Friday, April 27, 2012

Another Solo Unbelievably Simple Role-playing Dungeon Crawl

A few posts back I mentioned I started another dungeon crawl with some characters generated using Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying. I've been playing here and there in odd moments during lunch and even waiting in my car to meet Lady Shadowmoss at the gym. Today, I exited the dungeon with nearly a TPK (the characters are detailed below the image as well as showing how I handled the Cleric's spells).

Only the fighter, Blarg, and the torch bearer made it out alive and even then, Blarg was down to 1 HP. His armor kept him from biting it in the dungeon and only a Cure Light Wounds (from the cleric before he was taken down) prevented the torch bearer from becoming a casualty. The worst part? Not a single coin was found, gold or otherwise. They did find a finely woven tunic of a kind not worn in this region worth something perhaps, but it raised some questions as to what it was doing there.

They also discovered what appeared to be a map of the area indicating a village and various trade routes. But they couldn't discern what it might be for.

Whether or not I'll send Blarg back in, I haven't decided. I sent the party in to search for a creature that's been killing livestock and had killed at least one of the local villagers but now there's possibly two more threads to follow.

Here's the map, generated on the fly using my No-Budget No-Frills Pencil and Paper d12 Dungeon Generator:


Behold the Power of the No-frills No-budget Pencil and Paper d12 Dungeon Generator!




Room 5 was a real bugger.

First the party encountered some kobolds there, and they surrendered after the first one was killed. The party opted to leave them and continue searching, on the way back to the room, the kobolds were all dead and there were some battle-crazed gnomes standing over them! A fight broke out and only ended when the last gnome standing surrendered. The party let HIM go too, and watched him run out the door in the north wall, presumably towards the steps down. 


While they were searching the bodies for loot, skeleton warriors attacked them, entering through the door to the west.

Finally, on his way out of the dungeon, Blarg and Reginald the Frail, Jr. were set upon by three more skeletons in the same room! The pile of bodies in that room is ridiculous!

***** the cast *****

The characters (3 standard fantasy RPG archetypes):

Blarg, Fighter
Action d10, Wits d8, Ego d6 HP 14
Swordsmanship (action +2), Smashing doors (action + 2), lifting heavy things (action + 2)
Armor: plate (-3), shield (-1) (that means he can ignore the first 4 points of damage each time he's hit)

Nimbles, Thief
Action d10, Wits d8, Ego d6, HP 9
Detect traps (Wits +2), Disarm Traps (Wits+2) : both are rolled against trap's difficulty, Pick locks (Action +2) (doors typically are hard difficulty)
Armor: leather (-1)

Father O'Maley, Cleric
Action d8, Wits d6, Ego d10 HP 13
Cure Light Wounds (Ego + 2) - roll against recipient's ego. If higher than recipient, recipient receives 1d6 HP, if lower, no effect. Can use once per recipient per game day.
Turn Undead (Ego+2). - roll against each target undead's Ego in LOS. If target loses, is turned otherwise no effect.
Protection (Ego +2) - roll against target Ego (including self), if success, target gains an armor bonus of -1 per level of spell (i.e. Ego+2 = -1, Ego+3 = -2, etc).

Hirelings:

For the hirelings, as they are just normal humans and not adventurers, I opted to use dice with less sides for their attributes. I found this was also effective for kobolds, who in D&D b/x are 1/2 HD each.

Reginald the Frail, Jr., torch bearer
Action d6, Wits d3, Ego d4 HP 6
farmhand (action +2)


Moose Smythe, Porter
Action d6, Wits d4, Ego d3 HP 8
bar room brawler (Action +2)

I had back stories for everyone, generated from various random lists. Unfortunately, I can't read my own handwriting!

4 comments:

  1. Great write up! Skeletons, Kobolds AND Gnomes? Tough dungeon.

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  2. Hey, really good job! I'm making a dungeon crawler prototype game and found your generator really interesting :D

    Cheers from Argentina

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    1. Thanks Yemel! If you give it a try and have any suggestions, please let me know. - John

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  3. John - I just created a Bestiary for USR. If you're interested in it, let me know at davidgarrett69[at sign]gmail.com

    ReplyDelete