Randomization, Role Play and Improvisation

One of the things I love about AD&D is that it is light on the social mechanics, but what it does use works remarkably well as a form of improvisational prompt for social dynamics in the game. My Monday session this week was a perfect example.

So my Monday group, a pair of cousins, is running through White Plume Mountain. They are rocking two PCs each, a fighter/magic-user and cleric for one, and a fighter/magic-user and fighter for the other. The single classed fighter was petrified, so he’s been reduced by one of the magic-users and is being carried around until they can reverse the petrification. The spell lasts an hour, so it’s on a timer for when he will return to full size.

They ran into Sir Bluto Sans Pite, recognized him, fought and killed four of his eight men, and then I rolled a morale check and Sir Bluto and his remaining men fled. AD&D requires morale checks in certain well defined circumstances

Now, as the ref, I have to figure out what happens to Sir Bluto and his remaining men. The module doesn’t tell you WHY Sir Bluto is there. It mentions that he is a notorious killer, and that the party is bound to recognize him, but it doesn’t say anything else. So when he and his men flee, what do they do?

1. Go back to their post

2. Hunker down elsewhere and heal up

3. Go to Keraptis and tell him what’s up

4. Follow party at a distance, possibly ambush

5. Etc.

How, as a DM, do you choose between these options? Unless something jumps out at me, I roll for stuff like this. I rolled a d4 and got “follow party at a distance, possibly ambush”. To simulate this, I placed Sir Bluto and his men on the wandering monster table, so they would pop up unexpectedly at some point.

This past session he met them again through a wandering monster roll. 

They met in the hallway, the party taunted Sans Pite, and warned him off another fight. They felt that they could take him if they had too, but the last fight had drained resources and HP, and they were feeling vulnerable. At that point I decided to make an encounter reaction roll, and I rolled a 57, which prompts a second roll where I rolled a 53, which made it positive reaction, just barely. I now had to interpret this reaction. 

Since it was just barely a positive reaction, I decided that Sir Bluto wanted to be free of this dungeon, and saw the party as his way out. My on the spot backstory was that Sans Pite had fled to White Plume Mountain to hide when he was being pursued by lawmakers, and Keraptis had offered to allow him to stay if he worked in the dungeon picking off adventurers. However, Sans Pite has been here for a year and now wants to leave, and Keraptis has made no overtures towards letting him leave. The party is a golden opportunity. 

So he offered to help them navigate the dungeon, perhaps they would die and he would collect their magic items, perhaps he would flee if Keraptis showed up, leaving the party behind as bait, or slay them as soon as they left the dungeon if they got that far.

They continued on, 

They cross the boiling mud cave as they have magical flight capabilities, leaving Sans Pite’s men behind, though they did almost get fried by a mud geyser, but eventually figured out that they could watch and see if the geysers had a pattern, which they did. So they get across, and come to the door. They open it, and find a dark hallway. 

They try lanterns but the darkness eats the light. So they try a light spell, and it flares for a time then dims. So they decide to press forward in the dark. A continual light would have worked, but for the duration of a light spell. They didn’t try that though.

So they went up the hallway, and found a door. It was oaken and bound with iron. They realized that the fighter was going to increase in size soon, so they tucked his petrified and reduced body under the door, when it returned to size it of course broke the door, and they went in. The priest cast her continual light spell. They see a coffin. They scream, “nope” and turn to run, “VAMPIRE”. That was pretty funny. 

So one of the players shouts out, in character, “Wait, we don’t want to fight, we want to escape”. 

This is where it gets interesting. 

In 1e AD&D it’s BTB that if you can talk to something, and it can understand you, then you roll on the encounter reaction table. I did it for Sans Pite, and I did it here. The monster has to react to what the PC has said. Of course, it is up to the ref to decide to use the rule, sometimes, as Gygax points out, there will be no parley offered. But this case isn’t obvious. Ctenmiir the vampire is responsible for guarding a magic hammer, the party wants to leave. So I rolled an encounter reaction roll, with no modifiers, as there weren’t any other factors that weighed on one side or the other.

I rolled a 96%, so that’s an extremely favorable result. As the ref, I now have to interpret this. Why would a vampire, protecting a magic hammer, pause in killing the party and draining their life force, something I assume it would really want to do, when it was tasked with this?

Again, I had to decide something on the spot. In this case I decided that the vampire was forced into this task, bound by Keraptis’ magic, unable to leave, so he eats foolhardy adventures who get to him and sleeps in the dark. He, like Sans Pite, wanted to leave. But why would he turn to these adventurers and try to leave, when doubtlessly dozens of adventurers had done the same and been drained of life by the vampire before?

I needed a hook. Then I thought of Sans Pite. Sans Pite was also pressed into service by Keraptis, so I decided that EVERYONE was pressed into service by Keraptis, and when the vampire saw Sans Pite, away from his post without his men, well, he saw an opportunity. If Sans Pite roamed free, perhaps Keraptis was absent, or otherwise occupied, etc.

So there it was. The vampire parlayed with the party, and told them he would help them if they could get him free. There was a magical barrier that prevented him from leaving the cave, he told the party that if they could get that barrier removed, he would help them with their goal (they were sent to retrieve Wave). The magical barrier was controlled by a sigil in Quesnef’s chamber, the ogre magi was charged with protecting it. The party now has to convince Quesnef to lower the barrier so Ctenmiir can leave the caves, only Quesnef can do this, so they will have to get creative.

Observations

Improvisation

When I started out running D&D games I always struggled with improvisation. AD&D is custom built to improvise with. This session was a perfect example. 

At five junctures random rolls were made:

Morale check

Action roll (which of the possible actions would Sir Bluto choose)

Wandering Monster Table (to encounter Sir Bluto)

Encounter Reaction Roll (Sir Bluto)

Encounter Reaction Roll (Ctenmiir)

Each result was fairly bare, flee, pursue at distance, barely positive reaction, very positive reaction. However, each gave enough for the referee to add flesh to the bones of the encounter. And how much more interesting is this than Sir Bluto and his men “fighting to the death”. The party now has two allies, both of which may betray them, but powerful enough to help them achieve their goals. 

It’s also role-playing gold, Sans Pite has been a gift, he’s an accused murderer who was formerly well known and liked, and he’s been here for a year, pining to leave. The party is alternately suspicious and impressed, Sans Pite is pretty good in a fight.

What impresses me the most about this process, using social mechanics like morale and encounter reactions, is that it creates an adventure element that never would have occurred to me when putting it together to run. Having Sans Pite ally with the party was not on my radar. This sort of emergent, unpredictable material really adds to the immersion of the game.

Customization

People often lament the lack of detail in dungeon adventures, the pine for a “dungeon ecology”, and to make sense of things. I do enjoy a well thought out dungeon, but the style of dungeons in 1e is perfectly built for customization. All the early modules tell you very explicitly to make changes to fit this dungeon into your campaign, and leave open areas for you to expand. 

But what I didn’t understand until recently is that you don’t have to do all of that ahead of time. You can customize the adventure as you play, as I did here. When an encounter reaction roll required me to interpret a result (like Ctenmiir allying with the party) I decided that Keraptis had pressed everyone in the complex into service against their will. I could have decided that BEFORE the party went on the adventure, but it was just as easily improvised on the spot when it was needed.

In short, you can fill in the dungeon ecology, add motivations for NPCs, create factions, etc, etc, etc, when interpreting rolls, rather than doing that all up front. And as it is the result of interpreting dice rolls, the referee is surprised too, not as much as the players, but it is still a nice feeling as a ref to see an element specified in game like this from a combination of a dice roll and the imagination. 

You could of course have more complex social mechanics, or detail motivations and backgrounds for all the inhabitants of the dungeon, and that would stand you in good stead to handle what comes up, but it is preferable to me to have lighter social mechanics, mechanics that prompt me as a referee to fill in this stuff on the fly. 

This makes early modules very short and concise, later modules would add on a LOT more about personal motivations and background, and although this is fun if done well, it did make later modules a lot bigger. There is a sparse economy to modules like G1 which are very short but tremendously evocative.