The Name Of The Rose: Three Dimensional Labyrinths

The Name Of The Rose is one of my favorite films. Besides starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater, two fine, accomplished actors, it is set in the 14th century, at a medieval abbey gripped with fear due to a handsome monk's recent and unholy murder. More murders follow. Connery and Slater's characters arrive at the abbey shortly after the first murder, and attempt to solve the crimes. The abbey is the site of a massive library, off-limits to visitors: its contents hold the key to revealing the motive behind the mysterious deaths.
If you have never seen this movie, or have not seen it in some time, you are strongly encouraged to do so. As inspiration for a murder-mystery adventure for fantasy role-playing, this movie has few peers. There is little in the way of combat, but if you like atmosphere, fantastic sets and elaborate puzzles, this is sure to appeal to you.

One of the set-pieces of this film: a labyrinthine library, filled with octagonal rooms and rising and decending staircases. The two principles become separated and lost within the library, and use their wits to locate each other, retrace their steps and eventually find egress. It's commonly held that dungeon labyrinths are a bore, when it comes to rpg adventuring. I'm sympathetic to that view. Imagine your typical dungeon labyrinth, but now in three dimensions. Doesn't seem that appealing, does it? But, instead of being a labyrinth, what if that many-staired and chambered space was rather a nexus-point, a convergence of stairs and passages, going up, down and across, and giving the players a plethora of adventuring alternatives?
That has been on my mind the last couple of days, as I search for a way to design and develop a dungeon environment which provides maximum latitude to the players to strike out and pursue their own dungeon-delving interests. One of the constraints on the full enjoyment of a campaign by role players is the suspicion that they are being railroaded. What could be more freeing, for both the DM and the players, than that the mega-dungeon have a nexus-point, leading to a myriad potential adventures, with easy access to the surface and the dungeon-locales which most interest the players?

The Dying Earth RPG: Kaiin, The Old Town

Here's a tiny portion of the map of The City of Kaiin, one of the largest cities of The Dying Earth.

This portion of the Kaiin map shows 'old town' -- crumbling ruins which lie north of the city proper, just outside of the city gates. It is the the haunt of Chun the Unavoidable, who wears a robe of eyes. Gary Gygax drew his idea for AD&D's Robe of Eyes from The Dying Earth tale of Liane the Wayfarer and Chun the Unavoidable.

Several of the crumbling structures in Old Town were built to resemble the people who commissioned the buildings.

The Dying Earth RPG's world, regional and city maps are absolutely gorgeous, with lots of visually interesting detail, buildings and ruins. Kaiin itself is ancient city, filled with cynical, obtuse, selfish residents, who are not above swindling, murdering or enslaving naive visitors.

I've been giving some thought to Pat's Red Box Calgary campaign, and would love to use old town as the site for my adventures, since it is largely undeveloped, but its numerous ruined locales suggest mystery and adventure.

Red Box - Session One: Feb 28, 2010

I had the great fortune to play “face-to-face” old-school, 1981 Basic Dungeons and Dragons with Pat (Ode To Black Dougal) and Roger (Stirges Suck) today.

We met in the after-hours room of The Sentry Box just after 11 am, and got the game rolling at 11:30. The session consisted of myself, my 11 year-old son DJ (who, after finding out D&D was in the offing, begged to come) and Roger, with Pat as the DM.

Roger had the misfortune of rolling up a Thief with a 3 Constitution, which he promptly named Sickly McGee. Prior to the game, DJ and I had rolled-up characters: DJ was playing a Fighter named Exeter the Brave, and I was playing Castor Brandlestix, the Wizard.

After poking around the local Inn (The Dancing Dragon) and engaging in a conversation with Frederic the Dwarf for rumors about a Dwarven Delve several days to the East, we decided to take our chances in the Caves Of Chaos, as it is nearer than the Dwarven Delve, and we found the Cave location scratched on a corner-table at the Inn, so we suspected that the Cave inhabitants had already been softened up. Besides, Frederic the Dwarf was vague about what we might find at the Dwarven Delve. Perhaps he will provide more information the next time we cross paths.

Before leaving, the party made a visit to the local Mercenary Guild. There, we chatted up Morgan, and she agreed to refer several local Mercenaries to us, for a small fee of 10 Gold (which we happily paid).

Brother Maynard, a traveling Priest, looking to battle the forces of Chaos, and his two bodyguards, Bors and Ironside, enthusiastically agreed to join us, in exchange for each receiving 10 Gold per week and a half-share of treasure. The extra muscle was welcomed, and off Exeter, Cas and Sickly McGee went, with our hirelings in tow.

During our first day on the road, we encountered several mounted men-at-arms of the Striped Mage, and they suggested we hire-on with their master, located in his tower several days south of the Gloomfens ... an offer we agreed to consider. The men-at-arms moved on, but despite having avoided any unpleasantness with them, we suffered our first casualty: DJ, who had been eating candy, had one of his loose teeth come out!

After a five-minute break, to deal with that tooth emergency, we camped for the night, then continued on for a second day, finally spotting a box canyon, with caves dotting the interior walls. This appeared to be the Caves of Chaos! As nightfall was closing in, we traveled another 30 minutes down the road, and camped overnight. We wanted to be rested and alert for our first foray into the caves.

The next morning, we made out way to the cave entrance, on the north canyon wall, closest to the entrance to the canyon. Approaching from above, Sickly McGee quickly scouted the entrance to that cave, but the interior was too dark to detect anything, although he did notice a well-worn path leading from the cave-mouth to the bottom of the Canyon.

Emboldened by the relative lack of activity within the canyon, we lit our lanterns, set our marching order, and crept into the cave. After being taken by surprise by 4 pig-faced humanoids, we regained our composure, quickly defeated them, took their spears and hid their bodies, extinguished our lanterns, and hunkered down in a dead-end guard-room. Five more pig-faced humanoids briefly appeared at the other end of the hallway, checking out the commotion, but they retreated deeper into the cave-complex without locating us.

We discussed our options, and agreed that we would continue our foray, deeper into the cave complex. A guard-post (which we failed to spot during our first pass) was discovered, disguised as several alcoves with decaying heads: one of the alcoves was a false one, used to spy (from the other side) on anyone entering the complex. Turning past this guard-post, we found a second guard-room, this one, empty (probably the lair of the 5 pig-faced humanoids who had investigated the noise from our first combat).

Further to the West, we could hear conversation, though the language was unfamiliar to us. Discovering what appeared to be a throne-room, Sickly McGee suggested that we create a diversion, by setting the wooden furniture alight. So Exeter and one of the hirelings tossed the furniture into a pile, and lit it up with several flasks of oil. After several minutes of unintelligible shouting by the inhabitants of the cave-complex, 5 well-armed pig-faces appeared at the far end of the throne-room. Four of our party threw spears, killing one and wounding two others. Then the other four pig-faces were upon us. We fought them for several rounds, and then another 8 pig-faces appeared at the far end of the throne-room: at that point, Cas the Wizard invoked his sleep spell, taking out all 8 pig-faces who had just entered, along with one of the original pig-faced combatants.

After dispatching the sleeping pig-faces (Maynard the Priest assured us this was quite honorable, as we were merely hurrying their journey to the afterlife, and the slim possibility of redemption) we grabbed up several more spears.

Crossing the throne-room, we spotted another, larger common-room, occupied by six more pig-faces, who were arguing amongst themselves, quite oblivious to our stealthy approach. Catching them unawares, we made good use of our spears, getting off two volleys before the pig-faces recovered their senses and engaged us. While fighting valiantly, Exeter was cut-down by a lucky stab from one of the humanoids, but Sickly McGee and Brother Maynard avenged Exeter's passing, smashing and stabbing the offender to death.

Having, by this time defeated a total of 23 pig-faces, with but a single casualty, caution got the better of me, and I suggested we retreat and regroup. We retreated back to our original campsite, there encountering a dozen merchants using the cold embers of our campfire as starter for their own. They agreed to share the site with us, happily buying some of our loot at bargain prices.

The next morning, we returned to the cave complex, only to find that the remaining inhabitants had abandoned the caves, taking the bulk of their treasure with them. We did recover some equipment from a storage room, and some of the pig-faces' treasure, hidden in a secret room and forgotten in their hasty retreat, which netted us 80 Gold each. In addition, we gained experience for the 23 pig-faces we eliminated.

We discovered a quiver of 20 arrows, two daggers and two swords that were resting within a chest, however, neither I nor any other the inhabitants of the Keep have the ability to detect magic. We will hold onto those items until we can have them appraised for magic dwoemer.

Overall, it was a great session (other than the loss of Exeter, and my letting whatever treasure the pig-faced creatures had slip through our fingers), but i'm sure that treasure is still waiting for us to we make our next foray into the Caves of Chaos!