That’s a Game of Death reference. You know it’s a good reference when you need to explain it.
Our heroes were still exploring the Military District of the abandoned Imperial Town of Harzgard, looking for treasure. They had called their shot: A massive stone building on a hill in the middle of the district. They knew they wanted to get there. But the streets of the district did not afford them a straight line path — rather, the streets were a series of concentric loops surrounding the building, connected by alleyways and side streets. So they wound their way closer to their target, until they reached the inner street that circled the building, and they saw it looming over them.
They also saw something else — a stone tower on the path leading up to their target. It stood out compared the houses and shops of the town, so they decided to explore it first. Their follower Kisreth — an Imperial who is increasingly sympathetic to the locals — translated the sign above the tower door: “Library of Harzgard”.
This tower was meant as a “mini-dungeon”: a small area to explore in one session or less. So let’s get one thing out of the way right off the bat: I rushed this one. It didn’t get the kind of care I normally like to put into designing these things. Limitations of time. That’s why I chose to give it a simple design.
The library tower was basically designed so that each floor had a singular, distinct threat for the characters to overcome, after which they could progress to the next higher floor. (That structure is literally the only connection between this adventure and the Bruce Lee film Game of Death.) It was straightforward and linear. That’s not the worst thing, of course, but it’s not the open-ended exploration I normally aim for.
First Floor: The gang strutted in through the front door to find one large room filled with tables and a few empty bookcases. At each table, long dead skeletons sat, as if they died while studying. There was a broken staircase leading upward.
Straight up, I just forgot to follow through on what this floor set up. I intended to have the group see skeletons at tables on every single floor, so that the final enemy could reanimate them, forcing the characters to make their way out through a crowd of walking skeletons. My notes were rushed and incomplete, and I forgot to mention the skeletons for the rest of the adventure. So Floor 1 was a bust. The gang walked over to the broken staircase and boosted one another up to the second floor.
Second Floor: This floor also lacked any immediate danger. This is because I have a general philosophy in dungeon design that the first couple rooms/areas should just be set dressing. You set up your tone and theme before dropping the monsters and traps. This room was filled with books of Imperial history, as well as some gold medals and trophies on high bookshelves. This treasure was a bit of a trap. Lendel, our gnome alchemist who wears a heavy breastplate, decided to climb the bookshelves to get them. He failed his avoid save as the shelves buckled and fell to the ground, with a load of books and whatnot falling on top of him. He took a little bit of damage. It was more funny than anything. Forram, our ettin wood troll and magician, grabbed the rested of the valuables from the high shelves. He was tall enough to grab them without climbing. They took the stairs upward.
Third floor: This room had a wooden floor with tables in the middle and bookcases full of law records around the outside. Some area of floor were weak, and when the gang poked around, a swarm of termites flew out. This was a pretty simple fight, but it was pretty fun. My rules for swarms are this: A swarm is a group of tiny creatures the size of a normal creature in aggregate. A swarm deals half damage when their attack misses. A swarm suffers only 1 damage from single target attacks (regardless of how much damage the attack would have dealt). A swarm suffers double damage from area effects. And this particular swarm had a couple of special effects, since they were termites: They dealt double damage to wood objects or wood creatures, they broke scale armor with their attacks (which would include wooden armor), and they weakened the floorboards beneath the creature they attacked, potentially dropping them through.
Poor Forram the wood troll. The termites went straight for him, breaking his barkskin (a layer of natural armor that heals overnight when broken). No one fell through the floor, but they quickly learned to hit the termites with an area attack: Forram’s ice wand. They collected a few valuables and moved up the next staircase.
Fourth floor: This was a floor of military theory and military history. They got ambushed almost as soon as they stepped into the room. This one was a bit of an experiment. They were attacked by a skeleton with several levels of training in the vagabond class, making him evasive and tough to wrangle. Vagabonds get bonuses to their armor class, and at high levels, they don’t take any damage from effects that they successfully save against.
This fight was difficult, and one of the players just found it frustrating. His character was not a warrior, but he fought with a hand weapon and just couldn’t get a hit in. This led to me later adding a couple of combat-based options to the pilgrim class for players that feel they want such things. It doesn’t turn the pilgrim into a warrior, but it gives them some unique possibilities.
I liked the fight, but I do think that characters need options when they run up against something that they can’t hit. From an adventure/monster design perspective, I think that requires giving enemies reasons to flee, and making sure that players understand that they also don’t always need to stand and fight.
They won, of course, after a bit of a struggle. They found a combat manual that gave warriors a special option for training. And, of course, the moved up to the final floor.
Fifth floor: The librarian’s office. No librarian to be found. Instead, sitting at the desk was a rotund, gremlin-like fairy called a nocker. The gang had encountered a few nockers before: little pointy-eared, long-limbed pests that look a bit like hairless raccoons. Nockers like to snatch baubles (like potions) and run away with them. This nocker was much larger and rounder than the other ones they’ve seen. Notably, the nocker was sitting at the desk, gnawing idly on a couple of magic wands.
This fight felt a bit more fair. But honestly, it was mostly just goofy. And I like that tone for this game. I’m just not interested in doing the grimdark “fantasy dark ages” thing that a lot of “old school” or “retro” RPGs go for. We’ll have serious moments, sure, but also we have this fight. An oversized gremlin-looking monster, hanging out in a library even though it not only can’t read, but it’s probably no more intelligent than a field mouse, absent-mindedly chewing on a magical wand, accidentally setting it off and sending a blast of lightning at the heroes. That’s the kind of thing we’re doing here.
Once they defeated the nocker and collected valuables, they left the tower and set off on the path up to the large stone building.
Next time, I’ll talk about the structure of combat, and specifically how we keep it moving quickly. After that, we’ll talk about the adventure exploring something more like a traditional dungeon.