The shows mostly deserve to be dropped into the Sarlacc’s maw, the fandom is more toxic than the bite of an Ewok (you just know those little guys are spreading rabies,) and the heyday of Star Wars was a Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. But I do love a non-standard holiday as an excuse to play an RPG. Today, abiding by the Tables and Tales May the Fourth rule, Isaac is going to run us through a Star Wars themed adventure using Vaults of Vaarn (the rule is that we have to have a Star Wars themed game but we can’t use any official Star Wars games to do it.)
But not before I come up with a Star Wars themed Heart Landmark! You lucky readers!
Oddya’s Bog
Name: Oddya’s Bog Domains: Religion, Cursed Tier: 1 Default Stress: d4 Haunts: The Proving Cave (Echo/Mind d6)
Description: All the inhabitants of Oddya’s Bog are one with it. Most of them have become one with it over the course of years and decades, adding their own energy to that of all living things in this place. I mean, they add their flesh too, but you can’t make an omelette etc. The Bog needs the bodies and life-force of the people and other animals who find themselves drawn here.
The bog, a treeless, stinking expanse of fetid, untrustworthy marshland, writhes and undulates, as some such places do due to the waters concealed beneath the turf surface. Oddya’s Bog moves in this way because it is made mostly of people and animals, living beings that are absorbed bodily by the landscape to add their essences to the entity known as the Compulsion. They live still, in a terrible mockery of life, slowly learning what it means to be both one and many under the sway of the Compulsion.
Master Oddya is the Compulsion’s greatest champion that has not been fully absorbed. He has existed in the forgotten bog for longer than he can remember. It is possible that he is nothing more than a creation of the Compulsion’s microscopic constituent parts, the chlorimediants. Either way, he is a sour old prune that many have mistaken for a Gutterkin. Perhaps he was once a drow; he shares their pallor and long ears; but he can reach no more than knee-height to most elves and he walks the discomforting bog, unclothed and usually sucking on a recently plucked eyeball or knucklebone.
Many come to the Bog in search of Oddya, believing him to be some sort of wiseman or priest of a forgotten god. The downtrodden and addled residents of the lower levels of Spire have a great need for a saint or a leader to believe in. Rumours have been circulated by a certain, rather smelly sect of blank-eyed, robed and hooded drow on the streets of Pilgrim’s Walk. They have been telling tales, in the voice of the earth itself, of a prophet and holy man named Oddya who holds the secret to oneness. They appear every few years before inevitably disintegrating into the bog-stuff that they are and slowly making their way through the waters back to Oddya’s Bog, where he will re-constitute them and send them back to the City Above again the recruit once more. The pilgrims who come are brought under the sway of the Compulsion as Oddya speaks his strange backwards sermons to them, urging them to surrender to the Compulsion, to trust it and to use it. Most are captured and merge with the bog. Some escape but Bog Folk will follow them to prevent them from spreading the truth of the Bog beyond its borders.
Only one cave at the edge of the Bog is free of the Compulsion, the Proving Cave. If you enter it, you will be forced to contend with the thing you are most desirous of. If you manage to resist it, you will be healed by the cave at the price of a D6 Resource. If you do not, you will gain the Fallout, Unproven. See the Special Rules section. Special Rules: Master Oddya – If he is allowed to speak his strange mystic mumbo-jumbo, he may ensnare the listener and bring them under the influence of the Compulsion. Endure/Religion or Cursed roll to resist or suffer d4 Echo Stress. If a PC suffers fallout from this, use the following: Fallout There is No Try (Minor Echo.) Next time you might need to roll to do anything in Oddya’s Bog, you succeed automatically, but you lose a part of yourself to the Bog and the Complusion. All actions not directly in the service of the Compulsion are Risky.
Fallout I Have a Bad Feeling About This (Major Echo.) You are becoming one with the Bog and the Compulsion. All actions not taken directly in the service of the Compulsion are Dangerous.
Fallout Become Greater than You Can Possibly Imagine (Critical Echo.) Your body has become one with Oddya’s Bog and your essence serves only the Compulsion.
The Proving Cave – Ask the player what their character most desires if you need to. This thing will appear in the Cave as though it were the Heart itself. But it is fleeting and dangerous. If they attempt to take the thing or make it there own in any way, they will gain d6 Echo stress. If they get fallout from this, use the following: Fallout Unproven (Minor, Echo) If they see the object of their desires again, they will be compelled to pursue it. If they resist, any other actions will be Risky. (Ongoing)
Resources: Everything here is tainted but Oddya’s Bog Turf is a d4 Cursed Resource.
Characters created! Caravan stocked! My players are ready to head off from the outlying barrio of the Violet City into the trackless expanse of the Ultraviolet Grasslands. Honestly, between characters and caravan, our session went over time quite significantly. I did not expect to get any actual travelling done during the session, having gone through the character creation process myself already and having listened to the first couple of sessions of this Open Hearth Actual Play refereed by Marc Majcer. It took them the full three hours or so of the first session to do the same. In fact, they were still settling caravan details for the first part of the second session too.
I actually do regret not creating my own caravan before we had session 0 too. I think it would have helped the process go smoother. But not to worry! It went well enough and, indeed, the players enjoyed both processes. They particularly liked the sheer off-the-wall nature of everything about their characters, the anti-canon nature of the game and the setting and the randomness of almost every step. As for the caravan creation section, specifically; I have noted in a post from last year that I like to give the PCs a home that I can fuck with and I have done it repeatedly in various campaigns. But, in previous games, the creation of that home was never as involved or player -focused as it was in UVG. They immediately got into it. They understood the importance of the caravan, the supplies, the capacity of the vehicles, the types of animals they chose and the cost of everything of course. It took very little urging from me for them to get attached. They now have three carts and 9 mounts, all of which have names, some of which have favourite plushies and foods, a few hired cart drivers, also named and probably with tragic backstories. They have made it exceedingly easy for me to manipulate their little emotions when I fuck with the caravan almost immediately.
My approach
Anyway, today, I’m going to take a slightly different approach to caravan creation than they did. They opted for the “first caravan” package that is presented in the UVG core book. This is honestly a great option that does a lot of the work for you. It takes several key decisions out of the players’ hands and does all the cash calculations for them. Each of them took this package and added a few more animals. That’s how they ended up with so many carts and such a menagerie of pony-analogues.
I’m going to start from scratch, deciding on the method of transportation, the types of animals or animal alternatives, the trade goods and travelling gear. The caravan is going to be run by the character I created a few days ago, my D.W.A.R.F. Tumult Fisher Wizard, Del ‘Machinist. But I’m adding a couple more characters to their company of traders so that I’ve got more money to play around with. The caravan rules state that each character begins with a €1000 loan from a financier (with 100% annual interest!) so, I thought it would be more fun to start with €3000 than just the €1000 that Del would have had access to on their own. I’m not creating these characters in their entirety, I’m just going to roll on the background, strange item, motivation, path and name tables for them.
Hero Number 2: Oï Yu, the Timelost undercover Rainbow Inquisitor. He’s taken the Traveler path. He’s tracking a missing ledger. Oï Yu has brought with him his special carmine cactus that secretes drops of blood.
Hero Number 3: Maria bra Salsur, the bluelander pueblo heretic rancher. She has taken the path of the Fighter. She is following visions of glory and rebirth into the grasslands. She brings with her a self-playing zither with seventy tunes.
My caravan
Financier
You have to start somewhere. When you are trying to kickstart your dream of outfitting and running your very own grasslands-going caravan like Del and their friends are doing, you have to start with money.
Outfitting a caravan is expensive. The PCs should start with a loan of €1,000 per character. The financier is dubious and there’s 100% annual interest, but it beats scrabbling for pennies.
I’m going to go with the book’s advice here and get a loan of €1000 for each hero, so that makes €3000. That will, of course lead to a final debt of €6000, a nice round number, I think you’ll agree. Also, it’s future-Del’s problem, right?
The first step is to decide a few things about our financier. There are a couple of handy d20 tables in the back of the book for this very purpose:
Who are they? – Cat witch faction leader
What do they want? – Acquire forbidden magic
Their Organisation – Cat-first society
Their opponents – Savage capitalist scions
Weaknesses and oddities – appears only as a hologram
But Who’s really behind the patron?
Who’s coughing up? – Under-funded second-tier military complex
How do they hope to benefit? – Practical evidence to justify continued funding
What extra help can they send along? – Annoying but capable administrator
The beginning part of the Caravan section of the book goes into a lot of detail on trade goods, trade routes, the measurement of time, consumption of supplies etc. I’m going to maybe come back to some of this stuff later. For now, I’m going to establish the constituent parts of my caravan.
Vehicles and animals
Bearing in mind that I’ve only got six grand to play with, options are limited here. But this is what I would like to go with. We can’t really afford anything actually mechanical or biomechanical (which I would like as I feel like that would be Del’s jam,) despite their being some beautifully weird and desirable options such as the Road Yacht, the Porcelain Walker, the Autogolem and the Meat Crawler (yes, meat crawler.) But I can’t afford any of those! Instead, for vehicles, I’m going to go with a pair of Solid Coaches. They can each carry 12 sacks, with is pretty good, and they are less likely to suffer catastrophic damage on the road as they are level 7.
As an aside, most things are measured in sacks when it comes to hauling things across country. A sack is the basic unit for trade goods. A sack is equal to 10 stones. A stone is equal to 10 soaps. A sack is also about the same amount of space that a human takes up. Usefully, a sack of supplies is also just enough to keep one human fed, watered and otherwise relatively comfortable on the road for a week.
A week, as it happens, is the basic unit of travel in UVG. Journeys from one destination on the Grand Long Map of the Ultraviolet Grasslands to the next are said to take one week or two or more. This is adjusted for things like the relative speed of your vehicles, the types of misfortune you meet along the way, and whether or not you need to stop to forage when you inevitably run out of supplies half way to your destination.
Solid Coach x2 – €600 each – €1200 total bringing my cash down to 1800.
Each of these coaches needs a couple of draft animals to pull it. So, I guess we’ll need to roll on a table to determine exactly the type of pony-analogues we’ll be purchasing.
I rolled a 5 on this d6 table. It’s Goatelopes… I think we can all imagine what those look like, graceful antelope legs with a shaggy furred body, the ability to eat almost anything and the terrifying devils’ eyes of a billy-goat. Del is not going to fall into he trap of naming these poor beasts but the Timelost Oï Yu can’t resist. We have
Hopper whose favourite fruit is mango
Famante who has the genetic heirloom of utter baldness – requires liberal lashings of sunscreen.
Fiodor who has a wise move. He always lets you know when rain is coming by stopping and refusing to move until you cover his head.
Korven has a cute trick. She can stand on just her forelegs as though she’s doing a handstand.
Anyway, each draft animal costs €70, so that’s another €280. Down to €1520 now.
More humans
Next, we need to consider who will drive these coaches while the PCs galavant about pretending to know anything about running a caravan. As I am on a budget, I am going to hire a couple of people for this, or, as they are described on the Vehicles & Mounts table, Human, Common-ass. It is Wirth noting that the table also provides options for simply buying slaves but does take pains to point out that this sort of thing would be perfect for evil caravans and that they might be resentful, which its probably putting it mildly.
Human, common-ass x2 – €7 per week. I’ll reserve two weeks wages for them so that’ll take me down to €1492
Del, not wanting to get attached would not wish to name these lads either, but, being humans, they come furnished with their own names:
Torron Valpin is a Redlander
Ulfis i’Bosc is from the Greenlands
Supplies and other stuff
Right, now, let’s consider the supplies we need to keep us alive out there without having to stop all the time to hunt and forage. You need a sack of supplies per person per week. So, including our drivers, Torron and Ulfis, that makes five people. So that’s five sacks of supplies per week. Let’s make sure we are covered for a little while and get two weeks worth of supplies.
5×2 = 10. Each sack of supplies costs €10, so that makes €100 on supplies. This brings me down to €1392. It also brings the total number of sacks we have to 18.
How did I come to this number you might ask, dear reader?
5 humans +
the 3 useful kitbags that the heroes come with (each one takes up a sack of space) +
10 supplies
So, this leaves only 6 sacks of space for trade goods! Except it doesn’t. I’m going to refer back to the standard first caravan package and pick up a “bog-standard Pro-Hiker (TM) kit” for each hero as well. This will include a bunch of generally useful traveling gear like tents, sunscreen, schnapps and wine skins and a hat. Each pack of gear takes up one sack of space and costs €50. Most importantly, though, I get to roll on the hat table for each hero.
This hat-table-excuse brings the cash reserves down to €1370 and available sack space down to just 3!
More capacity, please!
Well, that seems like a shame to me. We could afford a few more mounts for the PCs to ride alongside the coaches and free up, not just the space the PCs take up, but also the space their kit occupies, since riding animals can bear 2 sacks. That opens up another 6 sacks on the coaches, meaning we can transport 6 more sacks of trade goods. Of course these mounts do cost €70 each too:
3 riding mounts – €70 x 3 = €210. This takes my total cash down to €1160
Oï Yu’s mount – Blinki the pony (dances with Oï Yu when the zither is played)
Maria bra Salsur’s mount – Pander the llama (a rare pedigree whose hair is soft as merino wool)
Del ‘Machinist’s mount – unnamed donkey (favourite fruit is dragon fruit)
But leaves enough space to transport 9 sacks of trade goods.
Trade goods
I rolled on the table on the first caravan package and got
“Vampire Wines,” which is just blood, right? I mean, right? (Actually wrong. The Trade Goods table says they are just made from grapes that are grown in soil rich in the flesh of creation)
These cost €100 each so that’s another €900 down, leaving us with €260
I’ll spend €68 to get bows and spears for each of the heroes and another €30 to get nomad robes for them. That brings my cash down to €162. I think it’s probably wise to keep that for the journey. Never know when you’re going to need to stop for burgers and milkshakes on the Steppes of the Lime Nomads.
Legalities and marketing
This caravan is established as a company in a legal sense and so it will need a logo/symbol, a name and a company motto.
The symbol is a stylised coach based on the first two owned by the company, speeding across the grasslands in silhouette
The name of the company is Ultraviolet Lopers
Their motto is “From the Circle to the Sea”
Conclusion
In conclusion, I think I may have enjoyed making this caravan that is probably going nowhere, at least as much as my players enjoyed making their actual caravan that they’ll be bravely shepherding into the Ultraviolet Grasslands in a week or two. There are so many great options to choose from or to roll up randomly. There’s usually a laugh to be had during the process and you get to name mounts and humans and stuff. Honestly, great craic; would do again.
I have been reading Luka Rejec’s polychromatic point crawl, Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City 2E for a while now. It’s a remarkably attractive and inspirational piece of work. Luka is responsible for the artwork, writing and design. He really brought his vision to life in this book and he has continued to support it for the last six or seven years since the first edition came out. Most recently, in the form of a massive crowd funder for no fewer than two books to expand the world, Our Golden Age and the Vastlands Guidebook, which I wrote about last year, here. But, there have also been a number of other supplements in the meantime. I picked up a bunch of them on a recent Bundle of Holding deal. The files included the invaluable UVG Guidebook. This details the Synthetic Dream Machine rules devised by Luka. Most useful for my purposes here, is the guide to character creation for UVG 2E. So, I’m going to use it to create my own character, and my own caravan too!
Here’s a little bit about the setting, taken from the UVG Guidebook:
The UVG is a point-crawl setting inspired by psychedelic heavy metal, the Dying Earth genre, and Oregon Trail games. It is a world colored by new wave science fiction and inspired by artists from Moebius to Miyazaki.
The characters, referred to as “heroes,” begin, generally, in the Violet City. This place is ruled by Cat Lords with little human hands and big human servants/pets. It is also the last outpost of human dominion on the shores of the Circle Sea. Beyond the city, to the East, stretch the irradiated, largely uninhabited, weird, vome-infested Ultraviolet Grasslands. The PCs are headed out there, probably at the head of their own caravan, hopefully with some goods to trade at the next stop, which might be the Porcelain Citadel or the Last Serai or some other magical-sounding destination along the Low Road and the High, which, if you follow it long enough, will take you all the way to the eternal sunset and the Black City.
New Campaign, New Character Creation Post
This is all in preparation for starting a new campaign of UVG on Sunday. It’ll be a small caravan of just three PCs and it’ll be a tight, friendly group, but I always find the experience of creating a character myself helps me to guide them through the process so, here we go!
My Hero
So, in the finest tradition of, well, my other character creation posts, I’m going to roll this one up as randomly as possible. Anticipating my requirements in this respect, Mr Rejec has helpfully furnished me with many a table in this book. So, without further ado:
Ability Scores – SEACAT
That stands for Strength, Endurance, Agility, Charisma, Aura and Thought. I have a few options for this process but I am going to take the most random, the d100 roll.
Strength – I rolled an 18 on the d100. This translates to an entirely unremarkable 0. I guess I should be grateful there are no negative attributes in this system
Endurance – 96! This translates to an excellent and amazing 4!
Agility – 62. This gives me a talented 2
Charisma – interestingly, this is not like D&D Charisma, more like the Ancient Greek meaning, which encompasses fortune. Anyway, I rolled a 49, giving my character a promising 1 in this ability
Aura – This can help your character “to use powers beyond mortal ken longer than usual.” I got a 19, giving my second 0.
Thought – “the mental dynamic ability. It captures how a character absorbs, processes, and manipulates information.” I rolled a 47. This makes my score another 1.
So, at this point my ability scores are:
Strength – 0
Endurance – 4
Agility – 2
Charisma – 1
Aura – 0
Thought – 1
Background Trait
I like the method of determining your capacity for learning traits. You get an inventory for this, just like for physical objects. You can’t overload your trait inventory without suffering from encumbrance, anymore than you can physically carry too much without the same issue arising. I get 7 + Thought inventory slots for traits. So that’s 8 slots then. It won’t come into it at this stage, of course. As a level 1 character, my hero will only have three traits.
A starting trait gives you a +3 bonus to actions that can utilise it. Although you can upgrade it from Skilled, which is the starting point for all traits, to Expert, which provides a +6 and Master, which bumps you up to a +9.
Now to the fun part. Rolling a d50 to determine my Background. (So, in the UVG Guidebook, this table is actually a d40 one. But there is another version of it in the core UVG 2E book, so I’m using that for this bit, as well as to answer the following two questions below.) For this unusual die roll, I’m going to roll another d100 and divide by 2.
I rolled a 65, so half that and round down, I get a 32:
“Tumult Fisher Wizard” (?) This acts as my first trait and, I guess determines my Path (see below)
Why are they on the Road?
What is my Tumult Fishing WIzard’s motivation for heading off into the dangers of the Ultraviolet Grasslands? Well, the same table is going to tell me that. I rolled a 29, making it 14 this time:
“Pursued by Loving Enemies.” This sparks a lot of potential background stories for my wizard.
What Do They Bear?
You always start off with one strange item. It might be valuable or it might be important or it might be sentimental. I guess we’ll find out. I rolled a 6, so that’s 3 on the table:
“Green brick with the light and warmth of a candle.” Some sort of Oldtech item maybe?
Path Trait
So, in the UVG Guidebook, you do things a bit differently than you do if you’re just using the core book to make your character. If you use the Guidebook you will be led, carefully and systematically through the process, starting with ability scores, moving onto background traits and then to path traits. In these rules, your characters path can one of three broad categories, Wizard, Traveller and Fighter. They are not classes; they’re only used to determine one of your starting traits. After that, you are free to choose traits from any path you like as you level up.
The whole character creation section of the core book is quite compact, and, in fact, the entirety of the rules are squeezed onto a single page. The core book is, first and foremost, a setting book. It can easily be adapted for use with almost any OSR or D20 system and, indeed, with just a little work, could work very well with a PBTA or other ruleset too. So, I think the decision to pare down the rules, particularly for character creation, makes sense, especially when the Synthetic Dream Machine rules were already available in other publications.
Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that the core book does not refer to Paths at all. Instead, it seems to fold them into many of the backgrounds on its d50 “Who is this Hero?” table. A good example is my “Tumult Fisher Wizard” result from the d50 table earlier. It includes something that could be a background trait, i.e. Tumult Fisher as well as one of the paths, wizard.
So, by default, my first Path trait will be from the Wizard path list in the UVG Guidebook. There is a list of six options so I’ll roll a d6 for it.
That’s a 3. “Exuberant. Each of your life points is worth double when paying for powers.” It’s worth noting at this point, that Life is analogous to hit points and you spend Life to cast spells, so this is quite handy.
Generate a Third Trait
So, you then get to choose one more trait. There is a random trait table. Depending on the result of the roll, you could get another background trait, a wizard trait, a traveller trait or a fighter trait. So, here we go, it’s 5! Which means a Traveller Path trait. Another d6 roll on that table, and that’s a 6!
“Swift, Spend one life or one hero die to get one more action this round.” That is an amazing trait for any hero!
Equip your Character
Similar to trait inventory slots, I get 7 + Strength inventory slots for items. With my 0 strength, that’s going to make it a 7…
You start at level one having two items and some cash (denoted with a €, pronounced cash, not euro.) One of your two items is a kit useful to one of your background traits. In this case, I guess it might contain fishing rod, net, lures, wizarding items, that sort of thing. But, as the guidebook states, “You don’t need to choose in advance exactly what is in your character’s kit — the items are in a quantum superposition until you define them as you play.” This should include a civilian weapon that deals no more than 1d6 damage.
The other thing you get is the Strange item I rolled up earlier, “Green brick with the light and warmth of a candle.”
I also automatically start off with €100 in cash. This sounds like a lot but a week of carousing will cost the average character 1d6 x €100!
It’s also worth mentioning Burdens at this stage. It is possible to take items or traits as burdens rather than have them in your regular inventory, perhaps because those inventories or full or for some other narrative reason. Each Burden you carry (you can have up to 20) gives you a -1 to all checks though.
Last Few Attributes
Level: 1 Life: 8 (all level 1 characters start with 8 Life.) Hero Dice: 1d6 (these come and go quite often in play. You can use them to adjust a die roll or recover Life. You also get one per session and every couple of hours of play!) Save: 13 (all level 1 characters get a Save of 13. You have to roll over your Save score in dire situations. You can add an ability bonus from Endurance or Aura to help you out. Interestingly, you can’t use Agility to save. Instead, it is considered an action roll.) Melee Attack: d20 + ability (strength) + skill (if applicable.) I’ve got a 0 here. Ranged Attack: d20 + ability (agility) + skill (if applicable.) My agility gives me a +2 to ranged attacks Oldtech Attack: d20 + ability (thought) + skill (if applicable.) My Thought score gives me a +1 for Oldtech attacks Fantascience Attack: d20 + ability (charisma) + skill (if applicable.) Another +1 here. Damage: I imagine my fishing wizard has a little fishing knife. That’s 1d4 damage. Defense: Here’s the formula, 7 + ability (agility) + bonus (if skill applies) + armour. No armour yet, so it’s going to be a 9 for now.
Name Your Character
The Guidebook has a table of names. The table lists them under particular cultures of the Vastlands, so, in all likelihood, the name you choose will also decide the culture you’re from. It’s a 12 point list so I’m going to roll a d12 on it. That’s a 10.
D.W.A.R.F. Names: There are 8 listed. Let’s roll a d8. That’s a 2 – Del ‘Machinist. Very practical, I’m sure. Lets also give them the pronouns they/them. Here’s the Dwarf glossary entry from the UVG 2E core book:
Dwarf: Backronym from ‘De Werker Aristocratiscee Revolutie Fraternitie,’ Dwarfs are a distinct culture-class of selectively biomanced people. They have effectively fought the traditional aristoi of the Red and Orange lands to a standstill and now form a major industrialist society of the Rainbowlands. A famously bureaucratic and collectivist faction, they are the only one staunchly opposing the bureaucratic and individualist Emerald City Cogflower Corporation (actually a coin church).
Looks like my fisher wizard is a communist. Love it.
Conclusion
So, that’s my D.W.A.R.F. Tumult Fisher Wizard, Del ‘Machinist. They have great endurance and very average strength. Despite having rather low Aura, they have a wizard trait which allows them to double the effectiveness of the Life points they spend on their spells and another trait from the Traveller path that allows them to spend a Hero die or Life point to get a second action in a round. And he comes with a green brick that has the light and heat of a candle. I have a pretty good idea of them in my head.
I will say that, if I were to do it all over again, I would have just stuck to the UVG Guidebook to shepherd me through the character creation process. Switching to the UVG core book for that one table roll complicated things unnecessarily. My advice would be to do the same, if you are determined to use the Synthetic Dream Machine rules for your game of UVG. Otherwise, use a different system and utilise the tables in the core book for flavour.
I think the next post will be Caravan creation so tune back in then, dear reader!
I don’t think it will be difficult to see where I drew inspiration from this week. It’s a story I have mixed feelings about but still, it introduced the world to one of the most enduring and influential fictional universes ever. Just remember, desire is the mind-killer.
The Heart Worm
Name: The Heart Worm Domains: Warren, Wild Tier: 2 and 3 Default Stress: d6 Haunts: The Waters of Life (Blood D8) Bernie Gallac, Terrible Warrior-Bard (Mind D6) The Prophet, AKA Moonlight-Falling-On-Glaciers (Fortune D6) The Herb, Mischung (Echo D8)
Description: Travellers in the deeper levels of the Heart, where all is flesh and warm and wet, sometimes pass from an artery into a wide open tunnel, resembling a damp cave with masses of tooth-like protrusions projecting from ceiling, walls and floor at the entrance. Many need no more excuse than that to run from the place, but many others know better. They have heard of the Heart Worm, and they know of the life-giving properties of its vital juices. Usually, these are the type of fool-hardy adventurers who have nothing to lose and who find the prospect of burrowing through the flesh of the Heart only to be deposited in another, unknown location, “exciting.” For that is what the Heart Worm does. A giant, parasitic entity that feeds off the multidimensional matter and energy of the Heart itself while digging through it and leaving cyclopean tunnels in its wake, the Worm picks up passengers and ejects them wherever it wants, seemingly randomly.
The Heart Worm has swallowed a few people and never let them go, however, perhaps due to the understanding that its passengers need support and services during their sojourn.
Bernie Gallac, a drow former soldier of the Allied Defence Forces, has been trapped for so long, he has forgotten the world outside. He spends his days composing sarcastic little ditties to comically roast the visitors who come his way. He has been surviving on the Herb, Mischung, which grows in abundance around the depths of the great worm’s mouth. It, along with his long imprisonment, has made him strange, one-dimensional, lacking anything but the desire to do what he does in the service of the Heart Worm and its passengers. His eyes and the eyes of all the inhabitants of the Heart Worm, are crimson from consuming the wine-dark Herb.
A passenger can gather and consume the Herb too. It must be cooked down until it is in the form of a red paste in order for it to be edible. It will slowly change the colour of their eyes to a deep red, but it will also make them feel more at home in the Heart as they become one with it (see Special Rules.)
The Prophet, Moonlight-Falling-On-Glaciers, is an aelfir noble scion, trapped these many years in the gullet of the Heart Worm. They desperately wish to exit and spread the news about the Worm to all the inhabitants of the Cities Above and Below. But, for whatever reason, the Worm has not allowed it. Perhaps it is not their time yet? Perhaps they do not wish to be worshipped like a god, maybe they do not want their presence truly confirmed. The Heart Worm does not confide in anyone its plans or reasons. The mask the Prophet wears resembles the face of the worm but for the two crimson eyes visible through the slits in it. They will speak to passengers in a voice to deep and resonant to be understood, to increase their fortune.
The flesh of the Heart, eaten by the Worm, travels down the peristalsis of the great gullet almost constantly. Those who exist inside, stick to the walls of the giant being. Some have tried to take parts of the Heart meat to sustain themselves. These unfortunates are invariably ejected by the Heart Worm at its first opportunity, in the most dangerous of regions. Passengers who wish to benefit from the Worm’s diet must travel further down its throat until they discover the crimson lake of the Waters of Life, the digestive juices caused by the enormous creature’s Heart-burn. If they can endure its acidic nature, a passenger who immerses themselves in the lake will have their old skin stripped away, only for it to be replaced with a new, deeply red skin. It will heal them of physical ailments. (See Special Rules.)
Eventually, the Heart Worm will find the perfect spot to deposit its passengers. When that time comes, they will be physically ejected by irresistible waves of muscular force, which leads to them being spat out at their destination. This could be anywhere in Tier 2 or 3 of the Heart.
Special Rules: Eating the Herb, Mischung has its dangers. It has the effect of bringing you closer to the Heart but this can also have the effect of making you like the Heart. When you consume the Herb, you must make an Endure/Wild or Warren roll or gain D6 Echo Stress. If this leads to fallout: Fallout: Heart’s Desire (Minor Echo.) The next time anyone voices a desire in your presence, you must do everything in your power to fulfil it for them.
Bathing in the Waters of Life can also be very dangerous. Roll Endure/Warren or Wild or take d8 Blood stress. If this leads to fallout: Fallout: Worm body (Major Blood) Your body begins to transform. Your new red skin sloughs off to reveal a ridged, wormlike one and you develop a taste for the Flesh of the Heart. If this is upgraded to critical, you fully change into a worm and disappear off into the Heart.
Resources: The Herb Mischung (D8, Echo) The Waters of Life (D8, Blood)
I have been reading Ultraviolet Grasslands recently (expect a post or three about this once I get done reading it.) I have been enjoying its format a lot. It tends to go into the big-ticket locations in the setting in some detail, maps, random encounters and occurrences, places of importance, how to get to and from the location. It’s usually built with enough randomness that your “Last Serai,” for instance, will be very different to the next party’s.
But there are a few locales described towards the end of each of these sections that branch out from the one central location, providing you with adventure spots in the surrounding area. Descriptions of these in UVG really depend on the type of area they are in. If it’s a heavily populated spot, you are likely to get a bunch of NPCs for the players to deal with, but in more remote places, it will probably mention more environmental hazards, enemies and traps. Importantly, it never goes into much detail on anything. The details, as with everything in the book, are left up to those gathered around the table. You just get a mention of a particular type of creature (and maybe a level and tag in parentheses beside it,) a monetary value for the treasure or resources you might find there, or a distance (in number of days’ travel) from the main location.
These really reminded me of something: Heart Landmarks. Not necessarily because of the format of the descriptions or the writing style or anything like that. It was mainly just due to the looseness of it. Heart Landmarks also provide you with a few sparks to light your imagination. They might tell you the type of haunts you have there and vaguely hint at a couple of NPCs, but it’s up to you to bring them to life at the table. I am aware this is not that unusual in modern RPGs but I have been reading and playing a lot of trad games recently, so the similarity really struck me here, in comparison.
Anyway, it got me thinking about something I started quite a while ago, before I even started my first Heart campaign. I have a file on my computer just called Heart Landmark Ideas. It had one entry in it, and even that was incomplete. So I thought I would make this a little series of blog posts.
DIY Heart Landmarks
What is a Landmark? In Heart, the City Beneath, the characters are delvers, idiotic adventurers who are compelled for one reason or another, to plunge into the red, wet heaven that is the Heart, the esoteric core of all weirdness. Nothing remains concrete or stationary in this underground “city” for very long, but, as long as a place has a sufficient number of sentients there to believe in it, to desire its safety, that will anchor it. These become Landmarks. Some of them are havens where delvers can rest and recuperate, some are terrifyingly dangerous lairs of nightmares and dark magic.
What does the Heart book tell us about making our own landmarks? Make sure your landmark includes one or more of the following:
SANCTUARY: Haunts are places within a landmark where PCs can relive themselves of stress or fallout and can often involve a major NPC to interact with.
MATERIALS: Resources can be procured here.
ADVANCEMENT: Not every chapter beat is achievable on a delve. Sometimes, landmarks are the perfect places to hit your beats.
EMPLOYMENT: NPCs, mysteries, required items etc. You get the idea.
DANGER: Not every landmark is restful and commercial. Sometimes you need to endure them to achieve your goals…
WONDER: Reveal something of the Heart of just dazzle the players with your imagination!
Other than that, the format of each Landmark entry is pretty much set:
NAME: ‘Nuff said
DOMAINS: These are broad areas of interest or influence: Cursed, Desolate, Haven, Occult, Religion, Technology, Warren, Wild
TIER: The Heart is split into tiers designated 0,1,2,3 and Fracture. 3 is much stranger than 0. Fracture is a movable feast of rumness.
HAUNTS: Places to rest and heal or people who will facilitate that. What kind of stress/fallout can be cured? Also, this should include the max dice size of healing.
DESCRIPTION OF LANDMARK: Part history, part current state of affairs. Maybe some hooks to bring the PCs there.
SPECIAL RULES: This could involve particular dangers or custom-fallouts.
DEFAULT STRESS: What is the normal amount of stress to inflict for action failures? Indicated by a die size.
RESOURCES: What type and die size of resources are available here.
The Blistered Basilica, a polyp on the inside of the blister. The devoted gather inside to worship (d8 Echo)
Rose’s, a restaurant with a good reputation and a worryingly good chowder (d8 Blood)
The Blister Pack, a general market that specialises in building and delving equipment (d6 Supplies)
Description: An enormous, fleshy blister on the inside of an enormous, fleshy chamber. Blister is pierced near the base by a hole that allows delvers to enter. From this hole there is a ramshackle wooden ramp that leads to a series of old platforms requiring constant repair. It has some residents, known as platformers, who are more or less permanent and mostly have no sense of smell.
At the base of the blister is a fetid lake of stinking pus. A whole ecosystem of pus creatures live in the lake. They generally leave the platformers alone.
The platformers worship the blister as though it were a god and as long as they do, they say the denizens of the pus will leave them be. But outsiders and heretics should not stay long, they say.
Special Rules: If you spend a bit of time in the Blistered Basilica in order to remove Echo fallout, make an Endure/Religion check. Consequences of failure as below: Fallout: Pus Magnet (Minor Mind) You have come to understand the Platformers’ devotion to the Blister and you feel a kinship with the pus-beings. They are there for your protection and you are there for theirs. You feel an urge to descend to the lake, befriend one of them and take them with you on your travels (Ongoing.)
Getting too close to the pus lake will require an Endure/Haven or Religion check. On failure/mixed result: Fallout: Blistering Barnacles (Major Blood) You’ve been infected by the pus. You are covered in hard, black blisters which hurt and stink. They make all social checks one difficulty rating higher (Standard becomes Risky, Risky becomes Dangerous etc.) (Ongoing.)
Resources:
Gathering Blister pus (d4 Religion) can be dangerous. See Special Rules.
Potential Plots:
Deacon Delicia of the Blistered Basilica has startling news for any PCs that visit. The Blister has revealed an existential danger to her. A stalactite-like calcium deposit has formed above Blister and a group of heretical pus-haters are preparing to climb up there and knock the spiky peril from its perch. This would spell the end for Blister, the Pus Lake and the Platformers. She is offering the church’s most prized possession as a reward to anyone who can stop the heretics. It is a wooden spike known only as the Splinter (Kill d8 Piercing, Debilitating)
It’s been quite a while since I’ve done one of these posts. I think my Dragon Age Character Creation post was the last one. And it was very useful to me in figuring out how that game worked before I started a campaign of it (which is ongoing. The PCs have all just become Grey Wardens without dying during the Joining!) Well, I’ve got a short game of Dungeon Crawl Classics coming up this weekend so I thought this would be a good opportunity to create a character using the DCC rules to help familiarise myself with them.
I’ll be running the iconic DCC #67 Sailors on the Starless Sea for a group of four or five players. To be honest, I don’t expect any of the PCs who survive this 0-level funnel (this is a module where the players play three or four 0-level peasants who delve into a dungeon. Whichever of their PCs survive get to advance to 1st level in their chosen class, normally) to go on to choose a class or progress to 1st level as its more of a one-shot deal. But, you never know! If it proves to be popular or any of them get particularly attached to one of their characters, maybe I’ll brew up a campaign for them. I certainly have enough DCC resources and modules to run campaigns for the next ten years straight! Anyway, the point is, I think I’ll still get something out of creating an actual character using these rules. So here we go!
Funnelling
For the purposes of this post, I am going to roll up four 0-level characters and then roll 1d20 for each of them. The character that rolls the highest will progress to 1st level while the rest are assumed to have died a gristly and unfortunate death in some stinking hole beneath a castle or in the gullet of some demon lord. To roll up the 0-level characters, I’m going to use the fabulously useful purple sorcerer, which will do it automatically for me. This is what I expect my players to use when generating their own PCs.
But first, a note on what’s being generated:
Ability Scores – These are Strength, Agility, Stamina, Personality, Intelligence and Luck. All DCC ability scores are generated by rolling 3d6. There are no alternate methods of generating them, no point-buy, no 4d6 and drop the lowest… it’s brutal.
0-level Occupation – there is a d100 table that covers a page and a half of the book to determine this. Your Occupation also determines your starting Trained Weapon and which Trade Goods you begin with. It will also indicate the type of skills you are trained in.
Money and Purchased Equipment – a 0-level character starts with 5d12 copper pieces. On top of the weapon they start with, they can use these to purchase other stuff
1d4 hit points, modified by Stamina
A +0 modifier to attack rolls and saving throws
A Lucky Sign – DCC characters begin with a Lucky Sign, which you roll for on a table. This can give the character a +1 to a particular type of roll forever!
One thing that’s not generated is alignment. For D&D type games, I don’t normally bother with alignment. But I think it is so integral to so many of the mechanics of DCC, that I can’t avoid it. The available alignments are Chaotic, Neutral and Lawful. I am going to roll for this on 1d3. I rolled a 2, so this character, whoever they turn out to be is going to be Neutral in alignment. So, without further ado:
I rolled up one Dwarven blacksmith, a Minstrel, a Herbalist and a Butcher. I’ll quickly go through the high points and low points of each:
Dwarven blacksmith – I’ll name them Grund. Grund has a Personality score of 13! That’s his highest. However, his Strength, which would be one of the main abilities of the Dwarf class, is just an 8. Even more alarming is that they have the approximate intelligence of a fence-post, with a score of just 3. Since their Luck modifier is 0 they don’t get any Lucky Sign bonus
Minstrel – I’ll name them Flor. Flor’s ability scores are generally very high, strength 12, stamina 14, personality 14 and Luck 15. Only Agility lets them down with a score of 7. They start with 5 HP! Also, Flor as the Lucky Sign, Raised by Wolves, which gives them a +1 to Unarmed Attacks.
Herbalist – I’ll name them Bud. Bud’s ability scores are incredibly average. Only Luck gives any kind of bonus (+1) and only Agility gives a minus (-1.) They do have the Four Leafed Clover Lucky Sign, which provides a +1 to Find secret doors. Only starting with 1 hit point, though…
Butcher – I’ll name them Cutter. Cutter is weak, (strength 7) clumsy, (agility 8) and unpleasant to be around, (personality 5) but is pretty smart, (intelligence 15) so they’re probably pretty annoying. Luck provides a 0 modifier so no Lucky Sign bonus here.
OK, I’m not going to lie, I’m holding out for Flor to survive the funnel but it’s entirely random so there’s really no telling…
“Funnel” Rolls
So, it all comes down to a single d20 roll for each PC. In case of a tie, I’ll just re-roll both.
Grund the Dwarven blacksmith – 17 (oh no)
Flor the Minstrel – 4 (wah!)
Bud the Herbalist – 18 (a reprieve!)
Cutter the butcher – 6
So, Bud, alone, bleeding and traumatised, crawls out of the crumbling remains of the ancient temple having, with the help of the heroic and now deceased Grund, Flor and Cutter, defeated the ancient evil beneath it. Grabs some treasure on the way out too!
Choosing a Class
So, since Bud is a human (all 0-level characters are assumed to be human unless it’s clearly stated in their title, i.e. Dwarven blacksmith) they can choose from any of the classes except Elf, Dwarf and Halfling, for obvious reasons. Yes, this is another one of those old school games in which “Demi-human” races are treated as classes, kind of like in Old School Essentials. You can check out my disastrous OSE character creation post here.
Anyway, that leaves the following classes to choose from:
Cleric
Thief
Warrior
Wizard
Now, Bud’s ability scores are as follows:
Str: 9 (0)
Agi: 8 (-1)
Sta: 12 (0)
Per: 11 (0)
Int: 9 (0)
Luck: 13 (+1)
Normally you would go with the class that matches your highest ability score, right? Well, I could do that, but Bud’s highest is 13 for Luck, which is useful for all classes. Next is Stamina, on 12, but, once again, no one class relies on that. You could argue for Warrior there, but with a Strength score of 9, I don’t think it makes sense. So, instead, I think I will go for Cleric, since they use Personality to cast their spells and that’s Bud’s next highest Ability score, at 11. They don’t get a bonus from it, but it’s as good a reason as any to choose a class, I think. Oh, also, the Herbalist already started with a Holy Symbol, so it seems fitting.
From the DCC book:
An adventuring cleric is a militant servant of a god, often part of a larger order the faithful, they wield the weapons of their faith: physical, spiritual, and magical. Physically, they are a skilled fighter when using their god’s chosen weapons. Spiritually, they are a vessel for the expression of their god’s ideals, able to channel holy powers that harm their god’s enemies. Magically, they are able to call upon their god to perform amazing feats.
Hit Points
Each class rolls a different die for hit points, just like in D&D and OSE. If you’re a Cleric, you roll 1d8 per level.
Bud rolls a 6 on their 1d8 and adds it to their 1 hit point from level 0 to make 9.
HP: 9
Choosing a God
If you choose to be a Cleric, you have to choose to worship a God of similar alignment to you. In Bud’s case, that Neutral. I am going to consult the Gods of Eternal Struggle table and choose one of the Neutral deities from that. I have recreated the Neutral gods section of the table below:
Alignment
Gods
Weapons
Unholy Creatures
Neutral
Amun Tor, god of mysteries and riddles. Ildavir, goddess of nature. Pelagia, goddess of the sea. Cthulhu, priest of the Old Ones
Dagger, mace, sling, staff, sword (any)
Mundane animals, un-dead, demons, devils, monsters (e.g., basilisk or medusa), lycanthropes, perversions of nature (e.g., otyughs and slimes)
With their background in herbalism, I feel as though Bud would lean towards the worship of Ildavir, goddess of nature. As you can see from the table above, they get a semi-decent selection of weapons they can use. It is also interesting to note at this point that Clerics can wear any armour and it won’t affect their spell-checks. Finally, you can see they are able to turn an array of interesting creatures, not just undead.
Magic
In DCC, when you want to cast a spell, you have to roll a spell-check. This is an obvious departure from D&D. Another difference is that they don’t get spell slots. However, there is a downside here. If you fail in your spell-check roll, you risk the ire of your deity. In the normal state of affairs, if you are trying to cast a spell and you roll a nat 1 on your spell-check, the spell auto-fails and you get to roll on the Disapproval Table. This can lead to consequences ranging from this:
The cleric must atone for their sins. They must do nothing but utter chants and intonations for the next 10 minutes, starting as soon as they are able (i.e., if they are in combat, they can wait until the danger is over).
To this
The cleric’s ability to lay on hands is restricted. The ability works only once per day per creature healed – no single character can be healed more than once per day. After 24 hours, the ability’s use reverts to normal.
Worse still, your chance of auto-failing goes up by one, meaning auto-failure and a Disapproval Table roll on a 1 or a 2. It gets worse; for every spell-check failure in the same day after this, that auto-failure range increases by another 1, with no real upper limit.
You can also piss off your deity by “sinning,” e.g. acting in a way that contradicts the god’s teachings or benefits one of their enemies.
Now, there is a way to offset these consequences: sacrifice. Yep, all you have to do is destroy or give away 50gp worth of wealth in your god’s name to reduce the failure range by 1 point. They might also accept a great quest of undertaking of faith instead.
Spells
Anyway, back to the spells! Bud starts knowing four Level 1 Cleric Spells, according to Table 1-5: Cleric. So, let’s choose them!
Blessing – this can be used to bestow all sorts of boons on the cleric themself, an ally or even an object. Since every spell in the game comes with its own table to determine the exact results, I’m not going to get into it here. Suffice it to state that you can get anything from a +1 to attack rolls for a round, right up to getting a permanent +1 for the whole party to any actions to do with a sacred endeavour they have undertaken.
Holy Sanctuary – this creates a place of safety for the Cleric and their allies. It might simply make it harder for enemies to hit them in that space, or it might allow the Cleric to create a permanent place of sanctuary, such as a temple, where powerful enemies cannot attack the faithful at all.
Second Sight – the Cleric gains divine insights into the results of their own actions. It might be a +4 bonus to a single action roll or it might be able to divine the outcomes of great events for a month and also receive a +1 bonus to all actions taken during that period!
Word of Command – Use a single word to command a creature to do something. The effects range from just that to it targeting all desired creatures they can see, who must obey it for a number of days.
All Cleric spell checks are made like this: 1d20 + Personality modifier + caster level
Turn Unholy
You saw above the range of creatures that Bud can turn with a Turn Unholy roll. This roll works the same as a spell check, so 1d20 + Personality Modifier + caster level. However, when Turning, the cleric can also add their Luck modifier. In Bud’s case, this is good because they have a +1 in that.
Failing a check can incur the Disapproval of their deity just like failing to cast a spell.
On a success, there is a fairly complicated set of potential outcomes depending on your turn check roll and the Hit Dice of the creatures you’re trying to turn.
Lay on Hands
Bud is a healer as well, of course. In fact, the Lay on Hands power is the only real way they have to heal anyone. But! They can use that to heal them of hit point damage, disease, poison, broken limbs etc. They can use it to deal with pretty much any condition.
Of course, just like with Turn Unholy, you have to make a spell check to use this power, 1d20 + Personality modifier + caster level.
The dice you use to heal someone depends on their class/type of hit dice they use. So, for a Warrior, who uses a d12 for their HD, healing is also rolled on a d12, which I think is neat. Although you can never roll more dice to heal than your target has in HD already.
Alignment is a factor in healing. If you try to heal someone of different or even opposing alignment to your character, you are going to probably do less healing than if you were healing someone of a similar alignment. As a Neutral Cleric, Bud is probably in the best position in this respect, as both Chaotic and Lawful creatures are considered adjacent to him on the alignment table, which I have reproduced below:
Spell check
Same
Adjacent
Opposed
1-11
Failure
Failure
Failure
12-13
2 dice
1 die
1 die
14-19
3 dice
2 dice
1 die
20-21
4 dice
3 dice
2 dice
22+
5 dice
4 dice
3 dice
Divine Aid
You can just ask your god for anything really. But it must be a truly extraordinary act to get them to intervene on your behalf so directly, when they are already giving you spells and other powers. So, to achieve this, you make a spell check as normal, and, even if you succeed, you are lumped with a cumulative +10 penalty to future Disapproval range… the Judge (DM) gets to decide the exact DC and effect of the request depending on what the intention was, what the god might want and how big the intervention needs to be. This seems like it could be used in some really clutch moments though.
There are a couple of notes right at the end of the Cleric class description. One relates to Luck and how their Luck modifier can be added to Turn Unholy rolls. The other indicates that their Action Dice can be used to attack or cast spells.
Equipment
The Equipment Chapter starts with a table that indicates how much gold your character stats with if you decide not to opt for the 0-level funnel method of character creation. If a Cleric starts at level 1, they get 4d20 gp. So let’s roll that:
20 (yep, out of a possible 60 gp)
At least I can add the 48cp I rolled up on their level-0 character sheet. Well, let’s make the best of it. I am going to buy a decent weapon, since Bud started with nothing but a club, and hopefully some armour.
I think I am going to go for a modest
mace (1d6 dmg)
and back it up with a
sling (1d4 dmg)
That’s a total of 7gp. I had also better get some
sling stones
for another 1gp.
Finally, the only armour poor Bud can afford is
padded armour (+1 AC) That makes Bud’s AC 10 because of the -1 Agility modifier.
That costs 5gp. So, Bud has 7gp and 48cp left.
So, let’s grab a
Backpack for 2gp
Flint and steel for 15cp
10 torches for 10cp
5 days of rations for 25cp
a waterskin for 5sp
50’ rope for 25cp
A grappling hook for 1gp
For a total cost of 3gp, 5sp and 75cp. Which leaves Bud with 3gp 2sp and 3cp.
So, that’s pretty much it for Bud the Witness (that’s their title as per the Cleric Table) I like Bud. They’re a survivor and a true devotee of Ildavir, goddess of nature, but they will never forget their humble beginnings as a herbalist, nor their old companions, Grund, Flor and Cutter.
Thanks to Soxzilla2 on reddit for the form fillable character sheet! You can find that here.
Character options in D&D 5e have always felt pretty thin on the ground to me. Official ones at least. Of course there are hundreds of subclasses, species/races, backgrounds etc. out there from third party creators but it has always seemed as though WotC have deliberately limited the number of official options they put out. I sometimes wonder if I only feel that way because 5e is not my first edition of the game. Because, in comparison 2e, the various classes and species are woefully underserved in my opinion.
In the late 80s and early 90s TSR released a set of books designed to complement the basic character options presented in the 1989 Player’s Handbook for 2nd Edition Ad&d. there was one for each of the classes. These generally focused on fleshing out the possibilities for the classes with “kits” background options, class-based campaigns, new abilities and features, class-based organisations like thieve’s guilds. There were also several supplements that dealt with AD&D races. The elves got one, the gnomes and the halflings got lumped together in their own book and they even had one called The Complete Book of Humanoids, which featured a plethora of “monstrous” races as PC options.
Back in those days, my table got a lot of use out of most of these books. The character kits from the class books became standard choices in many cases and the extra racial options were very popular for rounding out PCs. But my favourite, by a pretty long way, was the Complete Book of Dwarves. I had been a fully paid up member of team-dwarf since I read the Hobbit as a kid. I loved their aesthetic, their toughness, their curmudgeonliness, and, of course, their beards. I had a few dwarven characters over the years across multiple games and systems but I don’t think I ever got to have one in AD&D as I was almost always the DM. So, instead, I used the Complete Book of Dwarves to make up Dwarven societies, kingdoms, mythologies, NPCs and Strongholds. The book contains chapters on the mythical origins of the dwarves, dwarven subraces, “Your Life as a Dwarf,” Character Creation, Proficiencies, Dwarf Kits, Role Playing and Personalities, Mining, Equipment and Designing Dwarf Campaigns. I remember getting fully immersed in dwarven world-building in a way that my players probably did not entirely appreciate. But, if I’m honest, that was for me anyway, not for them.
Stronghold Creation
So the Complete Book of Dwarves has a whole chapter devoted to generating your own Dwarven Strongholds and I have a distinct memory of being wrapped up, sick, in a duvet on the couch rolling up stronghold after stronghold. I must have recorded them somewhere but those records have been lost to the mists of time along with Cold War and white dog poop.
Now, I haven’t had a copy of the book in years. I’m not really sure what happened to the one I had, but there is a good chance it was borrowed by one of my good friends a mere thirty years ago and they haven’t gotten around to returning it yet. Understandable. Anyway, it was my birthday on Tuesday and my friends Tom and Isaac gifted me a copy of it! I had recently been going on about my particular love for this book and they’d actually listened to me!! True, true friends.
So I thought we could create a stronghold together now that I’ve got it. Strap in! According to the opening section of the chapter:
Strongholds are the homes and workplaces of the dwarves. They can range from simple family residences to huge subterranean cities. The stronghold design sequence allows you to design a stronghold, either by making a series of choices, or by random die rolling. You may also combine the two methods.
Dear reader, if you have been here for any of my character creation posts, I think you will know which way we are going. Random all the way!
Here’s the Dwarf Stronghold Design Sheet:
You can see that we are going to start with the name. Now this actually requires us to turn back to Chapter 4 first and locate the Dwarf Name Generator.
We then roll 1d4 to determine the number of syllables in the stronghold’s name – that’s a 2.
That means we roll 1d20 twice on the Dwarf Name Generator Prefixes table – that’s a 7, Dal- and a 16, Nor-
We go ahead and combine those in the most pleasing sounding configuration, I think that would have to be “Nordal” for me
Then we flip back to Chapter Ten and roll 1d20 once more on the Stronghold Suffix Table – 15, -lode
Put em all together! Nordallode! It definitely has the sound of a place name made up for D&D but we are going with it
Next! Subraces Present. Ugh. Yep. This is the bit where it becomes a little problematic. Obviously, the whole subrace business in D&D is slightly odd. If you applied it to humans you would be talking about different ethnicities, but D&D doesn’t do that with humans, does it (I mean thank fuck, right?) (I’m deliberately skirting around the variant human unearthed arcana options because I think it’s best to do that.) Anyway, the Subraces Present section wants us to make sure we know which is the main subrace (i.e. the most numerous,) the dominant subrace, and which other subraces exist there. This section also includes a table that tells you how many of the dominant subrace are in your stronghold, while pointing out that this only refers to the number of male dwarves. The number of females is, for some reason, half this number and the number of wee dwarflings is half that again. Look, I don’t know. How they came to such decisions is beyond me and clearly did not even strike my tweenaged mind as something noteworthy at the time.
OK, so, I’m going to roll on the Subrace Table to figure out which is the Main Subrace in Nordallode. The same table determines their numbers. Once again, the table has different potential populations of subrace for each (Deep Dwarves can have 3d100+50, whereas Gully Dwarves can only have 1d100+50.) As for numbers of males to females, I see no reason to abide by the nutty, unexplained logic in this section. I’m not even going to split them up.
Ok, Subrace Table, roll 1 – 32 – Gully Dwarves.
Number – 1d100+50 = 108
Now to find out which is the dominant subrace and how many other dwarves subraces live in the stronghold. Let’s roll on the Dominant Subraces Table.
61, Hill Dwarves
This means there are 1d4 Other Subraces in the stronghold according to this table. I rolled a 2.
I’m beginning to get confused and frustrated by this whole subrace business. The first table got me to roll to determine which was the main subrace and how many of them were in the stronghold. Now, I’m told to roll on a different table to find out which is the dominant subrace (is this not the main subrace?) and then roll to find out how many other sub races are in the stronghold? But, so far, I have rolled two different types of dwarf for main and dominant…
If I continue on to the next page, it tells me to reduce the number of the dominant subrace by a percentage depending on how many other subraces are present. But, I have not actually rolled the number of the dominant subrace yet.
Forget it. I am scrapping the Hill Dwarves. Long stand Nordallode, home of the Gully Dwarves!
I will keep everything else the same. Now, with 2 other sub races sharing their home with them, the Gully Dwarves must reduce their numbers by 25%. That brings them down to a mere 81.
I’m now going to find out how many and what type of other subraces are present.
I roll 1d100 on the Gully Dwarves Subraces Table and get 74 – Mountain Dwarves. I roll 2d10 to determine their numbers and get 14.
I roll again for the second minor subrace and get 52 – Hill Dwarves. There are 3d12 of these beardoes – 20
New population of Nordallode – 115
From the book:
Hill and mountain dwarves may be found at any depth and living with any other subrace. They are clannish and keep to themselves. They are likely to be the employers of other sub races. While these others will likely be in the stronghold on a fixed term contract, it is not unusual for a stronghold to have enclaves of other dwarves who have been there for generations.
Time to figure out the stronghold’s overall alignment. This does not determine the alignment of every member, just the general outlook.
2d6 – Obviously this table has each of the sub races along the top as some of them are more likely to be evil than others (aaaagh.) Nordallode turns out to be Chaotic Neutral.
Let’s move swiftly on from all that nonsense.
Let’s figure out the Type of Stronghold we are building:
Another d100 roll and I get a 14, which means it is a Secondary Stronghold and gets to increase its population by 100%
New population of Nordallode – 230
Secondary Strongholds are second only to Major Strongholds and can be independent or allied with a Major one. I think we will call Nordallode an independent stronghold!
How old is our stronghold? Good question!
For Secondary Strongholds we roll 2d6 to find out how many generations of age Nordallode is – That’s 8. Pretty old… except, there is a Racial Modifier. Gully Dwarves subtract 2 from that number. So its 6 generations (no fucking idea.)
And how old can the dwarves of Nordallode live to be? No roll here:
Gully Dwarves – 250 years (this is the lowest possible life expectancy and its determined entirely by subrace…)
What type of government does our stronghold have?
It’s back to the d100 rolls – 89 – Oligarchy! Why, of course! How fitting! (Wah!) Oh wait, there are more modifiers here. Gully Dwarves add 10 (for whatever reason) and we have to add another 10 for being of Chaotic alignment! That makes it 109. It’s Anarchy baby!
Time to roll on the Attitude Table to find out what our problem is.
It’s a d20 roll this time. That’s a 112 – Isolationist. Lock those gates!
This means that 75 – 100% of the population is in the frikking militia.
What are our major resources in Nordallode? Well, the book shies away from telling you exactly what you’re rich in, instead, just giving you an idea of its monetary value.
It’s 1d20 on the Stronghold Resources Table and I got a natural 20! WOOHOO! Things are looking up for my poor little Gullies. That means it’s Rich!
There is an optional part of this table – the starting gold modifier, that applies to PCs who come from this stronghold. So, if your character did come from Nordallode, they would start with an extra 1d10x10gp. Pretty sweet. But wait! Another racial modifier means that you take away 10 from the original d20 roll because Nordallode is a Gully Dwarf stronghold… Born to lose. So, this actually means that my downtrodden dwarves start at Average Resources and so get no starting gold modifier at all. FFS. There is a +1 to the roll for being a Secondary Stronghold, but that doesn’t improve it from Average anyway.
OK, time to find out what Nordallode’s Relationship with Other PC Races is. We need to roll 1d20 four times on the table of that name. I am going to factor in the modifiers at the start this time. I get a +1 for being Chaotic Neutral and, for being Isolationist, I must treat any roll of 4 or less as a 9:
Elves – 12 – Threatening
Gnomes – 13 – Cautious
Halflings – Nat 20, becomes 21 – AT WAR!
Humans – 12 – Cautious
Nordallode, not friendly to outsiders.
Properly, this should only be rolled for the races that live nearby but since this is entirely experimental, I rolled for all of them
OK, we have figured out who we hate above ground, time to go to war or peace with someone underground too. Love the War/Peace Table:
Its another d20 roll – That’s a 1 which actually means Nordallode is at peace!
The next table allows us to see how long that unlikely situation has persisted
Peace Table – 1d10 – 7 – 2d6 generations! – That’s 4 generations of peace! Just not with those fucking Halflings obvs.
There is a War table as well but I think we have just determined that we don’t need to roll on that.
Nordallode has to defend itself from the depredations of those vicious, hairy-toed bastards. How do we do that? With our Military Forces!
Gully Dwarves have an Unsteady Morale (7)
Apparently the first reaction of Gully Dwarves to danger or conflict is to run away, whether they are members of the militia or not…
Their weapons are… “any they can scavenge,” which is not great for a militia but may make sense in a stronghold where anarchy reigns
With 230 dwarves in the stronghold, I’ll assume that 200 are in the armed forces. That means that, of their Leaders, there are 50 Thieves (level 2-6), 40 Warriors (level 2-4), 20 Warriors (level 2-6), 4 Warriors (level 8), 2 Warriors (level 10) and 2 Priests (level 1-10)
Special Forces – It says 10 to 20% of the militia have some of the specialised Class Kits from the book. I’m not going to get into that right now though as it would require the sort of dive into more general AD%D rules that I’m not prepared for. But, numbers wise, that’s at least 20.
War Machine Table! – We get 4 rolls on this because of the size of the militia and we get a +1 to our rolls because of our cool Isolationist attitude. It’s a d10 table – that makes 11 for the first roll giving Nordallode 3 War Machines, 8 for the second roll for another 1 War Machine and finally a 6 for 1 more. That’s 5 War Machines, total. Noice.
You can have Animals to defend your stronghold. The specific animal depends on your subrace, unsurprisingly. Let’s a have a cadre of Giant Beetles for the Gully Dwarves of Nordallode. That’ll scare the bejeezus out of those pipe-smoking tyrants!
let’s figure out our Total Strength
That’s Number of Leaders in the Military (118) + Special Forces (20) + Number of Dwarves in the stronghold (230) = 458. I am not sure what this number means. It seems incredibly abstract.
Conclusion
Every time I revisit one of these old AD&D 2E books, the realities of the western world, the industry, our polluted minds and questionable thought-processes of the writers of game materials largely marketed to children, smack me around the face again. When I first read this, I didn’t see anything wrong with it. In fact, I specifically remember deriding the mere idea of playing a Gully Dwarf when I was 12 years old. But I am giving that me a pass. He was a child. So, it’s harder to hand out the get-out-of-jail-free card to the creators of the books. They, perhaps unthinkingly, used their creations to perpetuate racist ideas. And I know they are fantasy races but there’s no excuse. Those subraces, as I wrote above, are the same as human ethnicities. According to the writers of this material, only some of them are fit to be the employers of the others, some of them consort with beetles and are cowardly and some are inherently evil… Need I say more?
I had a lot less fun with this process than I remembered having when I was a kid but there are still elements that spark the imagination. I like to imagine the Gully Dwarf heroes! Those few high level Thieves, Warriors and Priests, perhaps riding out on their War Beetles. It makes me wonder about the generations that came before, the founders of Nordallode, and what their lofty goals were. Would they be disappointed in their descendents or proud?
What’s your opinion on these old, race obsessed books, dear reader? Do you just shake it off or do you embrace the stereotyping and run with it?
I recently finished reading through the new campaign book for Heart, the City Beneath. Dagger in the Heart from Rowan Rook and Decard was written by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and illustrated by Sar Cousins and came after a very successful crowdfunding effort last year. I backed it because I back everything from RRD but also because I was curious about how they were going to go about constructing a campaign for a game like Heart. In my experience, A campaign for Heart is something best dealt with one session at a time. Looseness and improvisational ability are qualities you will benefit from when GMing this game. The character beats that drive the events and the plot and the characters forward might have one PC searching for someone to kick off a tall building while another might be looking to get into a situation that’ll garner them some major Echo Fallout. So, maintaining any sort of direction can be a challenge. This is one of the game’s great strengths, of course. It makes it feel quite organic at the table and allows your players to feel as though they are the focus of the evolving story.
So, how to you translate that style of play into a coherent campaign? Well, you get Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan to write it for you, obviously. What he has done with Dagger in the Heart is provide the GM with a trio of inspired villains that I can imagine the PCs will love to hate and built the campaign around their plots and goals. In the introduction, he also gives you a guide on how to use these villains, depending on the length of campaign you want to run and some other factors. You don’t need to use them all, and, indeed, you are encouraged not to. Importantly, the campaign will work no matter which ones you use. They mostly act as foils to the PCs plans and actions and you are given suggestions, throughout the book, on how to use them in each area and during each major event. In Dagger in the Heart, the villains have their own beats they’re working towards, which helps in keeping track of what they are doing most of the time.
After the intro, you get seven chapters, each of which focuses on the areas of the Heart (or, indeed, the City Above) that are important at different points in the campaign. A chapter features an overview section which briefly explains what is contained in it and what the PCs are expected to be doing while they interact with the places, people and events contained in it. After that, you have a Staging section, which gives you options on how to get the PCs to move the overall plot forward while they do the usual Heart stuff of delving and hitting their Beats. This might include descriptions of major NPCs or stat blocks for enemies. After this, you get your Landmark and Delve descriptions. There are so many Landmarks in this book. I am pretty sure there are more Landmarks in this than in the Heart core book. But the delvers are not required to visit all of them. Instead there are just a lot of options. Indeed, because of the very loose nature of the campaign, the Landmarks can occur in any order, within any given Tier of the Heart, at least. In fact, they can mostly move quite freely between Tiers as well. So, despite the plot focusing so heavily on the occult and defunct underground train system known as the Vermissian, Dagger in the Heart is anything but Railroady. What it does, is provide you and your players with a plethora of options for how the story of the campaign could play out at your table and, indeed, how it might end, taking into account what your delvers might do.
After reading it, I was energised and inspired. I wanted to get some players around the table and send them back into the Heart as soon as possible. It will have to wait a little while, though, while other games come to an end. In the meantime, I get to read it again and prepare something really special.
Heart GM Screen
I also got the new Heart GM Screen from the Backerkit. It’s exactly what you would expect from RRD. Very high quality and totally over the top. There are no useful tables or common rules on the screen itself. Instead it comes with a booklet that you can rip the particular pages out of or, I suppose, photocopy and attach to the screen as you like. That way you can switch out the items you most need, when you most need them. It’s a nice idea and I think it will be useful.
Heather joined our campaign a bit late. She decided to sign up about the time the rest of the party popped through their very first portal to Sigil. This worked out well because her character, Panasonic (no relation to the Japanese electronics manufacturer of the same name,) was already there. This Half-orc Bard hadn’t always been there but she had made a home in the city and even gained something of a reputation as a controversial singer/songwriter. She had written and performed a tune that was perceived as being particularly critical of the self-appointed police, the Harmonium, a Faction that was philosophically devoted to the notion of laws and the act of upholding them. Unsurprisingly, this made them less than popular with many of the city’s population. So, when Panasonic first performed her song “The Safety Dance,” (for copyright reasons, a song that is legally distinct from the 80s hit by Canadian icons, Men Without Hats) a riot erupted, followed by anti-Harmonium acts being perpetrated all over the city. So, on the night when the rest of the party emerged from the end of a pipe (other side of a portal) in the the swimming pool of the Gymnasium, Panasonic found herself taking a shortcut through that very place, with a squad of angry Hardheads (a nickname for the Harmonium) hot on her heels.
Luckily, the party came to her aid, and she, in turn, acted as a sort of guide/ally to them in the alien and bewildering city.
The thing about Panasonic was, she had a fascination for Sigil and the planes in general. She was fascinated by the doors, the portals, how they worked. She always felt there was something musical about them. Also, she had been trying to find a way home for a long time. She had been shanghaied in Sigil by her sister, Sony (once again, no relation.) Sony was jealous of Panasonic’s growing popularity and so got a wizard to send her off plane so she could take her place at the front of their band. When she ran into the party, who just-so-happened to come from the same prime material world, she latched onto them as her ride home.
So, the culmination of Panasonic’s story, unlike the rest of the party, came when she emerged through the portal to Erlendhaim with the others. It was a big moment for her! She even found her sister there and somehow made amends just before they were violently assaulted by a bunch of devils.
It was then that she gained her new bard features, having fulfilled all her major character beats.
As with all of these character options, I didn’t spend too much time considering the balance implications of these. But if you like them, and you feel like you could use them in some form or other, please feel free.
New Bard Feature – Music of the Planes
Magical Notes
From 3rd level; the Bard uses an action to strike a cord on their musical instrument and summons a tiny portal which projects, from the instrument, an ethereal glowing rune in the shape of a musical note. As the the Bard continues to play, notes emerge in a stream from a plane of pure, living music. This stream of notes can have one of several effects that the Bard must choose before using this feature.
Face-melter – Attack roll using the Bard’s spell attack bonus – Range: 60ft, Damage: 1d8 + Charisma modifier thunder damage. At 6th level this increases to 2d8, at 9th level to 3d8, at 12th level to 4d8 and at 15th level to 5d8.
Break/Dance – Affect a single creature in range (60ft) causing them to dance energetically unless they make a Charisma saving throw (using the Bard’s spell save DC.) On a failure, the creature’s AC is broken, reduced by 2 as they leave themselves open to attack. At 6th level the Bard can affect two creatures or reduce the AC of one creature by 3. At 9th level the Bard can affect three creatures or reduce the AC of one creature by 4. At 12th level the Bard can affect four creatures or reduce the AC of one creature by 5. At 15th level the Bard can affect five creatures or reduce the AC of one creature by 6.
Mosh Pit – From 12th level the Bard can affect a group of 1d8 + Charisma modifier creatures to attack the closest creature to them if they fail a Charisma saving throw (using the Bard’s spell save DC.) This effect lasts until the end of the Bard’s next turn.
Transported by the Melody
From 9th level, once between long rests, the Bard can use an action to play their instrument in harmony with the planes allowing them to cast the Contact Other Plane spell. From 13th level, once between long rests, the Bard can use an action to play their instrument in harmony with the planes allowing them to cast the teleport spell. From 15th level, once between long rests, the Bard can use an action to play their instrument in harmony with the planes allowing them to cast the Demiplane spell.
Monsters of Rock
From 7th level the Bard plays a melody that opens a portal to one of the outer or inner planes to summon an elemental, fae, celestial or fiendish creature of up to CR 2. 10th level, CR 3. 13th level CR 4. 16th level CR 5.
List of Elemental Creatures
Steam Mephit (CR 0.25)
Dust Mephit (CR 0.5)
Ice Mephit (CR 0.5)
Magma Mephit (CR 0.5)
Magmin (CR 0.5)
Azer (CR 2)
Air Elemental (CR 5)
Earth Elemental (CR 5)
Fire Elemental (CR 5)
Salamander (CR 5)
Water Elemental (CR 5)
Corn (CR 5)
List of Celestial Creatures
Couatl (CR 4)
Pegasus (CR 2)
Unicorn (CR 5)
Hollyphant (CR 5)
List of Fae Creatures
Sprite (CR 0.25)
Dryad (CR 1)
Sea hag (CR 2)
Green Hag (CR 3)
List of Fiendish Creatures
Lemure (CR 0)
Dretch (CR 0.25)
Imp (CR 1)
Quasit (CR 1)
Bearded Devil (CR 3)
Hell Hound (CR 3)
Nightmare (CR 3)
Barbed Devil (CR 5)
Night Hag (CR 5)
Conclusion
This is the last of my D&D character options from Erlendheim series, dear reader. I really enjoyed coming up with these options in collaboration with my players and it was a lot of fun introducing them to the campaign with big personal story moments for the characters. I highly recommend that as a way to make your players feel very special.
One of the central mysteries of my Erlendheim campaign was the PCs’ hometown. Dor’s Hill stood out like a boil on the perfect skin of an elf. The town stood atop a tall hill in the exact middle of the island of Erlendheim, surrounded by plains and forests. There was something else about it that was odd. A legend, or false history existed, indicating that, many generations ago, a number of very different people appeared in the vicinity of the hill, supposedly sent by the islanders’ primary deity, Helm, to act as guardians of the island. The native people were humans with a Nordic type of culture. The new people that appeared also included humans, though very different to the Erlendheimers, but there were also the goat-like Bariaur, a contingent of Githzerai and several Tieflings too. The legend told that they built the town of Dor’s Hill on top of the hill and swore to live in peace with the people of the island while acting to protect it at the behest of Helm.
As usual with such stories, there were elements of truth mixed into this largely fabricated tale. It was mostly made up or confused or deliberately mis-told over the centuries. In fact, the hill never existed prior to the coming of the new people. Because they arrived in it. It was a building, formerly of the city of Sigil, at the centre of the Outer Planes. It was the old headquarters of the Faction known as the Believers of the Source, or the Godsmen. It had been plane-shifted to the island by one of the Factions’ great rivals, along with everyone in it. When the Godsmen found themselves on Erlendheim, they also found there was no way back. So, rather than despair, they set themselves up on the island, allying themselves with the locals and assimilating.
The Foundry Tower, as it was known while situated in Sigil, had been rather brimming over with portals to other places and planes of existence. It had been renowned for being the most portal-dense building in a city filled with such portals. In Sigil, any door, window, pipe-opening, sewer grate or picture frame could also be home to a portal. You just had to know the key to activate it. So, although the PCs discovered the tower under the hill and uncovered the fact that it was home to dozens of portals that still worked, they had no way to activate them without some guide to the keys required. And they had to find them because the Druid’s kids had been kidnapped and transported through one of the doors. After losing access to the only extant copy of the book describing the keys on the island, they had no choice but to travel to Sigil in the hopes of finding another copy. So that’s what they did, through an underwater backdoor portal that happened to exist off the coast, conveniently.
Now, the fun thing about the doors in the City of Doors, was that the keys needed to open them could be almost anything, from a verse of poetry to the lost sword of a dead king. As a result, I thought I would let my imagination run wild with the keys needed for the doors in the tower. It turned out I didn’t need most of theses. I think they only ended up entering two or three of them in total, but it was still a fun exercise and I think it could stand to me in the future if I ever have another Planescape adjacent campaign.
So, as a break from the Erlendheim Character Options series, I thought I would present here “The Book of Doors and Keys.” If you can get any use out of this in your own Planescape campaign, that’s great! You may even be able to use them for some other purposes, I guess.
Bear in mind that the “Door” entries are specific to a map I was using for the tower. I’m not going to present it here as I think its usefulness to others is negligible, so you can just ignore those.
Also, please note that any destination with “Scatterhome” in it is from my own home-brew world, so you can safely substitute it for some other place.
The Book of Doors and Keys
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 3 Destination: Nidavellir, Ysgard Key: The thought of your most beloved person
Door: Eastern Doorway in Level 1, Room 6 Destination: Abellio, Arcadia Key: Eat a plate of ribs at the doorway
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 11 Destination: Pandemonium Key: Be drunk
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 13 Destination: The Shadowfell Key: Whisper a secret to someone else which will make them think less of you
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 16 Destination: Para-elemental Plane of Smoke Key: Smoke a strong joint
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 18 Destination: Chaste, Vitrean Empire, Scatterhome Key: A symbol of Kaigun, God of the Sea, from a dead priest
Door: Well near Level 1, Room 20 Destination: Mechanus Key: A gear from a magical construct from Sigil
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 22 Destination: Goldenfields, The Sword Coast, Faerûn Key: A red ribbon tied into a knot
Door: Well near Level 1, Room 24 Destination: The Caverns of Thought, The Outlands Key: The memory of a parent that is the most enraging
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 26 Destination, The Elemental Plane of Fire Key: Dragon-breath
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 31 Destination: The Nords, The Outlands Key: Crush a bunch of peck-berries (only obtainable from the Fae-wild) under foot before the door
Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 33 Destination: Aquallor, Arborea Key: Whistle the tune to the Hymn of the Mother
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 1 Destination: Elemental Plane of Air Key: Eat a turtle cake and burp in the doorway
Door: North Archway leading to the statue of a Githzerai in Level 2, Area 2 Destination: The Astral Plane Key: Break a bottle of healing potion in the doorway
Door: South Archway leading to the sculpture of a great palace in Level 2, Area 2 Destination: The Factol’s Palace, The Ethereal Plane Key: Tell someone a secret that will cause emotional harm to them
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 4 Destination: Tír na nÓg, The Outlands Key: Tell a joke
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 5 Destination: Khalas, Gehenna Key: Stab yourself in the leg and spread the blood across the door before the doorway
Door: Northern Archway in Level 2, Room 6 Destination: Strixhaven University Key: Frustration
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 8 Destination: Neverwinter, The Sword Coast, Faerûn Key: Dance the Neverwinter Axe-dance
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 9 Destination: The Infinite Beerhall, Demiplane of Celebration Key: Put a sausage somewhere it does not belong in front of the doorway
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 11 Destination: Elemental Plane of Water Key: Speak the name of the person you would most like to have sex with
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 13 Destination: Malbolge, The Nine Hells Key: Burn a book and throw it through the doorway
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 14 Destination: Minethys, Carceri Key: Inscribe an arch around the doorway with the tip of a steel sword
Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 15 Destination: The deepest dungeon of the Imperial Palace in Vitrea, Scatterhome Key: Cut off a left hand and place it in the doorway
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 1 Destination: Krigala, The Beastlands Key: Throw a beast’s tooth through the doorway
Door: Double doorway, Level 3, Room 3 Destination: The Arena, The City-state of Tyr, The Tablelands, Athas Key: The tortoise blade of a Mul Gladiator left in the doorway
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 4 Destination: the Feywild Key: Play the pan-pipes in front of the door
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 8 Destination: The Positive Energy Plane Key: Roll two sixes on a pair of dice
Door: North Doorway of Level 3, Room 10 Destination: Krangath, Gehenna Key: Wear a crown
Door: West Doorway in Level 3, Room 13 Destination: The Opera House, Rath an Croí, Scatterhome Key: Place a diamond in the doorway
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 12 Negative Quasielemantal Plane of Ash Key: A handful of Yugoloth ash poured on your head
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 15 Destination: Amoria, Elysium Key: Pay a compliment to the person you find it most difficult to compliment
Door: East Doorway in Level 3, Room 16 Destination: Niflheim, Hades Key: Cry genuine tears of sorrow
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 17a Destination: Mercurua, Mount Celestia Key: Tell a sad story in celestial
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 17b Destination: The Mortuary, the Hive, Sigil Key: Crush a cranium rat’s brain in your hand
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 17c Destination: Limbo Key: The memory of your most embarrassing moment
Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 20 Destination: Avalas, Acheron Key: Burn your skin and allow the heat from the burn to kill an insect
The Dice Pool 