I memed #opendnd

 

Arden Vul's author on its Wilderlands origins

 See https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2267080#p2267080

Post by Geleg » Thu Jul 28, 2022 12:13 pm

Thanks for the interest, folks. I'm the writer/designer of AV. We're excited that AV is still finding a home.

Someone asked above about where I placed AV in the Wilderlands.

TL:DR? I never placed AV in a hex in the Wilderlands, although portions of the cultures and peoples that formed the initial dungeon were clearly inspired by JG.

Longer explanation:
I should probably clarify. I may have said I had 'set' Arden Vul there, but that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. The Wilderlands was my favorite published setting, ever since I first encountered it back in the early 80s. So when I set out to devise a big dungeon I always figured I'd place it in the Wilderlands. But tbh I never got around to 'placing' AV in the Wilderlands, for a couple of reasons. One was that I began designing the dungeon in a break from active gaming (I had some long road trips with a 9-yr old and would often 'daydream' about cool-sounding design elements on them - e.g., the troll lifts). When my group reconvened, the dungeon was pretty primitive - really just level 3 (or parts of it),and without any sense of backstory or history. I didn't burden my players with world info at that point, going instead for the classic 'you're in a village and there's a big dungeon nearby'; it didn't really matter at that point where the village or dungeon were located. I figured I'd make it up as my players progressed, including deciding on a hex and filling in the regional background based on player interests. In terms of the dungeon, the design also emerged from a pretty disparate set of unconnected encounters and ideas. For ex., an early group ignored all my warnings about going too deep (partly because of the danger factor, but also because I hadn't written anything for those levels yet!) and insisted on going down a big shaft; so kinda on the spur of it I came up with the giant skeletons sitting in a big chair who were able to fire certain projectiles (I'm being oblique for spoilers), and one of the 2nd-level PCs ended up impaled on the shaft of the wall (I actually wrote that PCs demise into the final product; you can find the corpse still impaled on the wall ... somewhere). It was a fun moment with the group (who wisely fled in terror), but I then had to incorporate that improvisation into the dungeon concept (who were those skeletons? etc.). Another one of these early spontaneous creations was Kerbog Khan and his unusual voice and creatures. So early on there were a lot of moments like this, where kinda random things would get incorporated either because I thought they were cool or because of active game play.

As with any big project, though, there came a time when all of it had to make sense, or else I'd simply be recreating the World's Largest Dungeon (ugh). So at about the time I started talking to Joe Browning, that is, about 5 years after I'd dreamed up some of the early levels and my players had explored some of them, I became aware of two things. If Andreas and I were going to publish it, it would be wiser for it to be entirely original, and not located in an existing setting; this meant that the world elements - cultures, deities and especially names - should be original. The other was that to make it work well as a product, there would have to be consistency and backstory that explained (for those who cared!) all the elements that had been accreting to that point. This required a major rehaul on my part, and at the conceptual, linguistic, and historical levels. Now I know that gamers may not care much about that, but I did; I wanted it to feel like a 'real' setting, that made sense and had a plausible history (if that makes sense). So, for ex., even though in my home campaign the human barbarians had been called Tharbrians and Skandiks til that point (Wilderlands names), I had to sit down and rename them (Thorcins and Wiskins), and then come up with rough cultures for them. I also had to rename and rethink the pantheons for all the races. And, since the Archonteans had been becoming increasingly fleshed out in my mind, I had to work together all the different adventuring elements into a hopefully-satisfying backstory (without making a railroad, and without neutering the adventuring fun). So it was at that point that, both for commercial and design reasons, I consciously stripped away any of the vague Wilderlands elements that had always sort of sloshed around in my mind as a tribute to Bledsaw.

____

Re: An Introduction to The Halls of Arden Vul (Megadungeon)

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Post by Geleg » Thu Jul 28, 2022 2:39 pm

I prefer f2f gaming, so the pandemic put our campaign on a hold for the past 2 years. In Jan 2020, though, we had a huge moment. After many years of play in and around AV (and beyond! to the City of Brass, to Archontos, to the southern continent of Magae, etc.), my players returned to AV and decided to take out the Set Cult. They pushed into Level 3, into areas they'd not visited before, and a massive fight ensued in the main temple of Set. There the heroes did pretty well against guardsmen and lesser priests, until High Priestess Stephania arrived. Due to some bad rolling, and a judicious use of fire on the part of Stephania, the main PC magic-user was slain. That's pretty much where we left off. A sort of pyrrhic victory for my guys - they put Stephania to flight, but are now seriously lacking in the arcane department.

We are planning to start up again in September, f2f. I'm not sure yet whether we will start again with the old PCs (who ranged in level from 5-11), or whether we will start a new campaign. If the latter, I'm also unsure whether AV will be the tentpole.

In terms of conversion, it's really up to you and your style as a DM. I am a pretty flexible DM, and don't worry too much about such things. For me it would be a breeze, as I'd mostly convert or make it up on the fly. If you are more btb, then it might take a bit more to accomplish. I've also always been a 1e guy, so I'm not sure what the conversion to basic would entail. I wouldn't think it would be too hard, certainly not as hard as a conversion to 3e or 5e.

Sample VTT screen caps

 

Generic City Ruins Terrain, post-battle

A prepped dungeon

A battle in progress at Stormcaller Tor (the PCs seem to be losing)

Vampire Tower Lair - isometric style map prepped for play.

Hex Crawl advice from Melan

 Lots of good stuff here

5e non-combat XP awards

 Came up with this 4x4 table I'm very happy with.

Non-Combat XP Awards, per PC. Tier 1, 2, 3, 4

Minor: 100/200/300/500 - overcome a moderate non-combat challenge

Moderate: 200/400/600/1000 - typical session award, minor quest completion

Major: 400/800/1200/2000 - substantial quest completion

Mighty: 1000/2000/3000/5000 - major quest completion

Mini Six & Primeval Thule

 

TKurtBond:

Have you ever done a retrospective of your Mini Six Primeval Thule game?  How well Mini Six worked for it, things you would change about it?

My Mini Six Thule game page https://simonsprimevalthule.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-valley-of-scorn-palace-of-silver.html

1st session https://simonsprimevalthule.blogspot.com/2020/02/silver-princess-1-1-312215-ar.html

last session https://simonsprimevalthule.blogspot.com/2020/11/sp-28-2512215-ar-4-cp-dark-odo.html

My thoughts:

Overall I was very happy with how well Mini Six/D6 System worked for Thule. The system was originally created by West End Games for pulpy heroic fantasy at the level of the Star Wars original trilogy or Indiana Jones, which fits very nicely with Conanesque swords & sorcery. The general lack of attrition - wounds are rare, magic recovers quickly - worked fine. I found the Mini Six magic system pitched at an appropriate level too, powerful but not dominating play. 

The Hero Points make death perhaps a bit too unlikely; with one HP you can turn a killing wound to a critical injury once/session, which is enough to keep most PCs alive. We had one PC death in the campaign when Saya the Sword Sister chased a Night Thing into the moonlit woods, spent both her HPs attacking it, then got stabbed in the chest. Reasonably careful PCs with a decent Might score are rather easy to keep alive.

One issue I recall was when the PCs awoke hundreds of skeletons in the Licheway; as written it was nearly impossible for Mini Six skels to hurt the PCs. This did not work as a battle, I ended up turning them into a sort of hazard instead. Mini Six/D6 does not handle the extremes of play you see in Dungeons & Dragons.

Arguably the system does not suit long term play as well as D&D; it's certainly less complex than modern D&D editions. But we played 28 sessions with 3-5 Character Points (XP) per session and the game certainly still worked well.

Gary Gygax on The Campaign

 From the 1e AD&D DMG. The original advice, still the best.

THE CAMPAIGN

Unlike most games, AD&D is an ongoing collection of episode adventures,

each of which constitutes a session of play. You, as the Dungeon Master, are

about to embark on a new career, that of universe maker. You will order the

universe and direct the activities in each game, becoming one of the elite group

of campaign referees referred to as DMs in the vernacular of AD&D. What lies

ahead will require the use of all of your skill, put a strain on your imagination,

bring your creativity to the fore, test your patience, and exhaust your free time.

Being a DM is no matter to be taken lightly!

Your campaign requires the above from you, and participation by your players.

To belabor an old saw, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You are probably just

learning, so take small steps at first. The milieu for initial adventures should be

kept to a size commensurate with the needs of campaign participants — your

available time as compared with the demands of the players. This will

typically result in your giving them a brief background, placing them in a

settlement, and stating that they should prepare themselves to find and

explore the dungeon/ruin they know is nearby. As background you inform

them that they are from some nearby place where they were apprentices

learning their respective professions, that they met by chance in an inn or

tavern and resolved to journey together to seek their fortunes in the

dangerous environment, and that, beyond the knowledge common to the area

(speech, alignments, races, and the like), they know nothing of the world.

Placing these new participants in a small settlement means that you need do

only minimal work describing the place and its inhabitants. Likewise, as player

characters are inexperienced, a single dungeon or ruins map will suffice to

begin play.

After a few episodes of play, you and your campaign participants will be

ready for expansion of the milieu. The territory around the settlement — likely

the “home” city or town of the adventurers, other nearby habitations,

wilderness areas, and whatever else you determine is right for the area —

should be sketch-mapped, and places likely to become settings for play

actually done in detail. At this time it is probable that you will have to have a

large scale map of the whole continent or sub-continent involved, some rough

outlines of the political divisions of the place, notes on predominant terrain

features, indications of the distribution of creature types, and some plans as to

what conflicts are likely to occur. In short, you will have to create the social

and ecological parameters of a good part of a make-believe world. The more

painstakingly this is done, the more “real” this creation will become.

Eventually, as player characters develop and grow powerful, they will explore

and adventure over all of the area of the continent. When such activity

begins, you must then broaden your general map still farther so as to

encompass the whole globe. More still! You must begin to consider seriously

the makeup of your entire multiverse — space, planets and their satellites,

parallel worlds, the dimensions and planes. What is there? why? can

participants in the campaign get there? how? will they? Never fear! By the

time your campaign has grown to such a state of sophistication, you will be

ready to handle the new demands.

Setting Things In Motion:

There is nothing wrong with using a prepared setting to start a campaign,

just as long as you are totally familiar with its precepts and they mesh with

what you envision as the ultimate direction of your own milieu. Whatever

doesn’t match, remove from the material and substitute your own in its

place. On the other hand, there is nothing to say you are not capable of

creating your own starting place; just use whichever method is best suited to

your available time and more likely to please your players. Until you are

sure of yourself, lean upon the book. Improvisation might be fine later, but

until you are completely relaxed as the DM, don’t run the risk of trying to

“wing it” unless absolutely necessary. Set up the hamlet or village where the

action will commence with the player characters entering and interacting

with the local population. Place regular people, some “different” and

unusual types, and a few non-player characters (NPCs) in the various

dwellings and places of business. Note vital information particular to each.

Stock the goods available to the players. When they arrive, you will be

ready to take on the persona of the settlement as a whole, as well as that of

each individual therein. Be dramatic, witty, stupid, dull, clever, dishonest,

tricky, hostile, etc. as the situation demands. The players will quickly learn

who is who and what is going on — perhaps at the loss of a few coins.

Having handled this, their characters will be equipped as well as

circumstances will allow and will be ready for their bold journey into the

dangerous place where treasure abounds and monsters lurk.

The testing grounds for novice adventurers must be kept to a difficulty factor

which encourages rather than discourages players. If things are too easy, then

there is no challenge, and boredom sets in after one or two games.

Conversely, impossible difficulty and character deaths cause instant loss of

interest. Entrance to and movement through the dungeon level should be

relatively easy, with a few tricks, traps, and puzzles to make it interesting in

itself. Features such as rooms and chambers must be described with verve and

sufficiently detailed in content to make each seem as if it were strange and

mysterious. Creatures inhabiting the place must be of strength and in numbers

not excessive compared to the adventurers’ wherewithal to deal with them.

(You may, at this point, refer to the sample dungeon level and partial

encounter key.)

The general idea is to develop a dungeon of multiple levels, and the deeper

adventurers go, the more difficult the challenges become — fiercer monsters,

more deadly traps, more confusing mazes, and so forth. This same concept

applies to areas outdoors as well, with more and terrible monsters occurring

more frequently the further one goes away from civilization. Many variations on

dungeon and wilderness areas are possible. One can build an underground

complex where distance away from the entry point approximates depth, or it

can be in a mountain where adventurers work upwards. Outdoor adventures

can be in a ruined city or a town which seems normal but is under a curse, or

virtually anything which you can imagine and then develop into a playable

situation for your campaign participants.

Whatever you settle upon as a starting point, be it your own design or one of

the many modular settings which are commercially available, remember to have

some overall plan of your milieu in mind. The campaign might grow slowly, or it

might mushroom. Be prepared for either event with more adventure areas, and

the reasons for everything which exists and happens. This is not to say that total

and absolutely perfect information will be needed, but a general schema is

required. From this you can give vague hints and ambiguous answers. It is no

exaggeration to state that the fantasy world builds itself, almost as if the milieu

actually takes on a life and reality of its own. This is not to say that an occult

power takes over. It is simply that the interaction of judge and players shapes

the bare bones of the initial creation into something far larger. It becomes

fleshed out, and adventuring breathes life into a make-believe world. Similarly,

the geography and history you assign to the world will suddenly begin to shape

the character of states and peoples. Details of former events will become

obvious from mere outlines of the past course of things. Surprisingly, as the

personalities of player characters and non-player characters in the milieu are

bound to develop and become almost real, the nations and states and events of

a well-conceived AD&D world will take on even more of their own direction

and life. What this all boils down to is that once the campaign is set in motion,

you will become more of a recorder of events, while the milieu seemingly charts

its own course!