Cypher Play: Road War, Part 4

The coyote-don (arms not pictured here, lol) is a level 6 monster that defends as a level 4 to magic and attacks all targets in immediate range. My priest and scout lose initiative; all they can do is board up their garage and take a turn to prepare.

The priest is on the garage floor while the girl and the scout climb up to a second-floor perch to ready his rifle. The priest cannot climb any higher, so the coyote-don bursts through the garage doors quickly and begins mauling our man of faith, running for his life on the first floor.

The scout opens fire, and shots bounce off the tough hide.

The priest smites the beast with a holy bolt and puts some effort behind the blast, taking away a third of the beast's health, which angers it more. The priest still gets mauled, and things are looking grim down there, and the scout fires again and gets an 18, which is a ton of damage with a level of effort thrown behind it - and the beast turns its attention to crawling up to the second level.

As the coyote-don begins to jump up to the upper level, the priest strikes it down with another effort-backed holy bolt and slays the creature on top of a broken tractor.

Multi-attacks and "frenzy" attacks that melee or ranged attack all targets in an area are critical to higher-level monsters. Do not be afraid to throw multiple attacks in for monsters of level 4 and higher, and above level 7, start putting three or four attacks in there. Armor and the player's ability to soak and heal damage is more significant than you think, and you want to give the players the idea that if they don't spend points on effort, they will lose them as the damage they take (and get nothing for it).

Was the fight brutal? In some ways, yes; in others, no, but it doesn't matter. Encounter balance is difficult in Cypher, but don't worry about it - toss a GM Intrusion in there and add another monster or two to the encounter. That is one of the core rules of balancing Cypher combats; if you feel something is going too easy, it is immediately GM Intrusion time to ramp up the challenge - and no feeling terrible afterward if you don't.

But I didn't need to since the best dramatic focus wasn't a loss here; it was the significant burn of resources and another tough choice. The characters burned through about 20 points of abilities in effort use and damage taken, and all of their remaining rests for the day were burned through recovering - except for the 10-hour one. Now we have a choice:

Rest for 10 hours and recover everything?

Or press on into the night and get distance on the bandits that are chasing them?

Again, the Cypher system is forcing me to agonize about my choices in solo play! I weighed all the bad things that could happen if they stayed, the higher-level bandits showing up for revenge, and the dangers of driving into the night in a destroyed and monster-filled darkness into uncertain terrain.

So, in essence, the fight with the coyote-don did precisely what I wanted it to do: burn resources and give the group a hard decision. That gave me more narrative punch and drama than something too hard or possibly killing one of the group. That would have given me another equally dramatic decision, but this one felt perfect. Cypher is much like OSR games in that you constantly burn limited resources, making the choices increasingly tricky. In OSR, it is the dwindling pool of spells, hit points, torches, food, and time. In Cypher, you are balancing your pools and the remaining number of rests.

5E is too easy on resources, like an MMO where you can restore party ability to parity after each fight, and 5E isn't in the same genre of game as most classic RPGs. 5E has the same design goals as 4E, to be a videogame played on the tabletop. Pathfinder 2 is an even better videogame on the tabletop since the balance is so tight. Both are good but not classic resource management games with that constant threat and tension essential to the genre.

If I am sitting here in a solo game and feeling terrible about two equally bad courses of action, that is a good game that draws me in deeply. I don't get that in 5E or many OSR games since I know how to "game" those systems. In Cypher, it is all about the burn. Making fights "too easy" by burning effort will cost you later. And in some cases, the resources you need later will be the difference between life and death.

This is also why "balance" in Cypher needs to be looked at with a broader lens than in other RPGs. The first fights in a day may be easy, and you are burning effort like dollar bills tossed in a nightclub. But at the end of the session, when no good options are left, when all that frivolous spending catches up with the group, is the time you judge the challenge of all the previous encounters.

The better of the two choices was to press on, but if they ran into anything along the way, they would be in a terrible position to deal with it. So off into the night, they drove together, not knowing what was next.

They press on with few resources left, and the priest is still pretty banged up. They load the ATV into the back of the pickup with a makeshift ramp and head off as the sun sets. They find a ruined town with no good places to hide or rest, and through some makeshift crafting, they find a few dirty tarps to turn a carport into a shelter.

They take turns on watch and fail to craft comfortable places to sleep, so I plan to pull a GM Intrusion the next day when the fatigue kicks in and they are hindered in all further actions. They find a few old cans of food and a little water, so the night isn't all a total loss. Still, not having a place to rest and recuperate will hurt them tomorrow, and while they may be fine for a while, that fatigue will kick in, and they will be in even greater danger.

Their vehicles are still damaged, the ATV is out of ammo, and they only have two forward firing machineguns on the pickup. Tomorrow they press on and try and reach civilization.

Cypher Play: Road War, Part 3

So my delivery driver had the day off, so I tried a few new characters in my Cypher road-warrior-style game. A priest and a young lady wake up in a wrecked bus, with a gang of bandits picking through the survivors. This is sort of a Last of Us type story, where they were headed to a church in my crossroads town to take ownership, but their bus got attacked, and now they need to figure out how to survive.

This is a non-combat adept with an NPC companion, so he needs to get her to the town. I am finding giving the characters "jobs" in my sandbox gives me a lot more direction and impetus to act than the boring, stereotypical, no connections adventurer or survivor-type characters. I play with those character types, and my game dies due to disinterest. My new rule is "you must have a job" to start the game, and I don't care if the character quits it for something more interesting; they just have to have that role and place in the world for the story to be interesting for me.

The "adventurer class" of characters that "have a job raiding dungeons" is like cancer in modern gaming. I even feel the  "lone survivor" with "no connections here" is overused and boring. I can't play them; they are a massive turn-off. Every game I try to play solo with them ends after one or two sessions. I would much rather play characters with a job or role in the world because when you don't know what to do next, you can always fall back on a mission or task given to you by your employer.

So the priest pulled her to the wreckage of the bus where they hid, and now enter our second character, a desert ranger with an ATV nearby who hunts mutant creatures for the crossroads town, and he spots the carnage and decides to intervene. He sets up on a hill, spots the priest and the girl, and starts sniping the bandits one by one, forcing them to take cover and return fire. And again, this is a character who can at least take missions from the local government, law enforcement, and others who call him in to deal with mutant critters and monsters killing livestock. He is in the right place at the right time to take a stand.

So the priest and the girl dash to one of the bandit's pickups, hop in, and race away! And our ranger keeps taking the bandits out, managing to pick off a passenger each from the other two pickups, but not two of the bandits who hop in the bed of the last pickup truck as the two pickups give chase to the fleeing priest and girl. The ranger hops on his ATV and chases them all.

And the chase is on!

I am doing a lot of vehicle combats and chases in this system and trying to break things. The entire fight was easy since the bandits were level 2, the pickups were level 3, and our ranger burned points, taking them out. I am still learning system balance, so this is expected. I decided to lower their levels because there were multiple combatants, but in hindsight, I should have left them level 3 or 4 for this fight. It doesn't matter story-wise, so I just retroactively said these were the new recruits of the bandits going out to raid a bus.

Does it matter the car combats are a step abstracted? Not in the least. They are more fun this way than a detailed Car Wars-style sim, at least for the cinematic play Cypher encourages.

Every car had machine guns mounted forward, and the bandit pickups had bed-mounted machine guns on pintle mounts. The ATV the ranger rode on had one machine gun mounted front. The priest's truck was getting shot up out in front, and the ranger caught up to them from the rear.

The ranger on the ATV and the rear truck with the bed-mounted machine gun and bandits in the back went at it first. The ranger's ATV got hit, and since it was a level 2 vehicle, it lost 2 of the 6 health it had, which wasn't good. The ranger then traded fire a few times until he made a called shot targeting the crew in the bed, and firing the mounted machine gun.

He hit and mowed them down, eliminating the bed gunners, but with a 19 - an extra minor effect. So the ranger had one of the bullets fly through the rear window of the pickup truck and hit the driver's arm, forcing a vehicle control roll. Since the pickup driver was level 3, the ranger made the roll for them - an 8 or under is a "bad result" and means the vehicle kept control, and anything 9 and above helped the ranger and meant the vehicle lost control. This "flipping the roll" was one of those "light turn-on moments" for me for Cypher. A success for the player is a failure for the enemy.

The ranger rolled a 20.

The bandit pickup lost control, barreled off the road, flipped end-over-end, and exploded in one of the most incredible vehicle eliminations in a chase scene I had ever experienced in a roleplaying game.

Wow.

Thank you, Cypher System.

The ranger's machine gun rolled a 1 while attacking the last bandit pickup, so it ran out of ammo. That pickup had no way of attacking the ranger outside of the front arc, so it dropped speed and tried to chase the ATV to get a shot off with its forward guns. The ranger took the ATV off-road, forcing the pickup to chase and make a control roll, and a minor effect meant one of the bandit pickup's tires was damaged from a rut and hindered the pickup on control rolls. The pickup kept firing at the ranger while off the road, and the ranger did a maneuver through a ditch, and the bandit pickup got stuck in it, leaving the bandit immobilized and out of the chase.

Elimination is an elimination; I will take it.

Chase scene over, and that was fun. It was easy, but I am still learning to balance multiple party members, which is all good. These were the rookie bandits; the tough ones may show up later to discover what happened. This is a good note; if you have a too-easy fight, Cypher lets you roll with it and make it up later.

Or, trip a GM Intrusion, problem solved.

Part of this was I never expected combat-focused characters to be so good in the system. In this game, you can design enjoyable combat characters who shine by throwing fists and flinging lead. The priest has powers, but nothing that came into play with a vehicle chase other than avoiding getting shot. He did have his "1 point" of divine armor protection on, and I ruled that applied to his stolen truck, too, since "Jesus take the wheel."

I know this is not how that power works, but it was silly, and the truck had no other defenses or offense, so I ruled that was a cool use and it added to the fun.

The ranger waved hello to the priest; thanks were shared, and they ended up in a deserted mining town to take stock of their damaged vehicles and options. This is where I ended the game, but not before a massive tease for the next session. A short rest restored their spent points, but I am not letting them rest yet. That chase was too easy; time to turn up the heat on them.

GM Intrusion time!

The local animals started running away as something massive approached the town. A giant mutated coyote-don cross between a coyote and a dinosaur. I figure this monster will be level 6, have 2 points of armor, have a howling attack, and 21 health, but be weak to the priest's "divine magic" powers at level 4. I want a tough fight for this one, and they need to feel the burn.

God, I love AI image generators for creating stupid-looking mutant monsters.

Fear the Coyotedon!

The fight happens next time...

Cypher Play: Road War, part 2

Cypher remains an interesting narrative system for solo play, and it holds its own with my second session. A lot gets done in these games, large narrative sweeps of action and story, and in an hour, I can finish a day-long story arc of missions and activities.

My day two started with returning to the delivery garage and getting a mission to haul solar panels to a remote power facility. The truck was loaded with ammunition for the front and rear MGs, and one crew spotted the broken RPG turret on the roof, which was also fixed and loaded with HEAT shells (-2 armor, medium weapon). The solar panels were loaded up, and my driver and the crew headed out of the fortress town for the delivery.

Things got interesting along the way, and I wondered if a "road encounter" was a GM intrusion. In my ruling, I had pre-planned two encounters I wanted to happen in my head, so those were not GM intrusions on this trip. Just because you roll a random encounter or do something pre-planned does not equal a GM intrusion; this is only for stuff "outside" the planned adventure. What would happen on the way there was planned in my head, so I knew what would be written in my adventure module.

In the first encounter, a motorist with a flipped car waved for help. One of the crew spotted an ambush, so my driver pre-pointed the roof RPG at the rocks the sniper was hiding behind, spent a level of effort pre-planned lining the shot up, and told the crew to fire if things got sticky. It was an ambush; my driver rolled a 1 on looking at the flipped car to see if someone was there, and the car exploded on a GM intrusion, and the ambush was on! The rocket blew away the sniper's MG position, and the one on the road ran to a hidden motorcycle and tried to escape. A vehicle chase later, the bike was rammed and forced off the road, and the cyclist did not survive.

The second encounter was a vehicle-on-vehicle fight, and my driver felt the effects of burning pool points. This was a close one, the delivery van got half its health shot up by minigun fire, and the HEAT shells and accurate return fire (with more pool spends) blew up the pursuit. The "creature on creature" vehicle combat worked well, and it mirrors character combat in the weapons and armor scales are the same, only the damage is going to car health. One thing my driver did is roll a 20 on initiative and used that to make a driving roll to go offroad and stir up so much dust the chase car was hindered in driving and shooting tasks. That was a smart move that saved the fight and a trick worthy of using again as a player intrusion.

We got to the solar station, installed the panels, got a few repairs to the van done, and rested a little - but my driver was still tired. We got a side quest to take the mechanics out to a cell tower to fix that, and the van got stuck in a rutted road and ambushed by another sniper. That was taken care of quickly, the cell tower was fixed, and one crew spotted an ambush on the way home - another minigun car.

The van returned to the solar farm, and deciding to go home was tough. My driver was spent, the can was damaged, and we could not risk another 50-50 fight. The solar farm gave us a vehicular cypher, a 1-use drone, mounted on the van.

We plowed home, and fought the last car to a victory, taking more damage to the van in the process. The fight was short and brutal, and my driver had to spend an XP to reroll a 1; it was getting late, and I wanted this session done. Vehicle combat with the "monster vs. monster with weapons" abstract system is excellent.

We limped home, and a GM intrusion was flipped - another broken-down vehicle by the side of the road. This wasn't an ambush; it was a badly-damaged minibus full of migrant workers trying to get to town. My driver told them all to pile in, and the half-wrecked and shot-up van crawled back to town, where the workers were thankful for the ride, and the fruit workers' union sent along some crates of fresh fruit later as a thank you.

A good deed is done, and valuable contact with the union is earned.

My driver had three rests and ended the adventure with 10 down on SPD and 6 down on INT. The next day off will be needed to rest, and a new character will be started. The burndown led to a really dire moment at the end of the day. Should we spend the night at the solar station and let the road get blocked or reinforced? Or do we press home with a tired driver and a damaged van? We decided to press home, a risky decision that paid off since my driver burned XP on rerolls.

I love using XP as a resource. They are not as precious as other games, and you are not "losing progress" when you burn points. Considering spending them was the difference between my driver being left a burning wreck on the road versus making it home and saving a bunch of innocents.

I did the first two sessions in a day, one or two hours each, and I am amazed at how fast the game plays and how much narrative I can play through. I needed to eliminate my D&D "roll for random encounters" mindset, pre-plan a few encounters, and mix in GM intrusions to make the game unpredictable. You do need to "prescript" a few encounters in your head for travel and go by "what would be best for the narrative" instead of "I play this game with charts."

And again, my driver was spent. Sixteen points down with only one long rest left. An end that had me wondering if I would live through the fight. This is good, dramatic stuff, and I would not get that in a 5E or GURPS. Not that easily.

I am moving away from chart games, especially ones that drive the entire experience with random rolls. For this, I had a classic scenario, an ambush and vehicle combat; those were the two "movie moments" I wanted in the game. Everything else was winging it and having fun with the moment. I will use charts if it makes sense, but my imagination is good enough to surprise me. I also tire of games that deliver simple rules and a few hundred pages of charts. Charts don't make a game; gameplay does.

There are times I feel charts are used in some games as filler.

Plus, I sometimes roll on a chart and "freeze up." Yes, charts can provide incredible "I did not expect that" types of experiences, but too many charts can give you this "nothing matters" feeling where the game is random chart interpretation. Sometimes, a chart result does not fit, and I do not play the game I expected or wanted. For this game, I said my "basic 32-page module experience" involves the following:

• A wrecked car ambush.
• A vehicle battle.
• Getting stuck on a rutted road.
• GM Intrusion added an ambush here.
• The solar station.
• GM Intrusion added a side quest here.
• A vehicle battle on the way home.
• GM Intrusion added the broken bus side quest after this happened.

An adventure consists of 3-5 small goals or combats, which GM Intrusions expand upon. Random charts can be used to fill in blanks, but I did not need them for two sessions, and to feel free of them for my solo gaming was nice. But I do not need charts to craft a 3-5 beat adventure structure; I will just say what will happen and play through.

Cypher System is holding its own, and it is a challenging game for solo play. You focus on story and resource management, and you find yourself in some tough decisions. The play is also much more "loose" than a game like GURPS; you move quickly between narrative moments and handle what is essential to the story.

It reminds me of those "choose your own adventure" books in the 1990s that had some resource management, like ammo, torches, or health pools. Cypher is close in spirit to those, and the broad-brush narrative systems make refereeing this game solo easy and fun. If my driver is so tired he needs an extra day off, that is a great game experience.

The game also refuses to get bogged down in math, skill lists, and builds, which is excellent for solo play since if I did this in GURPS, my character would never have 90% of the skills he needed. He can do most tasks at a basic level and is good at driving and fixing things. That covers most of it, and the encounter level covers the rest. In 5E? Forget it, base rules plus a hacked-together road warrior style expansion, a lot of money spent, and hours to do anything simple. I would have never gotten this far in a 5E game, and I no longer need that system.

Cypher went from a game I couldn't figure out to a game I couldn't live without quickly.

Cypher Play: Road War

So I sat down to play a hybrid "Road Warrior" post-apocalyptic-style campaign with Cypher System, which worked very nicely. I am just in the "getting started" part of the game, with some running around a built-up fortress town, running errands, and getting to know the city. I am playing solo and using the Mythic GM Emulator to fill in any blanks, but keeping it on the lighter side and not over-relying on charts.

My character is a delivery service driver, so random deliveries are the "tutorial missions." The delivery van the company issues is a piece of junk, and it had three breakdowns on three separate deliveries. Traffic is treated as a monster, so it has a level and must be rolled against to avoid a table of random incidents. This is a cool trick to Cypher, making any sort of hazardous environment a monster with a level and health and letting the characters deal with it like an enemy.

Not all "leveled challenges" need to be enemies; they can be environments too. I could imagine a "rowdy bar" as an "enemy" in the system, and defeating them means either fighting them, entertaining them, or being best buddies with a few with social skills.

Vehicles (in my game) are like creatures with a level, armor rating, and health. Some vehicles vary widely in health; the van is level 4, with light armor, 12 health, and (when the front and back LMGs are loaded) has a damage of 2 (light vehicle weapons, mounted front and back). There is also a broken RPG turret (medium weapon, HEAT shells ignore 2 points of armor) up top. The company does not allow the trucks to be loaded with ammo in town since those are the rules. Outside of town, the truck will have ammo. Character skills modify tasks done with the vehicle, and vehicle armor would modify SPD effort as usual.

Money is strange, and I was giving out dollars, but I want to give out uses of "item prices" as rewards. A day of work at the delivery service? You can afford one moderate-priced item and any reasonable number of inexpensive items. A 5-day week of work would be expensive if no money is spent during the week. It roughly translates to saving 5 of one item type allowing 1 of the next higher.

• 5 inexpensive items or one moderate item = 1 day of work
• 1 expensive item = 5 days of work
• 1 very expensive item = 25 days (1 month) of work
• 1 exorbitant item = 125 days (1/2 year) of work

The above are in working-person wages. I would multiply wages by the character's tier rating for the base level and then by another rating from 1-6 for work experience or how well the job pays. For example, a tier 2 character paid double the rate - could buy 4 moderate items daily (or one expensive item-ish).

The system works very well, and the "daily grind" of delivering in level 5 traffic made for a long day. My character took someone from the garage to give them directions and watch for traffic hazards, which counted as an assist. A level of driving skill counted as another, and the truck sucked, which counted as a hindrance. The truck broke down once (GM intrusion), twice (random encounter), and three times (another random encounter).

The final GM intrusion was an expensive sports car pulling out suddenly in front of the truck. A driving roll with effort (and no spotter assist allowed) narrowly avoided an accident. The driver got out and had a fit, but some quick thinking smoothed it over and earned the player a new contact in the wealthy part of town - and I got a new cypher from the encounter and a thank you.

In the end, my character was tired, having spent 9 of their INT pool and 5 of their SPD pool. This was a long day with many delays, repair rolls, and using a cypher to fix the truck (which resulted in the truck losing its hindrance with a 20). If anyone says Cypher System is too easy on players, they are not forcing point spends and using scene hindrances and hazards to good effect. Add hindrances and deny assets if they do not apply. Also, require point spends to even attempt some actions.

To do well in this system and complete missions, you need to be a "big spender" on effort and use those pools hard, which is how it should be. Referees! Make sure those point spends are happening. Toss a GM intrusion in there if the fight is going too well, make a sandstorm happen, and add a hindrance to the scene. Use your tools and drain those pools.

If your characters are not half-dead tired from effort use, you are not playing Cypher right. That "pool burn" is essential to tension and challenge, and there were moments when the truck broke down. I had no idea how the day would be completed successfully at a few points. You should be looking forward to and carefully spending those recoveries.

If you are burning pools down, you are having fun.

Narratively, the system works incredibly well for solo play. This game was much smoother and more interactive than 5E, Pathfinder 2, C&C, or some of my OSR favorites. In many d20 games, you are not burning resources out of combat; unless you are in combat, the game falls flat. In Cypher, you are burning resources all day with any secondary mode of play (exploration and interaction), and in combat, your pools are directly under attack. Even in Savage Worlds you get that combat-focused resource burn, and I like how Cypher makes you burn through pools just to complete a non-combat package delivery mission. It felt like I was going to fail, which got my attention.

Next session? We are diving into vehicle combat with a dangerous delivery outside of town.

Pathfinder 2: Beginner Box Experience, part 1

Red d20 that can't roll above a 6, you are hereby banned from my game.

So I played the "solo adventure" at the beginning of the player's book for the Beginner Box, and now I know why we shifted away from any d20 system for combat and task resolution. The combat against the wolf felt like whack-a-mole, attack, attack at a -5, and hide in a bush.

The first five turns were miss-miss-bush.

Whenever the wolf attacked I made a high-pitched "arf" just to entertain myself. Most of the arfs would never land because I was bushing, and again, the red d20 was cursed.

I switched to one of my marbled ivory plastic Koplow d20s and the game got 100% better. I could hit again. But still, the whiffs and zero tactical options of straight d20 combat make me cringe hard. I know, we have a few things going on here:

• This is a scenario meant to teach you the rules.
• In Pathfinder 2, party synergies get a lot better later on.
• Solo play in most d20 games sucks.

I seriously feel if I want to solo play I am playing Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS, as that game runs one character with a lot of depth and interesting options for personal combat. Not only can I build a melee master, but the options I have on any turn are also varied and interesting.

Later on, in the skeleton fight, I hit on my first two blows and killed the boss of the dungeon in two hits. Strangely enough, that should have been super satisfying, but I felt that extremely swingy d20 style coming back and going the other way hard. Instead of feeling "yay!" I felt more "what?"

If I built Amiri or Valeros in Dungeon Fantasy they would be complete killers. Even in Savage Worlds Pathfinder at a basic level, they feel way more capable and pulp adventure fun, and you have a wild die there to push that heroic feeling.

I do get this feeling of why we abandoned d20 games coming back to me, and while I enjoy Pathfinder 1e just because of the choices, the more I play d20 games the less satisfied I am with all of them. I know this game is supposed to be more like the "battle chess" we enjoyed in D&D 4, but I have yet to see it happen. I know it is early with just this solo adventure, but my experience felt like eating day-old dried-out pizza. I will withhold judgment for now, and that one experience should not take away from the full game.

Still, the whiffing with zero tactical options feels like I am being forced to play "on rails." I know this gets better in the full game, but I don't like my feelings about why we walked away from d20 coming back. There is a deeper philosophical "why I play games" thing going on here, and it is for action, adventure, and discovery. Being tied to an attack script and a d20 is not why I play games.

Maybe I am just a person who prefers either ultra-realistic or pulp-action games, like GURPS or Savage Worlds, respectively. The games that go more down the middle of the road don't engage me.

I am on to the main adventure now, and I hope this goes better than the introduction.

Into the Borderlands: Play Report

The Goodman Game's versions of B1 and B2 is a really cool book, huge is one way to put it, with a full reprint of the basic module plus a 5E update of the same. You get all the maps, plus the 5E versions of the adventures are expanded and statted for that rules set.

And I played it as a part of a Pathfinder 1e game recently. I used the old-school module and converted up to Pathfinder, and skipped the 5E version.

Let's say, my experience was definitely old school, but not the type of old school I like. Going into the kobold lair, killing the guards, having a swarm of rats attack, and then holding off a hallway where charge after charge from the kobold's living area fell in piles in the hall felt...it felt wrong.

Not heroic. It felt like invading a tribe's home and killing them all because they have loot. We ended up a bit shell-shocked after the battle, and it felt really scummy for all involved. Like the party did something wrong, and my players felt that as well.

Wait, aren't we supposed to be the good guys here?

The Kobold Insurgency

We had a random event I rolled for later, and I ruled because the kobolds were attacked this way, the local tribes banded together and formed a "kobold insurgency" in the area and a general war broke out. It didn't make the party feel any better, and they knew they caused it, but it kind of put a bookend on a really ugly feeling encounter we had there.

But ugly encounters happen, and not every fight can feel heroic. I know and so do my players. This is the hardships of being an adventurer, sometimes bad things happen and you deal.

And this reinforces the idea of consequences outside the published module in the game world. You tip the cosmic balance and there is a possibility of a reaction happening. And here, one did.

And it was fun bringing up the insurgency every now and then as the kingdom battled it, the checkpoints, the fires in the hills, the soldiers marching out to the mountains, passing burned out farms, the town criers announcing wins and losses in the campaign - it became a fun backdrop to the game and the players enjoyed knowing the mess they made had a larger impact - although one where if it never happened none of this would have ever began.

But perhaps it was destined to all along.

And no, they did not tell anyone of their involvement. It became a sort of open secret to the party, and with each random event tied to the insurgency they knew they would have to go out there and end what they started.

But, what was wrong with us?

Times Change

Back when we were kids, yeah, they are all evil, here is a room full of them! Yeah! Blast them like a hall full of creatures out of the Gauntlet video game and grab their loot! The modules of those days were simple, room X filled with monster Y sorts of places, and just having a map with keyed rooms was cool and saved us a lot of work.

And I am not dumping on this module, the Keep on the Borderlands, my brother and I loved this place and had our first campaign here with characters that lasted for 40 years. This is where it all began for us, and I still have the home-made maps we made with graph paper and coloring pencils.

But I guess my tastes changed. I like stories, plots, and adventures now. I don't want to go in a hole in the ground "just because treasure" and kill everything down there for XP and GP.

Yes, the kobolds are technically "evil" in this module, it is assumed, but with no support or trappings like demon statues and the like, it felt wrong. I helped rectify that by making the united tribes evil and despicable during the game, so it sort of balanced out.

It would have helped if the original module eliminated the non-combatants and painted the tribe as evil raiders with loot gathered from raids on innocent villages, then the raid would have felt justified. Perhaps this was an oversight on my part, but I was running the module as-written to give them that experience, so this I felt was an interesting topic to write about.

To Be Fair...

The 5E material was excellent, and pointed out some of the problems of the original adventure. The criticism of B2 being a "monster hotel" was correct and a fun admission of the original material's shortcomings. They did try to fix a lot of the issues in the adventure, provided better descriptions and updated encounters, and I wished I would had started with the 5E side of the adventure before I put it aside for the original version.

The 5E material also mentioned when the group would surrender, and clearly laid out non-combatants (and did not stat them), so a more modern sensibility and adventure designer made some great tone choices here. I never likes the classic modules giving hit points for younger non-combatant monsters (or even mention their presence), it just felt wrong to put players in that position where they could accidentally injure younger members of the tribe with a misplaced oil flask or fireball. Let those on the map be combatants and leave those there as the ones responsible for evil occurrences.

There is also a reasoning why the monsters are all here, something to do with the chaos altar present here that draws the monsters to this area despite their antagonism and differences. It is a weak reasoning to hand-wave and say 'because magic' but it is something I could have worked with if I had wanted to. There is a difference between running the old adventure as-is, versus having the kobolds aware of a mind-altering presence in the area of "evil magic" and having that affect their actions.

The party could see a group of kobolds not attack a bugbear because some dark magic willed them to, and that would have aroused suspicion and played into that overall story arc of this place. Once the altar of evil is destroyed, the Caves of Chaos would be as well, and the party could have a sense of accomplishment within a larger narrative and the monsters could go back to being monsters.

I give the 5E section props (and one which I wish I would have read a little more before I ran this), and the tone change between expectations then and now is one thing to be aware of when running older modules. I know, it should be apparent, right? Not all the time, and in this case I stepped on that rake and it hit me in the face.

Turning it Around

By the end of the game, the insurgency did come home to roost and they got drawn into the fight and helped end it. It did sort of put an end to what the party started, and they felt they had corrected a mistake - that wasn't really a mistake because the module was written in a different time and expected a different type of player - one more interested in math and loot than story or plot.

It was a strange situation where and old-school module met modern sensibilities and a desire to play more plot-based games, and I refereed it as having a real consequence that became a backdrop and end to the game. They had fun and we talked about our feeling afterwards, and everyone agreed the insurgency was a fun way to take what felt like a morally-dark old-school slaughter into a larger story and they thanked me for turning what was an ugly situation into something they didn't like having to fix, but they did anyways because they felt responsible.

I pointed out that the situation was likely a powder keg likely to go off not maybe by this, but something else, and they understood and agreed. It was turning lemons into lemonade, but it made sense of something that felt wrong in the beginning and provided closure for the group.

Next Time?

I would make this an adventure location with a reason for coming here, not just to clean the place out, but a kidnapped merchant and a rescue mission, or some other plot based reason to be here, get in, and get out. This would go from a "clear out rooms 1 to 100" sort of game to a adventure setting that serves as a background for a larger story. Not a place to clean out, but as a set where larger plots and stories happen.

Then again, is it a great setting for that sort of story, or is this just fan service? Again, I am struggling. No, realistically, you would not have so many tribes - some hostile to each other - within walking distance of each other. They would not walk out of their caves every morning, punch their timeclocks, and say "hello Bob" and go off to raiding and looting only to come back here later to live in a small, easily accessible, openly known about hole in the ground when they have a whole wilderness map to go make a camp or fortress in.

And when you think about it, the larger and stronger tribes would have wiped out the smaller ones years ago and taken their stuff, perhaps collapsed their caves, and left to go find somewhere more secure, private, and defendable.

And next time, yes, I will be smarter and start with the 5E version with the tone fixes and updated content. I can still swap monsters to whatever system I am playing, but it helps having the fixes and additions to consider.

The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia

Yes, I know B2 is a classic and near and dear to the hearts of many, but I need to mention the Labyrinth Lord module of The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia. This is a way larger experience, but conceptually the same, and a bit better constructed. If I have a "goblin lair" or a "kobold lair" map that out as a standalone, and put it on a larger "adventure area" map (or let the DM place it somewhere), and then you can have a "Caves of Chaos" style area without having it feel too cramped or connected.

The bonus to this type of approach is you can create a classic experience, such as a kobold lair in the ruins of an ancient serpent cult temple, and have the room to create secret ways in, story and plot hooks, and even lost areas where remnants of the old serpent cult may still be around.

I prefer this style of setup to B2's, and this feels much more sandbox and open to me as a referee. The tribes of monsters have room to fight, skirmish, patrol, grab territory and resources, and retreat back to their defended camps and homes to plot another way to rule the lost valley where ancient power lies. Outside tribes could be called in as the war escalates. The players could pick a side, or their actions weakening one side or another could tip the balance of power and cause unforeseen consequences.

And you can ignore or move things around if you want to focus on one group of bad guys. You are not limited by the classic map's tight layout and structure. I would have liked the 5E adventure to space things out a little more with a larger adventure area and sites farther apart, but it is what it is. Messing with a classic that much would have been likely controversial.

In this sort of a "area map plus locations" setup there is more room for player agency and choice. If the story goal is a kidnapped merchant by one of the tribes, getting in, doing the rescue, and escaping are clear goals and you aren't "clearing a map" and you are not forced into areas that have nothing to do with the story.

A Great Book

Despite our strange play experience, I love the book and the work they put into this, and I am planning on getting the others in the series (and I hope they do the Slave Lords "A" series someday). It is clearly a labor of love with interviews, expanded material, a 5E conversion, and plenty to do. Highly recommended, but make note of some of the old school expectations and assumptions and feel free to wrap this into a larger story of yours that changes things up and makes "clearing the map" not the primary goal of the story or mission.

Then again, if you are just going for the old school feel with a modern rules set, dive in and have fun.