"I fell through the floor, and there I was..." for GLoGtober 2024.
Alan Lee
If you look at floorplans of centuries-old palaces and temples and castles, there's all these gridded webs that seem like they must be pure support, not normal rooms. What's going on in there? I have fair guesses, but it's hard to investigate online.
That structure in the middle of the courtyard. Who is she?
wtf?
I'm sure this is clear and obvious to many people, but it's the sort of thing that's hard to google.
Peripheral structures, supports, and architectural necessities can create interesting spaces in otherwise mundane areas, just because they were not designed for people to enter or scale them. They're natural obstacles, fine hiding places, and when destroyed might trigger a suitably impressive chain reaction.
This is a procedure for that early Assassin's Creed-ass situation where you must carefully navigate a city controlled by an antagonistic force, one where thousands of people live and provide cover for your activities on accident, while guards are on the lookout for you in particular.
Every public place is potentially hostile. A patrol of guards is less like a normal combat encounter and more like a trap or puzzle-- how do you avoid a confrontation that mobilizes the city against you. If their notice is brought down on you, how do you escape and hide?
In theory, every antagonistic city should be mapped out with routes between all the landmarks. In practice, I'm personally more likely to realize partway through a session that I'd like to use this procedure, and would like to be able to adapt it on the fly. So, here is a route type table:
d6 Route Types
1. Empty Streets. No native opportunity for stealth.
2. Checkpoint. Guaranteed static encounter.
3. Cramped Alleys. May be underground or interior passages.
4. Vertical Intersections. Bridges, different levels, roofs. etc. 50% of encounters having no good way to reach you right away.
5. No Man's Land. Residents move in small groups. Many oppose the ruling powers.
6. Busy Boulevards. Won't be noticed until you draw attention to yourself.
Encounters Encounters should occur at a comparable rate to dungeon encounters. To me that's a 1-in-6 chance per route and location, but I might increase that if I didn't design the rest of the city to be likewise dangerous. It makes sense to curate an encounter table for each antagonistic city. Again, think of these encounters as being like traps-- with signs the players can pick up on, triggers, and effects.
Sample Encounters
Pair of wandering guards with halberds, lanterns, and horns.
Dark riders, literally able to pick up the PCs' smell. Normal people don't get near them.
Bullying bravos. Harass people rather than earnestly search out enemies. Seeming like a victim might be safest.
Squad of counter-insurgents. Not necessarily seeking the PCs, but locking down the area to arrest other enemies.
Politicized animals. Their eyes are spies for Sauron.
VIP and entourage.
Elephant-sized mount, essentially a clumsy and fearful APC.
Collaborators. Bureaucrats, but knowledgeable of the city and how you may abuse it.
Inspectors. Papers please!
Cordoned-off perimeter. Line of soldiers, no bypass without proof of rank.
Overseers. May conscript passers-by for a day's labor.
Like you would do for a standard hazard or trap, let players describe how they (if needed, detect, then) avoid encounters. Good ideas don't need to roll here, but try to vary the exact disposition of encounters so that their tactics must always be sensitive to the particular situation. Characters with powers of stealth may be able to roll those even after a plan fails to pan out. That's like their saving throw, to continue the comparison to bypassing a trap.
Penalties for Notice
In antagonistic cities, the enemy force is aware of the PCs and opposed to them. If guards notice who they are, they might have only a few seconds for a hail-mary, then the situation turns deadly. They have the option of running it as a combat, but this is a bad idea in an enemy city. Let more reinforcements arrive, let escape routes get cut off, let chaos ensue.
It would be wiser for the PCs to flee. In that case, let them make a save to avoid damage or other effects as their enemies pursue them through the streets. If they survive, then they've made it away. The amount of long-term heat they draw is based on how important they are as enemies. If the antagonistic city is just opposed to them as thieves, upstarts, or unpersons as a matter of course, they might be able to get away with hiding in an alley for ten minutes, then carrying on. If the party is prophesied to slay the tyrant occupying the antagonistic city, they'll have to navigate to another sector of the city, deal with increased chances of encounters, and possibly get tracked back to their hideout.
Example For your consideration, here is an encounter table for the city of Nevermore.
d6 Encounters 1. Pair of Wandering Guards with halberds, lanterns, and horns. Notice: save vs death or take 1d6 damage.
2. Doctore, several Orderlies, and three Judge-Executioners. Curtly seeking signs of plague. Notice: 2d6 damage, save vs wands for half. 3. Riot Court. Torches, yelling, an angry mob but not the cool kind. Notice: save vs breath. On failure, you've been grabbed and dragged off to the Vigilante Jury. 4. Quarantine. Line of guards turn everyone away. Notice: save vs death or take 1d8 damage. 5. Two Plague Birds, man-sized, perched in a vantage point. Notice: save vs death. On failure, 1d4 damage from the King's Plague, +1 for all previous contact with King's Plague. +3 encounter chance on next encounter roll, due to squawking. 6. Suborned Gangsters with brutal blades. Forceful "requisitioners" and peddlers of protection. Notice: 1d4 objects snatched and 1d6 damage, save vs paralysis for half.
After reading this goblinpunch post, I was inspired to make a dungeon with many secret areas. This has been a long-time fancy of mine, so I decided to combine that fancy with another, the desire to make a dungeon with a "four elements" theme that I didn't find boring as hell. They're often too one-note, you know?
Click on the picture above, or the link >>> here <<< for the dungeon. For your titilation, here are some excerpts out of context:
Eating the wet organ within serves as a second dose.
... inspecting them for signs of green chalk and replacing any body parts, items, etc. with mechanical alternatives...
... you can't see if you're stupid, and if you're really really thick you can't even feel it
... each one with colorful streamers pasted onto its pudgy abdomen.
Air blasts from floor vents, totally negating gravity.
... leaving white lime-streaks wherever it slithereth.
... a 1-in-6 chance that the octopus either attacks or investigates the party...
... so many bottles of piss ("for experiments").
... and if someone reads it the talisman explodes...
Empty
... its contents ruined by hunger-maddened scrawls.
The skink is likewise trapped...
... is horrifically cursed. It cannot be removed except if a Remove Curse spell is cast while the wearer's blood courses with deadly venom, and it slowly transforms the wearer into a snake. This process takes seven years, but...
When I think about romance in adventure games, I immediately consult Udan Adan's Romance Plots in RPGs, which provides a great framework for creating "romance-ready" NPCs. They're pretty broadly useful, since using simple character tropes to evince depth can come up in romances, intrigues, persuasions, or other common PC activities. If the GLoGtober season calls on me to write on romance, it really behooves me to simply expand on the list provided at the end of that post, as I'm sure to have want of that at some point.
17. Workaholic Tyrant: Possesses rare executive abilities and runs their powerful organization well, but utterly neglects their interior life. Has no sense of themselves outside of the commands they issue and the hours they work. At risk of succeeding their soul out of their body.
18. Exploited Loyal: Servant of an unjust master. Often transmutes unworthy orders into humane ones. Beneficent and capable, they have no idea how little they are valued or how close their master is to expending them.
19. Widower: Nominally single, but as of yet incapable of moving past the notion that they must not love again. Warm, mature, and just a hair too committed.
20. Devotee: Someone for whom emotional unavailability is the sign of a compact. They think that love is a distraction from what they, in fact, can only get from love. They are a perfect romantic, focused on the wrong object.
21. Wary Heir: Expect to come into their power soon, and excited to use it. Dynamic, altruistic, capably navigating between the Scylla and Charybdis of responsibility to their parent and opportunity to do something new. Gives mixed signals because they fear others will try to manipulate them to get at their birthright.
22. Monster: Fascinated by the world, but barred from normal participation in it. Possesses inhuman capabilities, but must constantly bend them toward preserving their own freedom. Engaging, earnest, hurt.
23. Bright Addict: Confident and self-directed, with a good head on their shoulders. Constantly drained by some singular exception, a chemical, relationship, or glamour that they cannot resist. Bravely insists on forging ahead with a relationship despite constantly being led to undercut it. Require an outside perspective.
24. Client: Someone at everyone's disposal. Perhaps a servant, or an envoy who is not at their own liberty. Utterly starved for personal connection, but lacks the legal or social means to protect themselves from abuse or misuse. Consequently, their amore resists their mutual feelings out of apprehension of taking advantage of the client.
25. Compelled Paramour: Either by curse or mundane wager, someone bound to act against their nature. This compulsion made be odious, or simply a clear indication that they aren't being straight-up. If it's possible to act against the compulsion, they hold back out of fear that no one would love the "real" them.
26. Dragon: Grim, habitual, stubborn, and out of touch. In many stories, an unstylish villain. Is it really so surprising that they yearn for one good thing, something they can safely treat well, and know love instead of just fear? I promise this will be romantic if they're a stony-faced malefactor.
27. Perceptive Wit: Discerning and practical, but unable to keep their mouth shut. Wants to be well-liked, but wants blowhards to be punctured just a little bit more. Just slightly too reasonable to believe anyone would fall in love with them, and ready to help all their friends find a decent mate before they realize that they want an honest equal for themselves too.
And just for ease, these + the original descriptions in one random generator:
