Mail Room: Gods of the Forbidden North (OSE)

If you can afford to pick up the hardcovers for Gods of the Forbidden North, do so. These volumes for OSE are mind-blowing, easily outdoing some of the classic BX megadungeons of yore. Where Barrowmaze is an amazing hexcrawl sandbox of its own, Gods of the Forbidden North is all that plus an expansive campaign setting, with many adventures scattered around the map.

GFN is easily large enough to "eat" every other megadungeon ever written, and has room for them all in this super setting. Though, to be honest, I don't know why you would, this place is massive enough on its own.

GFN is "an event" and not to be missed.

And this epic mega-setting easily outdoes many 5E mega-settings of the same caliber. It certainly outdoes most OSR megadungeons.

This is one of the most amazing mega-campaigns for OSE, and one of the most comprehensive and amazing since Rappan Athuk for Swords & Wizardry. Though this is more than a megadungeon, two whole volumes of this giant three-volume set are the campaign setting and the vast undercaverns.

And there is plenty of room for you to expand this setting and make it your own, placing your own dungeons and other adventures anywhere in this vast and savage land. There are cities to expand, plenty of room on the map, and your campaign can expand to be as large as you want, though there is enough in these books to last for a decade or more of regular sessions.

You have it all in just what they give you.

And the campaign ends with a megadungeon in the third book. You will never explore this all, and most will just discover the surface 10% of what these books have to offer. Still, the quality of the setting and adventures here is among the best in gaming, including 5E, and is not to be missed.

OSE is just as much of a "heavy hitter" in delivering cinematic and premiere experiences as 5E.

Traveller: Worldbuilding

Creating planets for a Traveller game can be a complex task. You start with a set of basic stats for the world, and from there, you need to interpret and transform these numbers into a fully-fledged world.

Terra 1827 A867A69-F (N,W)

The above? That number? That is Earth. The UDP is planet name, hex number, followed by:

1. Star-port Quality
2. Size
3. Atmosphere Type
4. Hydrographic Percentage
5. Population
6. Government Type
7. Law Level
8. -
9. Tech Level
10. (Bases)

Numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 are size, atmosphere, hydrographic, and population, in this case, 867A. Now, think about Earth. We are supposed to imagine Earth from those four numbers. For some people, this is an impossible task. How are you supposed to come up with the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of the Amazon, the frozen ice sheets of the Antarctic, the mountains of the Himalayas, the nearly-infinite oceans, the splendor of Hawaii, the glory of some of the great river valleys in China, the pastoral fields of France,  the great forests and lakes of northern Canada, the endless urban New York area, and all the other places in this world from just four numbers?

867A.

And then, add most of the worlds you will create, which could be fantastic alien landscapes?

While I am moving away from AI art (because of the ethics and theft from artists involved), I can't deny the potential of an AI generator (legal, artist-sourced, and with contributors paid) to inspire ideas you could never imagine. The idea generation aspect of AI is truly remarkable, and while using it commercially is something I do not support, it can be a powerful tool in the right hands.

If you have one of the sector guides, you will find information on a few planets in the subsector, but not all. But remember, 99% of the universe, including random planets, colonies, and stations in systems, is yours to create. You can let your imagination run wild, and anything goes.

In addition, fantastical weather, geology, nature, vegetation, tidal flows, swamps, marches, salt flats, geysers, mineral formations, insects, volcanoes, mineral deposits, islands, beaches, natural arches, canyons, badlands, sea life, winds, atmospheric layers, rings, moons, oddly colored and shaped terrain features, animals, creatures, and space anomalies are all involved. Not every desert looks like California, and not every forest looks like Oregon.

And there isn't just "one location" in every hex map location. Each is a solar system, with a main planet and many other worlds and places within. Again, think of our solar system, Earth, and all the planets. Put a sci-fi civilization in there with ships zooming all over, colonies, space stations, satellites, and places on every planet to explore and do business. A typical Traveller subsector map can be very deceptive since you tend to think "one planet per hex," but it is not that way.

There are probably millions of "points of interest" in every hex. The trick is understanding they are all there, not getting overwhelmed by them all, and deciding the very few that interact with your players and game.

Imagine being sent to find a suitcase in our solar system—just one suitcase. It could be anywhere from Mercury to the deserts of Morocco or even in a cargo container in Jupiter's orbit, in a random ship's cargo hold, sitting in an airport bathroom, or in the back trunk of a car in any parking lot in the world—any world in the system.

Naturally, because your players are so awesome, they will be able to find it with a few vague clues and a matchbook from a random restaurant.

But the players could detour to an infamous "spacer casino" in a side mission. That place was never on a map or in a subsector guide, nor did it exist in anyone's ideas or campaign. But it is in yours. This is why when you play Traveller, people always say, "It is your Traveller." There is no way for anyone to play in the same universe twice. Ever. Not in a billion years. The map and system names could be the same, but none of what is in those planets or subsectors will ever be the same.

This is more challenging work than most fantasy games, and it requires a much more free mind to dream, create, and imagine the speculative and extraordinary. If the players want to help fill in, do some of the imagining, and make suggestions, go for it.

The universe is big enough to hold everyone's imagination.

Make it your own.

Maximum Mayhem Dungeons: Reprints Special #2

Another fun Kickstarter I am following is a reprint collection of OSR modules (9 for OSR, 1 for 5E) that look fun and have a lot of classic art and inspiration inside them.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marktaormino/maximum-mayhem-dungeons-reprints-special-2

These look super fun, sort of a cross between OSR and Dungeon Crawl Classics crazy and zany, and the art and presentation are spot-on with some classic fantasy artists in the books.

I am always on the lookout for great OSR adventures, and these look perfect.

The project is backed and I put a link in the sidebar.

Savage Pathfinder, Module Conversion

So one thing I wanted to do with the Savage Pathfinder system is play in the original Golarion setting, the official game world, but borrow classic AD&D modules and put them in the world. If I have the old modules, I am using them, so my world will be a strange mix of original edition content plus adventure paths.

I suspect this is what many people did when Wizards dumped 3.5 for D&D 4+; they kept playing their 3.5 worlds and adventures with the newer Pathfinder 1e rules and did not skip a beat. I also suspect many D&D 3.5 game worlds, including Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, got converted over, and the campaigns continued.

Plus, there is a lot of room in this world for fun places like the GDQ series, the B-series, the S-series, and the A-series modules. Put the Isle of Dread in the ocean somewhere; it would work.

Now, excellent idea, but is it practical?

Converting is Worldbuilding

I would grab my World Builder and Game Master's Guide for this one since this is a beneficial resource when converting anything into the game.

I would be careful with scripted adventures and use their content as guidelines. The Slave Lords modules in the A-series are good examples. Would I convert every room description, ensure every area and monster were accounted for, do a 1-to-1 map conversion, and ensure my adventure followed the exact same encounter and key matrixes as the originals?

We did this thing before with other games, such as D&D to Aftermath, a gigantic task that is rarely worth all that effort. After a while, things break down and begin to not make sense. The entire game turns into this hours-long slog where you realize if you had converted everything over loosely and not worried about the details, you would have never spent days of work prepping a module conversion that came out horrible anyways.

Often, there is just way too much to deal with. The encounters are too big, made for a game that simplifies combat and heavily relies on sleep, fireball, and other area spells to clear rooms.

Very Real Tournament

The Slave Lords A-series are interesting to study because one thing they did was convert these from simpler tournament modules to fully stocked dungeons and adventures to "add more value" to them. You will find the first two adventures expanded from simple and straightforward tournament maps to massive dungeons with many encounters and expanded content.

I dare say the more straightforward tournament maps look better for Savage Worlds Pathfinder to play since they capture the essence and narrative of the adventure, keep the number of encounters down, and avoid confusion and needless bloat. In the first module's tournament version, A1, you get all the classic encounters, the best areas, and the essential experience of the module without too much sidetracking or artificially lengthening things in that typical AD&D way using quantity over quality.

On a downside, due to tournament play, the modules are often a single track of encounters with no bypassing. Some caution is advised, but as a roadmap of the best the module offers, start with the condensed tournament content first.

They Are Not Perfect!

A reminder, the old modules are not perfect. They have a lot of flaws. If you look at the differences between the A1 tournament and vs. A1 expanded, you will see a vast "mapping challenge" in the expanded version. Many groups don't even "map" these days the way they used to. The number of rooms and encounters in all modules is significantly expanded, leading to many long combats and grinds. There are rooms to soak area-of-effect spells and resources. Places to burn divination spells. Lots of save-or-die parts. Plenty of slow hallway crawls with 10-foot poles in the lead. 

Some of this stuff is great for a B/X game, but a Savage Worlds game is different.

There is also this "video game" mentality. They will respond if an operation, like a slave-trading group, is hit. They won't casually sit in the dungeon waiting for the characters to return after they rest up and recharge spells. They may clear out and move elsewhere. They may follow the characters to town with some of the forces they have left and hit the party back before they rest. We were kids when we played these modules and cleared rooms like stand-alone videogame encounters to "solve." We allowed infinite resting in the town, even if the last room was the boss battle and the entire dungeon around them cleared. 

We were really dumb, but hey, we were kids.

From a  pulp-storytelling point of view, having the organization active in the nearby cities and a good amount of fights and encounters outside this dungeon makes a lot of sense. You could go all Indiana Jones and have a vehicle chase with a slaver caravan for a good time. Do not let the modules and maps constrain you. These are more story seeds than monsters and mazes.

And as far as I am concerned, that "respond to multiple incursions and make it harder" applies to all modules, even the Tomb of Horrors. What if, on the second foray in, things changed? That is true horror and makes venturing in there repeatedly a perilous proposition. If the groups and boss monsters had the magic and creativity to build these places and call them home, then they would have the same interest in defending them and self-preservation, especially once they know what they are facing. And if the dungeon is high-level enough, the boss must have a few wish or limited-wish scrolls lying about.

That 15-minute adventuring day should come with a considerable cost, with failure being just the most apparent price.

Railroad Crossing

One word of warning the tournament modules are very railroaded, so I would use them as guides only, and if the players found a way to bypass them, or there was a way to in the expanded version, I would let them. The entire goal here is to figure out what the essential encounters are in the adventure, what ones are needed to tell the story and build the Savage Pathfinder experience around those.

Like the World Builder's Guide says, less is more.

I would use this "pick the top 9-12 encounters" in every module conversion, even Tomb of Horrors. There are those signature moments you are trying to simulate and those memorable encounters you want to experience again, so why throw in the fluff? If the designers wanted to fluff out a fort with 6 extra rooms of hobgoblins, why put them in if there are already one or two great fights with them here? Let those signature moments tell the story of the adventure, and get rid of the extra filler.

Also, do not be afraid to "change the module" dramatically. If my group has been through the Tomb of Horrors so many times, they can recite the room descriptions and point to every trap and secret door like they were reciting lines from their favorite movies; well, it is time to change things up. Rooms will be shuffled, secret doors moved, new traps and puzzles laid down, and new deadly save-or-die horror moments added everywhere. The essence of the module is supposed to be a horror movie where the party needs to pay attention and figure things out, so make it your own and have fun.

And if you can't think of good traps, head on over to the Goodman Games store and pick up this:

Your players will not love you if you mix up Tomb of Horrors with some of these classics, I guarantee it. Even some of the ideas in this book can be combined with the traps in Tomb of Horrors to make the assumed solutions quite deadly. But allow clever play to figure things out. If someone tosses sand across the pit trap and discovers the wall of force, magical push trap, pane of invisible steel, or the illusion of a hallway over there, let them be smart. The sand won't set off the spring-loaded plate that shoves them into the spiked ceiling on the other side.

Take the solution they know works, and make it kill the characters.

And the suffering doesn't need to end with death; if a character "dies" in this dungeon, they wake up remarkably healed in a particular deeper part without their gear. With more traps that will kill them this time, or if they can figure out how - escape. Just trip that revelation to the "supposedly dead" party after the last one falls or flees and keep the fun going.

A big part of the module conversions is to simplify things to fit the pulp-action style of Savage Worlds. You can use that to add fun and your own ideas, so go ahead and make these adventures your own.

DCC Classics #0: Legends are Made, not Born

These are the D&D 3.5 modules made by Goodman Games before the Dungeon Crawl Classics game was a thing. There are a little more than 50 of them (and they have their own world), and they are all wonderful throwback adventures, every bit as cool and interesting as the original A-series, S-series, B-series, and the classic AD&D adventures. The layout looks the same, the art comes from some of the same artists, and everything about them feels old school and authentic.

The only fault to them is they are all statted for D&D 3.5, which just goes to show you when in doubt, make it OSR. These were written during the D&D 3.5 boom days, so it is hard to fault them, but would I love to see these re-done for OSR? Yes, but there is no real reason to (unless they were expanded and collected together in a series, and I would love that). But with Goodman games doing DCC and some very cool work recreating official AD&D adventures, I can see how a project like that would not be a high priority.

Part of me feels this series, especially with the talent involved in creating them, are becoming cool retro-historical adventures in their own right. Right now, they kind of feel like they are in their "forgotten" phase, kind of like how the original AD&D modules were when AD&D 2e came out.

Oh, no reason to play those old AD&D 1e adventures! We have modules written off the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels now!

It is trivial to convert these to the OSR game of your choice, such as Labyrinth Lord, Old School Essentials, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Swords & Wizardry, Basic Fantasy, ACKS, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Castles & Crusades, and all the other greats. If you wanted, conversion to D&D 5 and Pathfinder 2 would also be not terribly difficult.

There are a few D&D 3.5-isms in here, such as giving monsters class levels, but again, to give a monster class levels in OSR just ...give them class levels, add a few class hit points, give them the "better of" attack modifier, add a few spells if needed, and you are done. If this is a "boss monster" it should be a little tougher, a unique one-off anyways, and it won't matter if one monster in one module breaks the rules a little. 

All monsters in the world are different, and there are unique specimens everywhere. Who cares if there is one kobold with three levels of a wizard class, an extra 3d4 hp, and a few spells? Things start breaking if you are giving orcs 5 fighter levels, but then again, by the time characters reach that power level - they will be able to deal with them. Just be mindful of throwing too many of them at the party at once, since once you start throwing class levels around it is easy to do it all the time. D&D 3.5 exists in this parallel universe where they threw a few class levels on everything to toughen them up, and that is a different philosophy you see in a lot of OSR games.

Me? Throw a few class levels on them to toughen them up, and don't do it all the time. Either that or consider all humanoids as a base game race and ...throw a few class levels on there to toughen them up.

Now, these aren't the Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures you see today in the modern sense, with the DCC game and the zero-level funnels - though you can play them that way if you would like. These are pre-DCC "the game" but great old-school adventures just written in that old-school style.

This module is sort of a precursor to the DCC "funnel" adventure. Monster does a bad thing. Townspeople rise up and say "enough!" Those who survive discover there is more here than meets the eye. There are a few encounter locations, and they are not giant, so you could probably play this in a night or two and not overwhelm a new group. It is more of a simple starter adventure, with encounters balanced around a party, with a few smaller dungeons; than an expansive "Caves of Chaos" style of map, giant unbalanced encounters, and keyed adventure with dozens of areas.

If you are a fan of the original AD&D 1e adventures, these are highly recommended to pick up, since the maps, stories, encounters, and adventures are quick and easy conversions to the game of your choice. And since there are over 50 of these published, they are great if you start to get tired of some of the same old AD&D 1e standards and want something a little different. As great as the classic modules are, there are times when I want new adventures in new places, and these do the job nicely.

Playtest Report: Star Wars Force and Destiny, part 2

What is it about beginner modules and us lately?

First off, this is a fun game. I like what Fantasy Flight has done with Star Wars and their entire RPG line. I liked the dice, and I like the system. We had a great time with the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game too and loved that adventure. That boxed set was great stuff, and you even got to dogfight with TIE fighters at the end.

But we had no luck with the Star Wars Force and Destiny RPG Beginner Game boxed set. The module fell flat for us, and we found ourselves rubbing our eyes with disbelief at some of the situations. As a "introduction to the post Order 66 Jedi life" it felt like it didn't deliver, and I probably need to go over what happened during our game. Warning, spoilers ahead.

It all started out good enough, as we left off last time, our group of Jedi students holed up in a shelter on their way to the mountain temple. We left off feeling pretty good, and then we proceeded to the next part of the adventure, the ancient holocron with the Jedi master. Let's just say things didn't go so well there, and the players didn't like to have a hologram threatening them when they were there to help. There is a line in the holocron's dialog that is an outright threat to pit them against the locals, and that set my group and the omnipotent computer on a collision course. DarkgarX told the holocron, "We find you, we're pulling your plug."

Yes, like a line out of the Expendables movies. And that was it with the holocron, until...

Let's move on to the next encounter, where "dark side infused" primitive villagers were directed to attack the party by the "I am really a Jedi not a Sith" holocron. Now, the entire "dark side infused" rationale for both the wolves and the villagers in this module is pretty silly, my players were playing this like true Jedi, and they did not feel it was right for good Jedi following the code to wipe out a group of primitives. They ended up scaring them off with blaster shots and disengaging. Yes, this encounter was just supposed to be a simple run-through to teach the combat rules, but two things:

1. Good Jedi do not wipe out villagers (given deception caused this)
2. "Dark side infused" felt like a cheap rationale to make the villagers more like D&D monsters

Nobody liked the "dark side infused" thing in either encounter and my players didn't buy it (probably because there feels like little in the movies that supports this). Good Jedi do not pull out the longswords and kill the orcs, they act a step above. I give my players credit for taking the high road here, and the whole encounter would have been better served had the primitives been disposable combat droids or something.

The stupid holocron being there and sending the villagers off to attack the party did not go over very well at all. DarkgarX had this look on his face that said, "When I find you, I am erasing your memory circuits." Even if you are a good Jedi holocron, sending primitives off to their doom is a pretty Sith move. Especially since, um, when the dark side taint from this valley is going to be removed at the end of the adventure later, and it will be supposedly removed from the villagers as well.

Yes, don't put the players in a position where they are having to explain why they wiped out the village to the survivors. Not Jedi, and not cool, dude.

I mean, really, droids here would have been the better choice, and I could have imagined my players jumping at the chance to swing lightsabers at combat robots and whoop it up having a good time. Instead, the group elected to take the high ground, and the combat tutorial turned into a moral choice, which is probably not what the module designer had in mind, but my players are true hardcore Jedi fanatics who believe in the code.

Now, I don't like railroads as much as anyone else, but the whole "everyone falls into a separate hole and can't get out" encounter that WIN or LOSE the previous fight felt really, really silly after that fight. Yes, this is just another tutorial encounter, but it did not go over well, especially for six players falling into six separate holes. One of the players ended up getting out and helping the others out one by one, though by the end, some of them at least tried to use the force as the tutorial directed as a face-saving move.

You know that scene in Return of the Jedi where the whole gang gets caught in the Ewok net? Yeah. Painful like that. Times six.

From there, the adventure got better since the tutorials were over. The bridge encounter with the guard mercs went well (non combat resolution), the wolf encounter ended up being another moral choice but it ended up with another novel non-combat solution, and the temple fight was a pushover. My players wanted a lightsaber duel, but the big-bad had a longsword, and lightsaber versus longword fights usually don't end well for the "I am a D&D fighter in Star Wars" side. Plus we wanted this guy to have some cool force lightning or telekinesis powers, and he had some lame ones, so minus fun points there as well.

And in the end, that stupid holocron got pulled out of its socket.

"Adventurers! Thank you for rescuing the temp-"

...PHSSST!

But seriously, we came up with  better structure for this entire module, and it goes like this:

1. Players are students at this Jedi temple
2. A strange ship lands
3. Combat robots seize the temple, school, and village
4. Escape and get your stuff from the school
5. Save the village!
6. Rescue the master at the temple!

It is simple, and you could have even mixed in the tutorial parts with the "students at the temple" part before the attack, or mixed them in with steps one through five. You could have even left the holocron in as a helpful mentor directing players along the way. It is a much better setup, avoids the problem of "how do they know each other" issue, and gives the players a heroic motivation and robotic bad guys that are fun to beat up without sticky Jedi code moral decisions.

Yes, I expect later when stormtroopers show up, the grim reality of being a Jedi and doing bad to do good will come up, but my players didn't feel that decision should have came here, and not for the reasons given.

In the end? The big-bad was captured, the mentor saved, and the players wanted to turn the Sith over to the Rebel Alliance for judgment. Did we have fun? Yes, when the silliness of the first encounters ended, and the real fight began at the temple, but it took too much absurdity to get there, and the last fight was a kind of a letdown. It was a tough time for this group and for this adventure, but the promise of hooking up with the Rebels is looming out there.

I guess this will lead us into the next beginner's set, next time....

Adventure Design, Then and Now

I remember when adventure design was creating a dungeon map and stocking it. You didn't really need a reason to go down there, playing AD&D was like a game of Diablo where you smashed the monsters and grabbed the loot.

There was a point soon after where adventures became stories. Railroading became a common complaint as player freedom was removed for the grandeur of the adventure writer's brilliance. It's a great story, but a lousy dungeon. We needed reasons to go places, we needed to develop stories for tabletop gaming, and smashing monsters and taking loot was seen as a lesser form of play.

It's just hack and slash!

Point taken, but some people play the game for exactly that. We don't need to call why they enjoy things as a lesser form of play, or design games to discourage it.

So we get closer to today, and we went through a phase of "storytelling games" like Vampire the Gathering and others which engineered the experience for playing stories than playing dungeons. In a sense, these were purer expressions of the story-telling ideal, and they worked very well for that purpose.

And then in the 2000's, the "games to be all games" appeared with D&D 3 and others. You can actually trace this sort of "system game" back to GURPS and Champions, the original "big box" games, but d20 and its spawns tried to be everything to everybody, just like World of Warcraft and other all-inclusive fantasy experiences are today.

Adventures could be stories! Adventures could be dungeons! Adventures could be flowcharts, randomly created things, relationship maps, or any other construction.

It worked, and it still works with Pathfinder and other games, but we do see some "experience engineering" coming back into fashion with D&D 5. With the new D&D, we start with an assumption of "it's about the story" again, and map play and hack-and-slash feel like they are being pushed away.

For storytelling gamers, this is great, finally a version of D&D that appeals to our inner storyteller! For D&D 4 players, the battle-chess hack-and-slash game is gone, and feels like they are left by the wayside. Of course, D&D 4 can still be played, and Pathfinder has a strong map-based system, so there are things still left to play.

Two things. It's hard to be everything to everybody. It's true even in the 'real world' of work and life. Another thing, if feels like we are caught between this endless cycle of hack-and-slash versus storytelling again and again. Is it seen that hack-and-slash players prefer computer gaming to tabletop? Is it seen that tabletop players are more interested in stories?

The times dictate the games we play. But you do have a choice in your preferences, and the types of games that appeal to you. It is always hard to cut through the "dessert topping as a floor wax" style of marketing today that tries to paint something as everything to everybody, so you have to be informed and most importantly, comfortable in your own decisions and feelings about what you like to play.

Review: The Emerald Spire

The Emerald Spire Super Dungeon is Paizo's entry into the 'super dungeon' genre of adventure modules. What's interesting about this one is that each level is designed by a different superstar designer with the likes of the Paizo staff, Ed Greenwood, Frank Mentzer and a cast of others each taking a level and going with it. It's like an all-star Christmas album of dungeon design over sixteen interconnected levels.

The back story is interesting, and it accounts for the difference and variety in the interconnected lairs. Some of the levels have a related boss monster or story, so that is a cool thing - they are not all so different it seems disjointed. The dungeon levels are full flip-mat sized (they also sell flip-mats for all 16 levels), so this is a unique product in that it provides a series of battle-mat sized exploration missions. It is a great product for a regular gaming group that wants to play across a series of tabletop battles.

It's is an interesting break from other super-dungeon products that require you to map it yourself or play it by ear. This is a very nice "complete product" should you buy the maps. The flip-mat limitation puts a cap on the size of the dungeon levels, so if you like big and expansive dungeons this is probably not your thing.

The dungeon levels are well-put together, but they feel on the shorter side to me. They are your typical 3.x D&D style dungeons, with that tighter less creatures focus and deadly traps sort of thing, along with a fair amount of puzzles and other things to figure out. The shortness in the book for each level is a bit bothering, a couple of the levels feel like they could have been fuller, but a good game master can always improvise and add details on their own (as you should with any published module).

There is a 'fast transport system' in the dungeon that I am not sure I like, it feels like it was invented for expediency in an MMO-style nod. Back in my days, if the entrance to a dungeon was a mile underground we walked there dangnabbit! We took pack animals, carried supplies, and camped out in dangerous places with people standing guard. We hired retainers by the month, and good ones too, not these generic level 1 man-at-arms things you see so many of nowadays. Our wizards took bags of components with them too, because walking back to town was out of the question.

Or with high-level enough parties, we picked a secret teleport spot somewhere down there, and prayed each time we came back there weren't monsters in the room or someone waiting for us. There was a disadvantage in old-school adventuring to teleport happy explorers, party wipes from prepared bad guys waiting underground for magic-item and spell-book rich adventurer groups to return to their favorite port-in spots.

I am guessing because of the flip-mat "let's play level X tonight!" style setup the emerald magi-elevator was needed, but it is certainly a more modern design element, and one my old-school party would look at twice and decide to hoof it anyways. Besides, if we can use this thing like an elevator, who says the dungeon's big boss hasn't figured out a way to send us anywhere he would like? Old-school dungeoning paranoia saves lives and character sheets, my friend.

It's a fun adventure, but one side note. There's a sample town included, Fort Inevitable, probably one of the most strange fantasy town names I have come across in a while. Down the road from Fort Certain Thing and Fort For Certain, for sure. Or Fort For Sure, sorry. Anyways, it's a happy little adventuring base and hometown run by...a large garrison of lawful evil Hellknights. My player's first order of business? Clearing the town. I know, but you got this big dungeon up on the hill and...oh stop it, really? You attack?

Roll initiative.

But yeah, for a garrison of Hellknight cavalry with an open rebellion problem, I'm guessing this place shouldn't be such a great adventuring home base. But there are armor and weapons shops selling openly, and I'm sitting here thinking these would be the first places they would close down under an oppressive regime with that much firepower to throw around. The first rule of dictators is to disarm the population, it feels like an oversight, and I like my worlds based in a bit of realism gleaned from the events of actual history.

A bunch of adventurers setting up shop and snooping around the dungeon up on the hill? I bet the Hellknight commander lets them live until level five or when they pull up that first big treasure haul and then the adventurers are executed for heresy, treason, crimes against the state, insurrection, hoarding state resources, or some other trumped up charge so the Hellknights can take the party's loot and laugh up how great it is to be lawful evil. Besides, they wouldn't want a bunch of upstarts getting too powerful around here, would they?

It's like new school designers forgot what lawful evil means when it comes to kingdom politics and adventurer relations. Think of this happening in King's Landing in Game of Thrones. Yeah, not gonna happen without tons of bribes.

So no, Fort Inevitable isn't such a great base for adventuring after all, at least not for my group. It was a fun place to tear apart though, and it did take the focus off of the dungeon initially. My players aren't that naive, and I don't blame them because I like to run things hardcore and by the old-school spirit.

So in short, it's a fun adventure with a great flip-mat focus, and a little problem with the included home base should you decide to use it as-is.

Railroading: D&D 5 vs. GTA 5

Railroading.

I've been hearing a lot of criticisms of the D&D 5th Edition modules for railroading players into situations, to force them to make choices, and to put them in situations they had to go into or the module would dead end. To be fair, I've seen this in Pathfinder adventure paths as well, along with dead-ends where even the referee is sitting there wondering how to move the group to the next area without making it look obvious.

To the wargamer, or even the casual 4th Edition player, railroading isn't as much of a problem, I mean, just get us to the next battle and let's have at it. I've seen 4th Edition modules just list combat encounter after combat encouter with as little as possible holding them together and you know, so what? They were fun fights, and the addiction of the chess-piece battles more than made up for the click-clack of the rails underneath the party's feet.

It's not an excuse, no, but D&D 4 is so different on narrative style it is a special case. It is battle chess, and while freedom is appreciated in choice of direction, there better be a fun series of tabletop battles when we get where we are going.

But D&D 5 is more of a story game, and Pathfinder also dips into the story-solving motivation. When you play a game more driven by narrative, you are going to get railroading eventually. Even in the strongest sandbox computer games, like Grand Theft Auto 5, you are going to get scripted story missions every once and a while that are fun, memorable, and more importantly - welcomed by the sandbox player.

What makes the railroad parts of GTA 5 fun then? It's not because they are railroads, those scripted missions are very specific on what it takes to win, where you should go, and deviated from the path and it's "mission failed" real quick. They are just as railroad as their pen-and-paper counterparts.

There's a difference here, and I think it's important. GTA 5 offers and supports a huge and very involved sandbox experience, and the railroad parts are a welcome diversion from all the freedom, like a special challenge mode the player gets to solve every once and a while. The game is a sandbox first and foremost, and has scripted missions you take at your own pace that advance the plot.

With pen-and-paper games, the sandbox or 'open experience' is a secondary concern, it's the module writer's story that comes first, and that means the missions need to be built and scripted. Sandboxes in RPG modules feel like secondary concerns, thrown in as a map if there is enough page count, and the referee is told to "fill it out" on his own. Leaving it up to the referee is not sandboxing, it is lazy adventure design.

Referees can make up anything, anywhere, even in the dusty corner of your scripted room encounter the referee could throw in a rabbit hole to Alice in Wonderland. It's a given and a fact of being the referee running the game. A sandbox needs support for factions, encounters, things that happen if the players cause trouble, a populace, traffic patterns, special areas, and all sorts of other details the referee can use to make the setting come alive. A good sandbox takes a lot of work, which is why you don't see many good ones in modules.

You occasionally get the "you choose the next path" branching structure in a part of an adventure, and that is a step in the right direction. You could rescue the princess, or go retrieve the magic staff, you choose what you do next. Still, this isn't sandboxing if the map your branching scenarios are placed on is dead and doesn't have anything to it.

Also, tutorials by their nature are railroads, because you never want to throw new players into a situation where they have no direction. Module writers often make the mistake of writing a tutorial scripted part to kick the adventure off, and require the party to play through it as a prologue. Right off, most players will smell what's cooking and say "railroad" without giving the rest of the adventure a chance. Tutorial sections should be labeled as such, and players who don't want to play these parts shouldn't have to - tutorials should be optional. The party should have the chance of starting on the sandbox after an intro is read to them, and let them decide how to chase down the next part.

The princess has been captured by the Black Knight, and the royal staff thrown into the Evil Gorge? Some players may want to go straight to the Dark Castle and knock on the door, while others may want to go to the princess' castle. Some may go straight for the gorge, while others may want to watch as the situation develops, and then the Black Knight sends his army to the town to capture it. Things are happening, there is a timeline and a schedule for major events, and players can choose where to go next. There's room for all sorts of scripted parts to this adventure, but there is enough open-world content to keep the adventurers happy and busy.

There was a tutorial battle in the beginning of the module we could have played, but we skipped it to get to the action. It looked fun, but we just wanted to cut to the action. We decided to go to the gorge, and we got involved in this fun river raft ride where goblins kept running alongside and attacking us. Sure, that part was a little railroad-y, but we made the choice to go there, and we will make the choice of where to go next, so it wasn't as bad as the whole adventure being on rails. Plus, it was fun.

Great modules give you that balance of freedom and scripted action, and they give you the illusion of complete freedom while still having action-movie set-piece battles and situations.

Where Do I Go Next?

George and I were having fun playing adventure modules for other games with the Delta rules set, sort of as a playtest and study in adventure design. We ran into a couple that dropped you off a cliff in certain parts when the characters were wondering, "Where do we go next?"

It hurts when the referee can't figure it out in a short amount of time, and I ended up just fudging it and making-a-long-story-short. I short-circuited the player experience, and directed the group to the next encounter. Ouch. That hurts two-fold:

1. It robs the players of figuring things out
2. The players are playing for the next encounter, instead of being immersed in the world

These short-circuits where the referee has a NPC wander in and say, "Hey guys! I found the secret goblin camp, c'mon!" really rob the immersion of the game. They are equivalent of an actor in the movie breaking the fourth wall, and addressing the audience. The players now know they are being led, and play shifts to 'find the next encounter.' The feeling of freedom and the whole sandbox experience is taken away, and players feel railroaded.

An odd situation happens when the players figure out what encounters are in the module, versus what ones are made up by the referee. Ideally, these should be both treated as equals, but we have played with some groups that did not like extra encounters to be added to the module. I admit, it is a rare occurrence, but disconcerting when the referee's additions are treated as less-than-equal. Again, this is a tangent case, but an interesting one that deserves mention.

The ideal adventure feels natural, and gives the referee scripted situations, along with more open areas where players can explore, find off-the-beaten-path areas, and do a couple optional quests on the side. The module should encourage creativity, and give the referee ideas for areas to further flesh out and other things for players to do. We found ourselves in one case searching through the module's area descriptions looking for fun 'adventure areas' and could not find any. Of course, I could use GM Fiat and just create one, but for a written adventure, I award bonus points for the writer's suggestions and hooks that fit in with the overall adventure.

Good adventures are like good stories, they have a natural flow, and always keep you wondering, 'what's next?' ...and letting you know when the time is right.