Chapter Five
DUNGEON LOGIC
The evening for our game was agreed upon and my players arrived in good time. I’d prepared the front room with candles and various dungeony looking knick knacks. One end of the table lay my massive library of notes, maps and information cards … all hidden behind a makeshift cardboard screen. In the centre of the table spread out the village of Ching. Painstakingly mapped and painted as only an art student with an obsessive attention to fiddly detail and a set of Rotring technical drawing pens can manage. Two metal miniatures sat beside the entrance to the town. They were dull grey and unpainted because I’d run out of time .. Having only bought them that morning. Each place setting had a blank note pad, pen. Pencil, eraser, a character sheet and a full set of polyhedron dice. There were bowls of snacks for nibbling.. On the side I’d several bottles of coke and lemonade. The outlay for the entire evening had set me back more than the original boxset of D&D had. I had figured why do things by halves. Robbie appeared impressed by the laid out and was enthusiastic about the atmosphere I’d created. He sank down into a chair and asked if he could play an elf. Happy to oblige I handed the players manual over to him and he commenced rolling up his character. Steve (my considerably less than happy to be there friend) had said nothing about preparations. He took a seat opposite Robbie and looked bored. I asked him what sort of character he wanted to play.
“Dunno,” he answered. I pointed to a photocopied sheet in front of him. On it I’d listed all the options from the Players Manual and had illustrated each one with a humorous little illustration. Fighter, Cleric, Magic User, Thief, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling. There was a brief description of the various abilities. Steve stared at it for a few minutes and grunted again “ok, I’ll be a fighter.” I pointed to his dice and asked him to roll 3D6 for his different statistics.
“What?” he glared at me puzzled. I realised I’d descended too far and too fast into D&D speak and he was lost already.
“Take the 6 sided die, the standard dice (I poked one) … roll it 3 times. You add the three scores together. Each set of three gives you a score for your Strength score, Dexterity score, Intelligence score. Each one effects how much your character can do in the adventure.”
“Yeah, I knew that” he said picking up the 6 sided die and giving it a half hearted roll across the table. He was determined to make me feel like I was pulling teeth. I cursed the lack of an option in the player’s manual that says “For moody first time players, create their characters in advance and just hand them out.” The Manual did contain “Sample Characters” but hadn’t hinted that they were life savers in moments like this. The evening was speeding past and Steve seemed determined to waste most of it rolling his character up in slow motion.
“Ready!” Robbie said. He handed me his character sheet to check. I had no idea what to check, but I gave it a quick look and gave him a thumbs up. We both helped Steve sort out the final bits on his fighter character.
“What is your character’s name, Rob?” I asked.
“I’m Gullanthus of Silverwood.” He declared.
(side note Confession: I can’t exactly remember the name Robbie picked, but it sounded very elfy and there was a woodland involved. I’m filling in details as close as I can as my memory fails.)
“What about you, Steve, what is your fighter called?”
“eerrrrrr, Conan” said Steve.
Everything inside me wanted to beg Steve to please exercise a teeny tiny amount of imagination/creativity, but I knew I was on a thin edge here.
Anything like rolling my eyes at his choice would probably mean he stomp off home early and I’d be running the adventure for just Robbie. While this would probably be for the best, I really did want to have a gaming group, not a gaming individual.
“How was the group last night?” guys at the Game store might ask.
“Oh, he enjoyed himself greatly!” I’d have to answer. It just sounded creepy and weird to my ears. Thus, I bit the bullet and Conan and Gullanthus stood before the entrance of The Village of Ching.
“The Village hangs before you in the gathering dusk. Already lights are being lit in windows and the sounds of revelry from the local tavern tell you that the day’s work is over. The Weapon Smith is taking down his display and packing it in oiled cloth for another day, but you might catch him if you wish to purchase a blade.” I began painting my scene, but neither Robbie or Steve say anything as I pause. So I take another breath and carry on.
“All around in the gathering gloom tiny fireflies flit and dance. You can see the dusty north road stretching toward the range of hills you’ve just crossed. In the woodland surrounding town you can see the shapes of cottages and farmsteads.. Villagers, weary from a day’s toil, are walking past you toward the welcome glow of the Kobold’s Rest Tavern.”
“Where’s the Dungeon?” Steve asks, plainly bored by the Peter Bruegul painting I’m attempting to verbally create. “Ahhh,” he points at the cave entrance I’ve stupidly marked on the map only inches from his character sheet.
“Think we should check out the town?” Robbie asks as I make another villager walk past them.
“Narrrrr, what’s the point.” Steve says. “Let’s just go kill things!” Behind the Dungeon Master’s screen I fold up my booklet containing 60 pages of adventure threads/plot devices and colourful characters. I drop it down the side of the chair into the waiting boxfile. No point worrying about the wasted time spent on that. My adventurers are stalking off down the track to the waiting cave entrances. I pull out Encounters on the road file and discover a band of plague riddled goblins have camped for the night just outside the caves. I crafted a subtle dilemma here, do the adventurers fight the goblins and risk catching the plague or do they sneak past them. As my players draw close to the goblin camp I emphasise their plague pox and general sick condition. There is no way Robbie or Steve can mistake the illness. I even mention that they have heard tales of plague among the goblins that has spread to humans in recent months. Robbie looks at Steve and asks what they should do?
“Kill ‘um” Steve says. “They will have treasure and stuff.” Robbie shrugs his shoulders.
“I’m going to keep clear of them and use my bow,” Robbie’s character takes a covered position beside a tree. Steve has his character pull out his blunt battleaxe and wades forward. I run my first group encounter. I’ve done sample combat before between a variety of characters and a selection of monsters/creatures from the rulebook, but this is the first time I’ve run combat with actual players. I surprise myself at how smoothly it works, but the Dungeons & Dragons was designed to be playable and not particularly realistic. Robbie delights in his bow and a series of successful hits. It turns out one of his favourite movies is HAWK THE SLAYER and his ambition to be the Elf bowman character in that film comes to life as he fells goblin after goblin. Steve wades his axe swinging Conan character into the midst of the goblins. He isn’t as lucky as Robbie in his attack rolling. His dice roll several failures to hit and he begins to complain about his lack of complete success. The dice are completely random I tell him, you’ve as much chance of hitting as Robbie’s elf.
“No, I’ve got more chance of hitting, stands to reason. I’m in the middle of a horde of goblins. I shouldn’t be able to swing my axe and miss. Robbie is firing arrows from way over there, and it is getting dark. No way would every arrow hit.” The combat pauses as I explain Elven Infravision, the ability certain races (like Goblins, and Elves) have of seeing in the dark. The only person who is struggling with the gathering gloom is Steve. A fact I haven’t actually compensated for. I should really have been making Steve roll dice and deducting points for darkness he was fighting in, but I hadn’t bothered with this because I feared he would feel picked on. Seems he is already feeling picked on by the dice. Go figure! Combat limps on.
Goblins finally dead, Robbie suggests they burn the bodies as a service to the local village. Steve wants to loot the corpses for treasure. Robbie points out the increased risk of grubbing through plague goblin’s corpses added to the plague contaminated blood all over Steve already.
“I don’t care,” points out Steve, “It isn’t like I am going to play this character again after tonight!”
“What is the point of collecting the treasure then?” Robbie asks. Bless him, I wanted to say that, but feared upsetting the awkward guy even more.
“How do we know who wins if we haven’t got treasure to add up at the end of the night?” Steve says. Robbie turns and gives me a look and a grin. I’ve no idea what it means, but I quickly try to move the game on. By describing the vast entrance to the cavern system.
“I haven’t got my treasure yet!” Steve complains. I make a show of consulting some books and tables and announce he has found a few bags of copper coins, some rusty armour and chipped swords. He insists on bagging everything up and carrying it with him. Robbie suggests he stash the “treasure” in the woods so he won’t be clanking around the dungeon, but Steve doesn’t trust that idea. Robbie shrugs his shoulders again and they move on.
“The passageway stretches away from you, one branch to the left, another to the right.” I say.
“Those are the only choices?” Steve asks, irritation in his voice. Too late it sinks in that there is nothing I can do this evening that will please him. He is determined not to enjoy himself at all costs. Even if I give his character a full set of golden enchanted armor, a blade of magic so powerful it makes goblins explode if they look at it and a chest full of jewels … he is still going to moan. I now understand the significance of Robbie’s looks to me. He figured this out much earlier than I did and is now taking a sort of perverse delight in it.
“We go left,“ says Robbie.
“Why?” asks Steve.
“Because if we keep going left we won’t get lost. Basic principles of Dungeon exploration.” I am not sure how sound this idea is, but Robbie appears to have convinced Steve he knows what he is doing. They shoulder their packs, light a torch and walk inside. Robbie’s familiarity with dungeon logic starts to pay off. He tries everything and makes notes on things. He is picking up clues that I’ve scattered through the cave system. Hints that will unlock things later on, seemingly innocent items left around that Steve ignores, but Robbie puts in his pack. It is a little like being on the same wavelength as the person setting a quiz or crossword. If your brain works roughly the same as theirs you can buzz through a quiz and appear uncanny. It isn’t that Steve is unintelligent, though he will often play that game for some reason all of his own devising. He is just not in the dungeon mindset, and he is probably wasting a lot of mental energy on appearing moody and awkward as well.
They battle their way around the doughnut of death for about an hour. By this time they are nearly upon the first of my Boss Monsters. The Polychromatic Dragon Challenge. Their health scores have dipped to quite low and so, to cut them a break, I’ve placed a dusty locked storeroom just before the Dragon’s Lair. The door opens with four symbol coded dials. I’ve left the clues to the correct sequence of symbols scattered around the dungeon (why wouldn’t I?) and Robbie examines the door. Consulting his note pad, now filled with several pages of carefully collected clues he figures out the first two dial positions. Steve, whose notebook contains a doodle and a series of stick figures, suggests he break down the door ‘cause it looks old and flimsy (I never described it as such, he is just reaching here!)
“The sound of you smashing the door down is going to attract a lot of unwelcome attention,” says Robbie, inadvertently irritating Steve again by his unerring dungeon logic. Robbie finds the final two clues and spins the remaining dials. When a satisfying clunk, the door swings open. They shine a torch inside to reveal a tiny treasure house. Fresh armour, which gives them both better armor class scores.
There is a fresh quiver of arrows for Robbie, one of which is a golden arrow with a dragon etched on the barbed arrow head (I had a problem with being too subtle in my early days of dungeon design!)
I’ve also left an Axe the size of a small hobbit for Steve. It is glowing with a soft enchanted light and seems to float off it’s wall mounting as his hand approaches it. It is much better than the weapon I’d originally left there, but at this stage of the game I’m employing a psychological technique on Steve called Operant Conditioning. He plays nice and quits bitchin’ … I give him some imaginary treats as a reward.
I’ve also left two sets of four jars. One set has a smiling golden sun face etched on the outside and is filled with a sweet nectar. The other has a Scowling Moon face etched on it and is filled with a black viscous fluid. Robbie opens a Sun Jar and gives it a drink. His health points (called Hit Points in D&D) are fully restored. Robbie, his dungeon logic sound as usual, places the second Sun Jar is in his pack. I’ve left four jars … two to get both of them back up to full health before the dragon fight, and two to heal them after the dragon fight. Robbie gives Steve his two jars of Sun Fluid. For some bizarre reason (call it sheer “bloody Steve mindedness”) Steve ignores the Health potion and insists on opening the Dark Moon Jar. I describe the black fluid as having a vaguely evil stink. It slops around in the jar with an unpleasant bilious quality. I am sure not even Conan himself would have tried a mouthful of the nasty crap, but sadly Conan is being controlled by someone with a point to prove this evening. Steve makes his character take a good chug of this stuff. It is enough to wipe 2 ten sided dice worth of hit points off Conan, but I quickly half that amount for fear that Steve’s character will die if he rolls badly. As it is he takes 5 points of damage.
“Eh?” Steve says, playing confused by this mysterious and illogical outcome. “Why am I loosing health when Robbie got his back?” Robbie tries to explain that the two different jars and two different fluids, but Steve is playing his “I’m thick” card again. He insists his character takes another drink of the black fluid. I order him to take a second ten sided dice of damage and his face does that “What for?” look of annoyance. I know he knows exactly what he is doing, but I am not sure characters deliberately committing suicide is covered in the D&D Basic Set. Robbie grabs one of the remaining Sun Jars and tells him to drink it. Even Steve can’t find a reason not to. Conan, slumped to the floor and with one hit point remaining drinks the potion. I tell him to restore his full hitpoint total back on his character sheet.
“There is a second jar with a sun on for me?” he asks.
“Yes, Robbie drank one, stashed another in his pack for later. You drank the third and there is a fourth one for you to take.” I explain.
“I’ll drink the fourth one now.” Steve says.
“Why? You are already on full health, it isn’t going to give you anymore health!” I say, breaking the rule of not providing information that players ought not to know.
“It might do!” says Steve, that look in his eye. Despite the fact the Dungeon Master (who thinks he is controlling the game) has said it won’t, Steve breaks the seal on the fourth jar and drinks it. Like I predicted, the fluid doesn’t double Steve’s health. He complains about my dungeon logic, though he doesn’t call it that. Robbie is giving me that “what a plonker!” grin again. I wisely push to move on. They round the corner and encounter the lair of the Polychromatic Dragon. The fight is a tough one and though they dispatch the zombie minions fairly quickly, they take quite a lot of hits doing it. Steve decides to break the flow of the action by arguing that since the healing fluid is still in his stomach, he shouldn’t be suffering damage at all. I point out, with perhaps just a trace of sarcasm in my voice, that isn’t how the magic fluid works. “Well it should!” Steve says. At this point the Dragon locks eyes with Steve and I ask him to make a saving throw against the Dragon’s Hypnotic Gaze. Saving throws are the system of testing your luck in Dungeons and Dragons. A series of numbers each character has to deal with various situations. There is a saving throw vs. poisons which I ought to have made Steve roll against just a few minutes ago, but I had been so stunned he was drinking a jar filled with black rank smelling oil that I’d quite forgotten this rule. Now he has to make a saving throw against Dragon Breath.
“But this isn’t Dragon Breath.” he argues, “It is Dragon Vision!” Of course he would argue. In being a bit creative and designing my own dragon for this adventure I’ve strayed away from the purity (simplicity) of the Basic Set Rules. I pull out the Dungeon Masters Rulebook and look up Dragons to see if anything in the fine print covers this. I have to stop the fight to start reading. I glance at the clock. It is nearly time for Robbie’s bus home. We would have time for either pushing on and finishing the fight or arguing about the rules, not both. I point this out to Steve … who naturally thinks that bitching about the dragon is the best use of our last 20 minutes.
“I think we should finish the fight with the dragon and you get the treasure” I say, trying to appeal to his greed for imaginary loot. But now I’ve handed Steve what he has wanted all evening. A chance to ruin everything. He isn’t going to let a simple thing like gold and gems get in the way of stopping the game until Robbie has to catch his bus.
“You’re changing the rules, making stuff up!” he bitches. “How are we going to win if you keep changing the rules.” I try to argue that it isn’t about winning or losing, it is about having fun. This is something that Steve has tried hard to avoid all evening, so I’m really barking up the wrong tree. I can see Robbie looking at the clock. We’ve less than 10 minutes now before the bus. I suggest we put the game on pause and walk with Robbie to the bus stop. There are no objections to this plan. We reach the bus stop, and Steve announces he is going home as well. He has parked just a short distance away. He says goodnight to Robbie, ignoring me, walks back to his car and drives off into the night. Robbie, diplomatic and with an almost unflappable good nature, says nothing about the horrible end to the evening. He thanks me and tells me he has left the dice I’d given him on the side by the bottle of Pepsi. His bus slides around the corner and I wave him off. My head feels like it is mashed again as I walk back to my house. What had gone wrong this time? I was nominally in control of this night, but the dynamics of it escaped me. It didn’t feel as crappy and nasty as the Runequest evening, but I am still walking home with a heavy heart. I get back in and start to pack away the maps and files. I discover something quite unusual. Robbie’s dice are where he told me they would be, neatly stacked by the drinks station. Steve’s dice are nowhere to be seen. He has taken them with him. I hadn’t said I bought the dice as gifts for everyone, but I’d not said don’t take them at the end of the night. I am just bemused that the guy who appeared to loathe the evening so much he stopped the climatic fight in its tracks has taken a set of dice.