The Art of Delving

Here's another bit of Bleak Beyond material that might be of interest to some of my readers. It's basically a Delver-as-Subclass system. In a megadungeon campaign such as this, with no Thief class, the responsibilities of safely and carefully navigating the underworld are shared by all capable adventurers. Why not allow these intrepid spelunkers the chance to hone their skills the more often they use them?

A few disclaimers before I copy and paste: I still tend to not simply reduce these acts to straightforward dice rolls. The 5+ roll is a baseline suggestion, one which should be modified based upon how the characters are attempting them, the prevailing circumstances, and the difficulty of the particular endeavor. As a matter of fact, I am going to edit the new doc and add these notes! Be right back...

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The Art of Delving

A general purpose d6 roll is used for determining success or failure when undertaking various mundane tasks in the game. Refs can adjust the target 5 as needed, increasing it to 6 or lowering it to 4 or less as the game demands.

Note: It is suggested that Refs avoid simply reducing these acts to straightforward dice rolls. Encourage player reasoning and input, and reward or penalize them accordingly. The 5+ roll is a baseline suggestion, one which should be modified depending upon how the characters are attempting them, the prevailing circumstances, and the difficulty of the particular endeavor.

The 5+ Rule:
Roll 1d6
1: Absolute Failure
2-4: Failure
5: Success
6: Success and roll again. With a result of 6 on the roll again, the character denotes one pip above the relevant task.

Improving with Experience: When six such pips are earned the character gains a permanent +1 on all 5+ checks with that particular task. No further bonuses may be gained in this manner for that particular task. See Master Delver, below.

Ability Score Adjustment: Characters with a 15 or higher in the relevant Ability Score add 1 on their 5+ roll. Those with a 6 or lower subtract 1.

Race Adjustment: Characters of varying race will either add 1 or subtract 1 on their 5+ roll.

Core Tasks: Tasks which any character may undertake during the game.
Disarm Trap: Apply STR or DEX, determined by type.
Eavesdrop: Humankind -1.
Find Secret Door: Elf and Aelfar +1.
Find Trap: Dwarf and Dvergar +1.
Open Door: Apply STR. Hobbit, Doende and Irkling -1.
Unlock: Apply DEX.
Sneak: Hobbit and Doende +1.

Bonus Tasks: Bonus Tasks can be raised as well with the accumulation of pips, but may not be selected as a Master Delver's specialty.
Sense Direction: Irkling only.
Sense Secret Door: Elf and Aelfar only.
Sense Trap: Dwarf and Dvergar only.

Master Delver: Once a character has gained a +1 bonus to the first six Core Tasks (all except Sneak) through the accumulation of pips, he or she can claim the title of Master Delver. At that time the player shall select one, and only one Core Task with which he or she shall receive a further bonus of 1 on all 5+ rolls in that endeavor. For example, it is possible for a Dwarf to become a Master Delver with a Find Trap specialty, gaining a bonus of +3 on all 5+ rolls for that task.

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And there you have it. There's a PDF for dl in SHAM'S OD&D STUFF, or just copy, paste and edit for your own game. As with much of the Bleak Beyond material, some light editing will make it usable in any campaign.

~Sham

A Quiet Month

February has turned out to be a quiet blogging month here at Ye Auld Grog & Blog. Rather than pull up the old blogger excuse list, I simply mention that my recent scant free time staring at the dim glow of the monitor has been spent catching up on posts around the D&D blog circle.

While I haven't been posting articles, I have been working on a follow-up article to Delvers Delve for Fight On!. The first article was penned back in late November and submitted in early December. Delvers Delve is hopefully going to become a series of ongoing suggestions, observations and options focusing on dungeon crawling. It evolved from my Cover to Cover series, and it became of particular note to me as many of the my ideas within the article seem to be independently shared by others. In particular James at Grognardia reached many of the same conclusions in regard to revisiting the Thief based on actually reading what was written about the class in Greyhawk, and by that other James over at LotFP when he was reading the Holmes Basic volume. It suggests that many of us do in fact think in the same manner, albeit often in different styles.

The second article, which I am currently putting together, offers up a collection of options I have dubbed "Extended Crawling". Many I have been using for years, others I just started using, and some are simply clarifications of loose ideas that have been around in my games for decades.

I prefer to not spill the beans ahead of time with articles which may find their way into print in the future, so keep an eye out for that first Delvers Delve in the upcoming issue #4 of Fight On!. Everything indicates that it should be available from Lulu very soon.

It's interesting to see how articles submitted for print differ so much from blog posts. I get immediate responses and comments here, while things printed get virtually nothing. On the other hand, much of what I post online is forgotten very quickly, the exception being the Entourage Approach which was cobbled into a submission after being tossed about at the blog here. Articles which find print are something to be proud of in that they seem to have some measure of longevity.

As long time readers know, one of my high water marks since I started this crazed collection of random thoughts (aside from the Entourage Approach and the One-Page Dungeon) was the level I put together for the ongoing Fight On! project, The Darkness Beneath. Spawning Grounds of the Crab-Men created some buzz before it was printed, but not much since. In retrospect I feel I could have done a better job with that adventure. The level was written with a definite theme in mind, which I feel was conveyed nicely, but I still must put my work under the magnifying glass and offer up a few critiques of my own. Hindsight is always 20/20, as they say. Not enough empty space. Too few traps. Not nearly enough tricks. Virtually no misdirection. The dreaded Big Bad Evil Monster cliche. I'm afraid the whole thing might seem too restrictive and lacking that quality I personally enjoy so much in other adventures, creative elbow room. Let's just say I don't feel that I "let it all hang out" with the offering. I haven't heard any feedback on the adventure, so that alone speaks volumes.

I also submitted a small game option for the first issue of Knockspell way back in mid-November which found its way into print. The Thrall is a low level option for beginning characters. I like to think of it as an Anti-Entourage Approach. Rather than one character slowly gathering a following and amassing a stable of adventurers, the player begins with a few untrained delvers and ends up with a sole surviving character to call his own. I used something very similar in the past in a more wide open version which I stripped down to a rudimentary foundation in order to align itself with the original rules.

All of this leads me back to looking for input here on some of these non-blog offerings. For that reason I will be adding the original unedited submissions I made in PDF form over at my OD&D Orbitfiles page. None of these submissions will be added there until they see print, in all fairness to the editors. I'll wait for Fight On! #4 before I add these, so I can link to Spawning Grounds, The Thrall and Delvers Delve all at once. The Bogbears and The Entourage Approach which worked their way into Fight On! started here at the blog, so there's no need to add a PDF of those.

I'll be sure to remind readers to check out the Orbitfiles page once I've added to it. And yes, the promised new One-Pagers for The Dismal Depths are still in the works, as are my various other ongoing projects. Damn this is starting to feel like a job.

A dream job, nonetheless.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

The Dim Expanse part IV

The Dim Expanse part IV

Ulin Uthor, in Dwarven, translates roughly to ‘The Dim Expanse’. Within these depths, the so called ‘Deep Down’, the very laws of the world of man become lost and forgotten. The Dim Expanse is a connection between realities, that of mankind, and that of unreason. This series of articles will detail certain facets of Ulin Uthor while I am continuing to plan and design the mega dungeon.


In my cheeky introduction to Adventuring Obstacles, I used a quick analogy showing why simply rolling dice to avoid these various challenges is a no-no. Such an approach leads to meta-gaming, where the numbers take over, and mean more than the game itself.

I find fault with the original Thief concept, and theorized that the class, introduced in Supplement I, Greyhawk, has led modern D&D down a narrow, meta-gaming path. To the point where many players think in terms of numbers and charts rather than actual role-playing logic. Changing in a manner which helps support my Empty Room Principle.

To this end, I am attempting to take my own advice and stop hiding traps quite as cleverly. Even the best hidden traps in Ulin Uthor will have some tell-tale sign as to their presence.

Consider this, you are slowly walking through unexplored subterranean tunnels, known to be inhabited by the foul denizens of the Deep Down. Vigilant and wary, you have naught but a pair of dimly lit torches amongst you and your fellow delvers to light your way. At best, the lighting is flickering, shadowy and faint. Even a wide open pit in the tunnel ahead could take you by surprise. Some diabolical contraption on the ceiling overhead might go unnoticed amidst the shadows above. A somewhat crudely hidden pit, on the other hand, could certainly present a true threat. A trip-wire or a loose flooring stone might be nearly impossible to notice before tripping off it’s accompanying trap.

All of this is presuming that the delvers are indeed proceeding cautiously through the labyrinthine passages. If the delvers are in pursuit, or worse yet, taking flight through as of yet unexplored corridors or rooms, even plainly obvious traps might not be spotted in time.

The upper levels of Ulin Uthor are littered with pit traps, and trapped false doors. Depending upon the prevailing circumstances and the actions of the players, these may or may not yield clues warning of their imminent danger. I don’t necessarily need to include such clues in the keyed descriptions of the mega dungeon. Besides, many areas and levels of The Dim Expanse have stewards who routinely clean up such clues and warnings. Other traps within the mega dungeon have already had obvious clues written into the description. For example, scorch marks on the walls or floor, or pock marks and heavy etching near traps which release fire or acid.

An innocent pair of crossbow bolts, sunk into a dungeon wall, speaks volumes now. Perhaps it’s a clue that some trap trigger is nearby, or perhaps it’s simply the remnants of some melee fought within these walls in the past. This is not to say that as a referee, when designing your campaign, that you need to detail each and every trap in some complicated, logical manner within your written descriptions. If you enjoy such things, by all means it’s possible. I typically assume a loose floor stone trigger for traps that ‘fire’, a pull chain or spring mechanism on doors and chests, and counter-balanced trap doors above my pits. The level of detail and variety is left to the referee, to be preplanned, or invented on the spot.

This flexibility allows the referee to play D&D in an open-ended manner. The flow of the game and the decision making process is squarely upon the referee’s shoulders, and not determined by a roll of the dice. At times, the referee will certainly use dice to determine if the players have indeed seen such clues, but this is not determined by any hard and fast rules, classes, or abilities of the characters. It’s simply another story-telling feature in the referee tool kit, much like a Wandering Monster table, or ad-libbing.

Is this approach not in keeping with true old school OD&D? Perhaps not. In reading the LBB, one certainly gets the impression that the referee is often designing his dungeons in the most devious manner possible. Traps with no warning, save or die situations abound, merciless teleport and sloping traps intended to pit the delvers against overwhelming odds. All of this is fine, so if your particular campaign hosts players who are up to the task, go for it. In my experience, though, after the 15th unavoidable pit trap, the players begin to lose that feeling of realism, and the traps turn into an ‘exploration tax’, if you will.

Imagine if every Monster, or group of Monsters in your game sessions were invisible, silent teleporters, able to surprise the player characters upon each and every encounter. That would certainly get old after a while. Traps are no different. When you think of them in the same way that you consider encounters, this approach begins to make much more sense.

At times, you might want certain traps, or tricks, to be unavoidable. Teleport fields, for example. Such obstacles are perfectly fine, as they aren’t always directly dealing damage. Rather, these unavoidable features are waylaying and rerouting the delvers. Things like invisible death rays are perfectly fine, if you go for that sort of thing. Personally, I’d toss a few corpses in their path, though. Might the delvers still stumble into danger? You bet. At least there was a warning of some sort. Thinking along these lines allows the referee to dial the devious knob up or down, depending upon the situation. It’s all about referee control.

Whether you allow the Gygaxian Thief class or not, this obvious traps design theory will still engender more role-playing scenarios and critical thinking on behalf of your players. If a player in my campaign yearned to have a character who was mechanically adept, and well versed in the detection and removal of such devices, I would concede. Perhaps an Explorer class, or a Delver class. Something that a Dwarf might excel at, at the expense of combat prowess. Nevertheless, this character would NEVER be able to simply roll dice to detect, and roll dice to remove abstract, non-descript traps within Ulin Uthor. Such a character would need to role-play, and tell me what, how and why before attempting to get some class related bonus in his efforts to disable my traps.

Here are two examples from Ulin Uthor:

A standard pit trap, with a pair of counter-balanced trap doors. This pit has a pressure plate at it’s bottom, which when activated, causes the trap doors to close, resetting the trap. Pretty standard fare. Now, let’s say a NPC adventurer fell into this pit recently. His adventuring mates, in their efforts to free their companion, attempted to pry open the stout trap doors using a spear. The spear broke, and the spear head is still firmly wedged into the edge or center of the trap doors. How obvious is this? That’s up to the referee. Also, it leads to other ad-lib possibilities…is the adventurer still there? Why was he left? Is he still alive? Worse yet, has he been turned into a Zombie?

A dead end hall after a turn in the passage greets the delvers. A recessed niche in the wall at the end of the dead end hall, 30’ beyond, houses a small iron lever. The lever is in the ‘up’ position. Both walls of the 30’ hall leading to the lever have a thin crust of decaying flesh, splintered bone, and matted hair. There is a distinct odor of rotted flesh here. How obvious these clues are is up to the referee. Levers are almost always too tempting to leave alone. I often go a little ‘lever crazy’ at times. Is this a typical crushing wall trap? Is there some reward for pulling the lever? Is there some Deep Down denizen snacking on the remains of slain delvers here? Is this such an obviously deadly trap that the delvers had better just leave it alone altogether? You’ll have to enter Ulin Uthor and steady your hand to pull that lever and find out.

I really enjoy such risk/reward type obstacles. Sometimes there is no reward, of course. What there certainly is NOT is a Thief reaching for his dice when he encounters such a hall. The real reward is for the players to stop and think, and for the referee to enjoy watching the interaction he has instigated with this obvious trap.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

The inspiration for this post is completely credited to Ben at Ars Ludi. I apologize for not giving him due credit originally. ~Sham.

Adventuring Obstacles

In an effort to classify and differentiate the various obstacles encountered in the course of an adventure, be it in a dungeon, wilderness or urban setting, I present the following:

Magical: Magical Traps and Tricks.
Mechanical: Mechanical Traps and Locks.
Mundane: Features and Lay-out.
Physical: Melee and Role-Playing.

The Delver class can dice to avoid Magical obstacles.
The Thief class can dice to avoid Mechanical obstacles.
The Explorer class can dice to avoid Mundane obstacles.
The Pacifist class can dice to avoid Physical obstacles.

Nice and neat, and no grey area concerning what each player can and cannot do.

Any of the above four classes who reaches Level 5 may opt to instead pursue the Adventurer class, who simply arrives at the game session, rolls some percentile dice, and can either go back home, or stay and share pizza while he watches anime or performs funny voices for the referee.

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Yes, once again you’ve deduced that I’m being sarcastic. The Thief, as presented, is a good idea handled poorly. Why? I don’t think there’s enough meat on those bones for a separate class. The end result was a step in the wrong direction for D&D. Suddenly, everyone assumes it’s OK to reduce important game play elements down to charts and dice rolls. An Adventuring Obstacle if ever there was.

Why not, then, take it one step further and reduce combat situations, perhaps game sessions, into simple charts and dice rolls? You can already do everything else by rolling dice. ROLL-playing does not engage the player nor does it promote critical thinking. Referencing my Empty Room Principle, this is therefore detrimental to the game. These are the true Adventuring Obstacles, those rules which hinder the adventure itself.

Certain things need to remain random, dice rolling is an integral part of D&D. I don’t think anyone would argue that rolling dice to determine hits, misses and damage is a bad thing. Dice rolling to AVOID game play situations is bad. The Thief finding a trap and removing that trap, simply with two dice rolls, is akin to avoiding melee by rolling dice.

Is there room for a Thief in D&D? Sure, a reworked version, one where I’d be tempted to rename the class and remove the blanket skills. Perhaps a sneaky, lightly armored adventurer, who relies on quickness of action and deception. Not some walking trap detector/deactivator. Much to the credit of my former crew, very few of them ever enjoyed the Gygaxian Thief. It was a boring, thankless job. They liked the sneaking around, stealing stuff part…that’s what a Thief should be.

Here’s a way to make your party forget about the Thief. Stop hiding your traps. Leave trap clues in spades. Things such as corpses, skeletons, bones, scorch marks, open pits filled with spikes, darts embedded in a wall. Clear and present dangers to begin the player interaction and problem solving process, the intriguing part of dealing with these obstacles that the presence of the Thief class has removed from play. Seeing and listening to the players sort out the ramifications of such clues, whether subtle or obvious, and how telling they are, is part of what makes coping with such obstacles fun. Too many hidden traps which go off unerringly, damaging the characters and slowly (or instantly) whittling away at their hit points and resources become something other than traps. Such traps become abstract, losing their identity, reduced to mere collections of numbers.

The very notion of removing elements of deduction and logical thinking is the antithesis of the Empty Room Principle. Spot check? Not on your life, unless you either tell me you are specifically looking for something, or I, as referee, judge that your character might have a chance, not a static number, of noticing something based upon the prevailing circumstances. The lone exception to this rule is the Elf sense secret door option given in the OD&D LBB. This is not an ability based chance, it’s just one of those quirky little Elf powers. I even rule that the Dwarf looking for Clues in Stone needs to be actively searching for such signs, and the roll is only required if I feel that there is a chance of failure. A Dwarf cannot simply run about in an underground setting with some “Rock Radar” that beeps every time a slanting passage or trap is encountered. Such a ruling would cripple many of the best Mechanical and Mundane elements of the dungeon.

Even cleverly hidden traps can have some tell-tale sign giving away their presence. How obvious these are is up to the referee, and is based upon the actions of the players at the time. If a player declares he is actively searching, whether due to a tell-tale sign or a hunch, the referee can, if he so judges, determine that there should be a random chance of success or failure. This style of play encourages critical thinking and logic on behalf of both player and referee.

In Solstice, I have identified certain delving tasks which players will frequently perform. These tasks are based on the examples which were spelled out quite clearly in OD&D’s LBB. I recommend simple d6 rolls, inspired by those first OD&D task checks. Certain classes and races might get a +1 bonus when such rolls are called for. None of these delving task conventions replace actual role-playing and logic. Except, as noted earlier, the Elf sense secret door option, which specifically states that the Elf has “become aware that something is there” simply by passing the area. By extension, it would behoove a referee to mix it up every once in awhile, so that the Elf player doesn’t immediately know that he has sensed a secret door. Perhaps he has indeed sensed a trap door, or some other not so obvious dungeon detail. Even then, the distinction is made that this power is used at the referee’s option. It’s not a black and white rule, merely an optional guide for use during game play, as are all of these d6 rolls. Will every single door require a d6 roll to open? Not in my campaign.

I’m often of the opinion that anything beyond the scope of Vol. I, Men & Magic, is supplemental and should be used as nothing more than a guide to OD&D. That includes the above referenced guidelines to play, and Monsters and Treasure. Men & Magic is the core rules of D&D. The rest is campaign flavor and play suggestions. Nevertheless, I enjoy such guidelines and use them as a suggestion on how to resolve certain situations. They do add some continuity to the game.

Many other fans of OD&D feel that the Thief is a more befitting archetype than the Cleric. I disagree wholeheartedly with this notion. One is performing mundane tasks, while the other is performing divine magic. Of all of the OD&D supplemental classes, I do concur that the Thief is the closest to being an archetype, while the rest are indeed subclasses of the standard FM-MU-C three pronged crown of OD&D.

There’s an interesting thread over at the OD&D discussion forum, with many thoughtful posts and opinions, concerning this very subject. In particular that FM are combatants, MU are casters, and Clerics are hybrids of the two. While in some ways this is true, the fact of the matter is that the Cleric is not simply a hybrid, because his repertoire of spells, and his ability to turn undead are both divine powers unique to the class.

Could someone allow a Thief, and still use the above as a guideline for the mundane tasks performed by such a class? Yes. But then, why introduce the class only to hinder it’s uniquely mundane skills? I’d vote for a sneaky, pilfering, backstabbing FM subclass over a Thief archetype, personally. I'd also vote to avoid Adventuring Obstacles presented as rules.

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

The inspiration for this post is completely credited to Ben at Ars Ludi. I apologize for not giving him due credit originally. ~Sham.