Gamma World Remnants: Gammacore Reactor Control
I've been wanting to release this for quite some time, just haven't gotten around to it.
This was one of the planned areas in my cancelled Gamma World "fourthcore" (or "gammacore", as some have called it) project When Worlds Collide. The whole campaign was meant for a party of about 5th level.
In similar style to previous fourthcore releases, this is one of four possible areas the players must traverse in order to reach a computer system at the North end. It's a combination encounter and pseudo-puzzle involving prisms and very painful particle beams.
Hope you enjoy!
Contest: Design a Treasure Vault
I am currently developing another module titled The Heart of Fire. In a style that seems to be somewhat typical of me, it's another big one - 116 pages at current count - but I think this module might actually be more usable because of the way it's designed. It's not a linear path... It's effectively a dungeon crawl where the players can take multiple paths to their primary objective, or deviate to do something that has nothing to do with the primary objective, or just wander around and kill stuff. There are several roleplaying options, lots of traps and lots of monsters. Should be fun!
The module is about 90% done, and all that remains is the design of three different rooms and for me to write a whole lot of fluff for the rest of the module (as I've said many a time before, I'm no good at fluff).
Recently, as part of the "RPG chat" that occurs every Thursday, the discussion came up about how one goes about creating a campaign. A lot of people mentioned how they have a hard time with the "nitty gritty", putting together the mechanics on how things work, and have a much better time just coming up with stories or descriptions of things. I am the complete opposite: I guess it's because I've been a computer programmer for thirty years, but I have a tendency to do all the mechanics first and foremost, and then fill in the blanks and make the story around that.
Case in point: in The Heart of Fire, the first thing I designed was the full stat block and tactical encounter map for the endgame boss. I had no idea what his motivations were, or why he was a "boss" in the first place for that matter. I had no clue what environment he would be in, or what would be involved along the way in order to get to where he is at. In the module there is currently a group of zealots known as the Blackfire Order that worship said boss, but at the time I created the boss' stat block that cult didn't even exist; I hadn't thought of it at all. I had a fully documented Level 12 Solo Controller with an arsenal of traps and devices around his lair, but I didn't quite know what to do with it. Everything leading up that didn't exist, and at the time I had no clue what it would be.
Over time I built a world around it, but I built it one stone at a time. Whereas some people may have a vision of the story from beginning to end in their head, I didn't have the faintest idea where it would go. Eventually I created the Blackfire Order (the aforementioned zealots), and another group of antagonists that get in the way, and the maze of tunnels inside the volcano that the boss calls home, and the island on which the volcano stands, and the small fishing village at the opposite end of the island where the encounter starts. Actually, I didn't even get that far yet: the page on which I am meant to describe Serpent's Cove - the village where the party begins their adventure - is completely blank. I haven't written a thing about it.
But every creature, trap and hazard has a stat block. I know exactly how much XP every room has, and I know exactly what level the PCs will be if they take certain paths. I have 36 encounter areas with detailed mechanics, ranging from every unique monster's stat block to the hit points and defenses of the average temple door... but every single one of them has a "read aloud" section that currently blank.
That's just the way I am, I guess. I'll deal with it sooner or later...
-=O=-
In the meantime, I thought I'd try an experiment and see if anyone out there will bite. After I created the boss and his lair, I created the following map:
At the time I didn't know what to do with it, or where it was going to go, or what's in it. Now I have a vague idea, but still nothing concrete. But like I said above, I know every mechanical detail about the encounter that's just outside the door to the North (7 monsters, EL 11, 2,950 XP) and the specifics on the trap that secures the door... but that's it.
I made the map using the "OK, let's see what looks cool here" school of design. A massive pile of coins lying in wait underwater? Let me mess with the transparency and color contrast to make the water look weird... Lit braziers? Let me see how putting an aura around the flame looks...
All in all, a neat little map... That's devoid of content.
So I leave this to you: using the map above, design what the contents of the room will be. Put in as many death traps as you want, pile it full of enough monsters so that they can't move, devise some sinister puzzle or contraption that makes it difficult to get so much as a coin out of this place. The room could be a real treasure vault, or a place of watery doom. Use your imagination!
Conditions: The only condition is that you do not alter the structural content of the room. You can add all the creatures you want, but you must not change the appearance of the room by adding objects. At least not initially, that is - objects might appear after the room is interacted with, such as things popping out from the walls, rising out of the ground, or simply appearing out of thin air - but when the players enter the room must be as it appears above. Again, monsters are the exception: put whatever you want.
Game System: The design could be of any level, and preferably for D&D 4e although I will accept other game systems with D&D mechanics (from 1st Ed D&D to Pathfinder). You can even "fourthcore" it, if you're so inclined.
Judging: Depending on how many entries we get, I will either judge them myself or find judges to take a look. We'll see.
Prize: These days I cannot guarantee retail prizes like I've done before as I don't have the resources to buy them, but I could guarantee prizes I myself have created since they're free to me.
So the winner - or winners, if there is a tie - will get a voucher from Drive Thru RPG for all the products I have listed there (CC1: The Complete Collection, retail value $13.96):
- The Endless Winter
- The Dragon's Master
- The Heart of Fire (once it is completed)
- M1: The Wayside Inn tactical map
- M2: The Ring of Stones tactical map
And, to be honest, if your design knocks my socks off maybe we can work something out to include part of all of it in The Heart of Fire. Of course, you will get credit for the creation in every way possible. No guarantees, but I like to keep my options open.
Deadline: All entries must be in by midnight December 18th, 2011.
So if you're up to it, show the world what you can do!
ETA:
I guess it would help to add the email: send it to contest@brainclouds.net!
An Alternative to Player Death
I've run my share of campaigns and, as far as I can remember, I have never had a PC die.
Having a PC die is actually a problem for me, because the plot line in my primary campaign kind of demands that the original five players survive (at least until Chapter Three, that is). So if one of them dies it's somewhat of an inconvenience and "breaks" the story.
So I thought of a special way to handle it: give the dead player a chance to come back, perhaps even as a servant of the BBEG.
The following is a skill challenge concept I put together only a day or two ago, and probably still needs a little tweaking. I'm open to suggestions as to how to make it better. Anyone?
The Dark Offering
If a player dies after a certain point in the campaign, he is transported to something similar to a dream sequence where the "big evil" attempts to persuade the player to join its side. As DM, you are welcome to roleplay this in any way you see fit. The primary thing to remember is that the voice will attempt to recruit the player to go against the other players and the enemies of the BBEG in the local village. The voice may not be particularly sincere of its offer, though.
Skill Challenge: Complexity 1 (4 successes before 2 failures)
Primary Skills: Arcana, Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and see below
Victory: The player is restored to life as if the Raise Dead ritual was used, but the penalties persist only until the first milestone is reached.
Failure: The player dies. If the player is later revived with a Raise Dead ritual, all the penalties are -2 (instead of the usual -1) and he gains vulnerable 5 necrotic for the next two milestones.
Arcana, Moderate DC (1 success, maximum 2 successes): You focus your mind and resist the voice’s influence.
Bluff, Hard DC (1 success, maximum 2 successes): You manage to convince the voice that you will his bidding if your life is restored, knowing full well you don't mean it.
Diplomacy, Moderate DC (1 success, maximum 2 successes): You speak with the voice and try to talk your way out of the difficult situation.
Intimidate, Moderate DC (1 success, maximum 2 successes): You rebel against the voice in the darkness, stating you are not one to die so easily.
Attack (1 success, maximum 3 successes): You retaliate at the voice with violence. All attacks are made against a defense of 10+Level, and it could be any form of attack (melee, ranged or burst) and target any defense.
Surrender (automatic failure): You would rather die than become a servant of the dark.
Embracing the Darkness (2 successes, maximum 4 successes, with special conditions): You accept the darkness, realizing that the voice’s offer is quite enticing. Using this method at any point grants the player additional bonuses if the skill challenge ends up a success.
Note: The player that died must do this skill challenge alone; he cannot get any assistance from other players.
Upon a victory, if at any point during the skill challenge the player agrees to accept the voice’s offer and embrace the powers of darkness, the player gains the following conditions:
-
Player gains the "shadowtouched" keyword.
-
Resist 5 necrotic.
-
Vulnerable 5 radiant.
-
The player will be able to identify any and all creatures that have the "shadowtouched" keyword.
-
+1 to attack and damage rolls against creatures that do not have the "shadowtouched" keyword.
-
+2 to attack and damage rolls against other players or creatures that would normally be considered allies, or at least are enemies of the BBEG.
-
If the player makes any burst attacks, all other players and allies in the area of effect are treated as enemies.
-
The player gains a special "shadowtouched" power (which I will not elaborate on here for spoiler reasons).
-
No creature with the "shadowtouched" keyword will willingly attack the player in any way.
These bonuses remain until:
-
The BBEG is defeated.
-
The player makes an attack or threatening gesture against a creature with the "shadowtouched" keyword. The attack does not have to hit the target; the mere act of rolling the attack is sufficient.
Once the effect ends, the player must make an immediate saving throw with a -5 penalty; on a failure, the player loses two healing surges. If the player does not have any surges, he takes damage equal to his surge value for each surge that he is missing. If the player drops to 0 HP or lower as a result of this attack, the player dies and the BBEG will make no further effort to recruit him.
If the player embraces the darkness, at any time the player can turn against the BBEG as a free action. If they do, the player loses the conditions and two healing surges as described above without a saving throw.
As far as skill challenges go, I don't think it's that difficult, and it at least gives the players an opportunity to come back.
So anyone out there have alternatives for handling player death?
Excess Houseruling
I don't mind houserules most of the time because there are certain things in the core mechanic that, to me, make no sense, are not covered or may not translate well to the format I normally participate in ("play by post"). I personally have houseruled things like critical hits, tough minions and skill challenge handling (DC 10 + 1/2 level for an assist... at high levels, work for it guys!), just to make it a little more interesting.
But recently I've been exposed to what I call "excessive houseruling". In other words, the DM has elected to lay down so many new rules that you have to wonder if you're playing D&D at all.
For example, in ONE recent game there are the following houserules:
- New rules for swimming: you move slower, or even sink to the bottom, depending on the armor you are wearing. If you're wearing scale or plate, you sink pretty much no matter what; you get a save after which you can shift two squares and become dazed, but if you fail you start to drown.
- If you get pushed over the side of a dock in to the water, you get TWO rolls: a "safety roll" (Athletics/Acrobatics, fixed DC) and a saving throw. Now don't ask me what happens if you fail one or both, but as far as I could tell there is no way to avoid being dazed, even if you succeed on both rolls. When it happened to me I somehow wound up dazed, prone and hanging off the side of the dock.
- Complete redefinition of the surprise round #1: No opposed check to see if the other group is surprised. Post surprise round and first round actions right out of the gate, regardless of whether the enemy can act or not. There is no initiative order, so act at your discretion (and the enemy acts or moves at will as well). You can take full round actions until you "make contact" with the enemy, after which the surprise round ends immediately and the initiative order takes over.
- Complete redefinition of the surprise round #2: In the surprise round, you get a full set of actions and every time someone attacks the enemy makes an opposed Initiative roll. If their Initiative roll beats yours, the attack does not take place. Note that this is a complete subversion of the initiative and surprise round mechanic in the first place... This rule was so confusing that it nearly wiped half the party on the first round, despite us already standing there, literally two squares from the enemy, weapons drawn an sensing danger. Most of us posted initiative rolls and nothing else (as is normally the case in PbP, so we know what order we attack in and can coordinate. Not to mention a warlord in the party makes things more complicated), and the DM assumed that was all we were going to do in the first round, so we stood there like idiots while the enemy proceeded to smash our brains in with a barrage of attacks (four Thunderwave attacks at least, not to mention several melee hits). The result was half the party dead (my character - the warlord leader - took a total of 74 points of damage at level ONE. For those keeping score, that's 2.5x my actual HP) and the rest bloodied in the first round before any of us even made a single attack roll. It caused such an uproar that the whole scene was retconned by the DM.
- You can now use an action point as a free action at any time, even if it's not your turn. And forget about milestones and need to keep track of APs; you get one per encounter no matter what.
- New rules for invisible targets: Cannot attack an invisible target with a "lucky" melee attack EVER, and the houserule has been worded in such a way that I currently have no idea if it can be hit with a ranged attack. Note that none of this has anything to do with whether a character is "hidden" or not; I could roll a natural 20 on a Perception check and pat the invisible gnome on the head, but so long as he's invisible I can't smack him with the warhammer that's bigger than he is.
- Skill challenge rules that I know I can't explain (I posted the link to the thread on Twitter once; three people read it and only reacted by saying "my head hurts"). Basically we're walking through a city and we need directions, so we ask people. So each character has to pick a race we want to target, then make an opposed skill check of some sort. There's also a bunch of modifiers or something that I don't understand or know how they apply. And the end result is that I have to do 9 successes before 5 failures. Or something. Who knows.
There came a point when I didn't know what game I was playing anymore; I spent more time trying to make sense out of the rules than I did anything else. The story elements became lost in the mess, and every other post was asking for a rules clarification. There came a point when I stopped roleplaying and posted actions because I could not intelligently roleplay when I had no idea what was going on. It was no longer fun... it was work!
So I withdrew from the game.
Until that point, I don't think I'd ever withdrawn from a game in my life (well, except for games in which DMs disappear off the face of the Earth... Hey, it happens in PbP). It was a play by post game that was supposed to be all about roleplaying, but I read the thread a dozen times and didn't know what was going on. I had sensory overload, being hammered with so many rules that I couldn't focus on being the character I wanted to be. And I liked my character, too (one was a dwarven warlord, other was a shardmind psion).
I play PbP a lot, and I use it to tell a story and roleplay with the players. The rules are sometimes secondary, and if the players want to do something dramatic that bends the rules so be it. I have a monk in one game I DM that bounces all over the place, jumping over enemies and the like... Is that allowed in the rulebook? Probably not "as written", but I have him make a skill check and life goes on. I don't completely redefine what it means to take a move action.
D&D 4e has the potential issue of not being specific on certain rules, but that's by design. It's not like earlier versions, where you have five pages of grappling rules or six different ways to cast the same spell. In some ways it's simplistic and I think that's a good thing, but when a veteran player who is use to having a phone book of rules to go by starts playing it, they find themselves filling the apparent gaps.
So I'm curious...
- Have you ever been a player in a game where some houserules were absurd, or there were too many to keep track of?
- Any special houserules you've put in to effect as a DM?
-=O=-
On an unrelated note, I am taking a brief hiatus while I leave town on business, so this blog will be silent until the 19th of July. How I'm going to handle this trip and GenCon shortly thereafter is beyond me, but I'll figure things out as I go along.
The World-Ending Bag of Holding
I don't know if I've mentioned it here or not, but when it comes to managing encumbrance in D&D I'm of the school that assumes everyone - even first level characters - has a Bag of Holding. I do not want to worry about the math involved in determining weight, and I refuse to believe that our heroes would be over-encumbered and suffer in combat because they're one pound over. Also, I'd hate to think of the chaos that will ensue if the heroes just toss aside their inferior magic items, leaving them lying about as if they're spent cigarettes. Imagine if a wandering goblin chanced across your +4 Mace of Chieftain Braining just because you prefer your shiny new +5 weapon instead (although, come to think of it, that's kind of a cool adventure seed!).
So unless you want to carry a different broadsword for each day of the month or enough suits of plate mail to equip the London Symphony Orchestra, I'm going to assume you can carry the item somehow, regardless of size or weight. Either you get to hold on to your old magic items or automatically have some way to convert them to residuum so you can sell them back in town.
But, in a fit of boredom, I began to think about what exactly is a Bag of Holding. How does it work exactly, and what are the problems you face for doing certain things to it?
Dungeons and Dragons 4e's listing of the Bag of Holding and its bigger brother, the Handy Haversack (seriously? That's what it's called? Sounds like something Dora the Explorer carries around), doesn't go in to much detail on the subject:
Bag of Holding - Level 5 Uncommon
This item appears to be a simple sack of brown canvas.
Price: 1,000 gp
Wondrous Item
Property: This bag can hold up to 200 pounds in weight or 20 cubic feet in volume, but it always weighs only 1 pound.
Drawing an item from the bag is a minor action.
Handy Haversack - Level 10 Uncommon
This ordinary-looking backpack is surprisingly light.
Price: 5,000 gp
Wondrous Item
Property: This backpack can hold up to 1,000 pounds in weight or 100 cubic feet in volume, but it always weighs only 1 pound.
Drawing an item from the backpack is a minor action.
NOTE: There are other similar items - such as the Deep-Pocket Cloak and Tinkersuit (both from the Adventurer's Vault 2), but the concept is the same.
Every time I make a character that's high enough level to afford one or the other, I get one. But I got to thinking... What happens if it rips? What happens when you turn it inside out? What happens when you put one inside the other? What happens if I stuff the annoying gnome in to one?
D&D 4e makes no concessions for such actions, leaving it irrelevant or up to the discretion of the GM. Which, quite frankly, is kind of dangerous... 'cause the first thing I think would happen if you put one bag in another is that the world would implode. For any of the above actions, GM's can do anything they want: create a rift to another plane, creating a miniature black hole, spawn Orcus, spawn a pony... GM had free reign. And God help you if your GM knows anything about physics...
Can you imagine what it took to create the very first bag of holding? How many mages are standing around the Astral Plane thinking "well that didn't work..." and wondering how they're getting home?
Looking back at previous versions of D&D you can tell that many people have tried the above "what if" scenarios, so the rule books had to be very explicit of what would happen. Here it is from the d20 SRD:
This appears to be a common cloth sack about 2 feet by 4 feet in size. The bag of holding opens into a non-dimensional space: Its inside is larger than its outside dimensions. Regardless of what is put into the bag, it weighs a fixed amount. This weight, and the limits in weight and volume of the bag’s contents, depend on the bag’s type, as shown on the table below.
[Table removed - see above link]
If the bag is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag ruptures and is ruined. All contents are lost forever. If a bag of holding is turned inside out, its contents spill out, unharmed, but the bag must be put right before it can be used again. If living creatures are placed within the bag, they can survive for up to 10 minutes, after which time they suffocate. Retrieving a specific item from a bag of holding is a move action—unless the bag contains more than an ordinary backpack would hold, in which case retrieving a specific item is a full-round action.
If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in the space: Bag and hole alike are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane: The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, destroying the portable hole and bag of holding in the process.
That's a big sack. Two feet by four feet is larger than my laptop bag; that's not a bag, that's an oil drum.
Think about that description, though... A 9th level magic item that is capable of creating a rift to the Astral Plane and sucking most of the party along with it. And you can stuff all the magic items you want in it, but if someone pierces it with so much a needle everything inside it is vaporized. If you toss in your brand new +6 Longsword of Cloth Piercing, goodbye worldly belongings.
It's almost like carrying around Pandora's Box. The thing should come with an instruction manual or warning label; thanks to the manual I don't have to worry about sucking my bathroom in to the tenth level of hell because I know not to use my blow dryer in the shower.
D&D 4e forgets all that, either pretending that those situations would never happen or simply leaving it up to the GM's artistic license. I don't have to worry about how many razor sharp weapons I'm tossing in, or even if the annoying gnome can breathe in there.
It's also worth noting that there are four types of bags, each with varying bag weight, maximum weight capacity and maximum volume (the largest bag can hold 1,500 pounds and 250 cubic feet). The handy haversack exists as well, working essentially the same as the bag but with the added bonus that "when the wearer reaches into it for a specific item, that item is always on top." D&D 4e allows you to pull anything out of the bag as a minor action, even if it's something you tossed in years ago.
The description brings up yet another object that could combine with the bag of holding to end civilization: the portable hole, which also exists in D&D 4e but radically different...
Portable Hole - Level 19 Uncommon
This handkerchief-sized black circle becomes a great hole when placed on a flat surface.
Price: 105,000 gp
Wondrous Item
Power (At-Will): Standard Action. Place a portable hole on a wall, a floor, or a ceiling. (The surface must be flat for the item to function.) The portable hole instantly creates a 5-foot-wide, 5-foot-deep hole in that surface. With a standard action, any creature adjacent to a portable hole can pick it up, provided there are no creatures or objects inside it.
What I find interesting in the above description is that it isn't particularly clear as to what it does. if the wall is 5' thick, does that simply make an opening? What if the object is smaller than 5'x5'x5'? What if I put this thing on the annoying gnome's chest?
For the record, here's the Portable Hole in the d20 SRD:
A portable hole is a circle of cloth spun from the webs of a phase spider interwoven with strands of ether and beams of starlight. When opened fully, a portable hole is 6 feet in diameter, but it can be folded up to be as small as a pocket handkerchief. When spread upon any surface, it causes an extra-dimensional space 10 feet deep to come into being. This hole can be picked up from inside or out by simply taking hold of the edges of the cloth and folding it up. Either way, the entrance disappears, but anything inside the hole remains.
The only air in the hole is that which enters when the hole is opened. It contains enough air to supply one Medium creature or two Small creatures for 10 minutes. The cloth does not accumulate weight even if its hole is filled. Each portable hole opens on its own particular non-dimensional space. If a bag of holding is placed within a portable hole, a rift to the Astral Plane is torn in that place. Both the bag and the cloth are sucked into the void and forever lost. If a portable hole is placed within a bag of holding, it opens a gate to the Astral Plane. The hole, the bag, and any creatures within a 10-foot radius are drawn there, the portable hole and bag of holding being destroyed in the process.
Note the major difference: The portable hole went from being 6' wide and 10' deep to 5'x5'x5', no doubt to conform to the traditional "1 square = 5 feet" convention. Also, if something is inside the hole when it's folded shut, it stays in there in the same manner as a bag of holding; the D&D 4e version can only be closed if empty.
So in past versions of D&D these items were a disaster waiting to happen. In 4e, they're just another item that the players can use without fear of retribution or having an unscheduled visit to the Astral Plane. On an unrelated note: God, how I miss cursed items sometimes...
I'll continue to use them, just because it ensures I never have to worry about encumbrance. I'm kind of glad I don't have to worry about whether I will implode the world every time I put something in there.
As a 4e GM... Heck, I'd make *everything* include this technology one way or another, putting the players at great risk should they decide to put the would-be treasure inside their own bag of holding. But I can already see the problems with that: when a GM decides to take such liberties, the players might protest because it's not written in the rules anywhere. That still won't stop me from creating a world-ending cataclysm just because you put the wrong thing inside your little bag.
And if you're a gnome in my party, I'd be careful if I was you.
About the Author
Software developer and game designer in Miami, Florida. Currently working on content for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Pathfinder, 13th Age and other systems.
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