Red Box Rabbit Hole Part 2: Cribbing From Everywhere

In Part 1 of this rabbit hole I discussed my experience playing some solo 'Basic D&D' using a battered copy of the Red Box and the BSOLO Ghost of Lion Castle module.

Having enjoyed that quite a bit I went rummaging through my various, collected, TTRPG related materials for some way to keep adventuring. 

Making a Map 

I decided I needed a world map to go looking for adventure in. I hand draw some hexes on some A3 and put Lion Castle on the map using the description of its location from the adventure. Then I start dropping dice on the map to see what's where. This is similar to the method used in the mapping game Cartograph. The number on the die corresponds to types of terrain or other features. You draw those onto the map roughly where the dice fall (overlapping hexes in my case). The list I run with at first is:

1. Mountains

2. Hills

3. Forest

4. Lake (two lakes at once indicate a river)

5. Swamp (I later swap this out for plains)

6. Special feature (Roll again for: 1. village 2. Town 3. Ruins 4. Cave 5. Tower 6. Stones) 

When I'm done I have this:

Fairly generic but I'm not going for anything too original here. I want that feeling of place from early D&D - where this might be fantasy Wyoming or some other midwest meets Tolkien vibe. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing with the hexes. I run with the idea that you could move two hexes on from the one you're in during a standard days travel if you have a road. 

I start in Launam (manual backwards because I'm naming things based off the first bit of text I see) on the river that cuts through the NE quarter of the map. Then I go looking for trouble. 

I want a dungeon to delve into. I remember that I have a zine I picked up at local zine fair with an empty dungeon map on it (pictured below). 

Crawl zine by doodlebotdan (Daniel Purcell) 

You can see the makers insta handle on it.  As near as I can figure out their name is Daniel Purcell - so thanks Dan. 

Useful Tables 

To populate Dan's map I make use of the following tables in the Red Box Dungeon Master's Rule Book:  

Room contents and random treasures table from Red Box DM's Rule Book

For traps and special results there are lists or examples elsewhere in the book, (you can see the some of the entry on traps in the top right). I just pick a die to match the number of options and roll. 

For monsters I use the wandering monster tables in the same book. 

To avoid it be a hack'n'slash slog, (and to add some intrigue), I use a BECMI reaction roll table for the monsters on the back of an old DM's screen that was also gifted to me with the Red Box:

There are simpler tables for this but - I encountered this post  by Eric Diaz outlining how the nested tables create a, sort of, RP mini game in which player characters can try and sway the outcome of the next roll with a +1 or +2 here and there. I can vouch for this being very much how it played out for me. Having a patrol of 6 Goblins surround you and then having a tense conversation through gestures and offers of rations in the hope of surviving is pretty exciting. 

Oracle Dice 

A final mechanic that helped introduce some imaginative fluidity to things was the use of oracle dice for those, 'what if', elements of the game that tables can't fully account for. 
This involves asking a question - e.g "Can these goblins unlock this door for us?" and then rolling dice to get a yes or no. I used this system by Matt Jackson. 

 

How'd it go? 

The experiment worked fairly well. I was able to play through Dan's zine dungeon, rolling for what I encountered as I went in ways that preserved some suspense and gave my characters some interesting scenarios to deal with. At one point a skeleton jumped out of a coffin and started asking riddles so I had to google a riddle generator. At another point I found an NPC in a cupboard and talking with her using the oracle dice generated a whole scenario for the rest of the dungeon. I feel these sorts of systems work best with some willingness to interpret the results in playful ways - 'what would be cool and make sense with this result?' etc.   

Afterward I was hungry to use these mechanics in a great big dungeon. So I started to mock up a table for generating one.

That'll be the focus for Part 3 of this rabbit hole.  

Red Box Rabbit Hole - Part 1: Ghost of Lion Castle

I first got into D&D in mid 2014. A friend bought the new, Lost Mines of Phandelver, starter kit and asked if I would consider running it for him. This was my first exposure to TTRPG's and I caught the bug pretty hard. This same friend was introduced to D&D by his dad who ran games for him and his brothers when they were kids. 

I DM'ed that starter campaign for my friend and a group that eventually included five other players. In a climactic session in Cragmaw Castle we were even joined by his dad (who played an orc monk). 

Sometime after that my friend handed me a box of old D&D material that his dad wanted to donate to the group. It looked like this: 

The Red Box - with art by Larry Elmore

Inside was a bunch of older D&D modules from the 80's and the DM's Rule Book and Player's Manual for the basic set (part of the expanded Basic-Expert-Companion-Master-Immortal collection or BECMI).
This was really exciting - some ancient treasure or arcane lore connected to this game of ancient treasures and arcane lore. I enjoyed leafing through the old yellow pages and looking at the retro aesthetics of D&D in the 80's, (so much Farrah Fawcett hair  and chain mail that looks like lycra!), but in terms of incorporating this stuff into my game - I didn't see how. I was looking for session content rather than different ways to play and whilst these books had goblins and evil wizards etc I couldn't quite decode the stat blocks or convert them easily to my 5e game. 

Fast forward a decade and I'm more aware that some people really prize elements of what they call 'Old School' D&D. I'm not really sure who might be reading this, (this isn't really an OSR blog given that most adventures I've made are for 5e), but if the Old School Revival isn't a familiar thing to you, you can get a bit of a primer by reading the Principia Apocrypha. The upshot is that some procedures and principles, with which D&D has formerly been played, produce a very different experience which, (although it can be deadlier and involve tracking things like torches and encumbrance), can be pretty fun.  

With me so far? Alright, so...

 A week ago the podcast Between Two Cairns reviewed an old module from the 80's called 
BSOLO The Ghost of Lion Castle. Now it's time for that dog eared old box from my friend's father to reenter the story because guess what one of the modules sitting inside was...

Ghost of Lion Castle by Merle M. Rasmussen

 

I gently took it out of its resting place and got ready to read ahead of listening to the review. This is were I made my first discovery:

"Hey, this is a solo module!" -  So now I've decided to play it instead of just read it, which means I have to start looking more closely at those old rule books. This is great! I'm finally giving this thoughtful gift from my friend's dad some propper time. I pick a pregen character (they're all magic usesrs) and head to the gates of Lion Castle... 

(mild spoilers for the adventure ahead) 

I die. 

I try again - and die three more times. 

At this point I'm feeling skeptical about the module. I'm all for high lethality but having your 3hp character die to a portcullis you have no choice but to pass under doesn't feel fantastic.  

But I persist. I get lucky with the portcullis and also snag some magic items that give me something to work with. I start mapping the space on some grid paper - a central conceit of this module is that your character has a magic map and journal that teleports back to the starting tavern when you die so future adventurers can learn from your mistakes. At this point I'm getting quite into the mapping (see below):


  

Mapping Lion Castle

The space is starting to become coherent to me and I'm figuring out safer paths through the castle without getting into risky encounters with monsters (seriously, it's like a quick draw competition - lose initiative and you're dead). 

I'm actually having a lot of fun. Partly because of the module, partly because I'm getting to take some older rules for a spin but also because I'm getting to play a character in a world which, as a pretty commited GM, I don't often get a chance to do. 

I'm definitely not doing everything 'right'. Should I be adding a dexterity bonus to this? What number does this monster need to roll for a save? Why the hell does a portcullis require a 'save vs wands'!? But I run with what makes sense and keeps the game moving. 

Then, as my character stands in a dark corner of the dungeon, contemplating what to do next, I see something written on the entry for the room I'm in:

The body of Cortayo

 

'The body of Cortayo' - The name is the same as one of the pregens. I've recorded the deaths of other characters I've played on my map but I didn't want to write in this fragile old booklet. This must be the body of my friend's, father's character, waiting here for something like 40 years before anyone else played the adventure and discovered it.

I get very excited and look around for someone to tell but since there's nobody I make a note to tell my friend about it and then look up what equipment the pregen has on them. 

By now I'm pretty hooked on solo dungeon delving. But once I solve the secrets of Lion Castle I don't have any more vintage solo dungeons to play. I have modules for group play but it's not the same, as the front loaded info for a GM takes a lot of the suspense out of the experience and they're pretty hard to run without having some of that to hand.    

Part 2 of this rabbit hole will be about how I used a blank dungeon map from a zine fair and the tables in the basic Dungeon Masters Rulebook to have a follow up adventure for the character who survived Lion Castle. 

For now I'll leave you with the dry bones of Cortayo on entry L.65 

To be continued.