride and vigilante groups are out in force. Who could have taken it? Goblins? Meddling kids? Foreigners? Or maybe these strange folk who just wandered into town! Expect lots of checkpoints and demands to search all luggage.
60. Everyone in town is beautiful, well-spoken, and effortlessly charming. It seems delightful, until you spend more than a few hours there and spot a better-looking version of yourself being directed towards the last place you were seen... 
61. This town has been hurled through time by two hundred years! Depending on the rate of technological and social change in your world and point in history this fact might not be immediately apparent. 
62. The town is almost universally addicted to a narcotic powder which induces euphoria, relaxation, and a sense of universal knowledge. Other than the obvious societal problems of large scale addiction, there is some terrible fate for those that consume too much...
63. A mercenary army, on its way to the front lines of a conflict in the name of the King/Emperor/People's Glorious Leader has stopped to billet themselves in town. They are in no particular rush to be anywhere, and are taking great advantage of the letter of commission that allows them to take "suche lodgynge as maye be deem'd necessarie" to steal livestock, pay bar tabs with poorly scrawled promissory notes, roughing up anyone who looks at them funny, and generally making a dangerous nuisance of themselves. The town is very much looking forwards to seeing the back of them.
64. Every night after dark chthonic, crook-backed, pale-skinned monsters climb out of the well in the middle of town and drag any people they find on the street back down into their underworld. No-one knows what happens to those who have been taken, only that they have never been seen again...
65. There is a great trade in the town for dead bodies. A dark, half-constructed tower on the edge of town is paying good gold coin for any corpses that may be delivered to it, the fresher the corpse the higher the price. No one has yet attempted to sell living people to the cloaked figures of the tower, but the whole town has grown in wealth and prosperity. The tower has certainly been growing noticeably more complete as more bodies are delivered.
66. A nearby wood is home to a tribe of hideous beast folk, every few weeks a loud and rambunctious horde of them will descend upon the town and carry off seemingly whatever they can grab that isn't nailed down, with seemingly little regard to value or use. The whole ordeal is frightening but has amounted to no more than light property damage. The beastfolk may be a little confused...
67. Chickens are going missing in a town where chickens are the primary industry! All are suspicious, and guard their chickens more and more closely, but still they go missing. No corpses, no sudden increase in neighboring chicken flocks, just gone! There is a secret cult in town, stealing and sacrificing chickens to a cockatrice in hopes to raise the avatar of the chiacken god: The Great Golden Cock; who will bring in the ending of all things in the Great B'Gawk and hatch the world like an egg 
68. Very normal until the night of the full moon, at which point all strangers must be out of town or safely locked up somewhere. Every new moon a horde of satyrs appear from their fey realm and romp into town for a giant orgy! All consensual, interdimensional good fun. The townsfolk are just paranoid some prudes will find out and shut the whole thing down. 
69. Evil snake cult bent on world domination via a secret and generationally slow process of interbreeding with humans. Has a giant sexy broodmother snake goddess hidden somewhere. 
70. Dancing plague (probably caused by an outbreak of ergotism)
71. Built on top of an ancient sleeping titan, a pit in the midst of town burrows down to mine precious ichor and tissues of the sleeping god being. Essentially the Mind Mine.
72. Tax season has come and everyone in town is desperately looking for last minute deductions, attempting to sort out the byzantine tax code, or trying to raise cash for a large bill that has come due for them. Fraud, forgery, and undercover tax assessors abound. 
73. The town is full for the annual Great Boat Race between competing trade guilds and fraternal organizations. Opportunities abound for gambling, sabotage, celebration, or even joining in on a race! Plus there's probably some demon cult that arranged this the final race on the sixtieth year of racing a great demon will be summoned, there usually is.
74. The dead have begun rising and going about their regular business. They don't seem to remember dying, and act as if nothing has happened. It's rather disconcerting, and the smell is getting worse. 
75. An entire town dead from a virulent plague. There are four vampires left in town, growing increasingly desperate as the next settlement is too far for them to venture before the sun comes up, but there is no-one left to feed on.  
76. Phantasmal monsters have been appearing in town, terrifying people. Some townfolk have been seized by irrational compulsions to dig up the streets. Firey holes in the earth have been appearing. All these are side effects of the buried Ancient Alien spaceship on which the town is built reactivating and trying to get itself out: sending out its Emergency Holograms, firing its engines, and attempting to hack the brainwaves of the local fauna. 
77. Everyone is enthusiastic about "the baby", apparently their child is imminently due. It becomes clear that everyone is referring to a giant wet egg as big as a small house that is in the basement of the Town Hall. Everyone seems to consider whatever is in the egg their own imminent child. It is kept very wet, very warm, and all sorts of rotting organic matter is placed at its base to be absorbed through the shell. Where did it come from, and what will hatch out of it any day now?
78. One of the Fair Folk is here, capriciously altering reality to their own whims, mostly to create exciting stories to observe. The town has become a mashup of fairy tale, frontier western, and telenovela. 
79. The town does not believe in magic, and no magic works within its walls. Those who do believe in magic are held to be credulous fools. 
80. The town is completely frozen in time, people and animals locked in place unmoving and (hopefully) unfeeling. Birds and butterflies hang frozen in the air, cats in mid leap, people stand in conversation or mid-apple bite. Nothing has rotted, but a thin layer of dust has settled on everything. Figures are statue stiff, but it is possible to move them (things stuck in midair retain their gravity defying properties, but things that were on the ground do not start to float if moved). 
81. Entirely full of monsters pretending (badly) to be human. Ogres wearing top hats and far too small suits, three kobolds in a trench coat, displacer beasts walking unsteadily on their hind legs, etc. Each is convinced they are the only one practicing such a charade and are terrified at being found out as all they wish to do is live life as a human.
82. An Ancient Lost City has risen from the nearby bay, destroying the local fishing economy and flooding the town in a foot of water. Ancient Philosopher Kings wander the town's streets vainly looking for someone who speaks Ancient Atlantean, whilst being pelted with rotten fruit and told to get back where they came from.
83. Nothing unusual about this town when you enter, but the next morning after staying within its bounds a giant and impenetrable dome has settled over it. Airtight and seemingly indestructible. 
84. The dimensions of the town shift about when no-one is looking and seem to break the laws of physics. Alleys that lead through and do not connect to the next street, houses bigger on the inside than the outside, tantalizing glimpses of places not of this world at all.
85. Two households, both alike in dignity, are engaged in a vicious vendetta against one another, and all who pass through are expected to take sides this long standing grudge (with consequences for having the wrong colour tied to your mast). Of course the sole heirs to either house are planning to sneak off to marry each other.
86. The town is in the midst of a witch hunt. Accusations fly wide and wild, and hangings and burnings are commonplace. Probably not a great time to be from out of town, or to work magic, or to catch any sort of attention.
87. The town has become self aware, a great spirit of the city. It is interested and invested in its inhabitants, probably defensive against harm. It might also grow restless, and wish to hunt and consume small hamlets for sustenance, or mate with other towns to form a might conurbation!
    
88. Great Scott! This town has been hurled backwards through time by an appreciable margin! People wander the tarmac paved streets holding magical communications devices to the sky in search of signal. Everyone sounds very odd due to linguistic shift. Expect different social mores and running water. The local wizard is desperately attempting to reverse the situation, ideally without anyone realizing it is his fault. 
89. A forest is taking over the Town, bit my bit. Somehow trees are growing up between cobblestones, vines and bushes breaking part walls. Every night there come more and more of them, as soon as a small copse forms sylvan creatures spontaneously generate from it. Reverse deforestation happening at an alarming rate. 
90. All fires come to life and decide to go elsewhere. Every fire within the town's limits, from torchlights to raging bonfires, decides to take a vaguely humanoid or quadrupedal form and wander off from their hearths. No new fires can be made. The fires conglomerate together into a great kaiju made from about a mile outside the town.
91. Inhabitants are interbreeding with the terrible aquatic monsters of the nearby lake/bay, these hybrid offspring slowly transform in late middle age and eventually leave the surface to live in ancient undersea cities for eternity. The sea demons have dark designs for the surface world but are also immortal, so their plans still have about a thousand years before anyone has to worry about a fish-demon invasion.
92. A Plague of Stephen has hit the town. Upon contracting the disease the patient suffers a fever, then a brief period of unconsciousness, then awakes believing themselves to be a man named Stephen somehow transported into this body. They have no memory of their former life, but a detailed memory of Stephen's (up to falling into a large fungus colony whilst exploring a cave). Stephen remembers being a rather inquisitive adventurous sort of about twenty-eight years old. The Stephens do not share a mind, their memories starting from their "mind swap" are distinct depending on experience, but every single Stephen is eager to return to his own body. The plague is very contagious.
93. The windmills of the town and surrounding country have lifted themselves out of the ground and stride around like giants made of stone and wood. Is it just mills, or will other buildings get ideas above their movement rate? What is causing these ambulatory mills, and why do they need to eat cattle, donkeys, and other large farm animals? How will grain be milled? Clearly a hero of the age is needed. 
94. An angel/god/saint/local equivalent has seemingly appeared in the town square to dispense justice. It is seen as a sign of the end of days. They appear to be the genuine article, although their interpretation of their own scriptures is unorthodox and the punishment for transgressions ranges from brutally ironic to idiosyncratically playful to bureaucratically mundane.
95. Election season is upon us for the town council! Baby shaking, hand kissing, and other traditional events abound! Also a chance for bribery, voter suppression, industrial espionage, and all sorts of other fun. Democracy manifest!
96. People do not die of old age but instead become increasingly insectoid from their seventh decade until they become giant cockroaches at about one hundred. These elders are shut away in attics and cellars as embarrassments. This has been going on for a generation and no-one knows why. 
97. A town full of cats that act in the manner of a human society... possibly. They all have tiny buildings to live and maybe work in, and seem to have tiny marketplaces, and tiny social structures... or maybe you're anthropomorphising them. Is this even a kingdom?
98. Centre of a secret, yet benevolent and kind, snake cult. Chthonic secret rituals in underground temples venerating snakes as a symbol of rebirth and immortality. Other than being possibly heretical, completely harmless.
99. Plagued by a flock of Lawyerbirds and their incessant litigation against everything from nightly noise to lack of corn in the birdfeeder 
100. Probably nothing... 
     
     
     
     
     
     

The Well of Lost Things: A Very Non-Euclidean Dungeon

There is a small, abandoned stone well in an overgrown field. It looks old, ivy and creepers worked into the crumbling mortar. The rim of the well stands to about knee height, and the opening is wide enough for an adult human to comfortably climb down into. Looking down into the well does not reveal the expected interior, but rather a drop into a marble chamber.

The map of this dungeon is very easy, as every room has the same floorplan, a five-sided room with an arched doorway in each wall. Getting into the dungeon requires simply a rope, and getting out requires ascending the way you came. However, once the well is out of sight it will never be found again... or at least never in the same place.

The layout is easy as well. Do you have a d12? Of course you do. Well, do you have a d12 that you're not using? I joke of course, the d12 is never used! Anyway, joking aside, the way to keep a track of this map is that every room number corresponds to the side of the die with that value on it. You just need to have one in front of you and keep turning it to see where people end up.

A good way to ensure you are not getting turned around is to map a standard "room" template with each exit labelled as A-E. To orient the path through rooms without indicating the overall plan to the players, the door characters enter from is always A. If you keep a list of the numbers travelled through so far, you should be able to follow their path with ease (although the players may become quickly lost, that's sort of the point). It may also be an idea to blu-tack your d12 to the table on its current side to prevent accidental rolling.

Room Map

Room 1.
A character descending into the well would need to lower a rope, as the well goes down two meters before opening into a room three meters high. The room is luxuriously tiled in marble, but somewhat decayed. The air is cold and still, as if undisturbed for an age.

Room 2.
In this hall there are five empty plinths. Nothing happens to anything placed on these plinths... while observed. As soon as no one is observing an object on one of the plinths, it vanishes. If the owner of the object dives into the pool in Room 8 they will find this object (or all objects if multiple pieces were lost). If the objects are not recovered before the party leaves the well, they will end up in the world again as great treasures of antiquity.

Room 3.
There is a single five-sided pillar in the middle of the room, covered on all sides with clear mirrored glass. Any character reflected in the pillar seems off somehow, a little flatter and less realistic in some indefinable way. Any character that touches the surface of the mirror feels something pulled from them and into their reflection, the reflection subsequently seems more real and solid. Each side of the pillar takes a different attribute (randomly determined on the first instance of being touched).

1. The character loses all body heat, they no longer suffer ill effects from extreme cold (although can be frozen in ice if the moisture around them freezes) and will be invisible to anything that relies on heat to see.
2. The character no-longer casts a shadow or a reflection (with the exception of the reflection in the pillar) spells such as mirror image will no longer duplicate them.
3. The character no longer makes any noise with their footfalls, they can still use their voice, but this is the only noise they will be able to make. They will not be able to play an instrument (although they can still sing), clap their hands, or make noise by beating their shield. 
4. The character no longer has any scent. They cannot be tracked by smell, and neither will any ordure or perfume cling to them. 
5. The character no-longer leaves tracks, they do not leave footprints or broken twigs in their wake. Neither can they draw in the dirt or carve into stone, the material simply returns to its form once their eyes are no-longer on the surface. Objects can still be broken by them, but any attempt to leave a trail will automatically fail, be it breadcrumbs, chalk marks, or a skein of wool. They can still write in books, but notes left for others rather than given will blow away in the wind.

If a character touches all five sides, they are wholly consumed by the pillar and replaced by a doppelgänger who retains all their lost aspects but is their reflection come to life and retains none of their memories or attachments. Their sole drive will be to escape the Well of Lost Things as soon as possible. If the mirrored pillar is broken before the doppelgänger escapes the Well of Lost Things, the copy will melt into a pool of water and the original character will be found within the fluid filled centre of the pillar with all their attributes restored to them. The pillar's surface is as hard as diamond, so there would need to be something pretty special to break it. 

If the doppelgänger escapes, there is now an NPC copy of the former character running around the world without memories or attachments, but with all their skills and abilities. 

Room 4.
The room contains statues of all different figures all worked in the same marble as the floors and walls. They are unusual in that they do not appear to be gods, kings, or heroes but rather ragged dungeon crawling types. They are also posed in odd positions, as if looking at the room or inspecting the empty air in front of them. They are all incredibly detailed.

If the party leaves the room and returns, the next time they enter there will be statues of them. Their poses are almost a snapshot in time of them looking around the room. If, at any point, four statues are created of one character the oldest statue will have come to life and wandered from the room (a character will only ever see three statues of themselves; with the ones created earliest having disappeared). The living statues have one desire: to kill their double and steal their last breath so that they may become a living thing and flee the well. Any character that has lost their reflection to the mirrored pillar in Room 3 will no longer create statues of themselves if they pass through.

Once there is a living statue of a character, there is a 1 in 6 chance of encountering the living statue in any new room they enter. If the character makes a lot of noise (ie starts shouting) the living statue will arrive in that within one turn. 

The living statues are 4 HD creatures with AC as Plate, they have a human level intelligence and can communicate in the languages that their double knows. They will act reasonably with other characters and attempt to explain the necessity of killing the one that created them. If the creature does kill the character and steal their last breath, the stone of their form transmutes to the flesh of the character and they become a perfect copy along with copies of all the character's possessions. They retain the knowledge of the deceased character, but always remember that they are the superior stone copy.

It is the decision of the DM whether the duplicate is an NPC or given back to the player.

Room 5.
The room is cold, and frost rime is on the walls. There is a naked invisible ghost trapped in this room, it lacks form and substance but can communicate through whispers and writing in the frost. The ghost desperately wishes to leave, but you must be fully clothed to exit. If it can trick a character into disrobing it will steal their clothes and regain its form, passing its curse on to the naked character. The former ghost will immediately attempt to escape the Well of Lost Things.

Room 6.
A chest made of faint blue light floats suspended in the middle of the room. The chest is intangible, but the lock is obvious. If the key is found it will open easily. Inside there is what looks like a compass, but one that does not point north.

As soon as a character touches the compass roll on the table below (credit to Anxiety Wizard), the compass will unerringly point to that lost thing. Once that lost thing has been recovered, roll on the table again to determine what the compass points to next. The distance to the lost thing is up to the GM.

3d6

3-5: Something of only sentimental value: a letter in a dropped satchel, a lost toy beloved by a child, a locket containing a lock of hair, a valued love poem that fell behind a bureau.

6-8: A valuable but replaceable thing, something worth about one hundred money units such as a precious stone fallen from a piece of jewelry or a fine helmet that fell off a cart and into a deep ravine.

9-12: Something not really replaceable worth at least five hundred money units, a precious heirloom weapon, a golden signet ring of office, a large and well-cut gemstone. There should be at least a little risk in recovering it, it could be on a body at the bottom of a dangerous crevasse or lost in a bear's den.

13-15: Something that is not only valuable, but also important (if only locally). The lost deed to a manor house, the ancestral sword of a noble family, or a valuable reliquary. It would be worth at least one thousand money units as an object but may be even more valuable to the interested parties. It is also in a commensurately dangerous place, such as in a room in a dungeon.

16-17: Something valuable enough to have stories told about it in the area and is worth at least five thousand money units, although again it may be worth even more to interested parties. This should something that was given up on because it was very deliberately hidden and is very hard to get your hands on; or it was lost in such a treacherous place that no-one has dared to retrieve it. This is the level of magical swords, ancient tomes of wonder, and crowns of lost kingdoms. Whatever it is, it's an adventure to get to the place and grab it from where it fell, or to recover it from the heart of its trap-laden hiding place.  

18: Something that is very actually priceless, beyond wealth, beyond dreams, the sort of thing that lives have been given up for willingly. The Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the Flower of Immortality, all examples of this sort of thing. Finding this treasure should have world altering consequences, something Kings and Emperors have desired, something which slews of adventurers have dedicated their lives in vain to recovering. This is also the level of treasure that unrecovered items from the plinths in Room 2 become.

Room 7.
There is a chain slack against the floor attached to the central tile of the room. If the ceiling is inspected there in a ring through which the chain could pass through to create an elementary fulcrum. If this is done the central stone can be lifted out of the ground, revealing it to be a long block sunk into the ground measuring about two and a half meters in height/depth. Attached to the bottom of the block by a simple ring is the key to the chest in Room 6. However, due to the dimensions, it is impossible for a single person to lift the block and retrieve the key, a second person is necessary to take the key from the bottom of the block. The key is attached securely, but the ring has a latch which is easy enough to undo if you have time and two hands.

Room 8.
A large portion of the floor in this room has been shattered, as if a great impact had occurred. The flagstones are cracked and splintered around the edge of the great hole in the floor that covers one third of this room (spanning out from one of the corners). The hole is into the living rock, and it is clearly not worked stone but looks like a natural cave formation. The hole is filled to about thirty centimeters below the floor level with clear water. Looking down into the pool will reveal that it descends about three or four meters. There is the glint of something shiny at the bottom, and there are obviously some objects down there, but it is unclear what they are.

Any character that dives down to investigate will return with a lost thing. The first things to be found will be anything from the plinths in Room 2. Next, any object they have personally lost will be found. If there is nothing that they have lost or placed on the plinth, roll on the table below to see what they find.

1d12

1.  A small inconsequential item such as a toy, a needle, a piece of fabric sewn with ribbons, a bell or other small instrument. The sort of thing easily lost and easily replaced.
2.  Keys; could be someone's house keys, keys to a strongbox, keys to a fort or to an ancient tomb. There is no clue as to what they unlock, but they might unlock something eventually.
3.  Small change, a handful of coins from a variety of countries and time periods. Perhaps some of them would be worth a lot to an antiquarian or a numismatist. As coins they are about 2d6 copper pieces or equivalent.
4.  A small statue small enough to be held with one hand. A religious icon, a wonderful non-representational work of art, a bust of a great historical person, or maybe a lovely little kitty statue. The materials aren't valuable, but it is fine work, must be worth 50 money units at least.
5.  A single piece of fine jewelry worth around one hundred money units. A ring, a gold chain, a bejeweled necklace, or any other such thing.
6.  A small chest containing d1000 money units. 
7.  A precious gem worth 500 money units.
8.  A random Magic item, 1) Magic Ring, 2) Wand, 3) Gauntlet, 4) Demon Coin, 5) Cloak, 6) Crystal Cat Statuette 
9.  A very nice weapon. A jewel encrusted dagger, a sword with a hilt chased in gold, a ceremonial spear from a long-lost kingdom. Whatever it is, it is a mundane weapon of the finest quality and craft. Possibly made by the elves of Gondolin for the Goblin Wars, for Dragons and Goblins destroyed Gondolin long ago.
10.  A single piece of finely wrought armour. Could be a breastplate, or a helmet, a cuirass of bronze, or a hauberk of chainmail. Maybe it is a single lobstered gauntlet. One piece in any case, things tend not to get lost as a set.
11.  Valuable item that would fulfill a quest. A lost signet ring of a noble family, the final seal of a fallen Empire, the key to the locked chamber of great monument, the map to the Crypt of the New world. Something valuable beyond its monetary value. 
12.  Item of legendary value sought for across the world. One of the legendary lost tomes of Phandail, the subtle knife that can cut between worlds, the one ring, or similar treasure. Something that, if found, would literally change the world. 

Additionally, if a character who swims to the bottom of the pool has lost anything of their person through injury or illness (ie missing eye, hand, limb, etc.) the missing appendage will have been restored to them when they surface. Any character who has lost an aspect of themselves to the mirrored pillar of Room 3 has this aspect restored to them.

Room 9.
In this room there is a single small pedestal in the middle of the room, upon the pedestal is a red button. In a circle around the button is inscribed glyphs for the numbers 1-20. When the button is pressed, the portals to the chamber are suddenly sealed with pale, cloudy, and opaque walls of force. The glyphs around the button begin to glow with red light. Every three seconds one of the glyphs will wink out, counting down. Every time the button is pressed will cause the countdown to reset, also anything damaged, destroyed, or changed during the countdown will be restored. Wounds taken during the countdown will be healed, spell slots and mana expended will be restored, spilled liquids will be returned to containers. Once the countdown ends the walls of force vanish. There are no other effects.

What is happening is that every time the button is pressed, time resets within the room. No matter how many cycles of the reset within the room occur, from the outside it will only appear that the walls of force appear for a minute and then fall away.

Room 10.
There is a tree growing from a point in the floor. The paving around it has splintered, as if the tree erupted up through the floor with great force. The leaves of the tree are in shades of yellow, gold, orange and brown, as if it is autumn. The floor of the room is carpeted in a thick blanket of fallen leaves. If any of these leaves are inspected, it will be seen that each leaf bears writing upon it, in a scratchy alien hand. It is not inked upon the leaves, but rather grown into the pattern of the leaf itself.

Each of the leaves holds a secret that has been forgotten by every living soul in the world. The leaves on the tree hold no writing, but once they have fallen the writing appears to have always been there (the leaves only fall when the secret is truly forgotten). If characters go looking through for secrets, roll on the table below to see what they find (or think something up pertinent to your cosmology).

2d6

2. Local village gossip (Ronald the butcher has been rogering Gwenyth the fishwife all these years), very clear to what it relates to, but only of concern to inconsequential people long dead

3. The correct ritual responses for an ancient mystery cult long vanished from the world.

4. An important secret entrance to an ancient tomb. However where it could be located is not at all clear.

5. The true and terrifying secret of the nearby royal dynasty's origins, possibly something that could be used to blackmail a prince or bring down a dynasty.

6. The details of a now lost work of art. The melody of a forgotten song, the plot to a missing play by the greatest writer of the age, an epic poem in an ancient tongue

7. The location of a lost tomb, abandoned temple, or other dungeon-like location along with a clue about one of the puzzles, traps, or other perils involved there.

8. The lost history of a fallen empire, including the locations of some of the greatest and now lost cities.

9. A forgotten spell, once written but now lost to the sands of time.

10. The details of a great sunken continent, and the secret sciences that their ancient wizard priests knew of.

11. The true name of some great demon, lich, archangel, or other supernatural being. This secret is one of great power in the right hands.

12. A great cosmological secret of the world! The truth that the dragons sleep in the earth and will rise once more! The nature of gods and their purpose in the cosmos. The reason why the world is an Orrery!

Room 11.
This room contains the Kairophagus, the Time Sphynx. It looks like a Sphynx (the mythical kind, not the hairless cat; lion body, eagle wings, human chest and head), but its plumage and fur is between midnight black and beep blue, its eyes without iris or pupil are the color of the sky on a bright summer day. It wears a royal headdress and carries itself with a regal bearing. It is clearly far too large to move between rooms but does not seem overly concerned about its predicament.

The Sphynx is genial and polite but will demand tribute to let the adventurers pass through in peace. The Sphynx wishes to have secrets. It will accept any secrets provided and consume them. Any secret rendered to the Sphynx in this fashion (including any harvested from Room 10) will cease to be true, it will never have been true. Any tragic backstory will never have happened, secret crushes will evaporate like mist in the morning, former shameful crimes will be wiped from existence. Additionally, the Sphynx accepts lies, however if a character lies about a secret that secret then becomes true (as the Sphynx eats the falsehood of it). 

The creature is from outside time and thus incredibly dangerous however it will not attack unless the characters first offer violence. Even if a fight breaks out within its chamber (such as the arrival of a living statue) it will not attack unless someone attacks it first. It will appear threatening if needed in order to exact its tribute however. The Sphynx (HD 8, AC as Chain, Attack #3, Damage 1-8) is a large and scary monster in its own right, even beyond its special abilities.

Anything struck by the Sphynx's claws ceases to exist. If a character in armour is hit the armour is rent from existence. If a weapon or piece of equipment is attacked, that weapon is destroyed. If the Sphynx decides to eat a wizard's spellbook, all the spells within are unmade, and never existed in the world. All damage the Sphynx does is from permanent hitpoints and cannot be healed (that's just always the number of hitpoints you had). If the Sphynx licks its wounds it can eat the reality from them, instantly healing (it forfeits its attacks to give proper attention to grooming however). 

Room 12.
There is a well in the roof of this chamber, much like the well leading to the surface in Room 1. However the well in this chamber, it can be seen, leads to the roof of Room 1 (if a rope has been left dangling, it can be seen stretching upwards to the floor) the combined thickness of the roofs being about one meter. If a character were to climb through the well in the roof, they will find themselves in Room 1 (the gravity gradually and disconcertingly shifts part way between the two chambers). This character, looking back up through the well will now see Room 12. 

Any character that passes through this way is now trapped in the Well of Lost Things (having become a lost thing themselves). Even if they climb back through the well to Room 12, and walk back to Room 1, they will not see the way back to the surface, but the way back to Room 12 (characters who did not climb through the well in Room 12 see the way out).

If the trapped character dives into the pool in Room 8, they will see a passage in the floor of the pool visible only to them. Following this through they will find further down the bottom of the same pool (gravity having changed much like the link between Room 12 and Room 1) and the surface of the pool above them. Having swum through this, they will find the way out in Room 1 again. 

On Traps

Traps are simultaneously one of the most fundamental aspects of D&D style gaming, and also one of the most difficult mechanics to implement within the rest of the game. The two ways it seems to work is either by 1) being so much busywork and rolling as to not matter, or 2) so open ended that they essentially invalidate the very idea of the thief or analogous class.

I have been pondering how to properly run traps for a long time, so many adventures include them and they are such a part of the game's style and feel. Even the real world tomb of Qin Shi Huang had crossbow traps primed to shoot at graverobbers. However, I don't want every trap to be an escalating series of difficulty checks of "I roll to check for traps. I roll to disarm the trap." So in which case, how to do traps?

Now, smarter and better writers than me have already written about this, but on the off chance you find my writing more entertaining or clearer to understand or maybe you just aren't reading any other game blogs, here is my take on the whole traps issue, presented as my Rules Of How To Do Traps Gooder:

 

Rule 1: Give Clues

I like to be pretty clear with my players that there are two speeds to travel in a dungeon, the first is carefully and the second is pissbolting. I'm assuming that, when traveling through a dungeon at careful speed they are being cautious and checking the floor, and walls, and looking out for anything dangerous. So "You notice a tripwire running across the path" or "That bit of floor looks suspicious".  

Maybe I just really hate perception checks for this sort of thing, as simply making the roll/calling for a roll causes a lot of double guessing and meta knowledge, and bogs down the game anyway. I guess the passive perception feature (which I would like to say, one of the great design features of introduced in Fourth Edition D&D) sort of squares this circle, however this sort of cuts off part of the game if you don't have a passive skill high enough. Rather than being something to engage with the trap is just an out of nowhere "fuck you for adventuring" thing.

I think the board-game Heroquest (which is awesome by the way) deals with this well. As long as you have an empty room or corridor you can use your turn to check for traps, and all traps will be revealed to you. It's a sacrifice of action, so traps being hidden has some purpose, however other than that there's no barrier to entry as far as interacting with traps goes. The exception to this is when there are monsters present you cannot search for traps, so running around a room with monsters in it is a trade off between the tactical advantage of closing distance and positioning within the room, and the unknown quantity of any given space.

Pissbolting is, of course, another matter. You don't get to search for sneaky threats to your health and existence whilst running headlong through a corridor being chased by a big awful shoggoth or the like. It's sort of that trade off, like with the example of Heroquest above, where you are taking the risk of traps as a trade off to increased speed away from more certain peril. Also it awards mapmaking and/or marking traps you have found and bypassed.

 

The perfect trap for players, if not their characters

Rule 2: Design your traps

So, now your players know there is a trap there in front of them. What do they do now? There is always the possibility that you make disarming the trap a roll, but as I said already I don't really like this as a solution. Either the trap goes off as a fail state (which means you are limited in the range of traps, unless you like lots of "save or die" bullshit), the trap is unsolvable as a fail state (same problems with fail state trigger, with the added downside of effectively walling off parts of your adventure), or leads to dog-piling on the skill check (which is tedious). Trap solving as a unique class ability is also a 

I prefer traps as puzzles to overcome or avoid. In order to do this, you need to know how your traps work. You don't need to go all out and design a complete real world working mechanism, but a basic understanding of the trigger mechanism as well as the trap proper. 

Once you have an understanding of how you want your trap to work, it leads on to:

Rule 3: Let them look

The key to a great RPG is player agency, and the key to agency is the free flow of information in order to facilitate meaningful informed choices. Don't willfully obfuscate anything about the trap design that the characters could see, or reasonably be able to puzzle out.

For example, if the first indication that the players can see is that there is something not right about a certain floor tile, they can assume "generic trap" and take steps to avoid that tile entirely as the trigger mechanism. However, they can also look closer and find whether it is a cantilevered floor that will spin out from under unwary feet, or a pressure plate that will trigger some other spring loaded nastiness.

Both traps can be bypassed by leaping over the flagstone in question, however this involves the risk of failing the leap and so another solution must be found. A gangplank could be placed across the cantilevered floor in a way that would not help in the case of the pressure plate. This leads on to:

Rule 4: Roll to Disarm?

Something I don't like being skill checks in terms of traps. Much like the idea of rolling to see what you notice, it just seems to turn all traps into a series of increasing situations to roll dice somewhat arbitrarily. When there is one "disarm traps" roll, it leads to the bifurcating path of the trap going unsolved, or incentivizing dog-piling onto the check. 

I'd prefer letting the ingenuity of the players determine how best to deal with the problem before them. If there is a tripwire before them, they could of course step over it, leaving it as a hazard for when they return (or possibly for anything following them), or they could attempt to disarm it by cutting the wire. What if, however, the wire is designed to snap and trigger the trap? This leads back to Rule 3 and letting the players determine the difference between the two types of tripwire if they care to look. If they see holes in the wall, will there be spikes or poisonous snakes that come out of there? Will the trap reset itself or is it a "one and done" hazard?

For this style to work you have to both understand the nature of the trap in a broad sense, as well as be open with the flow of information, being unafraid of giving players the leaps of logic their characters would make in the situation. A character should be able to see if a tripwire is designed to pull a trigger, or snap to release a weight, and both would be countered differently.

 

Caveat 1: Don't be an asshole

A trap should be a challenge or a trade off, either way there should be a free flow of information. A trap can be a tax on HP for passing though, or a puzzle to be figured, or both, however it is best that the players know what they are signing up for in advance

Also, don't be afraid to make traps easy to solve. They're not the be all and end all of a dungeon, they're supposed to be solved. It's nice to have victories, and lessons learned and implemented can make people feel very clever and accomplished.

Caveat 2: Do be an asshole

Once you have a good grounding of how traps work, that they are puzzles of observation and problem solving, then you can start subverting expectations. This is when you can start pulling out Grimtooth's Traps to start messing with players familiar with traps (it's good to make Kobolds particular terrors for overly arcane and difficult to solve things, playing into the individually weak, collectively strong trope). Trap the trap finders, in fact this is the only situation in which these overly complex things can work. If it's just "roll to find/disarm trap" there's really no difference between a Rube Goldberg machine and a crossbow bolt. It's where the fun and games of this sort of thing is.

 

Pictured: The Author hoisted by his own petard

Duhander: A Game People Can Play

So, this is not a Fantasy Heartbreaker™ however it does share a lot of the same DNA. I don't expect this game to sell, or take the world by storm, or anything like that. 

 During one of the many lockdowns/stay at home orders/whatever you call them, I wanted to play D&D. I had also just moved across the globe after many years away. I put the call out for anyone who wanted to play, and many people who volunteered had never played before. I didn't really want to waste time with trying to get people to learn the entirety of 5E (which people inevitably do) or get scared off by a large rulebook, so I wrote a game that would be pretty easy to grok by anyone who hadn't played RPGs before, but still contain the things people expect from popular culture: twenty sided dice, critical hits, and bards. Also I wanted it to be quick and easy to learn, and not need too much math.

I hope I did that, and here's my first sort of stab at it. (This is just the player-facing stuff, the GM stuff resides in my head for now). 

Credit for Colour Images: Isabella McGregor

WELCOME TO THIS GAME

This game is a lot like Dungeons and Dragons, or really many other roleplaying games. So, if you’ve played one of them before you can probably skim this whole thing and make it up as you go along more or less. In this game you take the character of a rough and tumble adventurer exploring strange places, discovering long forgotten temples, plundering priceless cultural artifacts, and generally being adventurous. There is one player called the GM who will lay out the world and the non-player people (they are likely the one who wrote this).

STATS

These are important numbers telling you how strong, or swift, or smart, or sexy you are. They’re used for a bunch of things. There are four of them. Want more? Go play some other more complicated game!

 

STRENGTH: How strong you are, also your starting health. You can carry as many items with weight as you have strength and still move about. If you carry more, you move slowly and can’t do much. If you have more than twice this number, you can’t lift it at all

 

DEXTERITY: This is how nimble and agile you are. This is the number that something will have to beat to hit you with a sword or something.

 

INTELLIGENCE: This is how smart you are, and how much you notice. This is the number that something sneaky will have to beat to hide from you. It is also your health if something attacks you with mind-powers.

 

CHARM: This is your force of personality, if it is a higher number people are more likely to be positively disposed towards you. It’s also the number to hit you with a magic spell or mind powers.

 

“How do I find these thing out?” I hear you cry. That’s easy! Roll three six sided dice, and there you have one of your numbers. Do this four times, and you have all of your numbers.

 

BONUS

These are a bonus you add to your twenty sided dice roll when attacking or doing something with a skill or the like. Take your stat number and divide it by four (rounding down) and you have your bonus![1]

 

CLASS

This sort of tells you what special powers and things you have in the game. There are five roles.

 

FIGHTER

You are the best at fighting. You can use as many points of armour as you like, and all weapons except the battleaxe. You also get a double dodge bonus when using a shield. You add your level bonus to all your attack rolls. You keep your bonus when fighting with a weapon in each hand. When you hit, you can roll your weapon damage twice and keep the best result. Every time you level up you get to add four (4) points of health.

 

THIEF

You are sneaky and can pick locks. You add your level bonus to your attack rolls when using light or small weapons. You can wear up to your level in points of armour. You keep your bonus when fighting with a weapons in both hands if at least one of them is small. If you attack a creature unawares, or one already fighting someone else, you get extra damage equal to your level. To pick a lock or to sneak you add your Dexterity bonus and your level to a roll of a twenty sided die. Every time you level up you get to add three (3) points of health.

 

BARBARIAN

You are big and strong and tough. You cannot use any kind of armour, it is for weak city folk after all. However, you always reduce physical damage done to you by one. You cannot use any ranged weapon save a throwing spear, as to fight at range is a sign of cowardice. You can use all melee weapons, especially the battleaxe and add your level bonus to all your attack rolls. You keep your level bonus even when fighting with a weapon in each hand. You can spend your health points to change the number of any physical dice roll, and if you move the number up to a 20 it counts as a critical success, and if you spend them on damage you can take the number above the maximum roll. If you are at zero health points, you can continue to act until you drop dead at -10 hit points, whilst acting in this sate you have as many attacks as you have levels each round, can use a two-handed weapon in each hand, and add your Strength bonus to all damage rolls. Every time you level up you get to add five (5) points of health.

 

BARD

You are a magic weaver of tales and Master of Lore. You add your level bonus to your attack rolls when using small, light or medium weapons. You can wear up to your level in points of armour. You have a pool of healing every day equal to your Charm Stat plus your level (you can give any amount of this to anyone as an action, including yourself). Bards know a lot of stories and secrets of the world, and you can be expected to know most living languages. Every time you level up you get to add two (2) points of health, and one (1) magic point. You start knowing how to enchant humans, every time you level up you learn one (1) new level of Bard Magic.

 

WIZARD

You are a weaver of magic and master of the arcane. You add your level bonus to your attack rolls when using small weapons. You can wear up to half your level (rounded down) in points of armour. Wizards are big nerds who know far too much, and you can be expected to know most dead languages and most of the mystical living ones. Wizards can also store spells in scrolls and try to summon demons. Every time you level up you get to add one (1) point of health, and two (2) magic points. You start with a spellbook to write down spells in and knowing control over one (1) element, every time you level up you learn control over one (1) new element.

 

TYPES OF WEAPONS

There are essentially infinite types of weapons, but they really boil down to these ones

 

Small weapons: Slings, knives, broken bottles, etc. Do 1d4 Damage

 

Light weapons: Short swords, bows, axes, clubs, etc. Do 1d6 Damage

 

Medium weapons: Longswords, longbows, pikes, crossbows, etc. Do 1d8 Damage

 

Heavy weapons: Zweihanders, warhammers, etc. Need two hands, do 1d10 Damage

 

Battleaxe: Giant huge weapons, needs two hands and only used by Barbarians. Do 1d12 Damage

 

Pretty much you can have whatever kind of weapon you want, but it just does the damage listed. If it shoots/is thrown, you use your Dexterity bonus. If you go up and hit someone, it uses your Strength bonus.

 

The individual qualities of the weapon depends on what you want and what the GM will let you get away with.

 

FIGHTING WITH TWO WEAPONS

Totally cool right? Being like Arthur Dayne in Game of Thrones, or Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, or Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! I mean, yeah, but you have to know what you’re doing.

 

When you fight with two weapons you get to make a separate attack with each one. However, unless noted in your class description, you lose your level and stat bonus to both the rolls. You cannot fight with two two-handed weapons, unless you are a Barbarian who is bleeding out.

 

DODGE SCORE

This number is equal to your Dexterity score. This is the number that enemies need get on their roll if they want to hit you

 

SHIELDS

Shields can help you dodge in hand to hand combat, and if things are thrown at you. There are three types of shield.
Small Shield: Like a buckler, adds +1 to dodge

Medium Shield: Like a knight’s shield adds +2 to dodge

Large Shield: Like a pavise or kite shield adds +3 to dodge

Parrying Dagger: Like a main gauche. Adds +1 to dodge in melee and also counts as a second weapon

 

TYPES OF ARMOUR

Like weapons, armour can be whatever you want it to be, but it has one of these properties. Each point of armour takes one point away from your dodge bonus, but also reduces one point from incoming damage. Each point of armour has one weight, partly because it is heavy, and partly it is harder to carry other things the more armour you have on. If you wear more armour than your class allows, you lose all your class abilities whilst doing so (because you can’t move well enough to do your thing)

 

+1 (Padded clothing)

 

+2 (Quilted leather, Ewok pelt)

 

+3 (Boiled leather, that wooden armour from Hook)

 

+4 (Bronze Scales, Studded Leather)

 

+5 (Chainmail hauberk)

 

+6 (hoplite panoply, half plate)

 

+7 (lorica segmentata, Ned Kelly cosplay)

 

+8 (14^th Century Knight’s Armour)

 

+9 (15^th Century Full Plate, Dragon Bone Armour)

 

+10 (16^th Century Knight’s armour, Robocop but without the power supply)

 

SAVES

If you want to dodge out of the way of something, or resist a magic attack, or something similar, you roll a twenty sided die and try to roll UNDER your relevant stat.

Most poisons and diseases require a strength save, most dodging requires a dexterity save, most illusion magic requires an intelligence save, and most attempts at mind control require a charm save. 

Pretty much if you are actively doing something it is an ability test, and if you are passively reacting you are doing a save.

COMBAT

Combat is measured in rounds (a notional unit of time about 6 seconds long). Each round you may do three things. 1) Move, you can move your regular amount of movement (about 10 metres, or 30’ in old money); 2) Take an action, this can be to make an attack, to cast a spell, to aid someone who is dying, to run an extra move’s worth, to interact with an ancient piece of machinery, or whatever you want to do that would conceivably take six seconds to do; 3) A free action, like six seconds worth of talking, anything you could do whilst simultaneously doing an action.

 

Every character acts in a round, how this is determined is by rolling a twenty sided die and adding your Dexterity bonus. Higher is better. After everyone involved has had a turn the next round begins, and continues until all parties agree that combat is over.

 

To attack you roll a twenty sided die and add your melee (if hitting with a sword) or range (if throwing or shooting something) bonus to the roll. If this equals or exceeds the target’s dodge (dexterity stat minus any armour points) then you hit them, and can roll your weapon’s damage.

 

CRITICAL HITS

If you roll a Twenty (20) on your roll to hit, this is a Critical Hit! Everyone cheers and makes a big fuss! Plus, after you roll your damage, you get to add the most that your dice could have rolled on top of that (ie small weapons would add 4, light weapons would add 6, medium weapons 8, etc.), and you can choose to do something cool as well, like trip up your opponent, or flip up onto a chandelier, or anything else the GM will let you get away with.

 

GETTING HURT

If you get bitten by a monster, or hit by a trap, or do something else foolhardy and dangerous, you are liable to lose health. You can regain health by having a rest overnight. Every time you rest without being disturbed (by wandering monsters or the like) you regain your Strength Bonus in health.If you rest in comfort (like staying at an inn with nice food and a warm undisturbed place to sleep) you get all your health back.

 

However, if at any point you go down to zero health, you are bleeding out (unless you are a Barbarian). You topple over in a faint. You have three rounds of being unconscious then you are dead. Someone else can use their action to stabilise you and stop you from dying, or to go through your pockets and look for loose change. However even if you get back up again, once you drop you may suffer a permanent injury. You will also die if your health goes to -10.

For more information on Death and Dying see here.

 

LEVELLING UP

What everyone came here to do! You level up by experience points, which you get for exploring (everytime you go somewhere new, be in a dungeon room or a new continent you get experience), finding treasure, overcoming puzzles and problems, and defeating monsters.

 

When you level up you get whatever your class entry says you get (a variable amount of health, and a greater ability to hit things usually), plus a chance to change your stats. Every time you level up, you choose one Stat to try and improve. You then roll a twenty sided die, and if you roll under you stat it permanently improves by 1, but if you roll over your stat it goes up by 2!

 

MAGIC

Magic is always the long boring bit of the rules, so if you’re not going to play a Bard or a Wizard stop reading here and go off and do something productive instead. Or go have fun playing the game! Only the nerds who play Magic people need to read this.

 ...

In this game there are two types of magic: Bard Magic and Wizard Magic. Bards have the power of healing, charm, and knowledge. Wizards shoot fireballs, and other such malarkey.

 

BARD MAGIC

Bard magic is the magic of knowing things. This is often songs, riddles, cunning tricks, or little known secrets. Bards learn how to talk to and Enchant creatures, and to heal people. Bards begin knowing Talking to and Enchanting of humans, and learn other things by stages. They learn one type to talk to at first level. In order to learn to Enchant a type of thing, you must first learn to talk to it.

1 Beasts (Bears, Cats, Dogs, Horses, things that walk around on land)

2 Birds (Eagles, Chickens, Ducks, Bats, Dinosaurs, things that go in the sky or in the water)

3 Bushes (Plants, trees, large banks of seaweed)

4 Bugbears (magical but physical beasts, manticores, chimerae, krakens, giant ants, all sorts of things within the realm of the physically monstrous)

5 Boogums (outsider things: angels, demons, elder gods, spirits, ghosts, undead, etc.)

In order to learn to talk to Bugbears Bards must first master all the arts of Enchanting the first three forms of life. And in order to talk to Boogums, Bards must know how to Enchant Bugbears.

Bards have a pool of healing every day equal to their Charm Stat plus their level. They can heal any sort of creature they can talk to. As an action they can bestow any amount of their healing points on to any creature, including themselves.

Each Bard has as many magic points per day as they have levels, unused magic points disappear when the total is recharged with a night’s rest. Magic points can be used to track a type of creature that the Bard can talk to, or can be turned into a number of Healing Points equal to the Bard's Charm bonus.

A Bard can use magic points to try and Enchant a person or creature (more stubborn, aggresive, or powerful things might require more magical oomph) making the creature is immediately friendly towards them. This isn't mind control and will end if they ask the creature to do something really stupid, but it will be willing to do favours. This enchantment will last for a few minutes if the creature is opposed to the Bard, but can continue indefinitely (ie if you don't take advantage, you just made a new friend by magic/being charming). To enchant a creature in this fashion roll Bard level and Charm modifier, plus a six sided dice for every magic point spent on enchanting them.

Bards can also use Enchantment to add a six sided dice to another creature's roll to attack or attempt a skill (including other players). This simply requires the Bard to declare it and can be done after the roll is made. However, if this is attempted in combat it will also rob the bard of their next action as they spend it concentrating on the enchantment instead. If you are out of magic points you cannot Enchant any more creatures that day.

See here for more on Enchanting.

 

WIZARD MAGIC

Wizard magic is the magic of understanding the forces of the universe. Theirs is a magic found in laboratories, old books, astrological observations and other nerd shit. They master the elements and combine them in strange and unpredictable ways. Every Wizard starts by having mastery over one of the basic elements, and gains mastery over a new element every level. Each Wizard has as twice their level in magic points per day, unused magic points disappear when the total is recharged with a night’s rest.

The Basic Elements are: Earth, Air, Fire, Water

Once the Wizard has learned at least two elements, they can choose to gain mastery over the Advanced Elements. Advanced Elements require two other elements to be known already, however a Wizard does not need to master all the Basic Elements before mastering an Advanced Element, just the component ones.

The Advanced Elements are: Ice (Water, Earth), Metal (Earth, Fire), Sound (Air, Water), Lightning (Fire, Air)

Final Elements only can be mastered when all other elements have been.

The Final Elements are: Gravity (Earth, Air) Light (Fire, Water)

Each Wizard has as twice their level in magic points per day, unused magic points disappear when the total is recharged with a night’s rest. 

To cast a magic effect with Elemental Mastery, the Wizard rolls a twenty sided dice and adds their Inelligence bonus, their level, and a number of six sided dice equal to the number of magic points put into a spell. The difficulty rises with distance and difficulty.

Example effects by difficulty:

1. Natural, but convenient. A fire grows rapidly 

2. Unlikely, but still within the realms of possibility. An unstable hillside collaspses just when needed, and a bouncing rock sails away conveniently striking your foe.

3. Improbable! A once in a lifetime fluke. A small whirlwind appears from nowhere powerful enough to floor a single target then vanishes.

4. Impossible. A fire starts underwater.

5. Allegorical. An aspect of the element is infused into something else, and you can begin to levitate as the wind, or your skin becomes stone, or any other number of improbable things.

Distance also factors into things, the further away the harder it is

1. Touch: Yourself or right next to you.

2. Near: In the room with you, or as far as you could throw a rock

3. Far: Within the same level of the dungeon, or if outside as far a distance as you could yell and still be understood. Maybe as far as a trebuchet could hurl a stone

4. Wherever You Are: Does what it says on the tin, inside a dungeon can affect anything within the complex. As far as you could see outside. 

 For more on elemental magic see here

SPELLS & SCROLLS

Spells are like a routine for casting, and can be found by adventuring or researching. Spells are more efficient but also more limited and so knowing the spell "fireball" is always going to cost less magical energy than creating the same effect but with mastery over the element. All Wizard spells have a certain level, which corresponds to their cost to cast in magic points. If a Wizard reads a spell in a different book, or on a scroll, it will take 500 money units and one day per level of spell to copy it (ie a third level spell would take three days and cost 1500 money units). A spell beyond your current level can be copied, but not comprehended until the appropriate level has been reached.

Wizard spells are complex and take time to cast. All Magic spells must be prepared and magic points expended at the beginning of the day. Magic points can be allocated across multiple spell levels. For example, a third level wizard has six magic points, and can prepare two third level spells, or prepare three second level spells, or prepare one third level spell, one second level spell and leave one point free for a first level spell, or leave all magic points free for Elemental Mastery.  

Wizard spells don’t live inside them, but instead have to reside in a book. If a Wizard loses their book, or it gets destroyed, or stolen, they will lose all their spells. 

Wizards can also inscribe scrolls. This takes time, but allows you to store magic points and spells between days. To prepare a spell it takes the spell’s level in hours of work and twice the spell’s worth in unallocated magic points. So, to create a scroll of a first level spell it would take an hour’s work and two unallocated magic points, to create a scroll of a second level spell it would take two hours and four unallocated magic points. You must have access to paper, inks, writing implements (which can be expensive), and a safe and secure workshop or library in which to work in order to create a scroll (which is often hard to find). Scrolls inscribed with spells, however, are volatile and interact unexpectedly with one another. The safe number of scrolls one can carry without them beginning to bicker and fight is one more than your level (non-magic types are limited to carrying one magic scroll, as they are untrained in spell wrangling, but Bards count as Wizards for the purposes of scroll-carrying). Any class may cast a spell from a scroll.

 

SUMMONING DEMONS

All Wizards are taught how to summon Demons, since Demons can be pretty smart and powerful and can probably teach you a lot about magic. Bards probably also know how to do this, but aren’t dumb enough to try, since Demons are very dangerous. Summoning opens the rift between the worlds a little bit more and forces an inhabitant From Beyond into our world to do the caster’s bidding. What exactly comes through the tear, and whether or not it will do what the summoner wishes, is wholly unpredictable.

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[1] Negative modifiers? Sounds like advanced mathematical witchcraft! The lowest a number can be is zero! Go play a different game if you want to fool around with numbers that mankind was not meant to wot of.