OSR: Generic Laboratory

Patrick Stuart set a challenge. I needed a generic laboratory for a chapter of the Monster Overhaul. Lo and behold, it all worked out.

Original: Pits of the Black Moon by Dyson Logos.

It's about as poetic as those dreadful sonnets students are forced to write and about as artpunk as an office photocopier used to make zines, but it's done, and (hopefully), it's useful.

Small Dungeon Considerations

• I try to aim for 6-12 rooms. Fewer than six isn't really a dungeon; more than 12 doesn't fit on one page in the format I've chosen, and often leads to duplicated ideas. This limits map selection. Having a d# of rooms lets GMs easily roll a random room number.
• I try to pick maps where the natural room order (if you start numbering where the PCs enter the dungeon and increment in some sort of logical path) matches the layout on the page, so each room's description is close to its number. Sometimes (like in this map), it doesn't work perfectly, but it's something to aim for. Dyson has so many maps that picking one is often the hardest part of a generic dungeon; this challenge was helpfully specific.
  
• I edit maps to make them fit the page, the concept, or the format restrictions. Dyson's maps have shadows so rotating them can lead to odd effects, but trimming off a few rooms or adjusting some details is trivial and can significantly change the nature of a map. In this case, I cut off the entire left wing of the dungeon.
  
• I try to strike a balance between evocative language and impenetrable prose. These generic dungeons are supposed to be instant GM assistants. Every line should add meaning or utility, but if a GM has to stop to untangle a sentence, the generic dungeon becomes less useful. Distilled essence of dungeon or Reader's Digest pablum? Your call.
  
• All generic dungeons (and all bestiary entries) receive periodic punch-up passes, where I try to identify boring bits, excise dull words, and look for repeated adjectives.

Here's a bonus Generic Grotto.

OSR: Imperial Megapalace - Rapid Dungeon Assembly

On Saturday, Feb. 1st, the Pirate group TPK'd to beetles (and greed).
On Sunday, I despaired at the need to find a new genre, system, or plan. The Pirate game, after two TPKs and many hijinks, had run its course.
On Monday, I decided to write a Byzantine megadungeon.

Next game is scheduled for Feb. 16th. If you're in that game, look away! Spoilers abound.

Here's either how I wrote a megadungeon in two weeks.... or how I failed miserably.
 

Step 1: Concept Map

I picked an approximate layout. A round fortress-palace with four towers and a central dome. Crypts and a cistern underneath.

Then, I started tossing rooms onto a piece of paper. I went through existing palace maps (real and fictional) to find common rooms. Adjacent sections overlap or are placed nearby.

Ideas started to solidify. The dungeon would initially have one entrance, but more could be found and opened. Each tower would be guarded by a classic mythical beast. The dungeon will be a testbed for the Monster Overhaul, full of creatures and reskins for convenient playtesting.
 

Step 2: Draft Map

I decided to map the dungeon in Sketchup. It's not an ideal mapping tool, but it does have some handy features:
-ease of rotation
-components (items that can be cloned, but editing one item edits them all)
-ease of checking sightlines and overlap of complex regions

Starting with the south tower and working outwards, I started mapping rooms and zones. I didn't worry about assigning specific functions or occupants to every room. That can come later.

I did start planning routes. Assuming the players enter from the south, where can they go? What will bottleneck them? Is the dungeon sufficiently jaquayed?

I imagined a party moving through the dungeon. What would they see? Where would they go? What about the dungeon's original inhabitants? How would they use this space? Would an Emperor share a corridor with servants? What would diplomats see?

Mapping the dungeon will be a challenge. I'll probably provide players with template maps or approximate scribbings, or let them map it pointcrawl-style.
 

Step 3: Stocking Maps

Main Level

Upper Level + Towers

Crypts

The map is very heavily jaquayed. Some sections are linear or gated, but the bulk of the dungeon is criss-crossed with multiple paths, weird loops, and interesting choices. Secret doors are often one-sided (one side is hidden, one side is obviously a door). If approached from one side, they can create a shortcut back to a previously explored area.

The clock tower (the north tower) has two rotating sections. The bottom section rotates as players discover keys or gears. The upper section rotates on a 1 hour timer.

I want a mix of small and large rooms. Fights should require manuvering and flanking. Give players space to stretch out. Engulf them in the majesty of the Last Emperor.

At this point, the maps are ready to be stocked. They are still drafts. As I stock them, I'll remove and edit rooms, make notes, and scrawl corrections. 
 

Step 4: Stocking Subsections

I like minimaps. They make running complex dungeons much easier.

I am currently cutting the main map into sections. 3 are present in the image above: the South Tower, the Hippodrome, and the Menagerie.

Numbers are assigned based on probable routes players will take. To minimize flipping, each section will have its own half page, whole page, or 2-page spread.

I'm also writing very brief room notes as I assign numbers. No evocative prose, no details, just "gate" or "manticore" or "trap." If I have details I add them, but at this stage it's better to get the content down. I can always punch up the prose after playtesting.

This section takes ages, especially if I have to renumber a section or find I've missed a critical room. Splitting the dungeon into subsections helps.
 

Next Steps

Stock, stock, and stock some more.

If you've got ideas for things that lurk in the Imperial Megapalace, let me know in the comments. I can't guarantee I'll take your suggestion (or any suggestions), but it can't hurt to throw ideas out there. Procopius might help.

I'm not sure if this dungeon will become a free product, a Patreon exclusive PDF, a paid Kickstarted thing, or something else entirely. It depends on how the playtest goes, how much I like the final product... and if I get it finished in time.

Scratchpad Notes

To Do

-d100 Encounter Table
-I Search the Body
-d50 / d100 table of backgrounds (not using -lings this time).
-review these tables (good work, past Skerples) and use them.
 

Inhabitants

The Last Emperor
-Anyone who eats his flesh becomes sort-of immortal.
-Also cursed. A lot.
-Regenerates, but is weak.
-Built an Artificial Hell under the palace to torment enemies. Also serves as a regeneration point if he is killed.
 
Medusa
-With blind tigers.
-Possible to negotiate with but far easier to avoid.
 
Manticore
-Lazy
-Probably the first "big" monster the PCs will meet.
-Guards a path up to the Royal Prison.
 
Twisted Giant
-In the cathedral. A bishop grown large. Wields a censer.
 
Ogres
-Twins. One in the Prison Below, one in the Prison Above.
 
Harpies
-In the west tower. Pick off creatures who scale the walls.
 
Hereditary Eunuchs
-Don't ask.
 
Ketolysis Monks
-Flame breath from ketogenic starvation.

OSR: Escape from the Last Serai

Spoiler alert for my players. Stay away.

Last session in the Ultraviolet Grasslands, the PCs botched a secret mission. They didn't know they were on a secret mission, but that's no excuse.

Now they need to flee the Last Serai. What could be more fun than a chaotic shoot-em-up crawl through some mangled Dyson Logos maps?

We'll see how much of this map actually gets used... but it was fun to make. It hasn't been tested, edited, or checked for errors.

PDF (with key).

OSR: Generic Cult Lair + Generic Wizard Tower

The Monster Overhaul will contain a few very basic dungeons. What's a Minotaur without a Labyrinth?

Here are two examples. They're designed to be very generic, but still interesting enough to adapt on the fly.

PDF

Maps by Dyson Logos. The first is The second is a cleaned and edited version of the Shattered Tower mixed with The Poisoner's Tower. I couldn't really get the upper levels of the Shattered Tower to work so I adjusted things slightly. The Generic Cult Lair is based on this map.

Get early access to the full entries (hundreds of names, useful associated tables, etc.) on Patreon.

OSR: The Indefinite Train - Community Project

I'd like to try running a collaborative community project.

The Indefinite Train

There's a giant train that passes through many worlds. Everyone writes a one-page dungeon carriage using a template. The carriages get stitched together to make a sort of randomly generated segmented megadungeon, suitable for drop-in games, travel between worlds, or extremely random encounters. A summary of the setting and some design notes can be found in this folder.
 
All you need to do to contribute is copy the template to your Google Drive (or download it, but don't blame me if the formatting goes all wonky), edit it, then post it to this folder. Anyone can contribute!

If you want to test ideas or ask for advice, stop by the #gygaxian-train-assembly channel in Chris McDowall (Bastionland)'s Discord.

Here are two example carriages I whipped up:
Goblin Cannonade
The Roving Library of the Carnelian Sphynx

Backstory

There's a train. Possibly the Train; all others are imitations. Carriages are 100' wide and 200' long. Two levels and a roof. Every carriage has a door at the front (upline) and back (downline) and a roof hatch. It travels at 66.6 miles per hour. Some people say the Engineer, the Train's driver, is God (or a god) fleeing the end of the world. People have visited. They say if you reach the Engine you can ask the Engineer to grant one wish.

At the front of the Train, complex machines lay down new track, throw up bridges, and cut tunnels. At the other end of the train is Hell, or something like it. Demons and strange monsters infest the carriages there.
 
The angels of the Engineer are the Conductors, masked floating giants clad in blue and white. Their functions are mysterious. They don’t seem to understand how people work.

Sometimes, usually during storms, the Train's carriages rearrange. The track branches and reforms. New carriages arrive, old ones vanish or switch places.
 
The Train has been traveling for a very long time. Many carriages have been completely converted to new forms: temples, dungeons, palaces, villages, farms, etc, etc, etc. Some raid, some protect, some just exist. The loot and detritus of ten thousand worlds. A vast city of self-contained feuding blocks, reshuffled every so often to let new feuds rise to the surface.

The Train passes through many worlds. It doesn’t travel through space or underwater, but it can turn up almost anywhere there’s a breathable atmosphere. The train typically tries to pass through flat areas at least 100’ wide, but it can bore through mountains, throw down bridges, or rearrange buildings as it roars through a city. Old timers say it once tunneled straight down for a week and everyone had to hang on to the walls.

Boarding The Train
Sometimes, inhabitants of worlds visited by the train are scooped up and tossed into a new or existing carriage, along with treasures, supplies, livestock, etc, etc. It seems a bit arbitrary. New sentient arrivals are given a Ticket. Anyone who falls off the train while holding a Ticket will be collected by a Conductor and placed back on... somewhere. Tickets are transferable and extremely valuable.

People also sneak aboard the train. It’s a great way to travel between worlds, provided you don’t have a particular destination in mind. Illicit arrivals don’t have start with a Ticket.

New arrivals are usually too disorientated to throw away their tickets and leap off the train before before they’ve reached a new world. Would you really risk leaping off a moving train into a new and dangerous landscape?

Altering Your Carriage
Messing with the carriage structures seems to be fine. Messing with the wheels and linkages, not so much. Conductors turn up if anyone interferes with the wheels or tries to derail the train.

Final Notes

This project was made possible (in a vague way) by backers of my new Patreon, and the inescapable feeling of dread and guilt it inspires. Hooray!

OSR: Review: The Book of Delves

It's always a good idea to keep a "emergency dungeon" folder handy at game. Players get teleported a thousand feet into the air? Players decide to check out that weird door you didn't finish mapping? Dig under the baron's house, search for a rumour, flee from any carefully prepared content into the wilderness marked, not "here be dragons" but "fill this bit in later"?

Michael Prescott's Trilemma adventures are, I think, the gold standard. Ben Milton's putting out great adventure hexes. And, of course, there's the one page dungeon contest.

One page dungeons are hard to write. You need to cram as much information as possible into a very small space. No superfluous text, like "Kitchen: You enter this room to see a kitchen. Along the walls are pots, pans, cheesegraters...". Maximum conceptual density while still being useful as a pick-up-and-go gaming tool. They're like D&D petit fours.

Anyway, Tristan Tanner (bogeymanscave.blogspot.com) has written twenty "30 minute" dungeons and put them up for sale here. For $5.00 USD, you get 20 dungeons with maps.

I like the idea of a thirty minute dungeon. Sit down and, for half an hour and only half an hour, furiously hammer out a dungeon. Don't stop to think, don't stop to plan. Just go! Gooooo! And when you're done, come back in a week and either edit it or scrap it. It's a nice little writing exercise. Lots of RPG projects seem to stall or suffer from scope creep; this at least provides a tangible goal, cutoff, and reward.

Do Tristan's dungeons pass muster?

Side Note: I try, whenever possible, to punch up, not down. But these notes might be useful to anyone who wants to build short one-page dungeons or publish them, and I've run them by the author, so I should be OK.

Plot Hooks

One or two sentences plot hook, short and to the point.

"There have always been rumors in the village that the strange stone building in the hills was a blasphemous church to a demonic being. It has been a long time since light and foul chanting emanated from the structure, and the church has payed you to investigate, to see if the evil has left."

They're all pretty serviceable, though most are "someone's paying you to investigate a thing". Not a bad hook by any means, but it'd be nice to get some variety.

Maps

Here's an example map from the book.

It's not exactly a work of art. It barely feels like a work of work; it's just thrown together in MSpaint. Considering the web tools available, license free, it's hard to see why this was the style chosen.

I redrew this map in 30 minutes.

Map Numbering

Numbering should flow from room to room. Let's take a look at this dungeon as written.

Oh dear. The rooms were numbered as they radiate outwards from the entrance. But as the party moves through the dungeon (1-3-5-4-7-8-10 for example), the poor GM has to keep referencing the map to figure out the next room. It's also hard to judge adjacent rooms by reading the text.

Renumbering the map as follows:

We get a much more smooth numbering system.

There are still a few "jumps", but it's significantly easier to read and visualize. Try to keep player flow in mind when numbering rooms. Imagine how they'd walk through the dungeon and how much flipping the GM would need to do to keep up with them.
 

Map Jaquaying

It's supremely difficult to make a complex one-page dungeon without it becoming a grid of connected squares. The maps in Tristan's book have loops and multiple paths. A few look a bit linear, but most seem to incorporate a few good design principles.

Dungeon Key

"Read-aloud" text or general dungeon dressing is first, in plain text. GM notes and stats are in italics. It's a nice touch for the length of the room keys. If they were shorter, like a "classic" one page dungeon, it'd feel like a gimmick, and if they were longer a line break would be more suitable, but as they are it's just right.

There is a cupboard in this room, along with some piles of wood that appear to have once been furniture. Some blood stains the wall. A brownie lives in the cupboard, hoarding shoes. He does not want to be bothered, and rarely leaves the house for anything other than collecting more shoes. He knows about the goblins and the ogre downstairs, but doesn’t care because they don’t take his shoes. The brownie has HD ½, AC unarmored, ATK 1 knife, DMG 1d4, and can turn invisible at will.

There's a mix of combat encounters (rats attack, goblins attack, ghosts attack, etc.), diplomacy and conversations, traps, and interesting things.

General Complaints

These could all be one-page dungeons, front and back, with a bit more work on formatting. All the text is single column. With a two column layout, a smaller font size, and a bit of editing (there are still a few vestigial "Here is a room that is a room..." sentences).

As it is, most dungeons are 3 pages. Sure, a map page stapled to a front-and-back dungeon key isn't the end of the world, but it'd be nice to have these as single sheets of paper. If I wanted to print this, I'd need to spend a fair bit of time printing sections individually.

I'm not sure if any of these dungeons were playtested. I think, if you're publishing a product for money, you need to put in at least some playtesting. A "1d100 Horrible Horses" table, sure, don't bother testing it, but 20 dungeons? Honest, clear-eyed playtesting and editing helps immensely.

There's no art beyond the MSpaint maps. For one page dungeons art is tricky, but a cover page would have been nice.

And finally, the price. It's $5 USD.
 
That's too much. I don't think you get your money's worth, given other offerings on the market at $5 or below. There are $5 worth of ideas here - more, for sure! - and $5 or more of effort, but the final package feels flimsy. I feels, in places, like the author wasn't really taking pride in the work and trying to put out the best possible product. It feels like I paid $5 for a playtest document or a mockup, something on the road to being great but not there yet.

Auctions, Schemes, and RPGs

Inspired by Dunkey's Black Auction.
Auctions are perfect for RPGs.

Fantasy Flight Games put out a lot of lousy adventures for their Dark Heresy game line, but "The House of Dust and Ash" from "Disciples of the Dark Gods" is fantastic. It's just 10 pages long if you ignore the handouts and statblocks. It's no longer available, but casual google search should get you a PDF copy.

There's an auction on a mortuary island. The items are from the estate of a legendarily mad and cursed bloodline (think the Heterodynes from Girl Genius meets Vlad the Impaler. Proper evil superscience), so naturally, all sorts of mad and dangerous characters turns up. Of course, everything goes to hell in a handbasket. The auction house seals itself. A volcano is set to erupt shortly. The entire thing was a trap, set by the bloodline's last and looniest heir, to kill any potentially living relatives of the bloodline, no matter how distant.

It's wonderful.

Thomas Pringle

Elements of a Good Auction Adventure

A good but narrowly defined location. An eccentric cast of characters with secrets galore. A list of dangerous valuable items. A set schedule of events. Mystery. Glitz. Heaps and heaps of money. Auctions have it all.

1. The Invitation
Being invited to something makes the players feel special. It connects them to the world and makes the setting seem proactive and alive.

Get baroque. Use evocative, ornate language. Leave the invitation as a bloodstained clue in a murder investigation. Have it delivered in the dead of night by a knight in owl-feather robes. Give it an air of drama and mystery.

Print an example invitation (on cardstock, if possible). Don't use a standard paper size. You can make your own one-use embossing stamp from a bit of carved plastic and a hammer.

longque Chen

2. The Location
Design it like a dungeon but with different considerations. You want a few loops, a few set pieces, and many secrets. A grand old mansion or hotel is ideal. Servants passages, rooms for private conversations, lots of obvious tools and options. A place to use as a stronghold. A central room or atrium with branches, to encourage chance meetings and collisions between rival groups. Ancient secrets, unmapped catacombs.

Ideally, the building should have relatively few entrances and exits.

• A hotel on top of a mountain accessible only by a long winding path (and not during the night, oh no, much too dangerous).
• A mansion on a marsh (with a storm like this? Could be days, maybe weeks before the road is clear.).
• A hotel sealed off by strange government figures in gas masks and white crinkly suits (stay indoors for your protection. Anyone who leaves this area will be shot. This is your only warning).

You can get even more exotic. A building warped out of space and time by an item in the auction deliberately or accidentally activated. A ship at sea. A dirigible. An old bunker. An express train. Whatever a rich, mad, and dangerous person could use to increase the prestige and drama of the auction.

Thomas Wievegg

3. The Characters
Groups of 1-3 characters. Lone professors, eccentric and hunted. Bickering couples (it's all an act, they're cultists). One guy in robes with two identical creepy assistants. Mash tropes together.

4-6 groups of participants, plus 1-2 notable members of staff, seems ideal. Any more and the players may lose track. Any fewer and there aren't enough connections to make the auction seem properly chaotic.

• Innocents (a bored socialite, a petty thief in way over their head, hired arm candy)
• Assassins (not here for the items, here to kill one specific person)
• Acquisitionists (here to get one specific item. Anything else is a distraction)
• Subverters (here to switch an item for a fake, destroy an item, prevent a sale, moralize)
  Knowledgeable People (professors, occultists)
• Potential Allies
• Potential Rivals
• Fakes (in disguise, impersonating others, could be benign, could be deadly.)

Feel free to add a few gormless and helpless NPCs, suitable for sacrifices, human shields, shouting "we need to get out of here!" and doing foolish things to show players where danger lies, and general massacre chaff.

The great thing about an auction is that anyone can turn up. Money is the universal social lubricant. Baronesses in silk and pearls will sit next to bloodsoaked pirates if it means they can bid on the lost von Splitz masterpiece. You can show up in bloodsoaked armour carrying a severed head and be politely asked to store your gory trophy at the coat check.

Everyone shows up in black ties and formal dress for dinner, no matter how incongruous.

4. The Schedule
Show up. Scout the crowd. Gather a few hints. Get a few superficial impressions. Auction off a few items. Possibly retire to dinner. Oh no! The twist! And not all the items have been sold!

Have people enter and leave the auction unexpectedly. Increase tension with red herrings. Someone faints. Someone makes an urgent telephone call. The auctioneer is replaced with an assistant for a few rounds.

Use charts to keep track of everyone. Kidnap the Archpriest has some good timetable formats you can use.

Whatever the PCs goal is - get a specific item, get information, unmask someone, get rich - they won't be able to acomplish it without acting. They can't just bid on the McGuffin, win it, and walk out.

Derek Jones

5. The Items
Go nuts. At least 20 items. Most of the really good ones should be evocative, powerful, mysterious, storied, mythical, and dangerous if misused. Some should just be cash. Fragile, inconveniently shaped cash. The useful items are a pile of spare parts. The PCs will use them to assemble their escape plan.

You'll want to include some hidden synergies. You can invent a few yourself, but don't overplan. If you put enough interesting items in the auction house, the players will figure out unexpected uses and ways to mash them together.

You can also play the auction straight. Make it seem like there will be a twist - a volcano, a summoning ritual, a landslide - and then don't deliver. Suddenly, the chaos the PCs were planning to use to get the McGuffin isn't present. Can they still get it? Of course, they can't afford to buy it, and even if they could an unscrupulous antiques dealer has replaced it with a fake, etc.

Final Notes
Auctions aren't great for new groups. The PCs need to know each other's capabilities. They aren't great for groups with lots of tools either; PCs who can teleport and summon hordes of angels will find an auction trite and the items on sale quaint and melodramatic.

OSR: Boss Fight Design

I like boss fights. They provide a nice change of pace from traditional dungeon exploration. Surviving their challenges and emerging triumphant. My Alexandrian Dark Souls setting will include a lot of boss fights, so I thought I'd lay out my general principles.

Artem Demura

The Action Economy

I: Combat Effort

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight.

-Sun Tzu

Five PCs can make five attacks in a turn. A standard enemy can only make one attack.

The obvious - and incorrect - adjustment is to make the one enemy's attacks five times stronger and give them five times as much HP. This can work, but it makes a fight deadly and boring. Damage isn't everything. The 5 "attacks" the PCs can make could include stun effects, terrain modification effects, confusion, flanking, pushing someone off a cliff, etc. Just multiplying the numbers won't help.
 

II: Bullshit Effort

If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. 

-Sun Tzu

Five PCs can get up to five times as much bullshit as a standard enemy. They can tie ropes, toss items around, communicate, plot, and execute. They can combine items, spells, and abilities.

The obvious adjustment is to give your enemy bullshit-cancelling techniques: stun effects, sleep effects, turning people into trees. These can work, but you can't cancel all bullshit all the time. Instead, bullshit right back.

III: Mental Effort

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate. 

-Sun Tzu

No matter how clever you are, five players can still think faster than you because there are five of them. They might be thinking in different directions, they might be thinking incorrectly, they might be thinking themselves into trouble... but they are still moving faster than your poor GM brain can manage.

Good boss design can minimize mental effort. At a bare minimum, the boss fight should include all the information you need. If an enemy can teleport, don't list dimension door. List the range and limitations. Having to pause in the middle of a fight to look up some minor detail is a waste of everyone's time.

Jens Kuczwara

The Elements of a Boss Fight

You don't need to include all these elements in the same boss fight. Pick and choose.

I: The Rules

Bosses can break them. End of story. A fair fight is a fight you've already lost. Your rules say enemies attack once per round? Screw it, this boss attacks three times around. Your rules say creatures have a to-hit value? Screw it. You can't hit this boss with conventional weapons, or you automatically hit them.

II: Terrain

A 50'x50' room is boring. Consider including:

• Interactive (things to knock over, push, throw, or dodge)
• Intuitively connected areas (a room with a balcony, a sailing ship)
  Unintuitively connected areas (portals, teleporters, floating platforms)
• Something going on (an active forge, a collapsing building, a rotating water wheel)
• Places to maneuver, hide, or circle around (pillars, darkness)
• Areas that limit movement (flowing water, video game lava or acid, swarms of slippery maggots)
• Dangerous areas (pits, drops, mashing gears, flame jets)
• Strong themes. This is almost mandatory. The arena should be as interesting as the boss.

Try to include a potential escape route and a place to hide for a few rounds.

III: Phases

Tension in a boss fight tends to drop off fairly quickly. At first, there's this feeling of "Augh what the fuck is that thing!?", but players tend to figure out bosses fairly quickly. The fight becomes a slog.

You can continue to increase the tension by the uses of phases.

Phases can be triggered by:

• # of rounds since combat began (kill it quickly or it gets tougher or drag out combat to tire it out)
• Damage taken (1/2 HP or a specific threshold)
• Specific actions (melting ice, breaking chains, opening a door, using a spell)

Triggers should be obvious to the GM and easy to track.

• Phases can include:
• A change of boss moves (different or better attacks)
• An increase in the number of enemies (calling goblin assistants, splitting in half)
• An change in pace (slower or faster attacks)
  A change in terrain (see above) as the boss moves or alters its environment

IV: Boss Moves

A minimum starting point:

• One "moderate" damage attack. Enough to chip away at one or more PCs but not enough to kill a full health PC.
• One "oh fuck" damage attack. Enough to almost kill a PC or at least scare the hell out of your players.
• One "aha, thought you were being clever" attack. Usually an area-of-effect burst or a re-positioning.
• One "weird" effect. Passive or active. Does something unexpected. Helps control the fight, combat the PCs' bullshit.

Don't forget; the boss can re-position itself as well as attacking. It can circle, move back, flank, isolate, corner, or retreat. A boss shouldn't remain stationary to let the PCs surround and wail on it.
Additional Moves

• Telegraphed mega-damage attack. One round to get out of the way or you're probably dead.
• Area control attacks. Classic MMORPG boss fight moves. Designate an area; anyone in the area after a few rounds has something horrible happen to them.
• Reactions. Occur when a PC does something (casts a spell, fires a ranged weapon, smashes a vital gem). Breaks the normal turn order. Frightening.
• Summoning low-threat allies.

Passive Boss Abilities

• Initiative penalties (this boss is really quick)
  Multiple actions per round (It goes at the start of each round and in the middle of each round)
  Actions after every PC's turn (It goes after every PC)
• Automatically hit (this boss is huge, you can't possibly miss) coupled with damage reduction (but it's so huge your weapons barely harm it)
  Immunity to some types of attack
• An inconvenient movement move (flight, hovering, swimming)

Additional Complications

• Immune until some action is taken (smashing a crystal, opening windows to let sunlight in)
• Terrain can be used against the boss (ancient rusting cannons on the balcony, fragile ceiling)
• A second boss arrives in the middle of the fight.

Boss Move Tips

• The move's name and description should enable the GM to describe it, with as much or as little purple prose as needed, without preparing ahead of time.
• Powerful moves should be telegraphed. If a boss spits fire, its mouth should dribble flames all the time, even when it's not using that move. If it has a dart-forward multi-attack, it should move like a duelist, etc.
• Moves should be repeated to give the players a chance to learn and adapt.
• Try to include more than one path to victory. The Basilisk can be fought traditionally or blinded by stealth or fed to make it into a sort of ally.
• Some bosses deserve as much foreshadowing as you can give them. Hype them up. Give hints and warnings and, perhaps, mangled survivors.
• Some bosses should be horrible surprises.

V: Twists

• Not all bosses need to be larger or stranger than the PCs. The first boss fight in Bloodborne is against Father Gascoigne. He has the same equipment and the same moves as you... and he kicks your ass, because he uses them better. He thumbs his nose at the player. "I don't have any special advantages or tools. I'm just better. Get good, scruuuuub."
• Some bosses, especially ones with immunity to common attacks, can be treated more like puzzles than fights.
• Some boss fights can be tragic instead of hectic. They can be easier than expected for a reason that only becomes obvious later.
• A composite boss (a smaller creature riding a larger creature, two allies with different fighting styles, a caster and a sword-wielder)

VI: Music

Boss fights are a chance to get bombastic. If you don't use background music normally, now's your chance. Mostly silence, with only some areas having music, is a Dark Souls hallmark.

VII: Prose

Your goal, as a GM, is to make the boss fight interesting. Take your time describing the boss and the terrain before the fight begins. Linger over details. Build a complete picture in your players' minds and you will be rewarded for it later.

Practice describing things. Go onto Artstation or some other site, find some monsters, and describe them - out loud if possible. Your goal is to produce an experience that your players will vividly remember.

Yongsub Noh

Example Boss Fights

The Basilisk (by far the best and most complete boss fight I've written and tested)
The Stone Cobra Guardian
The Blizzard Eel
Xiximanter the Lich, the Apocalypse Shell, and the Umbral Duchess
 

Further Reading

Held Kinetic Energy in Old School Arenas
JRPG Inspired Encounter Design
5th Edition's Legendary Actions
Action Economics 101 and 102
Broodmother Skyfortress
All the boss fights in Dark Souls
EDIT: Better Boss Fights
Boss Mechanics from World of Warcraft
Monster Design - Focus on Special Attacks
Monster Design

OSR: 3 Level 1 PCs Solve 20 Black Doors

Michael Prescott of Trilemma fame crowdsourced 1d20 "black doors" on G+. In his words,

A Black Door is a dungeon obstacle (in Ben Robbins' original West Marches, an actual black door sealed by magic) that clearly separates skilled, versatile, resourceful and powerful parties from less experienced ones. Often adventurers will be completely unable to get past until they return later, having levelled up a bunch or brought special tools or hirelings.

Versatility is fine. Skill is fine. Resourceful is fine. But powerful, well-leveled, and experienced? Not needed. All you really need is a plan.

For a job like getting rid of the drug dealer next door, I'll take a hardware store over a gun any day. Guns make you stupid; better to fight your wars with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart.
-Michael Westen, Burn Notice (Pilot)

I try not to include explicit black doors in my dungeons. In my opinion, all good OSR problems should be solvable with a very, very good plan and no rolls, or by a lot of rolls and considerable danger. Rolls represent risk - if the PCs are good, they might be able to avoid risk entirely. Looking at an obstacle and saying "not worth it" is fine and sensible, but if the PCs really want to get past an obstacle, there should be a way - without being Level 20 or knowing one specific spell or hiring 30 experts.

Sometimes it works, and a group beautifully avoids a challenge or comes up with another way around a problem. Sometimes it doesn't.

Paladin of Beauty, regurso

Here's a thought exercise; can  a party of 3 generic Level 1 PCs could get through these doors? I've only included doors I like, or ones with enough detail to be interesting.

If the door is too easy, it's not really a challenge. If it requires one very specific tool to solve, or some other equally targeted requirement, it's not worth including. But if it looks difficult to solve but can be overcome with a good plan, your players will be very happy when they succeed. There's no better feeling than "outsmarting" the GM and defeating some impossible challenge with three eggs, twine, and a false mustache.

The trick, as the GM, is to design challenges that can be solved, but not to come up with specific solutions beforehand. Exercises like this help calibrate your design process.

Maybe I'll make a "GM Exercises" series.

Doors and Solutions

OSR: The Secret of Steam Hill, Session 2 (Everyone Dies)

At the end of the last post, I asked, "What would they find in the halls of Steam Hill? What treasures and dangers would they uncover in that mythical place? Would any of them survive?"

The answer is apparently "death, none, and no." They all died.

It didn't happen immediately, of course. But because it happened, and there are no living characters left to tell the tale, I'll gloss what happened so I can talk about why it happened.

The party continued to explore the wooden buildings on the top of Steam Hill. The buildings formed a sort of bath house or spa, with comfortable rooms filled with fine linen, freshly washed robes, steam, and soap. The bath house also contained scald zombies. These hideous undead creatures were covered in full-body burns, their skin blistered and weeping, their teeth gnashing with hunger. The scald zombies devoured the party's horses, attacked them, mangled their flesh, and generally caused havoc.

After clearing the upper rooms and resting overnight, the party descended into the hill itself, using a chain-driven elevator. Beneath, in the ancient tunnels below the bathhouse, they were startled by traps, baffled by valves, frightened by phosphorescent tentacles, and then, finally, lost. Their one torch (one!) went out, and they had to navigate by the light of a hastily constructed alcohol lamp.

In a gigantic room full of ancient turbines they were attacked by a vampire in a pressure suit. They didn't know this at the time, but they did know their attacked resembled the mysterious round-headed god the bathhouse-builders had worshiped. The party decided to fight it. Things went wrong immediately.

Blahriel the Elf Wizard drew her bow and shot the creature with an arrow. It immediately (next in initiative order that turn) leapt over and pummeled her to death with its wrench-syringe fingers. Blahriel was already at 0 HP and had some recent fatal wounds. I've got to post my amended Death and Dismemberment table soon. but in any case, it wasn't pretty. 

Shocked, Bob the Summoner stood to the side and watched the fight, unwilling to engage with just his dagger. Biscuit the dogling highwayman, missing an arm and badly concussed from last session, ran away.

RAAA-ger the Barbarian hurled himself into the fray alongside Sir Gilesworth. Unfortunately, he was still carrying the alcohol lamp, and the fragile bottle shattered in combat. Sir Gilesworth, Bob, and RAAA-ger were set on fire. RAAA-ger was blinded and flew into a terrible rage. He spent the rest of his life futility attacking friend and foe alike.

Bob, who also had several fatal wounds from past encounters, was missing an eye, and was fairly low on HP to start with, expired from the burns and glass shards. Before he died he threw a flask of oil at the vampire. The fireball caught his dying elf friend on fire, but also caused the vampire to briefly retreat into a nest of steam-pipes.

RAAA-ger, navigating by sound and instinct, charged after the creature and was swiftly punctured to death. The vampire, with its domed helmet broken by the knight's sword, could freely feast on the owlling's flesh. By the time Sir Gilesworth found them it was too late. He fought bravely but briefly and died to the vampire's crushing embrace.

Meanwhile, in total darkness, Biscuit tried to find the surface. Lost, assaulted by zombies and fatally wounded, and chased by a vampire in a pressure suit, Biscuit stumbled down a passageway and expired peacefully in a water-filled chamber after eating a ration.

This was my first ever Total Party Kill.

Lessons for the GM:

1. The Blizzard Eel did not teach the lesson I'd intended it to teach. Rather than learning "run the fuck away from some enemies" the party learned "you can fight anything and, although you might be maimed, still live".

2. The setting for the dungeon is too isolated. I'd intended the blizzard and the remote setting to force the players to use the materials at hand to solve their problems. The dungeon is designed to provide lots of raw materials for interesting schemes to solve puzzles. 

Instead, the players felt (unconsciously) that the only way out was forwards. The isolation created a sense that retreat was impossible. Even after many, many, many serious wounds, the party pressed onwards and downwards.

3. I should have played up the ominous feeling of the bath-cult and their god earlier and more thoroughly.

4. I didn't design the dungeon with the same care and interlocking structures as Tomb of the Serpent Kings, and it showed in play (at least, to me). Too many rooms lacked useful details or really important lessons. The dungeon needs a lot of work.

5. Players in this group describe how they check for traps and hidden danger in a much more loose and free sense than my other group of new OSR players. That might be related to (4), but it's worth noting and planning for.

Lessons for the Players:

1. If you all decide to fight, it's probably best if you all actually fight. 

2. Having a plan and coordinating well is important. Nobody knew you only had one torch until it went out. You'd made more, but stored them upstairs.

3. If the GM asks "What do you do?" and you hesitate and start arguing, not because you don't have enough information, but because you can't decide, then expect problems. You might take a penalty to Initiative, you might encounter wandering monsters, etc. 

4. Think about the dungeon and it's purpose.

5. Don't assume you have infinite time to act and explore. The world is not a fixed place that exists only if there are PCs observing it. 

Anyway, a new party will be heading back to Steam Hill. The group decided that they have unfinished business. Of course, they'll need to wait until spring to cross the mountains. Steam Hill may have changed since the last group of adventurers met a grisly fate inside its stone warrens.