Sessions Three and Four: The Barrow Crypt of Hafgrim Bloodslakir

 We managed to squeeze in two game sessions during the holidays, during which the characters arrived in the town of Vermisport, two days west of Avarice, after winning a map of the tomb of the notorious Urgoth warlord, Hafgrim Bloodslakir.  As the players were keen to avoid the wrath of the cultists of Atlach-Nacha in Avarice, an extended vacation seemed in order.

While in Vermisport, the party established themselves at the Dragonfire Inn, owned by the dwarven innkeeper, Drungard Aleson, who is inordinately fond of his own brew, Dragonfire Ale ("burns going down, burns coming out") and never passes up an opportunity to drink with his guests - whether they invite him or not.  Of the party, only the doughty dwarf, Hrothgar the Red, was brave enough to quaff Dragonfire Ale with their host; the others stuck to gentler libations.

In preparation of exploring the Barrow Hills north of town, the party stocked up on supplies at the local outfitter: Madam Marigold's Muffins & Sundries (free muffin with every purchase!).  Marigold, a matronly hobb, expressed an interest in purchasing any artifacts or curios recovered from the barrows, and also offered to sell the party a map of the tomb of Hafgrim Bloodslakir - an exact duplicate of the map Kragar the rogue had won back in Avarice.  Rather than a rare, one-of-a-kind treasure, the map was a scheme concocted by the Vermisport JCs to promote adventure tourism in the economically depressed town.  The mayor and local shop owners felt that a steady stream of adventurers spending their loot in town was a business opportunity too good to pass up, and if one of them happened to put down the wight that had been haunting the Barrow Hills for years, all the better!

After hiking into the hills, and exploring a few of the lesser barrows, the party finally came upon the one they sought: the crypt of Hafrim Bloodslakir.  At the first intersection after entering the barrow, they found another party of adventurers buried beneath the rubble of a pitfall trap.  As these adventurers were all dead there was only one thing to do: go through their pockets and look for loose change.  In addition to loose change, one of the corpses also had one of the copies of the barrow map.  Thus forewarned that the crypt contained deadly traps, the party became even more paranoid than usual, afraid to put a foot down lest they trigger some unpleasant surprise.

After thoroughly exploring and looting the crypt, the players confronted the final room in the northeast corner of the map, which they correctly believed to be the resting place of the wight.  They ignored the four alcoves on the north an south walls of the antechamber, and went straight to the room farthest east where the wight awaited them.  This was a wise choice, for had they opened any of the alcove doors all four would have swung open, dropping a portcullis at the entrance of the chamber, and releasing the zombies within, so they would have those to contend with as well as the wight.  As it was Bloodslakir, by himself proved to be a challenge, though he was eventually defeated without serious harm to the party.  Bloodslakir's treasure, a chest full of rubies was protected by a poison needle trap, which Kragar was clever enough to discover without being stuck by it and killed.

Their mission accomplished, the party returned to Vermisport to celebrate and lay plans to explore the ruins of the abandoned wizard's tower north of the old graveyard.

Monster Monday: Boozehounds

 I introduced boozehounds to my game a couple of sessions back, and the players got a kick out of them.  They suit the whimsical nature of Tunnels & Trolls, and the notion that players should at least be chuckling as their beloved characters are torn apart.

Boozehounds have an insatiable lust for alcohol.  They can smell it at great distances and will track it relentlessly once they've gotten a whiff.  A typical boozehound has a monster rating of 30, but for each round that they spend drinking booze, their MR increases by 10, to a maximum of twice their starting MR.  For old-school D&D style games, they have a typical hit dice of 2-3, and a 1d6 bite, but their HD increases by 1 each round they spend drinking, to a maximum of twice their starting HD.

The drunker they get, the nastier they become, so it's best not to let them get a snoot full!

Session Two: Redjack's Roadhouse

 The characters began this session the following day, nursing their hangovers at The Slippery Vixen while discussing whether to follow up on the treasure map that Kragar had won at the gaming table the night before.  They had just settled on an expedition to the Barrow Hills after suitable preparations had been made, when one of the tavern regulars announced that the body of Abdul Farouk (the fence to whom Kragar had sold the group's stolen gems the night before) had just been finished out of the nearby canal, showing signs of torture.  With this fresh intelligence, the characters decided that planning for expeditions was over-rated and that an immediate departure was just the thing.

They departed within the hour, catching a boat to Ferryton, on the mainland, where they booked passage with a supply carriage to Vermisport the following morning.  They spent a nervous night at the Ferryton Inn, with Kragar perched on the inn's roof all night keeping watch for spider cultists.  The night was uneventful, and they departed as planned shortly after dawn.

They arrived that night at Redjack's Roadhouse, the halfway house between Avarice and Vermisport on the Old Coast Road.

While socializing over supper and drinks, the players met Balzac Brightson, a mercenary, whom they hired to accompany them on their expedition in exchange for a 10% cut of the treasure.  At this point the session was cut short due to a player with food poisoning who could no longer continue.  With luck in the upcoming session the players will make it to Vermisport and commence their exploration of the tomb of Halfgrim Bloodslakir.

Game On!

 My long spell of gaming drought has ended, and I've finally launched my new Tunnels & Trolls campaign that I've been planning for ages, but haven't been able to get off the ground until now.  It's been a pretty stressful year for me; back in the fall of 2020 I found out that my prostate cancer had become aggressive and I needed surgery as soon as possible.  Unfortunately the pandemic had other plans, and cancer surgeries were cancelled as nurses were reassigned to Covid wards.  I waited for nearly a year, stressed out and wondering if the cancer was spreading and becoming inoperable.  I finally got my surgery at the end of August, and just in the nick of time: the cancer had spread to nearby lymph nodes (which were removed for good measure), and was impinging on my bladder wall.  This latter will still need monitoring, but for the moment I appear to be cancer free.  Just as I recovered from that surgery I was back in the hospital a few weeks ago for emergency gall bladder surgery.  Now I'm on the mend from that, and barring any more organs that need removing, my health care woes are behind me, and I can finally look to the future.

And thus it was that I finally was able to return to the virtual game table last week to kick off a new sword & sorcery campaign!  I'm using my favourite 5th edition (1979) rules, with some elaborations from the Deluxe edition (2015).  The game is set on Ken St. Andre's Trollworld, but on a continent of my own design, Pentamer, the starfish continent, located on the far side of the world:

The campaign is set in the city state of Avarice, on the south coast.  There is as yet very little detail on the map of the continent.  I'll be filling in details as needed, and as the players explore their world.

The first session began with the PCs, Hrothgar, a dwarven warrior; Kragar, a vartae rogue, and Fenix, a vartae wizard carousing at their favourite tavern, The Slippery Vixen in the Flotsam district of Avarice.  Rumour going around the tavern was that the temple of the spider god had a brand new idol of Atlach-Nacha sculpted with huge rubies for eyes.  Our intrepid ne'er-do-wells decided that those rubies would be much better off in their hands than in those of a bunch of spider cultists, and so without further planning set off for the temple district to liberate them.

The caper initially went off without a hitch; temple guard patrols were quickly dispatched and the gems were pried out of their sockets.  Then the characters decided to explore the temple and see if there was anything else worth stealing, and walked into the quarters of half a dozen temple initiates.  Hrothgar was confident that he could tank the damage from a handful of dagger-wielding fanatics, but then an acolyte from the adjoining room cast Oh Go Away on him, and Hrothgar fled the battle, leaving the rogue and wizard feeling very much like Julius Caesar on the senate floor.  Fenix was able to kill the acolyte with a timely casting of Take That, You Fiend, but then the mob fell upon them, daggers plunging, and Kragar, and Fenix soon passed out from blood lost.  When Hrothgar was finally able to master his fear, he returned to the battle to stand alone against the mob.  He eventually cut them down but was, himself, very low on Con at that point.  He was able to stabilize his comrades and they decided to quit the temple while they were still alive.  Fenix cast a Lock Tight spell on the temple doors after they exited, to delay any pursuit, and then made their way home, rubies in hand.

Kragar took the gems to Abdul Farouk, a reliable fence, who took them off his hands for 800 gp, much of which the characters blew on a well-deserved carouse at The Slippery Vixen.  At the gaming tables, Kragar won a treasure map detailing the tomb of Halfgrim Bloodslakir, located in the Barrow Hills, just north of the town of Vermisport, two days west of Avarice along the Old Coast Road, and plans for the next money-making venture were laid...

Whence the Labyrinth?

Dungeons are probably the most common adventure locale in role playing games; they were the cornerstone of every adventure in the early days, and remain popular today.  Sprawling expansive underground complexes filled with terrifying monsters and fabulous treasures exert a powerful draw upon our imaginations, and a call to adventure that is impossible to ignore.  Dungeons often serve not just as the locale for an adventure, but for the entire campaign, with huge mega-dungeon complexes taking novice characters to the giddy heights of power, as they delve ever further into its depths.

But where do these ubiquitous underground complexes come from?  This is a question that has plagued many of us, I'm sure.  I recall debating this topic ad nauseam with my friends back in high school, railing against the absurdity that such huge underground complexes could reasonably exist, and straining to provide credible rationale for them.  Indeed, this need for rationalization has caused many gamers to eschew dungeons altogether.

Another school of thought is that dungeons represent the mythic underworld, which requires no rationale, and follows its own rules and logic.  This very old-school view hearkens back to the earliest days of the hobby.  This mindset is explained in a thorough essay by Jason Cone in Philotomy's Musings, and is summed up nicely in this post by DM David: The Dungeon Comes Alive in the Mythic Underworld.  The beauty of dungeons as mythic underworld is that it does away with any need to rationalize them: they just are.

I really like the notion of the Mythic Underworld, but I'm the kind of guy who prefers a naturalistic explanation for things; not out of  a pedantic need to rationalize everything, but because doing so adds to the constructed history and culture of my game world, and it helps to fuel my imagination and come up with exciting adventure ideas.  It's easy to come up with a logical explanation for a single dungeon, but how do you account for the large numbers of such complexes that dot the landscape and support the cottage industry of adventuring parties upon which most fantasy roleplaying games are predicated?

One answer lies in early twentieth century history, because it turns out that mega-dungeon complexes are real and not as laborious or time-consuming to construct as my teenage self used to believe.  Ever since the hundredth anniversary of the armistice last year, I've been reading about the history of the 1st World War, focusing most of my reading on the western front with its trenches extending from the North Sea to the Swiss border.  Pierre Berton, in his book, Vimy describes in great detail, the underground network that housed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, including a map illustrating passage ways connecting officer's quarters, kitchens, sleeping quarters that looks exactly like every dungeon map I've ever seen.

The bedrock throughout much of France is composed of chalk, and the trenches, dugouts, and holding areas incorporate huge natural karst caverns into their labyrinthine networks, which extended tens of meters below ground.  Because the bedrock is so soft it was easy to dig the tunnel networks, and sappers dug mines and listening posts into no-man's land using nothing more than vinegar and bayonets.  Many of the caverns housed 500 men or more apiece, and Berton claimed that it was possible to walk 10 km from the Canadian trenches at Vimy to the Spanish trenches at Arras without ever seeing the light of day.  These complexes were, in effect, vast underground cities, and the Canadian complex at Vimy housed a population greater than any city in Canada at that time, barring Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg.  These tunnel networks were so vast that soldiers often got lost in them, so that specialist guides were designated to escort units to where they needed to go.  So by any account the underground complexes supporting the trenches of the western front are bigger by far than any fantasy mega-dungeon I've ever seen.

Entrance to a German dugout (creepy clown with free balloons not included)

So how do I incorporate the dungeon complexes of the 1st World War into a fantasy setting?  Trench warfare was a response to the devastating might of modern artillery and the advent of the machine gun, which made the infantry lines and cavalry charges of the 19th century obsolete - a fact that escaped many old generals in the early days of the war.

In a fantasy milieu artillery is called wizards, at least in campaigns where wizards are common enough to be included in the ranks of the army.  TFT is just such a game; wizards are so commonplace that seven of the sixteen listed wizarding occupations on the jobs table are with army or mercenary units, so clearly battles on Cidri are waged with wizards on both sides of the conflict, a situation similar to that depicted in Steven Erikson's fantasy series, Malazan Book of the Fallen (probably not coincidental, as the series was based on the author's GURPS campaign).  Parallel evolution suggests that since mages of Cidri are analogous to artillery on the western front of Europe, similar defensive networks would be built to protect soldiers from near certain death on the open ground.

This inspires lots of cool ideas for a campaign set in the aftermath of a great war.  Perhaps an invading empire laid siege to fortresses along the borderlands of its neighbors as it slowly advanced.  One by one keeps and castles fell to the besieging army that entrenched itself around the defenders, sappers extending tunnels to breach the defenses, defenders digging counter mines. The aftermath of each siege leaves behind a dungeon complex radiating from the hub of a ruined castle upon a field littered with the dead and saturated with magic.  What treasures and artifacts lay forgotten in the ruins?  How many thousands of dead men lie where they fell in the killing ground?  What manner of vermin have grown large gorging themselves on rotting corpses, and warped by magic?  Imagine the number of such dungeons that would lie in the wake of such a war.  Perhaps a necromancer has laid claim to one such castle drawn by the huge number of corpses upon which to practice his art.  Such places also make excellent refuges for bandits, orcs, goblins and other unsavory creatures that come to inhabit the ruins.

I also like the idea of injecting a bit of the 'mythic underworld' into this setting.  Might not such sites of mass killing and magical maelstrom leave an indelible imprint, perhaps tainting the land with the touch of Chaos?  The dead might rise of their own accord, animated by pockets of magic that linger and drift like clouds of chaos through the area, and the dungeons themselves might become semi sentient, like haunted houses, hungry to claim more souls upon which to glut themselves.

So this naturalistic rationale has given me lots of ideas for adventures, as well as provided an historical backbone upon which to build the campaign.  A land littered with dungeons - artifacts of the last great war.  They present a persistent threat to the surrounding countryside, as well as a source of riches that reward those brave enough to dare explore them.  This is why I like to have a logical explanation for dungeons in my game - such rationales help me to build an internally consistent world, and fuel my imagination.  To quote Ray Bradbury on story ideas: "I'll never starve here."

Constructing a World: speculations on the nature of Cidri

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the nature of TFT's default game world, Cidri.  For those unfamiliar with TFT, Cidri is a huge artificial world constructed by an enigmatic people called the Mnoren, and populated with creatures from various worlds and dimensions.  The details of Cidri are deliberately vague; it is meant to be a shared game world at least thousands of Earths in size.  Big enough for every game master to locate his or her home-brewed setting there without overlapping or contradicting the settings of other game masters.  It's a world big enough to contain everyone's various campaigns.

Cidri is a pretty cool idea.  It's a non-setting setting; a place so lacking in details that nearly anyone's game can take place there.  And as far as shared worlds go it appeals to me more than others because I'm the kind of guy who likes to design his own worlds.  I've never much cared for playing in other people's sandboxes, be they published game settings such as  Greyhawk, or The Forgotten Realms, or fantasy locales from literature, such as Middle Earth, or Westeros.  What I love most about being a game master is creating my own settings, and it's really attractive to be able to do that while still having my campaign set on the same world as everyone else's.

So what would Cidri actually look like as an artificially constructed world that is at least thousands of times bigger than Earth, if not more?  This is an important consideration, because the nature of the world will determine it's what the world is like, the length of its days and years, the environment - everything.  It's easy to imagine Cidri as just a really, really big planet.  But is it?  Is that even practical?

Consider the mass and amount of material required to build a solid sphere the size of Cidri.  Jupiter, the largest planet in our system, is 1,300 times larger than Earth and has a mass of 1.898 x 10^27 kg.  That's a lot of mass, but Jupiter is a jovian planet and is composed mostly of gas and liquid.  Cidri is a terrestrial planet composed of siliciclastics and metal, so it will be much heavier.  If Jupiter were terrestrial its mass would be about 1,300 hundred times that of Earth, so about 7.763 x 10^27 kg.  And since Cidri is said to be thousands of times larger than Earth, it's probably even bigger than Jupiter.  Say at least twice as large, and maybe even larger.

That much material would strain the resources of even the fantastically advanced Mnoren architects, and it isn't really necessary or economical for Cidri to be a solid sphere.

A more practical structure for an artificial world would be a Dyson strip, such as Larry Niven described in his 1970 science fiction classic, Ringworld.  It is based on a Dyson sphere, which was a thought experiment proposed by physicist, Freeman Dyson; a sphere built around the sun to capture 100% of its energy.  Dyson never intended his sphere to be a habitable structure, but the idea of it being so is compelling.  Niven made his fictional world a ring because the angular momentum of a sphere's rotation would generate gravity only around the equator, so there's no point in building anything wider than a narrow strip, if people are to inhabit the inner surface.

Let's imagine a Dyson strip with a radius of 1 astronomical unit (the distance from the Earth to the Sun), and a width of 1 million km.  A ring this size would have a surface area of 9.4 x 10^14 square kilometers.  Earth's surface area is 510 million square kilometers, so our Dyson strip has a surface area that is 1.84 million times greater than Earth's.  If we build 500 km high walls around the perimeter of the ring, they will contain the world's atmosphere thanks to the gravity generated by the ring's rotation.  If a second ring of linked strips were built with a faster period of rotation we would have hours of light and darkness to simulate day and night.

What's that you say?  A world with only 1.84 million times more surface area than Earth simply isn't big enough for your needs?  Very well, let's consider a full-blown Dyson sphere.

A sphere around the sun with the same 1 AU radius would have a surface area of 2.81 x 10^17 square kilometers (550 million times more surface area than Earth).  In this case though, we'd need some sort of artificial gravity generator since any gravity resulting from the rotation of the sphere would pool at the equator.  Also there would be no simple way to create day/night cycles as we can with a ring, so it would perpetually be high noon on this world, and there would be no way to tell time or to navigate.

But what if the inner surface of a Dyson sphere still isn't big enough?  What if you want the world to be really roomy.  How about we build the sphere around one of the stars in a binary system and construct gravity generators in the middle of the crust so that gravity is exerted on both the inner and out surfaces of the sphere?  Now we have a world very similar to Pellucidar of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Hollow World series, but on a much more massive scale.  Both the inner and outer surfaces of the world would be habitable, each heated and lit by its own star.  The combined surface area of the two surfaces would be 5.62 x 10^17 square kilometers (1.1 billion times the surface area of Earth).

Does an artificial sphere really need to be this ridiculously big?  Couldn't the Mnoren simply build a Jupiter-sized sphere that behaves like a normal planet?  They could, but there would be some problems with this model.  The first is that because there is no solid core, the crust would need gravity generators to prevent everyone from floating off towards the sun, and these need some source of power.  The second is that there would be no plate tectonics on such a world, and hence no way to recirculate carbon.  In a normal system atmospheric carbon dioxide is dissolved in rain water and precipitated as weak carbonic acid, which eventually makes its way to the oceans.  Oceanic carbon is precipitated as calcium carbonate and sequestered as limestone on the sea floor.  Eventually tectonic activity subducts one plate underneath another, causing it to melt and release gaseous carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.  Without this cycle the world's atmosphere would eventually become too thin to support life.  This is exactly what happened on Mars.  Originally Mars had an atmosphere much like Earth's, but because it is a smaller planet and further from the sun, its core cooled off quickly and plate tectonics ceased.  The carbon dioxide in Mars' atmosphere was slowly drained away, and is sequestered below ground with no way to reintroduce it to the atmosphere.  So in order for life to be sustainable on a sphere or ring world it would need mechanisms to regulate the carbon cycle.  These would also require a lot of power, as would the undoubtedly large number of other machines needed to maintain the environment of an artificial world.  The beauty of the Dyson sphere or strip is that they can function as Freeman Dyson originally intended: as super efficient collectors of solar energy.  The diurnal shade strips of a ring world could have giant solar panels on the sunward side; all that would be needed is a way to transmit the energy to the world's surface.  Similarly, a portion of the surface of a Dyson sphere could be dedicated to energy collection, and would received enough to meet all the the energy needs that world would ever require.

So the artificial world of Cidri is unimaginably huge because it needs to be.  A sphere or ring built around the sun is the best way to obtain the massive amounts of energy required to sustain the world's life support systems.  Whether Cidri is a ring or a sphere isn't really important; either one offers infinite adventure, and far more territory than any adventurers will ever be able to explore.  Constructing such a world is a big undertaking, but surely not beyond a people who possess the technological advancements of the entire multiverse.

Paint the Town Red! A Fantasy Tripper's Guide to Carousing

Who doesn't like a good drunken bacchanal?  Carousing is an intrinsic element of the sword & sorcery genre, and no mishap can befall our favourite Cimmerian that can't be put right with a flagon of wine and a winsome wench.  TFT even has a Carousing talent, so let's tap that keg and get the party started!

The most obvious benefit of the Carousing talent is a +1 bonus to reaction rolls in taverns.  This can be used for everything from securing companionship for the night, to talking your way out of a bar fight.  It could also be used as a +1 bonus to IQ on contested rolls when gambling, or as a +1 bonus to DX to cheat at gambling (slipping an ace out of your sleeve or surreptitiously producing your 'lucky' dice).  It could even provide a +1 bonus to initiative in bar fights that you were unable or uninterested in talking your way out of.  Carousing can also play a role in how characters gain at least some of their experience points.

There are many different ways of awarding experience points to characters in role playing games.  Awards are often made for killing monsters, or for completing quests, or, as in old school D&D, for acquiring treasure. How we choose to award experience dictates what the game, or your campaign, is all about, and it guides the behaviour and actions of the players.  If the bulk of the experience is awarded for the successful completion of quests, then players are going to be very mission-oriented.  If experience is largely awarded for killing monsters, then the players will sweep through dungeons like angels of death, exterminating everything in their path in the service of character advancement.

TFT's role playing rules, In the Labyrinth, present a rough guideline for awarding experience that is purposely vague to allow GMs to tailor experience awards to suit their own campaigns.  In general, the bulk of the experience comes as a group award at the end of each play session, while individuals can earn small bonus awards for skillful or amusing play.

Personally, I'm not fond of ad hoc experience awards, as it may put too much pressure on players to stand out.  Players contribute to the game in different ways, and while it's easy to single out dominant players or ones who are especially clever and funny, the contributions of quieter, introverted players may go unnoticed.  Sure, GMs can use ad hoc experience awards to reward the less obvious contributions of quiet players, but that puts the onus on the game master to be constantly looking for opportunities to make experience awards, and some game masters might be okay with that, but I feel I have enough on my plate just running the adventure.  I'm also not entirely fond of arbitrary group awards.  There's certainly nothing wrong with this method, but I prefer having a yardstick to measure the group's success each session rather than just spit-balling a group award, and for that I like to use treasure.

By linking experience to treasure I'm letting the players know how they should be tackling the adventures.  As anyone who has played it can attest, combat in TFT is deadly - more so than in most rpgs - and by awarding XP for treasure you let the players know that the only really important thing is coming home with the swag, no matter how they obtained it.  So they're free to explore alternative avenues of wealth acquisition that doesn't necessarily force them through the gauntlet of combat.  If they can use cunning or stealth to obtain a treasure horde, that's just as good as fighting their way through - better, actually, since they're more likely to make it out alive.  It also influences the types of characters that players make.  In my campaign you're going to see a lot of self-interested characters cut from the same mold as Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Han Solo, or Snake Plissken, and far fewer inspired by the likes of Sir Lancelot or Prince Valiant.  Sure, characters in my games will still end up saving the world, but more due to circumstance than design, and because it's where they keep all their stuff.

Of course one problem common to all fantasy rpgs is how to keep characters motivated once they have accumulated more treasure than they can ever possibly spend.  There's only so much stuff you can buy, and a lot of campaigns end up foundering when characters are swimming in money and magic items.  The challenge is to keep them hungry, and I do this by awarding XP not for treasure found, but for treasure squandered.  You ever notice that no matter how big a score pulled in by pulp sword & sorcery heroes of fiction, they're always flat-broke at the beginning of the next story?  The reason they're always broke is that they blow their score on women, booze, and gambling.

The idea of exchanging treasure for XP by carousing came from a post Jeff Rients wrote over on Jeff's Gameblog back in 2008.  It's a brilliant notion, and it inspired me to create my own carousing table, which I've been using in my home-brewed system ever since, and now I'm adapting it to TFT.

Carousing Tables

Characters may carouse at the end of each session that ends in a town or city where they can squander large sums of money and stir up trouble.  Carousing characters choose how much money they wish to spend, subject to the upper limit of their locale.  Gain 5 experience points for every $100 spent on revelry, and roll on the results table corresponding to the amount spent.  A character may spend any amount of silver they wish up to the maximum amount for size of the town or city they are in; after all, there’s only so much trouble you can get into in a small town with only one tavern, whereas a city-state offers far greater opportunities for debauchery.

Town or Keep: $300 max       Small City: $600 max      Large City: $1,000 max


Revels (Up to $300)          Boisterous Carouse ($301 - $600)    Drink the City Dry ($601 - $1,000)

1. Accused of Cheating     2.     Brutal hangover                            3.  Blackout
2. My shirt too?                 3.     Accused of cheating                     4.  I was just looking for a good time
3. Cut your losses              4.     My shirt too?                                 5.  Apparently you had a VERY good time
4. Who are you?                5-6.  Tattoo                                             6.  Brutal hangover
5. Interesting rumour       7-8.  Cut your losses                             7.  Give mortal offense
6. Win an item                    9.     Who are you?                               8.  My shirt too?
                                              10.    Your new best friend                  9-10.  What fresh Hell is this?
                                              11.     Win an item                                 11-12. Drunken vow
                                              12.    Tyche's favour                              13. Cut your losses
                                                                                                               14.  Who are you?
                                                                                                               15.  Your new best friend
                                                                                                               16. Tattoo
                                                                                                               17.  Win an item
                                                                                                               18.  Tyche's favour

Accused of cheating. Rightly or wrongly, you have been accused of cheating at dice or cards.  You: 1-3) get into a brawl, trash the establishment, and get banned from the premises; 4) are beaten and robbed by your accuser and his/her friends; 5) make an enemy; 6) get arrested.

Apparently you had a VERY good time. You have been arrested and charged with: 1) vandalism; 2) public debauchery; 3) theft; 4) assault; 5) grave robbing; 6) murder.

Blackout. You have no recollection of your bacchanal, but you wake up missing: 1) d% of all your money; 2) your armour; 3) your main weapon; 4) a miscellaneous item or spell book;  5) your clothes; 6) several important teeth.  Gain no XP from your revelry.

Brutal hangover. You’re afraid you might die, and even more afraid you won’t.  Suffer a -2 penalty on all ability checks the next day.

Cut your losses. You've spent your limit, and it's time to quit while the quitting's good.

Give mortal offence. You have gravely offended: 1) an influential priest; 2) a powerful sorcerer; 3) a captain of the guard; 4) a scion of a noble house; 5) a wealthy merchant; 6) a bureaucrat of the court.

Drunken vow. You’ve made an oath before the gods and they intend to hold you to it.  You are now under a Geis.

I was just looking for a good time! You wake up naked in: 1) a public garden; 2) a temple; 3) jail; 4) a nobleman’s harem; 5) an opium den; 6) deep trouble, bound to a sacrificial altar.

Interesting rumour. You overhear some juicy and potentially lucrative gossip.

My shirt, too? You suffer a run of bad luck, lose double your money.  If you don't have enough money to cover your losses, you will need to make arrangements for payment or expect a visit from hired goons.

What fresh Hell is this?  You are awakened by 1) painful sores on your nether region (get thee to a physicker!); 2) your new spouse; 3) your bed mate's angry husband, who demands satisfaction in the arena; 4) a summons to Thorsz's court; 5) a prophetic dream of imminent peril; 6) the galley slave with whom you now share an oar.

Who are you?. You wake up the next morning with: 1) the goats in an animal pen, and a reputation that's difficult to dispel; 2) the innkeeper's son or daughter; 3) the spouse of a powerful noble; 4) a slave whom you now seem to own; 5) an impatient prostitute demanding payment; 6) Thorsz's favourite concubine.

Tattoo. You get inked.  Your tattoo is: 1-3) bad-ass (owning player chooses what and where); 4) Lame and embarrassing (player to your left chooses what and where); 5) The name of the person with whom you spent the night - a proclamation undying love; 6) a spell, ritual, or ancient prophecy in arcane script.

Tyche’s favour. Luck is your mistress.  You: 1-4) win your money back; 5) win your money back plus 1d6 x $10; 6) win back double your money and make a dangerous enemy.

Win an item. Due to your luck at the gaming table you have come into possession of 1) a weapon; 2) a valuable gem; 3) jewelry; 4) a scroll; 5) a treasure map; 6) a religious relic.

Your new best friend. During your night of drunken revelry, you swore undying friendship to one of the following, and have become entangled in their sordid affairs: 1) the scion of a noble house; 2) a revolutionary; 3) a guild thief; 4) a priest of a proscribed religion; 5) a barbarian vagabond; 6) a wanted felon.

Of course it goes without saying that no one should feel beholden to the randomly rolled result if it is deemed to be inappropriate to the circumstances or preferences of the group; feel free to use the results for inspiration or make up something else altogether.  These are meant to be fun and to serve as a springboard for character sub-plots or even the focus of the next session's adventure.  I found that the end-of-session carousing was often one of the most popular activities with my players, who always seemed to enjoy a little random mayhem and hilarity to wrap up the evening's play and serve as a lead-in to the next session.

I've set the experience award for carousing to be a substantial supplement to experience gained during the course of an adventure, but this can easily be decreased if you prefer carousing to give a small xp bonus, or increased to make it the main source of xp gained.