Encounter Tables Part 2

X57

    So, apparently I didn't realize that the B/X wilderness encounter tables already account for the inhabited areas which basically makes my previous post redundant.  It's not entirely useless though since now I am going to combine the two charts.

    Now, the inhabited area encounter table will look like this.

    The procedure will be the same, rolling twice for monster type and once for action when exploring within inhabited zones whereas I'll only be rolling once for monster type in regular wilderness hexes (woods, mountains, swamps, etc).  This is to help reinforce the idea that inhabited areas generally have quite a few things going on while also making the party feel very alone in the wilderness.  I really like hearing stories from people who have encountered an animal (or cryptid) while they were traveling alone in the wilderness and I want to recreate that kind of atmosphere in my own wilderness.  When the party sets out on an expedition, they should really feel like they are on their own.

[Session Report 15 - 2/19/25] Welcome to Highwall

The town of Highwall

    After resting their wounds, gathering rumors, and resupplying at Dragonwrath, the party decided to take up an offer from Trilfo the merchant and escort him and his servants along the Bandit Pass through the Outlaw Forest to the town of Highwall.  The trip was short, only taking a few days, and was luckily without incident.  Trilfo and the party had heard of the recent escape of the bandit, Jurvak the Hooded, who had likely taken up residence within the Outlaw Forest to hide from Lord Branif's patrols.

    Once the party arrived at the impressive settlement of Highwall, they were greeted by a few guardsmen at the gatehouse who questioned and searched them.  After a few minutes and a brief conversation, they were allowed entry.  The party took a look around and saw a bustling tavern with a sign above the door with the image of a silver swan.  They quickly went in, another guard greeted them and the party went to speak with the tavern master.

The Silver Swan Tavern & Inn

    He was a jovial man and was glad to see new faces in town so he offered them a free round of ale and a barmaid seated them.  The young woman took their orders and carried on with her business.  The party discussed what they should do next and Sir Peter was particularly interested in returning to the goblin cave he had raided several weeks ago.  Other members of the party were just glad to have a break and were enjoying the tavern accommodations.  Trilfo the Merchant saw the party and decided sit down at the table with them, saying that the Silver Swan Tavern is his favorite drinking establishment within the Great Kingdom.

    After a spending the night in Highwall, the party decided that they better get back to adventuring and agreed to explore the goblin cave again.  They traveled for several more days until they finally reached their destination.  The party entered the lair cautiously.

    Sir Peter pulled out his map and led the party, avoiding the many pitfalls he had fallen prey to before.  Not long into their expedition, the party heard the sound of voices - distinctly nonhuman voices.  Ingott the Dwarf listened carefully and was sure that there were still goblins in this cave.  He was itching for a fight, for the hatred between Dwarves and Goblins is extreme, but for good reason.

Norik of the Jagged Peaks, cut down in his prime

    The party entered a room, Norik taking point, and were surprised by a group of 8 goblins.  The goblins had the initiative and one lunged at Norik, slashing open his gut and spilling his entrails.  The party were shocked by the sudden loss of their mighty warrior friend but were now more motivated than ever to exterminate the goblin plague.  A brutal melee followed and the goblins attempted to flee.  The chased them, not wanting to allow the murder of Norik to go unpunished.

Goblin fleeing

    After chasing down the last goblin and killing it, they traveled through more of the cave and saw a new passage that the goblins must've dug.  They continued down the corridor and eventually entered a room with the goblin chief and his 2 wives.  The goblins were caught unawares and were quickly slaughtered.

"I've yet to meet a goblin that liked the bite of the axe!"

    After the battle, the part gathered Norik's corpse and returned to the town of Dragonwrath.

Reworking Encounter Tables

    During my last session, the party encountered a 12-headed hydra while walking along the Bandit Pass within the Outlaw Forest.  While this encounter was pretty cool (and very scary) it felt kind of off to me.  I admit that there is something really cool about being able to randomly stumble upon a hydra while walking along a road but at the same, I don't think it's exactly what I want out of my wilderness encounter tables.

    I've seen a few videos and read a few posts about creating dynamic encounter tables using two, or sometimes more, columns.  The general idea is to have one column for NPCs and another for actions.  You then roll twice on the 1st column and once on the 2nd and you end up getting results like "orcs enslaving pilgrims" and "mercenaries fighting berserkers."

    What I'm thinking of doing is implementing these kind of dynamic encounter tables specifically for "civilized" regions and along roads, trails, etc.  Civilized regions are anywhere that is only a couple of hexes away from a settlement.  This is because these settlements will likely have patrols that help keep the surrounding area relatively clear of monsters.  If we go by OD&D, it says that "Territory up to 20 miles distant from a stronghold may be kept clear of monsters once cleared - the inhabitation of the stronghold being considered as sufficient to maintain the monster-free status."  This ends up working out to a range of 3 hexes away from the stronghold since I'm using 6 mile hexes.

    I know this isn't anything new or revolutionary but I think it will greatly improve my game and make the world feel a little less random while still allowing for those menacing encounters where the party stumbles upon a dragon or something.

I think this should work fine for now.

[Session Report 14 - 2/17/25] Return to Dragonwrath

A spiked pit trap

    Our heroes continued their adventure from where they last left off - inside the Dungeon of Darkness.  The party traveled down a few corridors, clearing the cobwebs as they walked past, until they came across a room with an exposed pit trap.  Norik took the lead and cautiously approached the trap.  As he looked inside the trap, he saw 3 unlucky adventurers!  One of them was still breathing.  The party sprung into action and lowered Norik into the pit in the hopes that he might free the impaled explorer.  Unfortunately, the man was too far gone and the pain from Norik lifting him up caused him to die.  Not wasting any time, Norik quickly searched the corpses and found a sack of silver and an expensive-looking necklace.

An unlucky adventurer, many such cases!

    The party, feeling a little confident after finding some treasure, kept exploring the dungeon.  Eventually they came upon a room with several metal gibbets hanging from the ceiling, each containing a skeleton.  At one end of the room stood a lone iron maiden.  Sensing danger, Norik and Fern both immediately brought up their concerns regarding the iron maiden and wanted to leave.  The others in the party, particularly the cleric, grew more and more interested in the strange device.  Having had enough of the arguing, Norik and Fern both decided to wait outside of the room and allowed the others to search at their leisure.

The cleric, lovingly named "Potato"

    The cleric raised his cross to his lips and began uttering a prayer to the saints of the Great Church hoping that they'd protect him from whatever harm awaited him.  He reached towards the handles, gripped them firmly, and pulled the two large doors open.  In an instant several long, pale, and thin arms covered in blood lunged forward trying to grab the cleric and drag him into the metal coffin!  Either by luck or divine intervention, the cleric was able to dodge the arms and fell backward away from the death trap.  His party members pulled him away to safety and the iron maiden's doors slammed shut.  The adventurers regrouped and pressed on.

1 very dead crab spider

    Traveling south down a long stone hallway, the party noticed more and more webs the closer they got to a chamber.  Having dealt with spiders before, the party decided to torch the webs and they heard a loud "hissssss!" and a large spider dropped from the ceiling and landed in front of the party.  Peter bravely charged forward and plunged his short sword into the beast, killing it.  After this, the party decided it best not to press their luck any further and started to head towards the dungeon's exit.  Along the way they battled a couple orcs and quickly left.

    Now the party was in the wilderness and they began the return journey back to the town of Dragonwrath.  After reaching the Outlaw Forest and traveling along the Bandit Pass, the party encountered a 12 headed hydra!  The party quickly ducked into the forest growth and hid.  Success!  The hydra didn't notice and our heroes were able to evade the terrible monster.  On the 3rd day of Final Seed, the party reached the safety of the town of Dragonwrath.

Just imagine it having 12 heads, thanks.

    Also, Peter was finally able to level up which means he's the first character in this campaign to reach level 2!

[Lore] Worldbuilding Part 5: Religion & Alignment

Hawk the Slayer and friends

    Since I've had a bit of a break from gaming lately, I've been using that time to continue fleshing out how I handle religion, as well as alignment, in my campaign.  One of my favorite fantasy movies is Hawk the Slayer, the story follows a legendary hero and his companions who team up to save an abbess from the clutches of the evil Voltan.  Although the movie never explicitly states that the nuns are Christian, it heavily implies it.  Plus, Hawk wears a cross necklace throughout the movie.  Now, in my own setting, I had already decided that I want the Great Church to essentially be the Catholic Church as its depicted in popular culture, similar to how they handled it in Hawk the Slayer.  

    The question I had though was whether the humans and demi-humans would both belong (or could belong) to the same religion.  My answer is yes, but the vast majority of followers will still be human.  This is mainly because the demi-humans rarely travel to the cities of men and so there isn't much in terms of cultural sharing between the races.  Demi-humans also tend to be too proud of their own ancestry and culture to convert to a "human's" religion even if that religion is universal.  I'm thinking of having players roll to see which religion they are a part of.  Human clerics have to be of the Great Church while other human characters might have a 6-in-10 chance of being in the Great Church or belonging to some other religion.  Demi-humans could also have a 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 chance of being in the Great Church rather than their own ancestral religion.  Also, while clerics have to belong to the Great Church, they are free to make up their own patron saint to pray to.

    I've also decided that each alignment has its own chief deity that created all other lesser gods of that alignment.  So, while characters might worship different gods they can still be unified in alignment.  The Great Church claims to worship the God of Law directly and that the other Lawful religions have simply mistaken His servants as "true" deities.  This allows for clerics to try to convert others without making it a big issue, since even clerics of the Great Church recognize other Lawfuls as being on their side, for the most part.

    Additionally, the Cult of Evil Chaos essentially functions the same way that the Great Church does but for Chaotic (Evil) characters.  Monsters can have their own race-based deities but many get converted by Evil priests and end up worshiping demons in the service of the God of Chaos.

    And as for how I want to depict the God of Law and God of Chaos, I was thinking of using a phoenix for the God of Law and a serpent for the God of Chaos.  It's got the Christian symbolism that I think is cool and also ties into Robert E Howard's "The Phoenix on the Sword" with Mitra and Set (which also has elements of Christian symbolism).  The Holy symbol for the Great Church will still be a cross but the Cult of Evil Chaos will probably have a ton of evil and ancient symbols to choose from, the most common being a pentagram.

    Overall though, I plan on keeping things vague for the players and having the clerics focus on their patron saint above all.  I'm gonna try and keep my worldbuilding on religion limited to what I have here until I actually need to develop it in game.  That way the religion further resembles the type of fantasy I like, with it being visible in the background but generally pretty vague in details.  Plus, this also allows the players to have a bit of freedom with who and how their characters worship.

[Homebrew] My Revised Fighter House Rules

Art by David C Sutherland III

    I previously posted about my house rules for fighters however I have since improved upon them, at least in my opinion.  I wanted to reduce the amount of attacks I gave fighters because I felt I had made the class kind of ridiculous, especially considering that combat rounds in BX last 10 seconds as opposed to a minute in OD&D and AD&D.  

    I also saw a reddit post from a DM who, instead of giving fighters multiple attacks, gave magic weapons a number of attacks equal to their to-hit/damage bonus.  I wanted to incorporate this into my own house rules because I felt that it really emphasized the fantastical nature of swords (and other weapons).  Many of these magical weapons have their own egos so it made perfect sense to me that a sword +2 vs magic-users could harness the fighter and use them for their own purpose, causing the fighter to attack with enhanced intensity and ferocity.

    I should also point out that these abilities are exclusive to fighters.  Normal men, dwarves, elves, halflings, etc do not receive these abilities.  This is to help protect the niche of the fighter class and to ensure that they are the most competent combatants.  Having said that, it is still possible for non-fighters to lift gates so long as they have the equipment or magic required to do so, it's just that fighters are the only ones who are capable of doing so without the need of equipment or magic.