Pig-faced orcs!

 This weekend is going to be dominated by that toad. But I managed to kitbash these D&D-style pig-faced orcs before knuckling down. I've given them all Monster Manual-compliant gear. 

These are made largely from Frostgrave cultists and cultist knights, with heads from Wargames Atlantic and shields from Victrix.

RAFM wizard

 Here's an old RAFM wizard from the 80s: part of the wonderfully characterful Wanderers and Warriors range. He's part of my 25mm megadungeon/old-school D&D project - the idea is to have a host of player-character types so that players can quickly pick a suitable miniature and get going once they're rolled up a character. I could see this fellow ('Nimrod the Bold Wizard', according to the catalogue) working well as a villain too.

I originally conceived this as a 1/72 project; I'm using the same monsters and even some of the same character figures (especially elves and dwarves). But there are just so many better character options in 25mm.

Megadungeon mechanics part five: the joys of one hit die and the implications of what has gone before

I mentioned in the previous post in this series that my forthcoming megadungeon campaign will be more like a wargame than our main D&D campaign. That could be  misleading, though, as I mean it in only one very specific sense: that combats will mostly be of the one-hit variety. This is going to be - for most players - a low-level campaign. A character that gets to level two will be cherished. And one that gets to level three will be prized. 

In part, this limited advancement will come down to player decisions. As I've noted before, I'm using gold for XP - but only if that gold is spent on unspecified advancement-related stuff: training, study, sacrifices, etc. I'm also going to make equipment - notably armour - much more expensive than it is in the common iterations of D&D. I want a mail hauberk to be a significant treasure item in its own right. Full plate harness might cost as much as levelling up. And then there's the process of hiring mercenaries that I've set out: the common way to do this is to have them fight for an equal (or double or triple) share of the expedition's loot, which will cut down the amount of gold available to PC. When they can be hired for a day-rate, that day-rate will be high. All of this means that the players will be constantly choosing between advancement, equipment and assistance. 

It also means that most PCs will be on a solitary hit die for much of the time. I'm toying with the idea of having PCs roll their hit dice for each expedition, although that might prompt a mutiny. But as monsters will be doing fighter weapon damage (d8/d10) for the most part, even second-level fighters will be vulnerable to a lucky stroke from a hobgoblin poleaxe (d10).

So characters will be more like Balin (taken out by one orc-arrow) than Boromir (pin-cushioned by countless arrows and still fighting to the last). This has three main implications.

1. Big battles can be handled easily. If the players hire 20 mercenaries to raid a goblin lair, we might conceivably have 50 or more miniatures on the table. But if we know that most of the goblins will be killed in a single attack and that many of the mercenaries (and PCs) will be too, we can look forward to an initial frenzy of d20 rolls and then a rapid clearing of the battlefield. Mass combat won't involve much more book-keeping than a typical skirmish wargame, and the deadliness should keep it exciting. I expect a lot of traditional PC activity (sneaking, stealing, trickery) to take place during large-scale combats as well as as an alternative to them.

2. Shields shan't be splintered. Because I want highly dangerous encounters, I won't be using Trollsmyth's excellent "shields shall be splintered" rule. We use that in our regular D&D campaign, and it's great. But in the megadungeon game of fully equipped expeditions, it will just lead to mules being burdened with umpteen spare shields. What I'll probably do to compensate is have larger shields modify AC by 2 or 3 rather than 1, which will be reserved for bucklers. So a tower/kite/buckler hierarchy of 3/2/1 modifiers is probably the way to go - although I'll be thinking about this a bit more. 

3. Tactical retreats will be common. When running our main D&D group through the Caves of Chaos last year, I though that one of the most satisfying sessions was when a raid on the hobgoblin caves utterly failed. It ended with some PCs badly wounded and the hobgoblins hunting for them with hounds in the forest. And of course, the PCs swore revenge - which was all the more satisfying when it was eventually achieved. If your characters have only one hit die apiece, you're going to be very sensitive to the turning of the battle's tide. And that leads on to the next point.

4. Game sessions may involve multiple expeditions. I really like this concept: that three or four hours of play might not be confined to a single raid, but could feature two or three. In running our 250+-session lockdown campaign, I've observed that the joy of the game comes as much from the story that emerges between the sessions as from the sessions themselves. I want to reproduce that even in an episodic and occasional campaign, so that grudges can form, vengeance can be taken and best-laid plans can gang aft aglae. And the best way of doing that is to have more story in a single session. For that reason, downtime will be almost instant. Once the PCs are out of the dungeon, we move straight on to preparing the next expedition: "Two months pass, and your wounds are healed. Assemble your new party! What's the plan now?". As the megadungeon will have many entrances, there should always be a different approach worth trying - whether that's launching a diplomatic mission to attempt to recruit another faction to your current cause, attacking from a different direction or hiring a squadron of stone-masons to block up some of the entrances of the dungeon altogether.

With the lights out, it's more dangerous ...

I've also been considering some other implications of my previous posts. Most obviously, the continuity conceit of the last lantern-bearer won't work if many of the PCs have infravision. So perhaps all PCs should be humans. That frees up dwarfs and elves to be villains, which is just as it should be. 

Then there's the presence of pack animals. I want these to be essential for expeditions to the megadungeon, for realism (food, blankets, water), to simplify encumbrance considerations and to allow for the removal of large items of treasure. They do, of course, make the party more visible, noisy and exposed - but I think that can be turned to the party's - and the game's - advantage too. If you're pursued by angry dire wolves, you might think about hobbling your mules and abandoning them to their awful fate so that you can get away. That's one option that the last lantern-bearer often has - and it's one reason that he always gets away.

The danger to mules also means that it's not only monsters that move around the dungeon, but treasure too. That provides a great boost to emergent narrative, I think. If the dire wolves dragged down your mules outside the hobgoblin stronghold, what has happened to the golden idol you looted from the troglodytes? The hobgoblins probably have it - but what have they done with it? Could you somehow play the vengeful trogs off against them? Or have they returned it to the trogs and forged an alliance with them as a result? Does that mean that their lair will now be guarded by chameleon-like stink lizards that you won't see until they're upon you? Or has a drooling ogre rescued the statue from the dire wolves' leavings and dragged it to his cave where he's now attempting to woo it by piling severed heads in front of it each day? 

That's for the players to find out ...

Megadungeon mechanics part four: a universal table of wandering monsters

I started writing this a few months back, in response to some interesting posts on wandering monsters from Lich Van Wrinkle and noisms. As so often, I failed to finish the post off - but I'm now incorporating its substance into my series on the megadungeon.

In their respective posts, Lich describes mixed results in his first experience of using wandering monsters 'properly' while noisms takes against them somewhat, especially in the dungeon:

In the artificial and enclosed 'dungeon' environment, though, I've always thought that something stinks about random encounters. Unless the encounter is with a being that already exists within the dungeon key, and is assumed to be moving around (that is, if the encounter is with a being that is extraneous to what is already plotted), then one is forced to simply put out of one's mind the question of where it came from. Why is this giant slug, which the random encounter table just threw up, suddenly here? Where was it before? And why is it that it it does not appear to have had a material effect on its dungeon surroundings prior to this point? 

Like Lich, I didn't use wandering monsters much or at all in my first incarnation as a GM. In part, that was because I started out with RuneQuest, which lacked the concept of the procedural dungeon crawl. And in part, it was because my adventures tended to be sketchy affairs in which a complete map was a bonus and there was never enough prep time for extras such as wandering-monster tables. 

That's not to say that I didn't use dynamic encounters - but they tended to be of the "some guards come round the corner" variety when things started to lag. 

I've still got plenty of time for that approach. But since I've been using Basic D&D for the nine months and running of our daily lockdown campaign, I've used wandering monsters a lot, and I like them. So, I think, do the players. Wandering monsters formed the basis of whole sessions on the Isle of Dread; as noisms notes, "the wilderness is all random encounters". 

A good table of fauna offers lots of instant adventure, especially when two or more rolls are used together. One highlight in our campaign involved the PCs glimpsing a roc on the wing from atop the Isle of Dread's volcano; when they descended onto the plateau and encountered a mastodon, I had the big bird swoop down and snatch it - much to the players' horror and delight.

But what about the dungeon? Wandering monsters are the quintessence of the dungeon crawl, I think, because they communicate to the players that dungeon-crawling is a dangerous business and that they should be quick, quiet and careful. And they also bring the setting to life. 

So where do these monsters come from? Noisms argues that the "only reasonable answer as to where randomly encountered monsters in the dungeon come from is: outside, or from further down". I don't think that's quite right - or at least, I think that these and other answers are easy to rationalise even in an "naturalistic" dungeon.

Now, I agree that wandering monsters should fit the environment. Each dungeon - and probably each dungeon level - should have its own tailored table. But I'm thinking about universally applicable categories that can be intuitively filled in for a given area of the megadungeon. Let's consider eight of these.

Patrols

This is the easiest and most obvious sort: patrols of humanoids (or similar) that live in the dungeon. You can divide these into 'home' and 'hostile'. So, if a dungeon level has mutually antagonistic orcs and gnolls in it, a home roll in orc territory brings orcs while a hostile roll brings gnolls - and vice versa. How do the hostiles get there? Most likely by following the PCs, hoping to exploit the carnage that they've created - and perhaps to pick off the depleted adventurers. Rationalising their route should be easy, presuming that the PCs have come through no-man's land to get to the orc section. The gnolls have simply followed in their (bloody) footsteps.

Stalkers

While patrols probably want to prey on weakened foes and parties alike, other creatures might be specifically interested in the party. They might be predatory, or they might be looking for security, company or even friendship. So, this category can include scavengers hungry for fresh corpses, beings that want protection in the dungeon (and what better escort than a bloody-handed bunch of murder-hobos?) or those interested in something the party has: past owners of treasure, perhaps, or their minions. If Moria is the ur-dungeon, then Gollum is the ur-stalker. 

Vermin (a.k.a dwellers in the wainscotting or the Wolves in the Walls)

One obvious way to have dungeon vermin suddenly appear is simply to have them come out of the walls. I've often used kobolds in this way: their tunnels riddle the dungeon but are too small for (most) adventurers to get down - and too dangerous even if they could. Yes, your halfling might squeeze into a kobold crawlspace, but the excursion probably wouldn't end well. 

This gives a nice rationale for why weak creatures like kobolds survive and even thrive in the underworld. Rather than inhabiting large and easily invaded caverns, they live in twisting tunnels; their communal spaces are almost impossible to access. And it also explains why they can crop up at almost any time or place in the dungeon. They tunnel and burrow constantly, the entrances to their crawlways are cunningly concealed, and they're always creating new ones. 

Kobolds are just one example of creatures in this class, of course. Giant rats, giant beetles and many other smallish, burrowing beasts fit here nicely, as do stirges that roost in the recesses of the dungeon but fly through its corridors when on the hunt. 

Squeezers (through cracks)

Monstrous oozes and jellies are pretty much a D&D invention (drawing on shoggoths and the Blob, of course), and they provide another easily explainable source of monsters. Where did that thing come from? It dripped through the ceiling. Oozes gonna ooze.

Raiders

Now, these are typically from the outside (or above or below). I'd differentiate these from patrols, above, in that they're not on regular duty or simply being opportunistic, but have mounted an attack against the area of the dungeon in which they're encountered. So, while these could be the orcs/gnolls from across no-man's land on the same level, they'd appear in far greater numbers than a patrol. But they could be hobgoblins from a nearby stronghold or bugbears from the surrounding hills. They might signal their attack with drums or horns, and the party might initially just encounter their scouts or vanguard - giving the PCs the opportunity to make something of the situation. Repeated rolls in a single session would typically indicate encounters with different elements of the raiding party. Raiders could also be other adventurers, of course.

Rampagers

Another dangerous category, this: big monsters on the hunt, whether from nearby caverns or from deep within the earth. This might include trolls, landsharks and umber hulks. If these creatures exist on the dungeon level, their coming will prompt other inhabitants to bar their doors and retreat to their fastnesses. And it could be signalled by howls, heavy footsteps or trembling in the earth.

Haunters

Given that most dungeons have witnessed many scenes of slaughter, you'd expect a few ghosts to be clanking their chains. Different bestiaries assign specific roles to synonyms for ghost, but we can usefully divide this class into apparitions: harmless but disturbing visions that merely show something that happened in the past - from a march of doomed troops to a murder; unquiet spirits: ghosts that want the party to do something for them - bury their bones, avenge their death or return some object to their grave; and evil spirits: hostile ethereal undead of the D&D spectre or wraith sort.

Apparitions are perhaps the most interesting class. In a science-fantasy setting, they might be fragmented holograms (as in Serenity or Prometheus). In any setting, they can be used to hint at some tragedy from the past. Perhaps the PCs see grim-faced warriors in bronze armour march down the corridor - and then encounter animated skeletons wearing that same armour elsewhere. And perhaps these apparitions aren't visible to everyone. You can have the whole party make a save vs spells; if everyone passes, they'll still be spooked.

Personalities

An easy way to bring the dungeon to life is to ensure that its most celebrated inhabitants don't simply sit in their room waiting for adventurers to arrive. There are two obvious categories here - the 'home' encounter, which might be the orc chief visiting his lieutenants or interrogating prisoners; and the rarer 'hostile' encounter, in which an eminence from another part of the dungeon has arrived. A 'hostile' result could actually be a welcomed guest - what matters is that it's someone or something who's not on their home turf. Previous random encounters might give clues to this. If you've had a 'hostile' raiders encounter previously, a subsequent personality might be the hobgoblin commander striding in like Darth Vader in the Hoth base. If you haven't, he might be here with his bodyguards to plot mischief in alliance with the orc chief. 

So, those eight categories might give us a table like this:

D8                    Category                        Encounter (D4)

1                        Patrols                           1-2. Home (2d3)   3. Hostile (2d4)   4. Outsiders (2d6)

2                        Stalkers                         1-2. Ghouls    3. Protection-seekers 4. Treasure-seekers

3                        Vermin                          1-2. Kobolds (2d6)  3. Giant rats (2d6)   4. Stirges (2d8)

4                        Squeezers                      1. Gelatinous cube (1)  2-3 Black pudding (1-2) 4 Grey ooze (1-3)

5                        Raiders                          1 Home (4d6)  2. Hostile (4d6)  3. Outsiders (4d6) 4. NPCs (2d4)

6                        Rampagers                    1. Umber hulk  2. Trolls (d3) 3. Landshark 4. Purple worm

7                        Haunters                        1-2. Apparitions 3. Unquiet spirits 4. Evil spirits

8.                       Personalities                   1-3. Home        4. Hostile

Over a session or two, rolls on this table should illustrate the dungeon's history, politics and ecology. 

And while they should challenge the players, they should also provide them with opportunities. A hostile patrol offers the prospect of a temporary alliance. A treasure-seeker might obtain its goal in return for local knowledge. If a 'home raid' takes 4d6 of the bugbear warriors out of the complex, PCs who have snuffed their torches and concealed their pack animals may have the chance to fall upon a lightly defended bugbear lair. If the hobgoblin chief is talking to the orcs, then he and his bodyguards won't be at home if the PCs come knocking. 

A third round of megadungeon mechanics: mercenaries

 

I've been thinking a bit more about how adventuring parties will be structured in my episodic megadungeon campaign (see here and here for previous thoughts). 

In some ways, this campaign is going to be much more of a wargame than most of the games I run, though there will be ample opportunities for roleplaying. But the game will take the form of successive armed raids on a (largely) subterranean stronghold of great size, and so tactics and organisation will play a large part. 

Each party will consist of the PCs plus an equal number of non-combatant lantern-bearers (torch-bearers, porters, etc.) and the same number of pack animals (mules, donkeys, camels, whatever). These are 'free' in that they're assumed to have been hired or bought before the game starts. So a party of three adventurers will be accompanied by three lantern-bearers and three pack animals. The fixed ratio makes it simple, and there's no 'on-screen' cost to the players. 

A party with just three combatants will represent easy pickings for monsters, however. So PCs would be advised to bolster their numbers with mercenaries. This decision is down to the party's leader - the PC with the highest CHA - but individual PCs can also choose to hire their own bodyguards.

So, how does hiring work? Well, it's simple: hired fighters get a share of the loot: an equal share (with certain exceptions - see below). 

That introduces a nice risk/reward consideration from the get-go. Do you hire 10 archers to rain arrows on the orcs on the first level? It might work well - but then your party of three will have to split any loot 13 ways, assuming that everyone survives. That assumption might not be safe, of course, but most parties will balk at getting such a small fraction of any takings.

Now, if the party's leader decides not to hire mercenaries, party members can still opt to split their shares with hired hands. So, a cautious dwarf might not like the idea of going in with just three fighting adventurers and might opt to split his share with three of his kin. Those dwarves will answer to him, of course.

There's also potential to play on the idea of the Doppelsöldner and allow the PCs to hire higher-level fighters for a higher share of the loot. Dungeons & Dragon's level system provides an obvious way to do this. But there will be scarcity limits on high-level fighters: no more than one third-level or two second-level hirelings per PC. So, if our three-strong first-level party hires three third-level fighters, the loot will be divided into 12 shares, with each of the hirelings taking three of those and the PCs getting only a quarter of the spoils between them.

Non-divisible treasures (magical swords, amulets, etc.) will be chosen by combatants in turn, starting with the highest-level character, whether PC or NPC, and then rolling dice for priority. So if our first-level party hires three third-level fighters and then finds the Drinker in the dungeon, one of those hirelings is likely to make off with it (which might be just as well).

Note that hirelings are not potential PCs in the way that lantern-bearers are. If your character gets killed, you can roll up a new character and embody him or her in one of the lantern-bearers, who, when offered the gear of the slain adventurer, has just acquired a taste for adventure. But hired fighters don't become PCs in the same way. They can, of course, be run temporarily by players who've lost their characters if the party is down to its last lantern-bearer.

This means that players can't leapfrog to higher-level characters after PC deaths. It also means that hiring high-level fighters is always costly unless they're slain on the job. Your party doesn't get to keep the Drinker because you took over Ulav the Fearless mid-game; instead, you roll up a new PC when the expedition ends.

That's the main system for hiring fighters. But there will be an alternative available once the party has amassed a bit of cash. They will be able to hire fighters for a day rate,  paid in advance. This rate will be much higher than that in the Rules Cyclopedia, so that it forces the players to make tough choices about how they spend their loot: hire help, progress in experience or buy better equipment. And fighters hired in this way will also be subject to the classic Rules Cyclopedia morale rules. They've already been paid, so if things go badly, they're more likely to break and run. After all, if you think that the orcs are about to finish off the party, you're not going to be too concerned about breaking your contract with a corpse. 

I also like the idea of unscrupulous PCs hiring equally unscrupulous orcs. As in Rules Cyclopedia, this will be significantly cheaper than hiring human fighters. But it will also be riskier. First, orcs will be morale 6 rather than the morale 8 for human mercenaries. Second, their loyalty will be vulnerable to reaction rolls in encounters with certain creatures (powerful ones that can speak orcish, such as ogres). And third, you always have to worry about situations in which your orcish hirelings outnumber you and are not afraid of you. I might, though, allow orcs to fight for half-shares under the share system, in which case they would still be subject to morale rolls (unlike human mercenaries fighting for a share)  but with morale 8 rather than 6 (i.e. the share incentive acts as the equivalent of a strong leader as described in the Rules Cyclopedia).

The net effect of all this is to make orcish hirelings a high-risk proposition that could be tempting in certain circumstances. If you're going to storm the hobgoblin stronghold, a few dozen orcish mercenaries could be a cheap way to achieve overwhelming numbers. But you don't want things to go too badly for them (prompting morale rolls) - or too well (so that there are lots of them inside and in control of the stronghold before the party establishes control). 

Scratch-built brain collector

 

The party stumbled across a brain collector in the depths of Castle Amber as our last session of 2020 came to a close. For the first session of 2021, I knocked this fellow up out of Fimo, tin foil and mince-pie trays.

More megadungeon mechanisms

Happy New Year!

After yesterday's post on the last lantern-bearer (the one who always gets away), I've been thinking of a few more mechanisms for the episodic megadungeon campaign I plan to run this year. These are mostly fairly arbitrary-seeming rules that will - I hope - add tension, excitement and a bit of grit to the game.

I'll probably use some variant of the original D&D rules for this (possibly Whitehack). I want to strip things right back, so that hit points are low and deadliness is high. In our regular D&D campaign, I use STR in the Into the Odd style: with characters losing STR points after their hit points are gone and having to make a STR save each time they take STR losses. That works really well - but for this campaign, I might go for maximum deadliness, so that starting PCs may well just have 1 or 2 hit points each. That should amp up the risks nicely.

So here are some of these mechanisms.

1. Adventuring parties are always accompanied by an equal number of non-combatant porters/lantern-bearers and the same number of pack animals. There's no point going on a treasure-seeking expedition to the Underworld if you don't have the means of carrying off the loot. And - in meta-game terms - that gives us the pool of reserve PCs, the encumbrance and lighting solution, and the continuity mechanism that I outlined yesterday. The pack animals also carry plenty of food, water and fuel.

2. Party casualties are always replaced from the lantern-bearer pool, with a new character rolled up on the spot. Such replacements can be of any class (hitherto hidden talents) and are equipped from what can be salvaged from the dead or provided by the rest of the party. The pack animals are likely to carry a few spare spears and bow. I'll probably have hand-to-hand weapons do damage by class rather than type (fighters d8 or d10 for two-handed; clerics, elves, dwarves and thieves d6 or d8; magic-users d4 or d6), to avoid any class restrictions on weapons.

3. Expeditions always end when the session ends. This isn't an original idea, of course, but I think it'll provide a nice rhythm and aid continuity, especially as the players aren't likely to be exactly the same each time. I might provide some narrative cover for this ("You need to get out by nightfall - the place is crawling with monsters after dark"), or I might just leave it entirely arbitrary.

4. Escaping lantern-bearers don't bring party treasures or equipment with them. They are assumed to have fled as fast as their legs can carry them. But they do know where the loot was last seen - and are able to guide a new party back to that point. It's unlikely, of course, that the loot will still be lying around. But if Baldros the Bold and his men met their end at the hands of the Iron Hand hobgoblins, it's a fair bet that the hobgoblins now have the golden idol that Baldros stole from the troglodyte tribe.

5. Gold provides XP - but only when it's spent (on training, better equipment, magical research, etc.) Living costs are included in this it's assumed that the PCs pay for their upkeep during the course of their training or studies. I'll probably seriously revise whatever armour and weapon list I use so that better weapons (two-handed swords, etc.) and - especially - better armour is seriously expensive. That way, there should be a nice dilemma for expedition survivors: better gear or character advancement? And of course, this mechanism keeps the focus squarely on loot - which incentivises dungeon-crawling.

6. All parties have a nominal leader - the PC with the highest CHA. This is largely for "historical" atmosphere in the dungeon: "That's where they got Captain Juras and his lot. That's him there - turned to stone!" or "See the tarred head on the spike up there? That's Chardro. 'Prince of Thieves,' he called himself. But the orcs are no respecters of royalty". The leader also has total control of the lantern-bearers/porters and pack animals, however. They go where he tells them to (except when they flee, of course), which should help to keep the party together - especially in light of the following.

7. There is safety in numbers. In the dungeon, large groups are much safer than small ones. You might think that a couple of thieves could sneak off on their own, relying on stealth and guile to get in and out with choice items of loot. But the dungeon ecology is against you. Wandering monsters - dangerous vermin of all sorts, including kobolds (or equivalent) - are always ready to pick off the isolated. And these creatures can see in the dark and are ever watchful from the safety of their burrows. Stragglers or break-off groups incite regular wandering-monster checks - and those monsters are numerous and emboldened. This makes plenty of sense: small creatures like kobolds are unlikely to risk frontal attacks on large, well-equipped groups (the kobolds don't know that the lantern-bearers won't fight). But ambushing a couple of thieves in the darkness? It's a near certainty. 

The point of all of this is to create a game in which the dungeon, rather than the party, is the focus, and in which 'victories' over the dungeon are to be prized. A total-party kill should come as an exhilarating last stand - and a successful expedition should feel like a real achievement. So too should taking a character up to second or third level - gaining the chance of surviving a hit or two in combat.

I'll be running this with 1/72 miniatures, which offers more space for all those pack animals and lantern-bearers on the table - and especially over Zoom. That scale is also somewhat "depersonalised", with the miniatures being more generic and interchangeable - which I see as a good thing for RPGs. 

The key, though, will be creating a megadungeon with plenty of interesting features and perils beside its inhabitants. I started work on this last year, and I hope to make it a major focus in 2021.

The last lantern-bearer: a mechanism for megadungeon campaigns

He always gets away ...

One thing I want to do in 2021 is get an episodic megadungeon campaign going alongside our daily D&D game. That campaign is inching up into higher levels, with most of the PCs around level six. I envisage the megadungeon game as being dingier, dicier and deadlier - featuring low-level characters with a high chance of mortality. It'll serve as an occasional refresher, an option for when some players can't make it, and a default setting for games with my occasional adult group. Every expedition will be perilous - and players shouldn't expect every character to come back.

That threatens continuity, of course. But I think I've found a way to resolve it: the last lantern-bearer. No matter what happens, he or she gets away to tell the tale - and fall into the employ of the next party. 

A while ago, I mused on the failings of pretty much every RPG encumbrance system I've encountered. Our long Zoom campaign has borne this out. With most of the character sheets out of my sight, the party always seems to be carrying a remarkable amount of stuff. I offset this to some extent with environmental restrictions ("no one wears armour in town/on a ship/in the desert"), yet the sheer volume of items carried continues to thumb its nose at realism. 

The coin-based treasures in older modules makes this worse. Today, I walked a couple of miles into town to obtain £5 in pennies and tuppences: basing for the great many 1/72 miniatures that will feature in this megadungeon. The weight of a mere 400 copper coins was noticeable on the way back - and trudging through the snow with many thousands would have been a struggle, especially if other gear were involved.

All based up and ready for the party ...

That leads to a simple default for the megadungeon campaign. Players carry their own gear, whatever gems and jewellery they can pocket or wear, and about 100 gp (in various metals). Everything else - the looted idols, the stolen artworks, the exquisite temple carpets - goes on the mules. And who tends to those? Why, the lantern-bearers, of course.

Here's how it works. Every party is accompanied by a team of mules or camels, and those are tended by a team of lantern-bearers - probably five or six. They do not usually fight; they do often flee. And at least one of them always gets away.

That sounds arbitrary, and indeed it is. But the concept serves three useful functions. 

First, the lantern-bearers provide a pool of reserve characters. There's nothing new there, of course. But these aren't henchmen. The sole circumstances in which they fight are when PCs die and their gear becomes available (offering, in game terms, the opportunity for the lantern-bearers to become PCs). The assumption is that the lantern-bearers are impecunious local youths. "Well, I guess you'd better put his armour on, son. If you can hold that spear steady, you can earn a share of the loot."

Second, the lantern-bearers remove all the usual encumbrance and lighting concerns. Their main tasks are to steer the mules, which carry the loot, and provide plenty of light. Those concerns are thus lifted from the PCs, leaving them free to concentrate on exploration, larceny and murder: the stuff they really enjoy. Because lantern-bearers don't offer a threat, monsters are likely to deal with the PCs first - and that gives the lantern-bearers ample opportunity to hide or flee (grabbing some light loot, perhaps, placing their lantern on the floor and trusting to the auxiliary torches they generally carry).

Third, the lantern-bearers provide continuity between parties. The problem with really dangerous megadungeons is that the wiping out of a party makes a second foray a little artificial. The players have already been there even though the PCs have not. But a recurring lantern-bearer or two plugs this hole nicely. Now the new party can learn all about the woes of the last one from someone who was there - and lived to tell the tale. It's artificial, sure, this inevitable survival of at least one lantern-bearer (and his inevitable hiring by the next party), but it's much less artificial than having the party learn from their deceased forebears without any connection. And if sessions are intermittent, the meta-gaming conceit can lead to appropriate in-game reminders: "That door, sir! That's the door that swallowed Captain Juras last spring. Be careful, sir, I beg you ...". 

What this allows me to do is to use the mega-dungeon for a series of occasional one-offs that build on each other despite frequent total-party kills. And by making TPKs a very real danger, I'm hoping to keep the players keen for revisiting - and revenge!

Happy Hogmanay!

Easter eggs and the joy of recontexualisation

What lies beneath?

Last night, I set up a quick Easter egg hunt for the kids. It was simple: a card on the kitchen table with a couple of mini-eggs and a slightly cryptic note about where the next treasures could be found. And so on. So they went scurrying from room to room, looking in bookshelves and behind masks, out to the garden and back in again. Despite the simplicity of the exercise, they really enjoyed it, with the younger proudly boasting about the clues she'd worked out.

One set of treasures was concealed beneath the "antelope statue", which my daughter immediately recognised as the scenic gaming item we made from one of my son's old toys (above). This was on the table about a foot away from the first note, and there was a weird satisfaction in the doubling back.

This got me thinking about dungeon design. One of the problems I have with classic  adventure modules is that they typically have hidden treasures and secrets that most parties will never find.

These features presumably stem from a time when inch-by-inch investigation was a norm, and where checking for traps and the application of ten-foot poles were standard.
But most players I run games for don't act like that. They'll happily ransack sleeping quarters, store-rooms and book-cases, but they won't go around twisting the left horns of statues or tugging on torch brackets.

That's probably as it should be: sessions would crawl along at a tedious pace if the PCs were looking for secret doors at every turn. And there's much more realism in players assuming that the world conveyed to them by floorplans or GM description is largely as it seems.

At the same time, treasures and hidden doors that give themselves away are a bit silly: what's the point of them if any passer-by can spot the cracks in the stonework?

But, as this morning's egg hunt demonstrated, hidden treasures are exciting if their discovery feels earned. And that's especially true if you're recontextualising something that you've already encountered. That huge bronze statue in the hexagonal room on the first level of the dungeon? Down here on the third level, you've just learned that twisting the left horn opens a secret cache in the torso. Back we go!

How might such information be discovered? Well, here are a few ideas.

1. "Let me live, and I'll tell you a secret ..."
A dungeon's denizens will doubtless know some of its secrets. And what better way for the last hobgoblin guard to secure his wretched life than by bargaining some of the information to which he is privy?

2. Carved in stone
Murals and reliefs deeper in the dungeon can contain revelations about areas the party has already passed through. Perhaps that brazen antelope was used for horrifying Moloch-style sacrifices. If so, a relief carving might show hideous beastmen opening it by tugging on its horns and imprisoning victims within. That tells the players that the statue opens, and it shows them how it's done. But it doesn't tell them what's inside it. Their curiosity should be piqued.

3. Book learning
Sorcerers' libraries are great resources, particularly if you have a random table to generate their contents. But for especially useful information, it might be better to have a single book (open on a desk, perhaps) that describes or illustrates areas with which the players are familiar. Or perhaps a map, showing the rooms they have passed through and some secret chambers they have missed: "That door must be behind the carvings with the griffins!"

4. Tavern gossip
If the dungeon has a market or tavern - and no self-respecting underworld should be without a Mos Eisley-style speakeasy - then the PCs may overhear all sorts of useful tibits: "That fancy warrior we roasted in the goat? He had all sorts of shiny weapons, but they burned us when we touched them, so we melted them down with him."

"They didn't melt, Gruznok. I looked yesterday. Still shining in the ash and bones."

5. Threats and menaces
A villain or NPC might threaten the players with imprisonment in some secret vault or oubliette. "I'll tell you where the last sneakthief ended up - under the Jade Giant's foot. There's no getting out from the pit under that - but there are things that can get in."

Once the villain's dispatched, the PCs are likely to revisit the Hall of the Jade Giant. Of course, if the villain is merely subdued, he might offer up some additional information, as in 1 above.

6. Unusual correspondence
Remember those huge statues of open-mouthed snakes coming through the floor on the first level? Well, down here on the third, there's a matching snake descending from the ceiling. And is that ... a ladder inside the mouth? But if this one joins up to the one in the hobgoblin shrine, where does the one in the armoury lead?

And so on.

All of these should give the PCs ideas about returning to places they've already visited. The lure of loot is strong, but discovery sings a siren song of its own. Who knows? They might even find an Easter egg ...

Neutral ground: the dungeon pub, Mos Eisley and Down in the Dungeon

Down in the Dungeon (from Monster Brains)

I'm currently constructing a Tunnels and Trolls dungeon. One thing is certain: it will contain a tavern. I've loved the idea ever since I chanced upon a copy of that 80s curiosity Down in the Dungeon. That book, by Rob Stern and Don Greer, is a sort of D&D cash-in that I once perused in print long, long ago. A primary-school friend's older brother's friend owned it, or something like that (as seems to be the way). 

The tavern is a hackneyed staple of traditional RPGs, of course. Superior examples of the trope are Gimpy's Tavern in Pavis and Apple Lane's Tin Inn. But rather than a starting point or brawling ground, a dungeon pub could be something much more interesting.

The first of the boozer illustrations in Down in the Dungeon is entitled Neutral Ground (see above). There's your starting point. This is a place where the normal rules don't apply. 

The idea of members of various dungeon factions and adventurers sharing a drink is just irresistible. Those orcs you fought at the Skull Gate? You might meet some of them in here. But they'll be off duty! They might just be prepared to let bygones be bygones. Or they might have a bone or two to pick. 

There are probably bouncers to keep the peace. Ogres, perhaps. Or automata of some kind. In any case, it's doubtless a fragile peace. But still, you might get a chance here to buy that scarred orc veteran a couple of pints and maybe loosen his tongue. You might even find out that the Skull Gate is unguarded on certain occasions.

The obvious template (and as the Grognardia blog suggests, probably the inspiration for Neutral Ground) is the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars. For what is a dungeon but a hive of scum and villainy? And what do scum and villains like to do? Why, drink, of course. 

So what can we take from Mos Eisley and apply in our underground tavern?

1. All sorts of things

This is neutral ground. Dwarves drink beside orcs. Or perhaps with them. Lizardmen hang out with trolls. Skeletons make a mess on the floor as their wine splashes through them. No one so much as blinks. You might even spot a gelatinous cube in the corner, patiently absorbing spilled liquor from the floor. And of course there are also sorts of potent brews on offer. There may even be all sorts of potent broos ...

2. We don't serve their kind in here.

This isn't a nice place. Some beings just aren't welcome. Elves might be an obvious example. But it might be more amusing if (say) dwarven PCs are denied entrance even though there are lots of other dwarves quaffing away inside. Or half-orcs being barred despite both orcs and humans being served. What we want here is something arbitrary and irrational that leads to improvisation by the players (one dwarf on another's shoulders under a long cloak; a half-orc trying to pass as a whole one; an elf improvising some sort of disgusting disguise). The particular strand of barroom bigotry needn't be explained, though it could be. And the prejudice might shift from one visit to the next - to test the players' creativity or simply to torment them.

3. Most of the best freighter pilots can be found here.

That famous smuggler you need? You'll find him at the Underworld Inn when he's in town. This is the place to meet NPCs who need to lie low.

4. Watch your step. 

Bars full of monsters mean brawls full of monsters. This is where all the wandering monsters hang out when they're not wandering. PCs should expect hassle ... 

5. This place can get a little rough.

... and so should NPCs. The PCs might have the opportunity to help out an NPC, thus earning trust or gratitude.

6. Sorry about the mess.

Whatever happens, the patrons and management have seen it all before. Throw a few coins down on the bar, and no one will say anything.

Now, while the dungeon pub is certainly gonzo, it needn't be goofy. The obvious parallel is with a fairy or goblin market (see Christina Rossetti, Jack Vance's Lyonesse and Hellboy 2). The irrationality of the prejudices in 2. above could be played up nicely as a sort of fairy whimsy. 

But what else could we add? Well, if we take the fairy aspect (through a Vance or Susannah Clarke filter, perhaps), we could have a lot of fun with the drinks. So what's on tap?

1. Session ale. 

This is terribly, terribly moreish. After one pint, you'll want another - unless you can make a Luck save (T&T) or a Wisdom save (D&Dish systems). If you fail that, you'll have a penalty on the next save (a higher-level save in T&T), and so on. It costs you money (price to be determined by GM). And when you run out of money, you'll want to trade gear, weapons and armour. It also it temporarily reduces your CON by a point for each pint drunk. When that reaches 0, you pass out for d8 hours. If you make your save, you succumb to a fit of violent retching. The CON points return at a rate of two an hour thereafter as you sober up.

2. Veritas vino

This is delicious. The trouble is, it relaxes you with its rosy glow. You feel so good that you just have to tell anyone you meet what you're doing and why. "We're planning to come back on Seventh Night to go through the Skull Gate - because it isn't guarded then!". Drinkers of this wine tend to attract an audience.

3. Murder mead

It's very tasty, but it makes you violent. Very violent. It achieves this through a weird inversion of reality. If a  drinker fails a CON save (-1 for each pint), he or she will perceive a random stranger in the bar coming up to them and issuing a challenge ("I don't like you", etc.). In fact, though, the drinker will have done precisely that to the stranger. Mayhem often ensues.

4.  Braggart juice

This makes the drinker very convivial but also inclined to boast. I'd leave this one to the player's ingenuity - with XP or cool points for truly epic bragging.

5. Slumber wine

Think Bombur in Mirkwood. Slumber wine is a powerful restorative (recover 1 HP or CON point, depending on system, per goblet), but it isn't meant for mortals. Make successively more challenging saves with each glass or fall into a deep, deep sleep for 6 + d6 hours. While asleep, the  character will occasionally chuckle or smile contentedly.

6. Orc-draught

This is also a restoring drink, but it tastes awful: fiery, astringently herbal and cough-inducing. A CON check is needed to keep it down, but it restores 1 HP/CON point per flagon. Failure to "take your medicine" will attract raucous mirth from nearby orcs. Half-orcs may benefit from the drink without requiring the check. 

7. Legstealer

This is a pleasant-tasting ale. It appears light, and it's cheap. Each pint reduces the drinker's DEX by one point - but it only takes effect when they rise from the table. They will then be hit by the full penalty immediately. Points are recovered at the rate of one an hour thereafter.

8. Sealbreaker

This is refreshing. But make a CON test (with successive penalties) for each pint or feel an urgent need to urinate. Once this starts, it will recur every few minutes - and in all stressful situations - for D4+1 hours.

9. Ruby ale

This is a wholesome drink (recover D4 hit/CON points per session, regardless of how much is drunk), but it reddens the skin remarkably. The effect is cumulative; one flagon makes you look a bit flushed. By the time you've had six, you'll have gone full Hellboy. The effects are (d6): 1-2 measured in hours per pint; 3-4: days per pint; 5: weeks per pint; 6: permanent.

10. Elf-draught

This is erudition in a glass - at the expense of your physique. Each serving takes a point from your ST(R) and adds it to your INT. It's a truly delightful drink, though - you'll need to make an INT save to stop. This gets easier, though, the more you drink. It has no effect on those with elfin blood.

The names of these beverages change with baffling frequency, of course. And there are doubtless many more ... 

Down in the dungeon with Song of Blades and Heroes

I got back into gaming through Ganesha Games' Song of Blades and Heroes, which I bought to play with my kids. Since I gave my son a batch of painted miniatures for his birthday a few years ago, we haven't looked back.

We hadn't played SBH for a few months, but last night, we got a dungeon-based skirmish going. My son laid out a quick dungeon using D&D tiles, and then we identified a couple of areas (a temple and a sorcerous circle) as objectives. We assumed a god's eye view, just to keep things simple, and marked out a few areas for wandering monsters. Then battle commenced.

Wandering monsters are a regular feature of our SBH games, reflecting creatures drawn by the noise of battle or the prospect of carrion. What we usually do is have each player roll a d6 at the end of their turn. If it's a six, a monster turns up. Before each game, we set up a row of six monsters, so when one appears, we roll a d6 and take the appropriate one (rerolling if that monster has already been used). A 'monster' could be a wandering owlbear or a band of goblins or anything else from the deepest recesses of the Cabinet of Shame. They typically attack the nearest player-controlled characters, with the other rolling for them. Each monster (or group: they act as one) rolls activations on three dice; two failures does not end the monsters' turn, as each individual or group is treated separately. The monsters are generally inimical to each other.

This works pretty well - especially with the more spectacular monsters. In the past, we've had some climaxes reminiscent of Harryhausen films in which two monsters fight to the death. In one memorable game, these monsters had killed or driven off all the player-controlled characters, so what began as orcs versus lizardmen ended as griffon versus tyrannosaur.

In last night's game, though, we decided that all the dungeon monsters would be on the same side. As the game progressed, we got through the whole batch: a mindflayer, a demon, a gorgon, an alzabo, a flesh golem and a meriod. As the mindflayer ("brain eater" in the Song of Gold and Darkness book) had the Leader trait, the other monsters benefited from his presence when they were nearby.

In the battle between orcs and snakemen, the orcs eventually prevailed, helped by greater numbers and the presence of two leaders. But it was a close-run thing - and a nice way to dust off a superb ruleset again.

Down in the dungeon - with Whitehack and The Black Hack Second Edition

Although I often run RPGs without miniatures, I find them useful for new players, games with children and - especially - for games with lots of players. The third category often comprises the first two, making miniatures and floorplans especially useful.

Last weekend, I ran two games - the first for first-time players (my colleagues) and the second for my kids and their friends. I used the same scenario: a dungeon-crawl with an intro stolen wholesale from Jack Vance's The Eyes of the Overworld. 

For the first game, we used the second edition of The Black Hack. I loved running this. The player-facing rolls keep everyone involved, and the system's nicely intuitive (basically, everything's a d20 attribute check). I was very impressed with how the new armour system works. The degradation of armour's much easier to track than in the first edition, and gives the players lots of risk/reward decisions to make.

The Whitehack game was a blast too. It remains my favoured version of D&D for campaigns, because it allows a bit more subtlety and because there's a little more parity between players and NPCs. While I love The Black Hacks' dice-burning system for armour, traditional armour class allows you to fiddle around with monsters a bit more. For example, in Whitehack, I occasionally confront the PCs with brass automata who have AC 10 but only a single hit point each. That makes them tricky opponents without being overwhelming, and involves no bookkeeping whatsoever. It might be hard to achieve the same in The Black Hack.

I did, however, import The Black Hack's usage dice into Whitehack. These are very useful for rations,  ammunition and the like. They ensure that resource management and uncertainty remain core parts of the game.

For both weekend sessions, I used hand-drawn floorplans. These are my preferred option for miniature-based RPGs. They're quick to make, they afford much more design freedom than commercial tiles, and they're 'what you see is what you get': if I've drawn a troglodyte hide staked out on the floor of a room, then that's what's there when the PCs enter.

Drawing out the floorplans means that the 'master map' can be very sketchy. I started with a rough scrawl and then drew out a clearer fair copy once the floorplans were finished. The advantage of this approach is that all your effort is visible for the players (and the crudeness of the GM's map makes it almost unintelligible to players should they happen to glimpse it. 

I add 3D terrain where I have it, but I draw it in quickly in case I forget or misplace the scenics:

With ...

... and without

In the second game, we had eight players. The party split up, with two tackling the lower entrance while the rest headed for the orc outpost above. The floorplans were a huge help here, as it was easy to coordinate the action and for the players to visualise (eventually) how the two parts of the complex connected.

Another advantage of floorplans is that they speed things up. It's easy to glance at the table at the end of each turn and work out how far unseen monsters attracted by noise or scent will advanced through the dungeon. And of course it's far faster than drawing out rooms and corridors on a mat as you go. 

Hell ain't a bad place to be

This follows on from the previous post. If the underworld into which your players venture is actually Hell, there are some interesting implications. Humanoid monsters become minor devils - which is often what goblins are in folklore - and encounters with the animate dead require no explanation - because the Underworld is where you go when you die.

I want to expand on that last point. It provides an excellent rationale for encounters with old friends - and old foes too. Think of Odysseus meeting the shade of Agamemnon - or fearing to encounter the head of Medusa. Or think of Dante's encounters with Minos, Cain and the Minotaur, among many others.

That sort of thing is great in a campaign, because recurring elements are really all that makes a campaign better than one-off scenarios. And the return of a long-dead enemy is always going to add spice. That's especially true if the villainous NPC is now a demon rather than merely a shade.

There's a good example somewhere in Michael Moorcock's multiverse books. Yyrkoon, Elric's treacherous cousin, reappears in the Corum saga as a demon (I think his name is spelt Yrkoon this time, but it seemed clear to me when I read it that he was the same entity).

For the GM, this offers up interesting possibilities. It gives you a supernatural means of achieving an arch-foe's return. And, as demonhood is probably not exactly fun, it gives that arch-foe extra motivation to conspire against the PCs. But it also allows the PCs to see that arch-foe consigned to some (literally) hellish task in the underworld. Perhaps the leader of the local usurper's armies is now reduced to marshalling goblins in the upper levels of the underworld. Or maybe that evil sorcerer is now pursuing his goblin-human hybridisation project with a much bigger budget. Or perhaps he's the person that the PCs have to negotiate with to achieve passage to a certain section of the underworld. If they're responsible for consigning him to the netherworld in the first place, that could be especially awkward ...

Dungeons are Hell

I've been doing a bit of genre-fantasy slumming by reading Michael Shea's Nifft the Lean. It's quite the most D&D book I've read - but in a good way; I loathe books that read like, or actually are, write-ups of someone's campaign.

Nifft has much to recommend it. The influence of Jack Vance is clear; Shea's first novel was a Vance-approved follow-up to the Dying Earth sequence. And Shea isn't as good as Vance at the Vancian stuff - all those Wodehousian wizards and disdainful potentates. But Shea's stuff has attractions of its own: principally in its gruesomeness and its monsters.

The book contains four novellas. I'd read one or two of them a few years back, but they repaid rereading. The first and the third both involve descents into the underworld. And this is where it gets really interesting for the RPG-minded. For Shea's underworld is truly hellish:

There were huts with door-curtains of strung teeth still chattering from the denizens' quick hiding. (I alone heard their rank breathing within, and the groans of their tightly muffled victims.) There were ghoulish smithies too, where toad-bodied giants hammered smoking limbs onto struggling souls stretched on anvils, and other shops as well where similar giants with pipes blew screaming dwarves into being from cauldrons of molten flesh. There were rat-men struggling in thickets of tarantula weed, and there were groves of dung-bearing trees with twisted trunks, translucent like gut.

But what a setting for adventure!

Now, I know that the "dungeon as mythic underworld" has been kicking around the internet for many a year. But while Philotomy's musings are wonderful, I think that to confine the mythic nature of the underworld to an absence of infravision, doors that close by themselves and a generally inimical environment is to miss the obvious point about a mythic underworld: it's Hell.

Once you accept that your adventurers are delving into the upper reaches of the Inferno, everything starts to make sense. Of course the place is crawling with the walking dead - it's where you go when you die. And of course there are goblins, hobgoblins and orcs: minor demons who merely hint at the greater dangers of the deeper levels. Elf-hills and dwarf-caverns are almost certainly the upper reaches of the Infernal regions too.

There's plenty of resonance in this. Odysseus adventured in the underworld, as did Heracles. And so did Orpheus and Aeneas and Gilgamesh. Indeed, the descent into the underworld - katabasis - is a staple of heroic narratives.

And best of all, as with Shea's underworlds, no nods to realism are required. Your guides here are Milton and Dante and Giotto, Breughel and Bosch.

"If only we hadn't met in that tavern ..."

Whitehack and The Black Hack

Whitehack's been my go-to RPG for some time now. I use it for regular games with the kids and their friends, for family sessions (my wife can occasionally be persuaded to play) and for occasional games with my old RPG muckers. It's great - sleek and elegant, and with nice, intuitive mechanics. The "roll equal or under" system sits nicely with those of us who were raised on RuneQuest rather than D&D, as does the freedom afforded by the flexible character-class system. I've tweaked it a bit with regard to shields and weapons, and it works very well.

I've heard good things, though, about The Black Hack, another take on old-school D&D. Astonished to find that the rules cost less than two quid on DriveThruRPG, I bought them the other day. And I'm very pleased I did.

So how do the two compare? At the most superficial level, Whitehack is more expensive (and not for sale as a PDF). It's also edited to a professional standard, which The Black Hack isn't. Editing aside, though, both are well written and clear. There's nothing in The Black Hack that's hard to understand, and my quibbles about the editing could be resolved in a quick sweep for run-on sentences and awry punctuation.

But what about the systems? Both use a "roll under" mechanic, and both make extensive use of a character's actual stats - STR, CON, DEX and so on. I love this: it very quickly gives the characters some "shape", and means that a DEX 13 thief is not identical to a DEX 15 one when it comes to fiddly tasks. A reliance on modifiers, rather than raw stats, is a weakness of Dungeon World, another re-imagining of old-school D&D that I like.

Where The Black Hack differs from Whitehack significantly, though, is in its combat system. Where Whitehack has an "attack value" stat modified by STR, The Black Hack uses the STR score itself. DEX is used for dodging and shooting, and INT or WIS for spell-casting. Saving throws are also done on the six stats rather than class-based derivatives.

Some might find this simplistic (while being strong helps in hand-to-hand fighting, surely the best swordsman isn't always the strongest?), but I can see it working just fine on the table. And it's easy to rationalise STR as including "strength-related skills" as well as raw brawn.

Like Dungeon World or Ganesha's Sellswords and Spellslingers skirmish game, The Black Hack has only the players rolling dice. Monster attacks are resolves by attempts to parry or dodge with STR or DEX; failure leads to the players rolling damage against themselves. Stronger monsters (i.e. those with more hit dice) give penalties to the roll. Like Whitehack, the Black Hack compresses a lot of information into the hit-dice number, but it goes further, so that armour, damage, hit points and penalties are all directly derived from a single number.

Spells are a major point of difference between the two games. Whitehack's "miracles" are created by the player through negotiation with the GM during character creation and cost hit points to cast. I like this; it captures the sense found in Tolkien and elsewhere that magic is physically draining (think of Gandalf after his initial encounter with the yet-to-be-revealed Balrog in Moria). The Black Hack has a spell list; a conjurer's chance of casting further spells that day falls with each casting. I like this too: it's got a nice unpredictability about it, so that you can't plan the use of magic too precisely.

The Black Hack also has a modern, dice-based system for encumbrance and supplies, including ammunition. You don't have to worry about counting individual arrows, but you'll know when your quiver's getting light. This is a bit like Dungeon World, I suppose, and a nice abstraction that might work well if imported to Whitehack.

Perhaps the most innovative element of the game is its approach to armour. Whitehack uses ascending armour class (0 is none, 6 is plate), which is clear and intuitive. In The Black Hack, traditional armour class is abandoned; instead, armour and shields act as a bank of "buffer" hit points that must be whittled down before wounds can be inflicted. This is highly abstract, of course, but no more so than hit points themselves. I like it: it means that heavily armoured warriors are more or less invulnerable at the start of a combat but become susceptible to injury the longer it lasts - and the more tired they get. Armour points regenerate after an hour.

It's easy to think of situations where this will strain realism; imagine, for example, two plate-armoured fighters who are just about to deal with the last of their orcish opponents when more orcs reveal themselves and start shooting. By the rules, I think, those fighters would be effectively unarmoured against the arrows if they've used up their armoured points. But of course you can easily rule that armour points renew themselves in such situations (perhaps fresh combatants replenish armour point automatically).

So what are the respective strengths of the systems? I think I'll stick with Whitehack for campaigns. It's a more subtle system, and its less rigid character classes allow for less stereotypical roles in the party. I'm increasingly flexible with the players, so that a Deft character can have a Wise miracle in return for forfeiting his attunement or something similar; a Strong character might forego one of the special fighting abilities in return for a miracle or a sneak-attack specialisation.

But I can see two clear roles for The Black Hack. First, we often play one-off family games on holiday or with visiting friends, and The Black Hack is perfect for that. Character creation is very quick, and the game has a tremendously no-frills approach. The set spells will work much better for occasional players than Whitehack's creative approach, and "time to table" is extremely short.

The other thing I'll be using The Black Hack for is out-and-out dungeon-crawling - games where the excitement comes as much from the rapid dwindling of your hit points as the coherence of the setting.  We've dabbled a bit in Descent, but I increasingly think that looking for the platonic dungeon-crawler board game is a fool's errand. Full-blown role-playing games simply do the job far better, giving you more opportunity for character individualisation and innovative problem-solving. Although The Black Hack is written primarily as a "theatre of the mind" game, with abstracted distances and ranges, it would work tremendously well as a miniature-based tabletop game. I occasionally lay out dungeon tiles for the kids on the premise that their characters have a map of the setting, and then let them work through it, with surprises coming from secret doors, treasure and - of course - inhabitants. The Black Hack looks ideal for that.

There are whispers, too, of demand for a one-off RPG session in my office. The Black Hack might just cater for that too ....