[00:00:00] Speaker A: RPG Lessons Learned. When the game is over, when your players are gone, that's when lessons are learned.
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[00:00:22] Speaker B: Hi, welcome to RPG Lessons Learned, the show where you can learn from our mistakes.
I'm Dusty and with me, as always, is Tanner. Hi, Tanner.
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Hail and well met traveler.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: So a couple things. First of all, um, I haven't released any episodes in a while, but we have some previously recorded, so this is likely to be released immediately after another episode. Even though.
Awkward statement, Tanner. We've kind of been on a break from each other.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: We have. And I think that's kind of how adult relationships and friendships work sometimes. Um, I think the, the sign of a good, healthy relationship and friendship as an adult or as a gaming group is that you can take some time away from each other to deal with life and then you can get back together and it's like nothing happened.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: And we have also been seeing other people.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: We have. I've been playing quite a few games in the meantime, as have you. Um, you know, I like to, I like our one on one time, but sometimes I got to bring some other people involved, you know.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I'm really excited for this episode. You ran my favorite dungeon that I've written, Dragon in the Dungeon.
Uh, the Hex crawl that we talked about on a prior episode by, uh, Hex Crawl, the Hex dungeon, I should say the 14 room hex dungeon. That formula that I came up with and keep reusing, reusing, reusing. And the idea behind it was that, you know, Dungeons and Dragons have so few literal dungeons, like where you keep prisoner dungeon dungeons with literal dragons. And I wanted to do a literal dungeon, the literal dragon. But you ran it for some friends and family or family.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Yeah, so my wife and um, my wife's mom, my mother in law and her brother and sister who are both teenage aged.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: So how did Dragon in the Dungeon go?
Um, running, actually. This is intended to be kind of a starter, you know, module for people. Was this one of their first RPG sessions?
[00:02:20] Speaker C: If not the first, this was their second. So my wife Alex has played a ton of RPGs in the past with me, so it was awesome that she was there to kind of help along her mom and her brother and her sister, um, who were interested in the idea and kind of had a vague idea of what was going on. But this was the second session that we played together and the first one we played was, uh, One of Ben Knowlton's adventures. Lair of the Key Master, which is great. Um, I don't know if we're going to talk about it for a whole episode. We might talk about it at a later date. But that is also a dungeon with a dragon in it.
So this was the second they had back to back dragons in Dungeons. And it was so funny because as we were exploring, they were seeing like the red scales and the tea, like the teeth marks and the claw marks. And they're like, there's not going to be another dragon. It's got to be something else. Load bold. It was another dragon. It was awesome. It was a fun moment. But yeah, it was, it was a, uh, great time. And we played it in the tan hack, which is my, um, personal customization of my favorite kinds of OSR rules that we've talked about before.
Um, and that I've ran for you before, Dusty. And yeah, it was, it was a hoot. It was a great time, man.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: So, practical questions, did you run it as a hex dungeon or did you translate it into a more normal map?
[00:03:42] Speaker C: No, I ran this one as a hex dungeon and I printed out a hex dungeon, um, worksheet. I wish I had those here. I'll have to send you a picture of them after the time because it's so fun to see how people's notes are different because Alex's notes were like very detailed. In her brother's notes, he was just like kind of doodling pictures and stuff. But yes, I gave them like kind of the heads up that, hey, you know, you're going to be starting on this, you know, in this hex and then exploring outwards from there. And they got that pretty quick.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Did they enjoy the act of mapping?
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Um, it was a split decision because the first dungeon I ran, Lair of the Key Master, was entirely me just verbally describing it. I said, you know, this hallway stretches to the east and the west as far as you can see, and then at the very end there's a little branch. And they had some fun moments during that of doing that and being like, oh, this must connect to here. Even though they didn't line up on their drawings like this, they were figuring it out and stuff.
And then after this session with Dragon in the Dungeon, I asked, you know, which do you guys prefer? Do you guys like hex maps and, uh, or do you guys like, like free freehand drawing? And Alex and her sister liked the hex dungeons and her brother and her mom like the freehand mapping. So you Know, different strokes for different folks. But I think it's cool that, um, it was, you know, they got to see both ends of it and at least, you know, know what both. Both options were. Like.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: I love a split decision.
[00:05:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: So. And I'm jumping around asking questions, uh, as I'm interested.
I'm gonna keep doing that. Actually, I was debating asking you kind of the story of how they engage. But let me. Let me keep asking some interesting questions that I'm interested in. There is a, ah, There's a single point of failure at the bottom of the oubliette, where. Where you either find the secret passage into the rest of the dungeon or you don't. There are some hints you can pick up.
Um, you can hear kind of some mining through the captain's office.
Um, the oubliette. You don't have to make a roll. A thorough search will also uncover the passage. Did this single point of failure present a huge problem or did you paper over that somehow?
[00:06:02] Speaker C: No, that worked pretty well as written.
So they visited the warden, uh, pretty early on, and they heard the noise coming from behind the earth, sorry, the captain's office.
So they. They knew that there was something else going on in that direction. Um, and they were, like, splitting up, like, trying to get the captain out of the office so they could hear at. Listen at the walls and stuff. And they had mixed success. Success with that. But when they got to the oubliette, um, that is where the first fatality, the first and only fatality happened. As I texted you about.
Yes, you did, Alex, my wife's character. This is. This is how the oubliette is written.
The floor of the oubliette is 10ft lower than the floor of the prison. Unwary characters who enter will take 1d6 falling damage. So I was. As we were entering that area, I asked for marching order because I wanted to know who was going to be the first.
And my wife, Alex, uh, her character, um, she's playing a halfling.
She.
I, uh, did not Dusty that she was being particularly wary, but I said, okay, you get a save, like a Dex save to not fall in. And she failed the deck save. I said, okay, you're taking 1d6 damage. And she's like, can armor help me here? And I'm like, I don't think armor helping with fall damage makes much sense. And she's like, that's fair. Rolled a six on the damage die. She only had four hp, I think. So she was instantly knocked out. And the way the Black hack works is that or the tan hack and the black hack.
Um, once you get to somebody who is at 0 hp, you roll the dice to see if they were just conked out or if they take some sort of extra debilitating effect. They managed to get their way down there. And when they get to her, she rolls uh, a one on a one D6 which means she was killed instantly.
So the 10 foot drop took, took one of the characters out. But as they were poking around in the oubliette, Alex was rolling up a new character, um, like right away and they found her in the oubliette. Of course, you know, she was, her character was chained up there and so they kind of had time to explore it. And yeah, the way you have this um, written I think is really great, uh, because it says if the characters don't make a roll to find the secret exit. So you know, like they could roll it like, I guess an L for like a dwarf with stone cunning or some other similar effect could probably detect that um, that one exit it says um.
Oh wait, sorry, I was reading.
Yeah, the secret exit. Yeah, it's ah, a thorough search of the room, especially when they're touching the walls will reveal it. Yeah, so it's like, I like that you kind of leave it vague as to like what's going on here, you know, um, like specifically how it is hidden. And I think that's kind of a concession to like the very brief format that this dungeon is in. But I liked your idea of it being like kind of hidden in a concentric spiral around the room. So if you're walking the edges of the room, you'll find it.
I still would not recommend necessarily that people would be design a hex dungeon with like one point of failure, you know, um, that being said, I think you pulled it off. But it wouldn't be a recommendation that I do it that way in general.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: I love it too much to change it.
[00:09:33] Speaker C: Yeah, that's fair. I mean I think it's a, it's a cool effect. And um, kind of I almost imagine it's like a matte painting kind of effect from like an old Lucasfilm movie or something. Like you shift the eye and then suddenly Indiana Jones is, you know, he's
[00:09:48] Speaker B: standing on something specifically inspired by the labyrinth.
Uh, that scene where Sarah's in the outer circle of the labyrinth and she's like, how do I get in the labyrinth? And the snail is like uh, right there. And the camera shifts perspective and you're like, oh, there's actually there appear to be no archways, but there's really a ton of archways.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I ah, love that. Um, I think it can be fraught maybe to apply a movie making trick to an exploration based game that's verbal. But again, like you said, I don't know if I were to like really zing you and tell you to update this dungeon, which I don't think you need to do at all, I would say, hey, maybe describe like inspire the GM at the table as to how it's actually hidden rather than them kind of just like leaving them to figure out if they found it or not. Maybe.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Yes, I do. I do just say a tunnel hidden by a clever optical illusion.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: Yeah. So again, ah, maybe people like that, but maybe some GMs would want more guidance on that. Like I said, I had the benefit of talking to you about this session before I played it, which is maybe the most useful thing you can do.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: So did I run this for you or did we just talk about it?
[00:11:01] Speaker C: No, we just talked about it. Okay.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: I've never run this for you, but yes, I describe it whenever I run it. I describe it as kind of overlapping walls where the overlap isn't obvious unless you see it from the right angle.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: Yep.
Um, one other thing I want to compliment you on is your.
I don't know if this is like a BFRPG kind of house style, but adding the check boxes for monster HP and the fact that each giant rat or Kobold or whatever has slightly different amounts of rolled hp, that makes it like super fun and super easy to just kind of tick them off and um, keep it interesting and dynamic because they don't know if a Kobold is going to have 4 GP or 6 GP, you know what I mean? And it makes it just so easy to run at the table, so usable.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: I can't claim credit for that. That is very BFRPG. BFRPG. Any of their adventures, which by the way are 100 free to
[email protected] no affiliation. I haven't said a no affiliation in so long. It feels so good.
Um, they do check marks, uh, or check boxes for hit points and I just always thought it was genius. So I do that now and I do um, print my dungeons and check off checkboxes as a workbook. But having, having said that, as you were describing checkboxes, I noticed the description of the 10 emaciated prisoners in D4 and I had the wrong number of checkboxes by almost all of them.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: Oh my God. It's literally unplayable.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Yes, you're right.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: They should have two GP or. Well, now you gotta update the PDF. Now, that's probably why nobody wanted to talk to you about it on Reddit. They all saw that and they're like, dude, we cannot. Yeah, no, but that's awesome, though. And I have been kind, um, of doing that as scratch paper. Like, when I'm running Tanhack for my buddies for my, um, my Hex Crawl game, which we may talk about in a future episode. Like, when I roll a random encounter, I will say, hey, okay, give me two minutes, guys. And I roll all the HP for the guys, and I write little checkboxes on a little scratch piece of paper. So I'm. I'm in love with it. I wish I would have discovered it earlier. It's sick. Cool.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: So the guards, um. I don't come right out and say that they're not. That they're not good people, but the conditions of the prison really strongly imply that the guards are not good people.
Um, I. I really.
I wanted to let the players, when I run this for kids, they're like, oh, that, you know, they. They blindly trust the guards and blindly trust that the prisoners are bad. And then I run this for adults, and the adults are like, man, these guards are terrible. These PR prisoners are mistreated. And I love that it can be seen different ways. How did your group. How did Alex's family see the guards?
[00:13:42] Speaker C: What if I told you that the adventure ended with them fighting and killing all of the guards?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Now, I do want to ask you, what is the story, so, of your group engaging with this dungeon?
[00:13:55] Speaker C: So they went in the dungeon, you know, and they poked around in the prison area.
And I think I did a good job of role playing the, um, victim of the torture chamber. I kind of had to improvise, like, what their crime was, you know, and all this stuff to. I. I can't remember. It's been a couple weeks since I've run it, so I apologize if you have that written.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: No, I don't.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: It is, uh, it is meant to be improvised.
[00:14:21] Speaker C: Yep. So I ran that, and I kind of improvised that. One of the guys in the prison and his wife who's in the torture chamber, they got their. Their great crime was that they got in a fight with their neighbors and accidentally killed one of them. Like, they pushed him over and he broke his neck or something like that. And so after that, they're like, well, I don't know, like, you're not a Good guy. But like, I don't know if you deserve this.
And so as they went through the oubliette, they kind of had that. I, you know, they were, they were pretty set on at least rescuing the victim of the torture chamber. But they went deeper. They uh, bartered with the mushroom people. They parlayed with them and kind of realized that that's not really where they're looking for. And they realized that the mushrooms people were not evil. They killed all the kobolds. They solved the little puzzle at the shrine, which I liked.
They found the exit to the outside, like kind of the hidden exit from the ancient shrine. And then they uh, went snuck past the dragon, took a bunch of its treasure, didn't even wake it up. The dragon, oh was just, was just a hazard. And then they came back out and they realized. So I basically had simulated in my head. I'm like, okay, they're in this other half of the hidden caves.
In the meantime, the guards have returned to the jail and the oubliette and found in the torture chamber and found that they had released these people. So the guards were ready for them when they came back out. And the guards were saying, hey, we don't really care what you're doing, but you need to give us all of your treasure or we're going to tell uh, the Earl about you.
So I love. There's nothing that makes players mad than getting mugged for their treasure. I've done it before in games and it's always awesome because it puts them in these like really hairy spots where they're like, like even players who don't really care about like getting gold, like what is there to do with gold pieces? That's kind of like a, a long standing question but like the moment an NPC is like, give me your stuff.
Oh, um, man, they get mad and I love it. I had, I don't know if I've ever talked to you about it, but when I was running my 5e game with uh, hex dungeons, they got mugged by Githyanki.
Like extra dimensional pirates came and they were like, you know, level 8 or 9 and the githyanki were like level 10 or 11 and they were in a bad spot. They're like, give us your stuff or we'll kill you. Boy, did that boil it for them. But the guards, I was kind of running them as corrupt bastards as I think they are written to be. And so the guards held them up and was like.
Then the players were like, no, screw this. And they Fought and killed all the guards. They released all the prisoners. And the Earl was like, if I ever see you again in these lands, I'm going to send men after you and kill you. And so that's how the adventure ended.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Well, did they have fun?
[00:17:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I think they had a hoot. They were really pleased with your little puzzle in the ancient, um, grotto.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Give me the puzzle that I completely ripped off from the Fifth Element.
[00:17:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, like, I mean, it is a basic puzzle. Like, it's literally just, you know, put the right stuff on the, uh, the right plinth or whatever. But it works. Yeah, they have to put air, earth, fire and water on each of the four pillars. And it was fun for them to be like, how do we put air on a pillar? And then Alex's sister was like, I blow on it. And I'm like, yep, that works. And then the sword came loose there. It was really funny, though, because, um, Alex's brother, who's 17 years old, he was, like, playing kind of a curmudgeonly cleric, and he, like, really wanted the magic sword. And so him and his sister, who's only a year older than him, they were, like, arguing. She's like, no, I'm the fighter. I should get the sword. And I'm like, she should probably get the sword. I mean, I'm not trying to influence anything. You guys can do it. And then they were arguing, and then I'm like, hey, wait, can clerics even use swords? And he's like, all right, she can have the sword. It was really funny.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: You should run, uh, the leprechaun adventure next, because he can get a plus one. Shillelagh.
[00:18:41] Speaker C: There we go.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: There we go.
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Um, as they were trying to figure out their prison guard standoff too, um, they eventually used the spell in the tan hack. Alex's brother used the spell command, which is a creature obeys a single three word command that does not harm it.
And they were trying to brainstorm, like, what is the worst thing we could make this guard say, you know? So that was very fun to the teenagers at the table for a couple minutes, um, and my butt was falling asleep in the, uh, kitchen chair. So. But, yeah, you know, it was a hoot, man. They really enjoyed it. It was so fun to see them, like, immediately go from like, oh, we're doing a quest for the king and we're going to find a dragon, to being like, no, this situation sucks. Everybody here sucks.
I'm getting mugged for my opals and moonstones that I Worked my fist sized amethyst and sapphires that I worked really hard to kill these kobolds for. And then that like the dragon was just like kind of the reason things were happening. It was like I said, it was only involved for them for like a half of a scene. It was really fun.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Do you mind if I read our text exchange?
[00:19:59] Speaker C: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: I have to say I'm reading it because it delighted me. And mostly I'm reading it because, you know, 50 years from now when I'm, you know, in a nursing home with none of my marbles and I'm listening to this podcast to remember my life and my gaming. This will help me remember this text exchange. Because this was Friday at 8:13pm you text me and you say some stuff and then uh, in the meantime I'm about to run this for Alex's family and it's a picture of dragon and dungeon printed out. And I said, cool, have fun. Fun fact that if they encounter Frog, we'll come back to that. They'll be the first group ever to have done so, to my knowledge, because no group I've run through has ever encountered Frog. He said, I'll keep you updated. And then like over an hour later you're like, Alex's character took 10 foot drop into the oubliette and was killed instantly. Laugh, cry face. I wrote my bad.
[00:20:50] Speaker C: We were all laughing at the table. So, you know, it's just so funny. Just uh, just half flings down.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I love the word unwary in the description. I was channeling Gygax.
Like I had just read Tomb of Horrors. I think he must say unwary and Tomb of Wars. I'm making this up. I'm going to say like nine times, someone is going to crack Tomb of Horrors and correct me and say he only said it, you know, zero times. But I just feel like Gary Gygax said unwary a lot.
You said to report Frog remains undiscovered, but they were pretty appalled or, sorry, they were already pretty appalled by everything else they found going on in the prison. They had a great time. The adventure though, I, I love appalled. So few groups have actually been appalled at the guards. I've been a little disappointed by that.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think it maybe depends on what their expectation is going into it. Like, I know Alex's brother and sister, uh, are, are they're, they're rowdy teenagers, you know, they're fun. I like hanging out with them. Um, they're looking to pick fights and stuff. And I know that um, Alex's mom has a strong moral compass as well and Alex does as well. So like it was, it was just fun for them to be like, like I made them kind of callous and rude at first because I think you did a good job of describing like the guards don't want, like these are basically external auditors coming in to mess with their, their work. You know. And so I kind of started with that and then it escalated from there. So I think, you know, knowingly or unknowingly, I think in my experience it was a well written kind of e of delving deeper into kind of how messed up uh, this whole location is. But yeah, you know what, like the, the fun of OSR games is that you can present a lot of story or situations and it's up to the players if they want to bite on it or not. You know, there, I'm sure there are players who would say yeah, this was messed up. But like my character doesn't care. I'm here to get treasure and kill a dragon. You know what I mean? Like, like I think the beauty of OSR games is that you can choose to be a do gooder or you can choose to get treasure and get out.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: So a couple of other rapid fire questions. I know how much you hate my numbering scheme.
[00:23:01] Speaker C: M. How was that?
It was okay for those who um, don't know.
So when you have a hex grid, they don't line up nicely horizontally and vertically, right? Like if you wanted to go horizontally across on horizontal hexes you would have to like zigzag up and down. And so your columns would either all have odd numbers or all have even numbers. So like there's like a three and ah, a five but there is no a four. But there's a B2, a B4 and a B6. So um, it's okay. I just don't ever find myself for the amount of hexes that this is.
If this was a 30 by 30 hexagrid, I think a grid notation would be good. But the fact is is that I'm never thinking about well, what's going on in column B? It's no, what's going on in B4 and that's connected to B2 and B6. And so for me it would make more sense. And when I do it I just call them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and I kind of just, you know, roll them around. I think there's no right or wrong way to do it. Um, if it makes sense for your brain I think that's fine. It didn't, like, impede me at all, but I just.
I think that's better suited for when you have, like, five, like, I don't know, 10 rows and 10 columns rather than five and three. You know what I mean?
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Because of my nudge and notation, you wind up starting the key in the middle of the document.
[00:24:33] Speaker C: Yeah. And I don't.
I don't think that's bad. I think that you did.
At the start of the key, you say start at C1 entryway. So I think you covered your butt there and then.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: The mushroom grotto is completely different from the rest of the dungeon. Like, I wanted an environmental hazard. That's the underground river. I wanted a puzzle. That's the ancient shrine. I wanted some fights. Got those in. The mushroom grotto is. I just wanted something weird. I wanted one hex of just weird weirdness.
[00:25:04] Speaker C: But.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: But weirdness that if you learned what was going on and what the mushroom people were doing, weirdness that would kind of fit. Did they find the mushroom grotto? Totally out of left field and just weird.
[00:25:14] Speaker C: When they go through the secret tunnel to the other side of the dungeon into the caves, they see the claw marks, they see the scales. They know people have been disappearing, so they have a pretty good idea. Some giant red reptile that's. That's doing this.
When they came across the mushroom people, you know, they were like, I present. They never got into the village. The guards kind of stopped them, but I told them there are no other exits to this area. They looked around, they saw the mushroom people. They saw there are no other exits. And they're like, we can come back here if we need.
Um, but I don't think what we're looking for is here, which I think is a valid, you know, path to take. I think I overdo it on the weirdness a little bit because I think that's what excites me. I like to baffle my players and present, um, kind of gonzo situations sometimes. And you're way more restrained with it, which I think is valid.
I don't know if it, uh, if it read as, like, really weird as opposed to, like, there's kind of this other thing going on that is a little bit more out of left field, but it's not super core to what's going on, if they're paying attention, you know, fair.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Anything I didn't ask. That you wish I would have. Based on the experience that you had.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: I wish the dragon had a name.
Oh, I think, um, named Bad Guys, I think. Well, I think every dragon should have a name. Even young dragons. Like, I think it adds to their mystique. I mean, if you're going to go to the trouble of naming every guard in the.
In the dungeon, I think the dragon deserves a name as well. How would they ever find it? Or maybe you could leave clues to it. Like, maybe the mushroom people refer to the dragon by its name as opposed to calling it a dragon. Stuff like that. I think that would add to sort of the. The mythical nature of it rather than it feeling like an animal, which I think this dungeon kind of makes the dragon feel like an animal rather than a cunning reptile. That's fair.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Should I name the kobolds, too?
[00:27:15] Speaker C: Yeah, but only if they're funny.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: The whack.
[00:27:19] Speaker C: The whack. Drick bop. Yep. Yeah, stuff like that.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Well, dude, I can't tell you what a thrill it was for me to get the text and be like, oh, my God, someone's running this thing that I wrote. So thank you for texting me. Thank you for talking to me about it. It's such fun when you create something and put it out into the world for someone to use it. So thank you for giving me that thrill.
[00:27:42] Speaker C: Absolutely. Now you owe me one. You got to run something that I wrote next time.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: I do. Yeah.
[00:27:47] Speaker C: Well, thank you for, uh, writing it. It was a hoot, and, um, you know, unexpected things happened, and it was, uh, it was a ton of fun. And for a first or second session game for a group of players with a, you know, moderately experienced gm, I think, uh, you couldn't ask for much more than that.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you for listening.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: People call them reviews, postmortems, retrospectives.
We call them lessons learned, and we're sharing ours with you.
