My Thirty-Minute Dungeon

Paper and Ink are not my preferred mediums.

 

Today I was intending to run a game, and then I did so. In the period between wanting to run the game and running it there transpired a series of mundane events which delayed my preparation work until only an hour remained. Then one of my players arrived an hour early.

By sequestering myself while the player looked over the rules and checked their email, I made a dungeon in thirty minutes. Instead of starting with a map, or a premise, or anything I could use to run the game, I made a sketch. The image of a sea-spire prison had been knocking around my skull for a while so I started there and tried to work out what would be a good fit. Sea-serpents are harder to draw then lampreys, so I decided to draw one of those instead. The dock was supposed to be stone, but it came out looking more like a pier, so I went with that. The light in the tower was drawn as on, so obviously the players would need to turn it off to drive the sea-thing away. Tiny choices like these added up until what could have been a more paint-by-numbers affair had some flair to it, with the players ripping apart rickety wooden stairs and luring guards into the spawning grounds of the dreaded sea-thing as they fought their way upwards. (The thingalings are incidentally what the spawn of the sea-thing are referred to as.)

Many years ago, I was introduced to the idea that limitations breed creativity. I believe it was by the youtuber Norespawns, who was discussing settlement building in Fallout 4 and 76. Instead of just writing a dungeon out like I would normally, I tried to start in a way that I am not especially familiar or skilled in. My corner-cutting choice to avoid doing a serpent's head led to one of my best monsters in years. (Any monster where I can use the word "Garbage disposal" to describe what it does to NPCs is a good monster indeed.) And while earlier I did say that there was no game use for the drawing itself, I was able to show it to the players to set the mood a little and give them an idea of what they were up against.

If you ever find yourself with only thirty minutes of game prep, then instead of rushing forward headlong I might suggest you sketch something instead. But only if you're not a very good artist.

Perry Miniatures Afghan Tribesmen versus Wargames Atlantic Afghan Warriors

 Long titles are a thing which I enjoy both creating and reading.

In economical terms the Wargames Atlantic Afghans (Pictured right) give you four more units for about 7/8ths of the price of the Perry Miniatures box. However, the Perry box comes with two command sprues, giving you the ability to model your Afghans as drawing a sword, banging a drum, or carrying a flag without the need for any conversion work. Size-wise the Perry miniatures are larger, though this effect is exaggerated by the puddle base they stand upon and the wider-spread legs of the Wargames Atlantic figures. In terms of poses the Perry Miniatures Afghans have closer together legs with better arm posing. Their weapons are closer to their bodies, which makes for better looking models, but this does also make painting more of a chore. In regards to assembly the Perry plastic is harder to work, but with less dramatic mold lines.

The two models were painted in the same manner that I outlined in my earlier post. Either the sculpting or the plastic material of the Perry kit makes it take paint differently than the Wargames Atlantic models, producing what I consider to be a better result in the end. The somewhat larger sculpting of the Perry figure did make the painting easier, though it may look a little odd next to other scales. Luckily my British miniatures are also of Perry make, so things should remain relatively consistent. I am excited to try kitbashing between the two manufacturers, perhaps smoothing out differences across my models.

There was no small amount of dread when trying out the Perry Afghans, as my earlier attempts with the Perry British had proved extremely unsatisfactory. While the British weapons were very delicate to the point of concern the Perry Afghan's sword is only a little flimsy, but definitely more delicate than the Wargames counterpart. The paint scheme I attempted on the British test models also came out quite badly, which made me worried here. It was not the models which made that scheme fail however, but my own lack of practice. Having now painted with sufficient experience at my back, I believe that the Perry Afghan may be my best yet.

And Lo, The Dungeon Breathes

 It is my intention to publish a review of the Perry Afghans soon, as I have come into possession of a box as of late. In the meantime, I will detail an idea I had one night. I do not wish to claim it as my own, it has the feeling of something half-remembered from someone else's mind. I will edit this post if ever I should find out where it originated.

John Laporte - Night - River Landscape with a Ruined Abbey

The classic conception of how a hexcrawl should start is that of the town, the wilderness hex, and the dungeon. The party starts by hearing a rumour in the town and getting a quest hook if one is needed, they travel through the wilderness and have an encounter or two, and then reach the dungeon. That starting dungeon could be a Megadungeon which takes the focus of the entire game, or it could be a five-room affair meant for a single session.

Caspar David Friedrich - Ruinen in der Abenddämmerung

But what if it was both?

Calendar play is something I have not experimented too much with in my games. They exist either in a state of temporal limbo or take place across a fairly narrow timeframe, a season at most. Nonetheless I find myself very interested in how a set schedule of events can affect player engagement and immersion. Imagining a party taking a shortcut to get their treasures to town before the end of a fair, or stranding themselves during winter in inhospitable terrain, or even just having to give their hirelings Sundays off is very tantalizing, if only I could be bothered to write up a premade calendar for my games.

One interaction of calendar gameplay I have been toying with is the breathing dungeon. Imagine a game which starts around the summer solstice in some far-off village. The peasants all stream out of their homes with lanterns at sunset, making it to a hilltop outside the settlement shortly before midnight. The wooded hill is shaded by ancient trees, and at the very peak is a stone-paved circle and several low crumbled walls. The people eat and drink and sing the old songs they don't sing anywhere else. Maybe they make costumes or wear masks, maybe even the woodsfolk show up, calling off their ancient feud with the charcoal-burners for a night. Perhaps a wickerman is burnt, but only a small one. Then, between the fireflies and the warm summer breezes, they filter back down to resume their lives and forget their midsummer fugue.

Midsummer Eve Bonfires by Nikolai Astrup

The next night, or the night before, the players explore the hilltop. Maybe they wander briefly down a staircase hidden amongst the roots of the great trees and trade riddles with the woodsfolk. Perhaps they drive off a few cheerfully drunk bandits from that same hilltop. The players have had their fun and so they go on to bigger and better things. There are other strange places in the region to explore and they do so. The weather gets colder, the dungeon begins to grow.

David Friedrich - Winter – Night – Old Age and Death

One day in Autumn the players find themselves at the hill again. Except this time the walls seem taller, and they reach down from the top of the hill to the bottom. What once seemed like a ruined little shrine now looks more like a fallen Abbey or a decrepit fort. The tunnels beneath travel further too, and the woodsfolk have left for places unknown. This time they might face goblins and ghosts, and if there are bandits they will carry grimaces and guns.

Franz Ludwig Catel - Das Kolosseum in einer Mondnacht

By the eve of Winter the dungeon has grown beyond titles such as "castle" or "temple." It reaches to the very edges of the village, where their wooden palisade now butts up against crumbling walls of giant stone bricks. The facade of purpose has been cast off by the thing, chambers connect more like the veins in a body than rooms in a building. It is inhabited by devils now, and on the coldest day of the year even worse things from above may twist their way down, able to briefly thrive in a climate closer to their frozen homeworld. The village is either abandoned or locked tightly now as they wait for a hero, or amoral group of mercenaries, to save them.

Jacob Grimmer (attr) Ruine in Waldlandschaft

The dungeon does not contract all at once. Without the meddling of the players it will shrink again, but only after it has taken a great toll from the locals. Even with their assistance the structure does not disappear overnight. Spring is the time for the players to explore the dungeon in a more relaxed sense as the woodsfolk begin to re-emerge and a few devils linger, while new bandits enter the region. Every few days another room is reclaimed by the roots of the great trees and another stone wall sinks into the earth. The villagers begin to prepare their masks and wicker men.

Roelant Savery - Landscape with animals and ruins

I do not believe it is an especially revolutionary idea to have a dungeon change with each visit, but I do like the idea of it changing drastically in both size and inhabitants, and doing so according to a seasonal pattern. In Summer it is a festival event and faction interaction location, in Fall it is a smaller dungeon, in Winter a larger one, and then Spring provides a chance to come back after healing up to check out any last chambers. Having it be something the villagers aren't only afraid of is an interesting twist too, I think. I would not go so far as to say they worship the thing, but revering a dungeon instead of what lives within does throw the concept on its head a little. The trick to making this an enjoyable tidbit rather than a mandatory gameplay timer is definitely giving the players plenty of other things to do in the meantime. This dungeon works best as a unique regional thing rather than something to be emulated by every other hole in the ground.

Mostly I just like the image of the thing.

Lluís Rigalt - Night Landscape with Ruined Monastery

The Littoral Conundrum

Work on the previous model and the Afghans continues unabated.

In the meantime, I find myself thinking on the matter of hexmaps and littoral zones.

I do not know quite what I intended when I added the colour gradient onto the water of this map. I believe I was copying the sailing rules from the old Birthright setting.

There is a significant problem with this approach. While the Birthright map uses non-hex zones of varying size, my maps do not. This introduces problems. In most hexcrawling games with sailing rules like ACKS there are two locational sailing states, one for navigating with sightlines to land, and one for navigating without sightlines to land. In theory this would mean I only need two colours on the hexmap, but this is not the case. Why? Because horizon sightlines on a ship can vary greatly. One ship without a crow's nest might have the typical 3-mile horizon line, but a fully-rigged galleon might have a sightline over four times that number. In Birthright this distance can be abstracted to a range through non-hex zones, but not in my maps.

Credit to Howard Pyle for the image.

For the moment I believe I have settled on the hexes representing encounter zones. The first hex represents encounters happening on the shore, like someone watching you, and littoral encounters like fishermen. The second grouping of hexes represents rich areas of the sea like coral reefs, and the third area represents open ocean where marine life is scarcer. Due to the way continental shelves and reefs work this means the middle zone should be extended on future maps.

As a bonus, here is the fog-of-war technique our group has been using during games. It was previously accomplished on Google Jamboard, but with the shuttering of that service a new program will have to be found. The map only displays hex features which are highly visible, like the fortified town in the picture. The radius of the magnifying glass can be adjusted to represent shrinking or growing visibility based on vantage points and terrain conditions. My hope is to one day create a physical equivalent, even if it starts out as a large sheet of paper with a hole in the middle and a camera iris glued on top of it.