Rules

Rules, rules, rules.  Every game needs some.  The question I find before me is: which rules?  Do I choose a ruleset (B/X aka Moldvay or BECMI aka Mentzer) or do what I did with my previous campaign and choose a basic ruleset and modify it?  Kabuki Kaiser wrote a great post discussing the joys of having a mix-and-match set of rules.  Not having a rules lawyer or a group of munchkins helps a lot, and I'm not sure about the former in my batch.  And how much player input should I use?  Some of my players are very inventive and will spend a lot of time working on a character background.  Some of my players are naturals at going at right angles and manage to create plots and NPCs with their very play.  This is wonderful.  However I also have some players who, if I give them an inch, will try to take a mile, and this is where I run into difficulty.

What will happen if I allow races or classes I'm not sure have a place in my world?  This sandbox world I'm trying to only lightly sketch in, to be filled in by the actions of … the players?  I suppose it's really a question of how much control I want over the world.  My world.  But should it be my world?  Shouldn't it be our world?  Mine and my players'? Isn't my whole point to lay the ground before them as they advance over it, to describe each detail as it becomes relevant?  Isn't it really therefore a group world?  Perhaps I'd best then relinquish my claim to it.

I have a difficult time letting go of my creations.  It's one of the reasons I don't sell my artwork.  I've already created some things for the world.  I've written up some detail on the city of Illi Pesch.  I know what kind of humanoids live in the surrounding area.  I intend for the theme of the campaign to be a dark struggle for survival in the face of increasing incursions by the humanoids and other baddies.  But what if the players turn aside from this entire region and take their adventure somewhere safer?  It's their prerogative to do so.  Am I prepared for the campaign to turn in unexpected directions?  Kinda.

Maybe I'm not ready to run this thing just yet.

Why build dungeons? A rationale

I periodically get nostalgic for old-school style dungeon crawls. The trouble is, I usually get caught up in the rational but annoying thought of, “Well, where did this come from? Why is there a freaking dungeon crawling with monsters and weird random magic here, anyway? How can I make it make sense?” It’s enough to send my creativity scrambling for cover under the couch.

Some may say, “It doesn’t matter why! It’s a game! It’s a dungeon! The player characters want to kill monsters and get rich and famous and powerful!” I don’t wish to cast aspersions on this school of thought, but I have to say that this response worked for me when I was a kid, scrawling out dungeons on cast-off grid paper my father brought home from work. These days I want to have at least one foot in the realm of rationality. Yes, even in a fantasy roleplaying game.

On a whim, I picked up my copy of the Dungeons and Dragons Rule Cyclopedia, a compilation of the rules for Basic D&D. I turned to the section on wizard characters (pg 20) [1]. In talking about high level wizards, the book mentions that such a character typically acquires a tower and may build a dungeon underneath it. Why build a dungeon? Well, to study the creatures that wander into it, of course. To do magical, genetic, or perhaps alchemical research on them. To study their behaviour, and to keep current on the state of the monsters in the world.

There you go. There’s at least a couple reasons to build a dungeon. Of course, the wizard may be (or later go) stark raving mad for some reason or other and start building whacky evil magical stuff in his or her dungeon, but it’s not necessary.

Dungeons are also useful, as one might well imagine, for keeping prisoners. The text mentions that monster-filled dungeons are not popular amongst the local people and the wizard should be prepared for low-level adventurers to come poking about in his dungeon to stop the monsters within from ravaging the countryside. Maybe the wizard doesn’t care about this. “It will be interesting to see how this plays out,” he may think. Or perhaps she’d like to allow the monster population to naturally beef itself up as a result of the weaker individuals being weeded out by the adventurers. High-level wizards were once lowly, low-power characters, too. He might think, “How’re they gonna learn if they don’t have something to pit themselves against?” There are all kinds of responses.

There are other kinds of dungeons, of course. I think other archetypes - the abandoned keep, the haunted tomb, etc. - have their own rationales just in their very concepts. Sometimes you just need a dungeon that’s just a dungeon! Go! Find the monsters and the weird magic and try not to get brutally killed! If you succeed in collecting the Extremely Bizarre and Deadly Thingamajig of Doom you’ll be famous! And I’m sure you won’t mind that missing ear ... or hand ... wait, where are you going?

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1. The dungeon-building rationale is also discussed in the Players’ Handbook in the Companion Set, under the section about high-level magic-users.