Dungeon Floor Level 1: The nameless city

Pitch: There is this ruined city up a forgotten road, where the rumors say there is a tower that is only visible at night, but vanishes during the day. They say it was the work of a famous magician that lived there when the settlement was alive. It will surely be ripe of magical trinkets, wonders, treasure and dangers.

The PCs won't find the tower unless they delve during the night, and their vision will be greatly improved if they choose a moonlit one. This might increase the paranoia of lycanthropes or vampires amongst the players, but there is not a single one of such. YET. Still working on the tower levels.

KEY: 

1. This house has no roof and it's full of reeds. They hide a small pool with magical propierties: Whenever the moon shines on it, the water glows with moonlike light, until the next day. Anything soaked on that water will glow as a torch as long as its wet. 1 in 6 chance there is a treant bathing in the water.

2. Five hobbits are housed here. They are adventurers who come for loot just like you did. Three have bows, two have daggers. They will give information about a random room (d20 + d6) for free. They will expect something in return for any other help. 120 sp are hidden under a pile of rags. The door is totally blocked and they get in through the window.

3. Door to the city. The trees right in front of you can be crossed, but it takes a full turn to get through the naked, twisted branches. This works the same on any other tree concentrations. If you spend a turn trying to burn it with a torch, it catches fire on a roll of 2 in 6. The whole tree will be on fire on 1d6 turns. 

4. This tower is completely empty, no floors or inner walls. There is however a nest of killer bees, and the entrance is partially hidden under some wooden beams

5. An old temple is so overrun with trees that it has almost eaten all the usable space on it. Eight acolytes still worship a female idol, with the classic emerald eyes that are worth 300 sp each. Their leader is a 4th level cleric.

6. Six snakes (spitting cobras). Will attack if the PCs open any furniture or stay for more than three turns.

7. 158 sp hidden on a cupboard. There is a window partially blocked by a tree.

8. There is a lush jungle into this room. Plants seem to vanish like smoke when touched, but instantly reform. It is, obviously, an illusion. You can see an overture into the wall that can be accessed through a stairs and that leads to a small bridge/balcony. You cannot see, however, a box with 350 sp plainly put on the floor, because the illusion covers it.

9. This stairs lead to the top of the tower, Anyone fighting somebody who is downstairs has +1 to hit and +1 AC.

10. This is the floor over room (17) and it is accessed trough it. The door at north actually gets you in room (17) but I draw like that, so read it first. Anyways, room (10): A rope leads up into a darkened tower. If the players try to climb it, it will ring the bell of the old church instead (the rope leads only to the bell, which is worth 150 gp if somebody can transport it). The bell faint ring will last for fifteen minutes at least, and while its sounding, all nearby illusions will vanish. Also, four orcs from the guarding point at (14) will come to check who is touching shit at the bell tower. 

11. This bars can be bent just as a stuck door,  so you can access the sewer.

12. There are two guardians at each side of the door to room (13). They carry naginatas and no armor, just robes and a chinese-type wide hat that hides their eyes, no matter how near the PCs get. They have a very faint blueish hue. They are illusory, and its creator wasn't good at rendering eyes. They seem to breathe, but they won't talk or move otherwise. This encounter seemed stupid to me when I created it, but it's the one that my players struggled more with. They haven't made up their minds to cross that door, that is completelly unlocked.

13. There is nothing in this room of value, looks like an old granary.  However, there is very worn out illusion (each character has a 3 in 6 chance to actually notice it)  of a kid holding a woman's hand. Both walk through an illusory wheat field, and the woman holds the rein of an illusory horse.

14. Eight orcs guard the bridge: four have bows and are atop of the bridge itself. Other four have spears and wait beside the stairs.

15. The bridge leads into this tower, but orcs will avoid it. It has a spider crab on the roof, will fall over anyone entering the room by that entrance.

16. This is a mezzanine over room 15. You can see the spider from here. There are also some books on the shelves: searching for secret stuff will give you a magical book about birds that projects a faint flying hawk 40 cm over the pages when opened. Worth 200 sp to the right customer.

17. This was a church in better times. It is raining inside this room, but it doesn't actually soak you, because it's illusory. The old stairs are destroyed, but a rope will get you to the first floor (10). Use dex or str checks if you feel like it.

18. A stuck iron door will get you into the city through the sewers. Outside, there is a peaceful, rocky grassland.

19. A poisonous pink flower grows in here. 2 in 6 chance every turn for anyone to get sleepy: save or fall asleep to eventual death unless woken up. There is an iron door that will easy open, and will take you into the city.

20. Three lizard geckos live in this tower. They can access (21) easily by climbing, but PCs cannot do so. Its 10 meters high,

21. Stairs get into this inner balcony from the street. You find the body of a half- eaten adventurer. A silver dagger can be found with its point buried deep into the wooden floor. 

South of this tower, there is a bunch of trees that difficult access. It is scratched on the paper because my PCs burnt it.

22. This room is empty

23. A hobbit is hidden here, conveniently guarded by a door blocked by branches. He is devoted to paint the illusory tower every night, with a brush, a palette and a canvas. He is obsessed with the idea to capture its fleetingness, and its ethereal beauty. He is too hard on himself and his previous works (2d6 pictures stashed in a side of the room) but will trade them for any food supplies, or anything that can be made into pigments or a canvas. It's not related to hobbits at room (2). The window at south lets you watch all the panorama, with the tower in front of you. But you cannot see the orcs under it's shade. The hobbit will warn you they are there, though.

24. This room can be accessed by the bridge in the north wall. There is a trapdoor at the floor leading into (23). The wood around it is rotten and anyone approaching has a 2 in 6 chance to fall into said room. The fall will give you a penalty of -2 to hit and lower your MV by one unless you pass your save.

25. This part of the wall is easy to climb from the outside, but is is guarded by a treant. This is probably too big for the players to face but there he is. It should be obvious and scary

26. This room is accessed through the sewers. It contains a human corpse with 30 gp

27. Access to the tower. The ground floor of the tower has no walls, only columns. Amongst the darkness, there are some stairs hidden that lead to the first floor. There are also 9 orcs with spears and daggers and their leader (double HP, magical shield +1, spear and sword) 

28. Two orc lookouts will shoot with their bows to anyone that gets into their range, and blow the alarm horn if you manage to escape the first shots. Accessing this building is difficult because there are overgrown trees in the way.

29. Two more orcs with spears and daggers guard a big stash: 100 gp and 800 sp

WANDERING MONSTER CHECKS

1 in 6 chance of encounter for every turn the PCs are on the street, or 3 in 6 per rest assuming they rest in the city and make watch through a window or something. The first time the result is rolled, use the first noted encounter. All the other times, use the second.

1. A flock of blue illusory birds passing right through you // 1d6 Orcs

2. 1d4 Spider Crabs

3. Illusory princess, walking towards room 17, then dissapears // 1d6 Acolytes

4. 1d6 Antelopes

5. A Trader (human) // 1d6 Killer Bees

6. A small treant (5HD). Will not attack unless PCs scare him with fire, harm him or any plant on the city.

wilderness (pointcrawls vs hexcrawls vs squarecrawls)

On my last sessions I had not hexed paper and I had no patience to draw a map hex by hex, so I made a bunch of vertical and horizontal lines and used a square grid instead.

Its not the first time I do it, and while I like the aesthetics of hexes, the truth is that squares do fine. You can assume the same size for them as you would with hexes (6 miles as the standard set by this post). You can move horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally (that takes 2 moves). It might not make much sense a priori, but hexes are not realistic either, they are a different form of abstraction. And as a gaming abstraction they work just as fine. Maybe more, as the players can verbalize their movements better in the case you don't want to share your map with them. North! South! East! West! 

I also tested something for simplifying movement that I wanted to use, which I liked a lot and will probably stay on the game:

Movement rules: 

clear terrain/road: 3 hexes (or squares, of course)/day, or 4 if using a horse.

forest: 2 hexes/day

mountain pass: 1 hex/day

* Players can use the night's rest to travel 1 extra hex instead, if there is enough visibility to allow it; but penalties for not resting might appear

* Weather conditions such as a storm will reduce the hexes travelled by one, and might increase the chance of getting lost.

* Characters who are encumbered also reduce the travelling speed by one, and if this takes your travelling speed below 1, its up to the GM to decide if it becomes 1, becomes impossible or has a X in 6 chance of being fruitful (a fail indicates that you must rest before you finish walking the hex)

* One encounter roll per day travelled, and another one for each night passed. 

Today I have also read this and this other classic links about pointcrawls and got me thinking: Hexes and squares are just 6 and 4 path-nodes after all. Why not switch to pointcrawls and embrace a new abstraction? Well, I am studying the pros and cons of the idea, and from the top of my head, here is a list of them:

* Pointcrawls dont have to be "one location away is one step", which was my main concern. Roads can be segmented on any number of steps, as Chris Kutalik points in the first link, and every road have its own chart of dangers. You will have to sleep on the ground still in a random forgotten place sometimes.

* Getting lost can still be portrayed, it might actually be easier. If the PCs get lost, they automatically end up in another "road" that starts at their last "node", at the same segment of distance. For example:

If you are at the red dot, travelling from B to C, when you get lost, you are randomly "teleported" to any of the yellow dots. If there is a terrain type associated with that road point, GM will tell you and you will or won't be able to determine if you are lost by that description. 

* Hexcrawls fail to portray impassable barriers of smaller granularity of 6 miles. If confronted by a mountain range, it will always be passable, even if with a small travelling speed. Pointcrawls on the other hand are designed for thriving with impassable barriers. Sea, Mountains, etc. 

* Pointcrawls are faster to draw. They don't have to even be scaled in the map, as the roads take care of that, so they lend much better to make maps "artistic" (see picture below).

from The Road to El Dorado

* Though it is true that a too linear pointcrawl (see picture above) removes the players agency, one with enough bifurcations or nodes prevents this completely. "A hex is just a node with 6 paths after all", as we said earlier. 

* New paths between two nodes can be unlocked during the game, which cannot be done on a hexcrawl easily (it is hard to make an area "secret" or "locked" naturally). For example, new ways can be found just as you would a secret door (you find it on a 2 in 6 by spending time searching for the trail), maybe they are found after you have been lost in there (recovering from a "get lost" roll makes you find a shortcut through the woods), attempting something that wasnt plannned (players decide to sail down a river, and at its base they find a way that goes upwards, to where they came. This one is used a lot on old Lucas Arts adventure games) or doing something in game that unlocks the path (if you help the kobolds build that tunnel, you connect the city + the sea under the mountain)

* A pointcrawl can be drawn over a preexisting, not-gridded map by deciding its points of interest. This can also visually guide you into how does the area look, or which kind/frequency of encounters does it have. For example, in this map below you can adjust encounters depending on which terrain the roads are crossing at that point.

credits: Arlin Ortiz

Of course, I'm not saying that any of this approaches are objectivelly better. All are equally valid, and one can take the one that likes best at anytime. But I think that these are enough points to prove that there is no reason to be fundamentalistic about hex-based grids, neither to say that the other approaches lack gameability. And you, dear reader, what is your personal experience? have you used this, freeform maps or any other alternative to hexes? Whats your preferred choice?

El Páramo de la Cobra

This is the map I gave the players on my last session. The game never went past the first session but I wanted to share it here. The whole zone west of the bridge is an old battlefield filled with restless dead. The rumors talk about a bandit lair hidden on one of the buttes, which's leader has a bounty over his head, payable on the town at 3B (the shit at 2A is a factory). The southern road is practicable (only 1/20 encounter rate, thats where the caravans come through) but any square north of it has it at 1/2.

The old battle destroyed the town at 1E and there are rumors of a temple dedicated to a snake god (door at 1G) which is actually guarded by giant snakes.

The treasure at H3 is actually already stolen by the bandit to whom this map belonged, and taken to his lair.

The random encounter is arranged so the first time you roll a number you get the first thing listed, and all the other times you get the second thing.

1 - Ghost fire, will guide you to another encounter if followed / Wraith (will posess and turn you into a zombie if he defeats you, with lots of HP)

2 - Recent corpse with bite marks, you find this map on him / possessed giant wolf (zombiefied by wights, very tough, covered in arrows). Going over the stairs north will automatically lead you to him.

3 - Foreign thieves looting corpses / Possessed thief with ancient sword, bathed on the other thief's blood

4 - Local thieves performing ritual burials of the ancient dead to appease their wraiths / Local thieves heading to their lairs

5 - Local goth kids. They want to record evidence of wraiths in a cassette tape recorder. / 1d4 zombies

6 - Creepy musical mutterings. If investigated, will attract the pcs to a small radio receptor playing this music, in the roots of a tree (the bandit king is actually broadcasting the session live, as he does every night). The device it's covered with poisonous snakes as the music seems to attract them (It works on giant snakes too) / Old corpse with treasure, a wraith lurks nearby.