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 Reb 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. 

Finally 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 ws 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 an 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 sytems work best with some willingness to interpret the resullts 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.