So I was trying to make something playable about the Dark Tower. But instead of just using the setting, I want to just get the inspiring bits. I don't want to feel constrained by book characters or be a huge nerd about the lore details (because I know myself, and if I go down that way, I will become so obsessed with sticking with canon that I will get stuck in the research phase)
And what the hell, deep down I want freedom. Freedom to create, make and discard. There is something about me and the mystic western imagery that asks me to have a room to put the things that I might come up with.
The Dark Tower series (IV and VIII mostly, as they are the ones that deal most with the youth of Roland and take place on the Mid-World)
Into the West TV 2005 show (Greatly reccomended, never heard of it until recently even if it was produced by Steven Spielberg. I love how it shows the dynamics between indians and whites without plainly ignoring or glorifying any side. It might not be "really what happened" but it is consistent enough that works for me.
Final Fantasy 8 (If you think about it, the plot is easilly portable: A school state that trains young kids to kill, then sends them out in missions as "mercenaries?" "paladins?" "witch hunters?". Also the anachronistic world suits partly into the vision that I have for this setting)
This blog entry that got me thinking on "how would a Middle Earth equivalent that is based on the american frontier instead of middle ages Europe look"
The premise is that the PCs are young gunslingers (which are a sort of equivalent to knights) that have some missions given by their elders, and must eventually go on a quest for the Dark Tower (or the setting equivalent, though we could probably use it without copyright issues as it comes from the Robert Browning poem)
Then I started to look into quest-based games to see how they worked (Pendragon, PBTA, etc). But since I got enamored with the OSR sandbox style, where PCs decide their path and gain XP for tangible shit (gold by default) games where the GM gives the players a quest through the voice of an NPC dont work much for me. I just dont know how to do it anymore.
My idea is to run the whole game as an overworld megadungeon: Lets explain.
Gilead, on the left side of the map, is the starting town. To the west of it, the wilderness works as a Level 1 dungeon floor (with LVL 1 adequate monsters and that). On it, you can find one or more passages to get into new lands, that work as a dungeon level 2. And such until you get to level 10 where the Dark Tower in its field of roses is supposed to lay. This works as an invisible wall: theoretically there are no walls that prevent you to pick up a horse and riding towards it, but you will have to find your way into 9 "dungeon levels" that will trigger crazy monster encounters unless you have leveled up yourself.
Certain pathways might make you "skip levels", so, for example, you can go from the lands of level 2 to the lands of level 6. But an scalated progression from 1 to 10 is always possible if you search for it.
This might remind you a little about the "West Marches" thing, but it differs in something crucial: The lands you cross are significantly bigger. The West Marches supports itself on the premise that all sessions begin and end in the base. In here, once you delve beyond level 2, you are not supposed to sleep home anymore. Reaching out into the wilderlands is a matter that might take years.
Of course, you might find other towns in the wilderlands. But the more you go west, the less chance for them to be "civilized", and the more for them to be weird. That if they are not a bunch of ruined stones by the time you get there. It is not easy to stand long in a level 5 belt. Of course, you can rest assured that those who do are powerful warriors, have adapted somehow or are doomed to perish.
Just a reminder to put battle horns on the inventory list
As I don't want to bother in creating a world in detail (neither would do it with a megadungeon) I will try to rely on random generators. Lets say that when you find a settlement, roll 2d6 + the dungeon level
3-6 - Small outpost (Farm or the like)
7-8 - Small Town
9 - Bigger Town or City
10- Fortress
11 -Nomad tribes
12- Small outpost (abandoned)
13- Small town (abandoned)
14 - Big town (abandoned)
15 - Fortress (abandoned)
16-17 - Nomad tribes (weird)
18-19 - Small outpost (weird)
20-21 - Small town (weird)
22 - You reach the Dark Tower
Basically the further you get from Gilead, like it is the bastion of civilization that allows other towns to flourish, the rarer the conventional towns are. Instead you go getting more and more indian tribes, fortresses that can withstand the hazards or failed attempts of colonization.
This is an over simplification, but more or less what I have in mind. Actual geography like mountains, rivers, sea lines, roads, etc overlaps with this "danger" map.Over this base, I leave some thoughts:
* All of this starts counting to the West of Gilead. But on the other directions there might be other lands differently incremented in level (so they are, in a way, locked; until the PCs level up a little). The city being the home of a true knightly force is the reason that it can stand being confronted with high level lands. Still, the only level 10 land ever is the one in the west, where the tower lies.
* The level might spike suddently by entering a dungeon or a cave
* The idea of having towns set on the level 4 wilderness pairs nicely with the feeling that frontier towns must have felt like, back in the 1820s
* Once again (and this is a problem I stumble upon many times) XP for gold makes no sense if the PCs are from a knightly or elevated condition, with interests beyond the material. At least if the only XP comes from gold. XP must come at least from three sources: treasure (including outlaw bounties), monsters and (yes, I know what I said) quests. But I got some ideas to automatize the latter by derivating them from the "lawful" or "friendly" monsters in the "bestiary".
* I love technological anachronisms. I found out that one can advance technology very hard without breaking the fantasy feeling as long as you leave out mass production (Gilead being a monarchy should be able to stop untamed capitalism), roads and cars and, to a degree, TV. A land that is not practicable to pave or to build cable lines for much time (because there are constant earthquakes, monsters or other disturbs) gets rid of the latter two, and, by taking away trade, slows the first one considerably. Still, you can have a small amount of autogenerated electricity (windmills, etc) and power up small devices as fridges, music devices, battery powered tools, radios (I love the idea of a radio station transmitting across dangerous wastelands)... etc. On the other hand, I love the trope in which electrical devices are more prone to being tricked against you by evil sorcerers.
* That being said, technology is set around the 1840s, with the advenment of the Colt Dragoons. Gilead aesthetic and customs are set on the arthurian era, with a foot on the medieval retellings and the other deep down on the primitive celtic myths.
* The world is divided on "baronies" or "states", some of which have big cities as capitals and some of which are in safer zones than others. At some point, the frontiers are blurred and the territories are unclaimed. Trains only go to level 3 zones, and are dangerous to drive beyond that. The most extended way of transport is by horse.
* Alternativelly, a map in the style of Out Run in which each level bifurcates into two, which later might converge, can also work.
*The whole bulk of the game is the bestiary. That is where the color comes from. Depending on what to choose as encounters, the game will feel more medieval fantasy or more "real life west", with my ideal point somewhere in the middle. Dragons, elves and dwarves as we know them are 100% off this project (I see many people talking about pinneaple on pizza, but little thought is paid to those who mix dragons and revolvers). I'm not doing goblins with guns either, and no different races are to be playable. Curating a good bestiary is the key to get the feeling straight. This takes me to the next point.
* In normal D&D, you hit monsters with swords until they come down. And it is ok, it makes sense somehow, because of myths, tradition or internal archetypes. But firearms are different. Firearms are not suited to kill monsters but men. Sometimes men with other firearms. This is just one of the reasons that makes fighting and monsters different in classic fantasy than in western clichés. It is ok to have monsters with great hp that will go down in a few shots. Most high level humans are to be like this. But it is kind of anticlimatic to shoot down fantasy monsters to death. Thats why I'm thinking that beyond human, undead, really big animals (its tricky to draw a line on where a big animal stops being an animal and starts classifying as monster: lets think about the Graboids) or demonic versions of those (Like in the White Buffalo, or Mononoke Hime) many monsters are not to be of the kind that can be "just shot"; but rather to be avoided, dodged by pure horse speed or dealt in other ways (and maybe shot once they are weakened or unmasked). From the top of my head I'm thinking on:
- Enormous sand hands that form on specific parts of the desert and grab/swallow people into the ground (See Stephen King "the beach" short story)
- Wraiths. I just love using them.
- Psychic leeches of any kind
- Colossus of the Shadow of the Colossus type
- Monsters that can pass as friends or manipulate the PCs' acts.
- Any of the entries at the Goblin Punch's Book of Tigers suits a setting like this better than common fantasy bruisers.
- Same can be said about Lovecraft-type monsters in general.
- Non-monster threats such as thinnies or starkblasts (Dark Tower), earthquakes, tornados, stampedes, plagues, etc.
- Its OK to have a gunfighting vs missile wand confrontation with a sorcerer, if previously you have succesfully defeated some number of his magical tricks.
* Some staples that are very useful in this genre are magically enhanced bandits, really clever tacticians, former gunslingers turned evil, indian tribes who are wary of strangers, cultists of forgotten gods and any equivalent of John Farson's rebellion, all of them normal humans (except when they are not, of course)
* PCs game loop usually ends at Gilead, though if they can find other rest/supply settlements, they can also use them for the services they have. Maybe some specific resources (like revolvers, for example) can only be found consistently on that base city. But thats OK. There is one last trick that you can play at some time, which is to stage the downfall of Gilead at a certain point of the PCs life. Be sure to make it so a part of it is played by NPCs and monsters (Doppelgangers? Evil Wizards?) that the PCs have previously met. That will make it personal.
* If you've read Wizard and Glass, you might remember that all factions relied on things like the wind direction, the height of the grass or wether or not it would rain (remember when Cuthbert and Alain dug the powder ditch to blow up Citgo?). If you are sneaking somebody and you are both riding a horse, there is a chance that the horses will say hi to each other and give your position away.
I think its important to use all that. I want players to wait until the moon is full to attack a given enemy, because it allows them to see them from a greater distance. I don't know how to implement it beyond learning all those tips by heart myself and using them, but I find it worth it.
I want to also encourage them to search and use real life survival tips, with rolling only required if it has a chance to fail. In that sense, your player's knowledge is your character's knowledge. Unless the GM says otherwise, if you describe what you do and it makes sense, you have at least a chance that it succeeds.
* On the hp/gun damage scalation as a problem in high levels (or when a gun does d8 damage but a level 6 character has 6d6 hp). To keep the gunfighting a constant threat, characters should stay at relativelly small HP levels. A high level character having 18 HP seems like a sensible maximum. This goes more in line with the original Into The Odd rules. I already did something with it on the Trigun adaptation and might be useful to do it here (though I must add that, even though Trigun might share many things with the Dark Tower, it doesnt really vibe in the same world/themes or whatever, at least for me. Trigun is biopunk, here we lean more on good old magic)
* Horses, horses, horses. When I said I want to rule this as a megadungeon instead of a hexmap, I mean it. Each "area" is mapped as a series of interconnected "rooms", even if intangible. Each ·"room" is randomly generated (lair, treasure, settlement, empty, crossroads, path blocked, etc) and the rules for movement mirror those used in dungeons, but the movement used is instead: Horse (Sprint), Horse (March) and Walk. This makes each exploration turn takes more in-game time, so things that depend on time, like healing, take more time. And that feels nice. I should also be learning more things about horses, because I'm a city guy. I think that horse tending and behavior is a largelly ignored aspect in both fantasy and western settings; as well as horses themselves. Which is weird because their imagery is so powerful that a almost any character on a horse looks automatically like an adventurer.
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