NeoGrognard

It’s true. It’s hard to create old-school dungeon crawling with the 4e rules. Hey, but we like a challenge, right?    

Rob Schwalb suggested moving aspects of resource recharge away from the short rest, and places them in quest goals that lived within connecting sector. The base idea is pretty brilliant. It is trying to get us to stop thinking about adventures as rooms after room after room and look at the cohesive whole. This was promised (alright, maybe promised is too strong a word), but we’ve seen little of it. The you get a glimmer of it in Dungeon from time to time, the RPGA (and by that I mean Living Forgotten Realms) experiments like crazy, many times to good effect, but the rest of us wait for Dungeon Masters Guide x (where x is equal to a number greater than 2) to explain it all.    

I’m all on board for trying to find a way (or ways to solve this) and if you think that Rob’s idea is the bees knees run that horse until it drops. Personally, I think the quest recharge mechanic is too artificial. I’d rather tackle the structure of adventure design. Leave official rules to players and their plethora of powers, feats, and magic items, we are DMs and we do what we want!    

The real problem, as I see it, is that most of our tech on encounter design is structured like a Die Hard movie. Now that’s fine. I mean yippie ki-yay, motherfucker. I can play kick in the door kill be a badass then collect your loot all day. But sometimes you want a Harry Potter or Lost structure.  Sometimes you want a Game of Throne structure. Sometimes you just want to resurrect the B2 Keep on the Borderland.    

My first basic set was the purple Moldvay box. I got it for two reasons. First and foremost it had dice. Dice were hard to find. Second it had B2, which was a fun adventure. I don’t know how many times ran it, played in it, and mused over its complexity. Until T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil saw release, it was the coolest dungeon evah.    

It’s still pretty cool. Sure, it seems like a bunch of different monsters in a lot of different caves at first, but there are actually interesting factions, a strange temple to chaos, and even ransoming prisoner rules. It’s actually a pretty function monster community. Demented and sad, but social and dynamic.    

The tools and examples that we are given in 4e, just doesn’t typically assume that structure. It has vision tunneled down on instances of action. It has a hard time panning back up to a spot where exploration is just as important as combat domination. Characters have plenty of opportunity to avoid encounters, trigger other encounters and interact with the dungeon denizens in way that rolling for initiative just doesn’t cover.    

Back in the early days of D&D, we didn’t have rules for this crap either. Hell, we barely had combat rules. Now we have better rules on one side, and that makes us sad for the other. But I would rather take an old school approach to the problem with some new school tools. I want to bring back the wandering monster.    

Before we get to wanderers, I want to add a new kind of rest—the short rally or rally rest. Basically the shorter, short rest, a short rally takes a minute, you can spend as many as you want during the day, no strenuous activity blah-da-blah, and the character regains a single encounter power or spends a healing surge. It is clearly worse in the long run than taking a short rest, but in the right situations it can be a godsend.  I’ve half a mind just to re-dub it second wind and add a benefit and exception to the second wind we all know and love. In combat you take it as a standard and you gain either spend a healing surge or get back a single encounter power along with the +2 to defenses. Out of combat it takes a minute and you don’t get the bonus to defenses.    

This change is not strictly necessary, but it can create more tension in the exploration…but that will become evident later.    

Now back to wandering monsters. Back in the old days they brought uncertainty to rest and travel. That was their job. It’s a job we need doing again. The problem was wandering monsters seemed cheesy if used simply or cheaply. My proposed solution is wanderers.    

What’s a wanderer? They are small encounters coming from adjacent area (“hey, what the hell is that?”) or designated from a pool of listed wanderers. With certain triggers a DM checks makes one or more d6 rolls. If at least one of those rolls is a 6, enter the wanderer.  A DM can always decide not check for wanderers on a give trigger. If there are no creatures in adjacent areas or a sector doesn’t have any or any more floating wanderers (that’s right, I said floating wanderers!), the DM can decide not to roll, or better yet to roll, but not calculate the results (it keeps the players on edge).  If the DM has many options, just pick the one he or she likes best.  

Floating wanderers are those encounters that inhabit a pool of wanderess.  Floating wanderers can sometimes be hard in a dungeon setting, because you want them to pop through the walls, but hell, if Left 4 Dead can do it most of the time, so can D&D. You just need another tool—sectors.    

You see I liked Rob’s idea of sectors. I think it is just good design to think of a group of interlocking areas as a dynamic space, and sectors make this manageable. It’s also one of the reasons I like The Keep on the Borderland, the Caves of Chaos uses sectors. Each cave is a sector…or group of sectors.    

To illustrate my points, here is how I developed a section of the original B2. It’s my goal to keep the broad strokes of the encounters and find a way to fit 4e mechanics within those strokes. This is a small part of Cave K—the eerie Shrine to Evil Chaos. I split up this sliver into 2 sectors, the black sector which is main temple, and the tan sector which is the strange basement.    

As you can see by my map  the Caves of Chaos it absolutely huge by current adventure design standards, but it is still workable. Unless you have a huge table, you’re not going to be able rebuild big chunks of the temple with Dungeon Tiles (and you are never going to see it on a poster map), but there are other ways to run exploration, as simple as description and a designated player as mapper, and as high-tech as using video screen or projector to uncover sections of the dungeon. The large space serves us well here, because you can switch back and forth between exploration and encounter mode, and you know you will have a space large enough for a good combat encounter.   

Here are the rules for rolling for wanders in these sectors.    

-Each time you rally, you check for wanderers (If I decide to change second wind, this would not happen during combat). At the DM’s discretion wanderers interrupt the rally.    

- Each round of combat, on the turn of the monster with the highest initiative, you check for wanderers. If that monster or group of monsters is defeated, move the check to the next acting monster or group of monsters. Or, you could just put a “check for wanderer” space or card on the initiative order.  

- Each time you take a Short Rest, you check for wanderers 6 times. At the DM’s discretion wanderers interrupt the short rest.    

If you are not in love with rallies, you can drop the concept and it still works, just make sure wanderers nearly always interrupt a short rest.    

Individual sectors would have rules or advice on their wanderers. Keep in mind that you want to make natural divides for sectors. You want players to take advantage of sectors, without making the sectors seem too mechanical. For instance, the door between the upper temple and the lower area is a physical barrier between two distant groups of potential combat encounter.   

The Black Sector    

The black sector has three groups of 8 zombies. Unlike normal zombies, these are blind and have blindsight 5. Two of the zombies are on the map, but those are only proposed starting places. Each of those groups patrols up and down the corridor. The other group can pop up wherever you would like, as long as the positioning is plausible.    

The wanderers for black sector are    

1-      The third group of 8 zombies    

2-      A pair of wandering priests from the main temple. They are plotting, secret lovers, or hiding a body, whichever is cooler.    

3-      A group of goblins who have been order by the chief to carve their tribe’s symbol into the wall. The group consists of a small group of siblings who are vicious, stupid, and suspicious. The chief hopes the priests will torture them before sacrificing them to whatever demon they worship.    

4-      A wight searching for a wight now trapped in the tan sector (and beyond my map). The wight can also be a wanderer in the tan sector.    

 Tan Sector Wanderers    

The tan sector has a strange group of creatures, two of which, the gelatinous cube and wight, are just off my map, but the cube is a great wanderer and could be triggered anywhere.  Other than that the wight from above, the only wanderer is a priest come to check on the wight from time to time.

You’ll notice two things about wanderers; each wanderer is unique and in a context. When you use a wanderer it’s out of the pool. If you use a chart, you can just reroll, but treating it more like a pool maybe best.  Wanderers should have the potential to add to the story not seem like a kludge. That’s why the context is important. DMs may come up with better ideas, but at least they have something that is default and designed for the sector to start with.   

The other point about wanderers is that they are not infinite. They are a resource that can be depleted, and when it is, an area is basically clear. Many times when a group of characters clear out a sector, they’ve found a place relatively safe for an extended rest.    

Encounters    

Here are my notes on the encounters. None are finished, this is just the outline, but enough to give you the idea. That and some stat blocks and a more robust treasure list is all I would really use to run this in my home game. The information in the brackets is the number or location in the original adventure.    

 K1 [Cave K Entrance] Entrance: EL 0    

K2 [Cave K Entrance] Long Hall with Zombies: EL 2 – 8 zombies that patrol up and down this long hallway. Patient characters can easily hide from the zombies (group check Stealth DC 9) and sneak about when the zombies’ backs are turned.    

K3 [54]: Evil Acolytes: EL 3 – Four lesser priests of demon cult, one is a leader, mix of soldiers and controllers because we don’t need to have all the priests do the same thing, and soldier + controller can equal combat heartburn. These guys should be tough to build tension for encounters in the temple.  Wanders usually appear alone (60%), having nothing to fear due to the zombie guards (and even evil priests have to pee sometime). They will call for backup if they fear defeat, but would rather take sole credit for defeating a group of adventurers. The rest of the time Wanderers will appear as a group of at least two, the exact size can be a table or the DM’s discretion or both.    

K4 [Hall between 55 and main temple]­: EL 2 – This other group of 8 zombies is identical in composition to the K2 zombies, and patrols this long hallway.    

K5 [55] Evil Chapel: EL Variable – This is an uninhabited room with some creeps stuff. There are relics on the altar that are a mix of cursed item and trap. Characters take them, bad things happen, characters destroy them, the bell in the main temple rings, and the upper temple (black sector) comes a run’en.    

K6 [Halls around 60, 61, 64]:  EL 0 – These hall are typcially empty.    

K7 [60] Torture Chamber: EL 3 – The torturer is an elite brute, maybe a demon spawn from Demonomicon. He is a killer who enjoys his work. Any combat with him will alert the guests in K8.    

K8 [61] Guest Chamber: EL 2 – Two humans, a jaded noble in over his head complete with his bodyguard, a rather callow and self-serving mercenary accustomed to simple bullying at a noble’s side. They will investigate any battle with the torture, but will take sides only when there seems to be a clear winner. They will befriend the PCs and even help them, but will just as quickly turn on them.    

K9 [64]: Cell: EL 5 – It may be a ballsy move, but the level 10 elite controller medusa from the MM goes here.  Unlike the original adventure, this medusa wants to escape and get her revenge on the demon cult. She will do it with or without the PCs. The problem is, the high priest of the demon temple has already taken a part of her soul, and has a power that allows him to control her for a short period of time. Make sure to give the high priest a magic item that grants a +5 saving throw bonus to petrification effects.    

As you can see, there is some iteration work to be done here, but I’ve playtested the basic concepts enough that I’m pretty confident they will work. While this solution may not be as simple as Rob’s but I do think it confronts problems where they lay. If you want a different structure than the action film structure for your encounters, you have to adjust the design of those encounters, not how the players get back resources. And by co-opting some old tools, examining why they were there to begin with, and finding better ways to apply them, we can at least reclaim the old delve structure of exploration and uncertainty.