Secrets of Blackmoor: A D&D Documentary

The Terror of Spiral Keep: Skin Borers

1/29/2024

When you are on a tight deadline for, The Blackmoor Gazetteer.

And also -

When you are heavily ADHD and you should be working on one book, but you can’t feel inspired or motivated. Then suddenly you get an idea and are ready to work on it, only your idea is for another book entirely!

I’ve been working on my new RPG book, The Terror of Spiral Keep, with the goal of making a setting module that teaches referee’s how to infuse their own game with a feeling of exploring the unknown and psychologically disturbing elements of horror. One main premise I have been trying to get across to referee’s is that you don’t need rules for fear, or sanity, to make your players actually feel terror. All you gotta do is make their skin crawl - in this case I mean it literally.

Since it will be a few more months before TToSK is finished, I thought I could share a chapter draft on the blog and just throw out some ideas on using horror themes in RPGs. This is written toward a Fantasy setting, but it can work in pretty much any old school game you may be playing which also has magic, or psionics in it.

Creepy Crawlies
This is a classic horror trope and I’m not inventing anything new here. I’m just recycling what works in both sci-fi and horror in order to creep out my players.

*cough cough* - Alien.

The Burrower, a.k.a. Skin Borer

Skin borers are anything which is parasitic and literally enters a player’s body somehow. If you describe how one of the your players has had something chew through their skin and is now inside them, everyone at the table is going to be saying “EEEeeeewwwwww!”

Ideally, you want to personalize what this is for your own game, so the players who have read about these won’t be able to identify what it is ahead of time and run like hell.

While these creepy crawlies are always small and about the size of a beetle to the size of a mouse, yours can be anything, a small mammal, an insect, a strange alien fish that crawls on its fins, whatever suits your mental image of creepy.

What is critical here is the encounter and how you play it out.

Just to help you get a feel for this thing, let’s stat it out. I've even expanded the D&D stat block to conform to AD&D for all you AD&D referees.

Burrower/Skin Borer

No. Appearing: 1-12 (it’s always fun to use the D12 and it is the most under rated die of all of them.)
Armor Class: Variable - are yours fast moving or slow moving, soft or crunchy. If fast give them a 4 to 2 AC, if slow 9 - 5, same for crunchy and soft. Apply what you think is most effective.
Movement: Is your creature a Dropper or a Rusher, more on that later.
Hit Dice: 1 HP
% In Lair: Technically these will almost always be In Lair because they tend to appear on or near their former victims, or places that have been covered in blood.
Treasure Type: There is usually some kind of equipment or small treasure in a sack nearby. Although this is not planned as bait, players will be lured to the area by the goodies lying about.
No. of Attacks: See below
Damage/ Attack: See below
Special Attacks: 1 per round, the first attempt is a roll to get through armor and the second is a roll to pierce the skin.
Special Defense: Outside of the body they are difficult to detect, once inside a body they can be seen easily enough - they need to be cut out in order to kill them.
Intelligence: low, insect like.
Alignment: it’s up to you - do you want them to throw off players by emanating evil, or do you want them to be devious and neutral?
Size: Very small.

That is pretty vague I know. What is important here is the purpose of this encounter. We aren’t out to kill any players, though it may happen. What we are trying to do is cause them to feel very uncomfortable.

Let’s begin with the encounter type, Wandering Monster, Surprise, Fixed, Decoy, or Compound Encounter.

As a Wandering Monster Encounter these can arrive in the form of a person who approaches the players. Roll up a character and figure out what kind of NPC they could be. Is it a crazy old man in rags wandering the dungeon while moaning and screaming in pain? Is it a beautiful man or woman in elegant clothes? How about a lone halfling, dwarf, or elf?

Play out how this seemingly benign person who has likely dropped their weapons and only wants to find the safety of being out of the dungeon can transfer a burrower to a player. It won’t be the NPCs objective to harm the players, It is merely a result of how these parasitic critters behave.

Does the person appear and interact with the players, or does this person appear and then collapse on the ground as they are dying with only 1 HP left.

However you choose to run this situation the NPC is not the threat. They could even be Lawful Good. Sadly, they happen to be carrying something very dire on them which will attack any players who gets too close.

No matter what the situation, because these are small critters, they are able to surprise on a 1-4 using the standard OD&D surprise roll of 1 in 6 for normal encounters. They are small and may not be moving right away. Once seen the players can avoid them.

As an old school referee’ing technique, if they are hiding in someone’s clothes ready to be passed onto a new subject, then unless a player states they are examining before making contact, well then, players don’t get a die roll to perceive the presence of these vermin.

A good clue that something may not be right, is the presence of ruptures in the person’s skin where the creatures have entered and then sometimes leave. Again, a player needs to state they are examining the subject. There are no freebies in old school play, you can’t just roll dice, you have to state what and how you are doing something. This is not a video game on paper.

The Surprise Skin Borer happens if a pre-encounter die roll comes up as surprise. This encounter is also similar as a Fixed Encounter the Referee has placed in a location within their dungeon.

Generally these things hang out on or near present or former victims. In this encounter your players will come upon a place which is splattered with blood. They can smell it and they can see it clearly on surfaces. Maybe something was brutally murdered here and then dragged off. Perhaps a trail of blood leads away from the location.

Or, a former victim of these creatures is lying on the floor in a hallway. They may have a sack of coins and gems spilled on the floor next to them, and even on occasion a magic item, or a nice suit of armor.

The little burrowers might be hiding in a crevice in the floor waiting to rush out and attack a player, or they may be lurking on the ceiling above and waiting to drop on unsuspecting players, hence the question earlier regarding whether your vermin are Rushers, or fast moving, or Droppers, who wait for an opportunistic moment to jump out of a hiding spot, or drop from above.

The Decoy is similar to other situations. D&D players are really paranoid of wooden objects like treasure chests and tables for some reason. Thus, if you have this kind of object in a room and it is entirely benign, you could place some Droppers on the ceiling that can attack players even if they are using a ten foot pole to check for mimics.

Of course a wood table is a bit dull. Why not make the table creepy too and have it be dropping with fresh blood. Decor and mood is so important. Martha Stewart might even say "It's a good thing."

A Compound Encounter might be something such as surprising a group of evil priests in a secret ritual chamber where they are applying these creatures to a sacrificial victim. Once the evil cultists are dealt with one can proceed to examining the rest of the location. Did a jar full of these creatures fall on the ground and shatter. Are these creatures on the living, or dead, victim. There are so many glorious options here and all of them are not a good result for the players.

As a referee I have so much fun running vermin like this vs. my players. It is my nature as a referee to mentally torture, and dare I say, trigger my players. All I can say is, if you like this kind of game then come play against me sometime. Otherwise, avoid me at all costs. In our house group half the players will look at me after an encounter like this and shake their heads as if to say, “that was awesome, even if my character died horribly.” The other half gives me the kind of look which I read to mean as, “that was totally disturbing and wrong, what happened to you as a child to make you think of things like this?” The funny thing is - they keep coming back for more!

Damage

Before we talk about Attack, I think we need to discuss what Damage is for these.

Damage is mostly psychological. The gaol is to create an experience similar to watching a favorite horror movie. Thus rules related damage is minimal, but perhaps emotional damage is not.

Attacks are a variety of events in a real RPG, in that different variables will require different methods - this is key to properly running most older systems as referees gain experience in how to adjudicate anything that happens and players can literally opt to try anything as well. Most game systems that have tried to create a universal mechanic of die rolls end up destroying the immersive aspects of a low rules high stakes RPG. Ideally, these encounters work best when using earlier game systems.

This may sound like an ‘edition war’ type of rant where I am claiming to only play the correct, or right, game system by using one of these older editions. That is not what I am saying at all. All I am saying is that the experience of these older systems is different from newer systems. If you want to experience an immersive and terrifying RPG it is best to play with a low rules game system.

Damage caused is 1 point on the first successful attack to pierce a victims skin. The creature has gotten into the player’s body and can be seen as a lump under their skin, much like a mouse running under a bedsheet. This is the main reason for having these be smaller critters, we want this disturbing descriptor of the event.

What if a player only has one hit point. It would be a shame to lose out on the entire encounter experience by letting them die. Hit points are abstraction. Thus you could tell a player, you lose 1 half hit point. Nothing in most rule books says you cannot split HP into fractions, and also, this attack is not really big enough to kill a PC, it never should be.

Perhaps if a player cannot get rid of the vermin - they may, 50% chance, take a point of damage every 12 hours as the creatures crawl around under their skin eating whatever it is they like most about their new home.

On a successive combat round after the player has been ‘invaded’ they must roll a D20 and roll lower than Intelligence or they are overcome by the trauma and the pain and cannot do anything truly useful this combat round. This happens every combat round.

How does one fight these things?

It’s simple, the players get to do even more disturbing acts out of their own free will - they must cut the things out of a victim with a dagger. It may be worth putting a knife over a torch to sterilize it first too.

Cutting always works, but the player takes damage based on a D12 roll. Since most people would not be well versed in anatomy this can lead to serious problems. Good clerics are the exception, trained in the healing arts, they can cut it out and will only do 1 point damage. All other PCs must roll a D12: 1-6 = 1 hp damage; 7-11 = 1d4 damage, 12 = 1d8 damage (Oops you must have hit an artery!). If you are playing AD&D, and or using a class like Rangers, or Druids, they too can do it without causing major damage.

In my game being at zero points causes unconsciousness. Thus cutting one of these out should not kill a player, but now the party may have to deal with carrying the PC out of the dungeon.

Attack!

We’ve gotten this far, how do these things conduct attacks?

In the first round assuming a player doesn’t see them and manage to smash them, they get an attack roll vs. AC9 to see if a Rusher manages to climb onto and up a players leg, or an arm if the player is touching something the creature is on. The same attack is made for a Dropper, failure means it falls on the ground near the player and the player can attempt to smash it in the same round. If the player was surprised, they get a 50% chance, or 1-3 in 6, to notice something move through their field of vision, or bounce off their body.

Once on the player, the creature will try to eat into a players skin or get through armor in order to do so. The next attack is vs. the player’s armor class. Better hope you are the Fighter in plate armor!

The second attack causes 1 point of damage and means the thing has gotten in you.

It should be noted that a roll of 20 on the first and second attack always succeeds - thus even if a fighter is wearing magical armor that would make a low HP monster unable to succeed, they still have a tiny risk of being bitten.

This covers most of how this kind of creature can be used in a dungeon adventure. The thing is, once you’ve used them they lose a little bit of their charm, as players will be wary of things like this.

You can use the same concept for, yet, another kind of creature.

What if you have a ghost appear. This apparition silently beckons. Maybe it is floating over a lure of some kind. Perhaps a locked treasure chest. Maybe the ghost is a warden of this prize and is warning the players away from the chest. Except, when the players come near to the chest the undead is floating over it suddenly rushes a player and enters their body becoming a lump that is sliding around under their skin.

This is even worse. It is super natural. It may be evil. It certainly cannot be killed via mundane means. It will require clerical assistance and magic weapons. I won’t stat this one out for you as you should be able to create your own based on what I have already provided above. I would suggest a low HD creature that can only be driven off by a high level cleric.

Let me know if you have any ideas for variants on this trope. Most of all, please tell me how your players reacted to this kind of encounter.

I truly hope using these ideas in your own game will help bring more fun to your table.

The images that appear in this article are taken from our book, The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg.

We still have roughly ten Red Hard Cover copies left for sale on our site - Click this Text to link to our Sales Page.

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combat diagrams for dungeons & Dragons

1/24/2024

2 Comments

Well, it’s a been a while.

Was just peering at some spurious content about the need for Chainmail to understand original D&D, along with comments about a letter Arneson wrote to WOTC being another reason that it would be impossible for Arneson to be the inventor of RPGs.

Old arguments I've been debating for years and it is all so tiresome.

I had to go delete my online arguing and let people think what they want - I have more important things to do right now like writing this blog post!

Here is what I think:
No, all this reverse engineering on historical fact is just wrong. Almost no one had Chainmail as a supplementary rule set in order to understand D&D back then.

Arneson invented the methods that all RPGs use for verbal play. He is the one who took the game completely off the map. Too much evidence supports this statement. We’re working on a new book, The Blackmoor Gazetteer. We will be publishing some never seen maps and writings which reveal to an even greater extent what Arneson was doing before he even shared his invention with Gygax.

And this is not to say Gygax didn't do anything at all as co-author and editor for D&D. Without the combined efforts of both Arneson and Gygax, and also Don Kaye, we wouldn’t be playing RPGs today.

You may want to get on our mailing list via the link on this website so you can get the announcement for The Blackmoor Gazetteer as well as Arnecon 2.

What did happen in ye olden times is that every referee would create their own systems for how to better run a game.

There are many techniques that older game referees develop for running games. I often overlook how useful some of my own techniques could be for newer referees. I had been considering adding a section onto Spiral Keep in order to help players run that dungeon in a truly immersive manner. Perhaps it’s worth throwing it out there now since it will be a few more months before Spiral Keep gets published.

So let’s talk about Combat Diagrams as well as Push Back.

We may need to talk about player organization too.

Party Leader

First off, the Referee is responsible for tracking only their own side of a situation. An experienced gamer group will have a Party Leader who takes on the role of managing the party and their characters.

The Party Leader should be an easy going and not controlling person because they are the group manager, but not the group dictator.

Old School, which is really also New School because Arneson's game is designed to keep re-inventing itself, is all about Team Play. The players need each other and also need to work together as a cohesive unit.

Players who are into Me Play will sabotage an adventure and risk harming the entire party - I've seen it happen many times.

Party Movement Order

The first thing a Party Leader does on game night is to announce something like so, “We need a party movement order. We’ll advance two by two, but if we get into a combat situation one of the second rank armored PCs can step up to form a three fighter wall.”

Players all work together to determine where in the party movement order everyone is located. This is the best thing to do because an evil DM who is not shown a written party movement order will begin to roll dice and determine randomly who is up front and who is in back when something bad happens to the party.

Every Player Character should have an ID number. Thus when making a party movement order sheet. The Leader can write down numbers rather than whole names. In my games I run big parties. Players have up to three PCs they control along with several NPCs they control.

Which brings up this question:

Is it possible to run an adventure for a group of players, who are running a total of 12 PCs + 12 NPCs = 24 characters, deep into a dungeon?

Yes, it's easy if you follow my advice here - just keep reading.

It also helps me as referee if they use number ID because sometimes I may simply roll to see who is being affected by a random event, and they can be anywhere in the party.

As the party moves through an adventure the referee can address the Party Leader as to what the group is doing. Yet, before that the Party Leader asks the party members for consensus.

PL - “What do you think we should do?”

Players - “It’s probably best if we take the left hand turn and keep going left, thus even if we lose our map we can easily find our way back out.”

PL - “That is a very sensible idea, does everyone agree?”

Then the Party Leader tells the DM, “We take the left hand passage and slowly advance. The thief is out front scouting and checking for traps. He has a rope tied to his waist so that if he triggers a trap door, he won’t fall to the bottom of a spiked pit. Fighters in the front are holding the end of the rope with just a little slack. At any sign of danger the thief will pull back behind the front rank.”

Do you see what is happening?

The Party Leader is establishing a standard operating procedure.

An experienced Party Leader enhances the game for everyone by helping to move the game along without too much non game chatter.

The Party Leader will also help the referee by saying things to other players such as, “Don’t forget to mark off the torch you just used...”

A good party Leader never tells other players what to do either. They merely help keep the group organized and focused on the task at hand.

Party Leader - “Ok, the party will enter the room advancing cautiously. Once we’re all in the door, since Rosa's elf is at the back, can she hold the door ajar and keep her eyes on the passage we came out of in case something comes wandering by?”

Rosa - "Yup, I got it. I am standing with sword drawn and keeping watch.”

Or, if combat is taking place.

Party Leader - “Ok, Chris's fighter is badly damaged, who can move to the front rank allowing him to withdraw from combat?”

The Leader suggests actions and also requests actions from players that are needed for the party members to survive.

This kind of play turns a party of adventurers into a smoothly operating military unit, which is what is most needed during a dungeon dive.

We may be playing medieval fantasy, but this is also a war game and running the team like a highly trained squad of WWII commandos leads to better play IMHO.

Now that we’ve reviewed organized party play we can move into the next part of this discussion.

Combat Diagrams

The party has done me a favor as referee and they have created their movement order, which is really a party combat diagram which they will manage for me.

Now for my own combat diagram.

When a combat occurs I write down the critical components for the combat, Creature, Armor Class, and Hit Dice, on a piece of scratch paper.

Then I roll my hit dice and note what each creature's hit points are.

This is where I begin to use my combat diagram. Depending on the size and number of the creatures encountered I will write down hit points in rows. Standard old school combat is three critters a row if the combat occurs in a hallway or door.

Let’s side track briefly: Tactics in an immersive game played without minis.

I’d like to note that Dan Boggs put a little detail in his Champions of ZED rules stating that creatures attacking through a doorway can only do so two at a time vs. the defending side, which can have three characters attacking those coming through a door.

We also mentioned tactical play in another section of Tonisborg. Due to the stairwells being very narrow, if a party makes a tactical retreat up a stairwell and then surrounds the opening at the top, the monsters will be at a disadvantage if they try to attack up a stairwell. Only one, or two can attack out of the stair, while the party can place up to six people around the top.

Optional Rule: In OD&D it is not unreasonable for attackers on a lower level fighting up hill to receive a -2 on attack rolls and for those attacking down hill to be granted a +2.

This is very common in nearly every war game I’ve played.

These ideas are worth noting if you want to give players the option to exploit terrain advantages when in a dungeon.

I have my monster hit points diagrammed and now I can begin the combat. Assuming I am past the rolls for surprise and options taken to close range, or increase range by running away, all the rest just falls into place.

Player A attacks the monster on the right hand of my diagram. Player B hits the one in the middle. Player C hits the one on the left.

As monsters take damage I add hash marks. When they are dead I cross them out.

This creates a diagram that is sort of like a game of Tetris. Although a monster in the second rank has their hit points written below those in the first rank, if a first ranker gets killed the second ranker is considered to now be in the first rank on the next combat round.

Combat proceeds in a very simple fashion. Everyone does their attacks for a round and I note who is hurt and who is killed.

Wash Rinse Spin - Combat is now very easy to manage as a non miniatures battle. We roll for hits and do damage. The players decide if they want to keep fighting, shift fresh combatants into the front rank, risk shooting arrows from the second rank, and monsters get their end of combat round morale check.

Well, sometimes things get ‘Dicey.’

Let’s assume the players are in a larger space and they are at risk of flanking attacks.

Since I run my game without initiative except in the case of surprise, all actions happen at once. I also use my own rules for break through/ slashing damage where a good damage roll which exceeds a monsters hits will carry into the next critter. This slashing damage also works for monster attacks - Combat is deadly in my games.

Back to the Fight!

The combat begins as a three on three regardless of location in most instances. What if the critters or the players want to begin a flanking operation and spread out to the sides?

Well, the combat diagram allows me to do that. As referee I will say, “the orcs from the second rank move out to the sides to engage more of the party members.”

At this point I begin to use arrows to mark where the second rankers are going and now it is up to the party to assign the task of who will be engaging these flankers by drawing arrows on their own diagram.

As the referee I have a lot of information to track. By trusting my players to play fair, they can take care of party details for me.

I hope everything is fairly self explanatory up to this point.

Exploiting Tactical Advantages

Since I mentioned tactical play within an immersive game, there are times when a tactical attacking defense can withdraw, or a tactical push back and advance can be achieved.

At any point either the players, or the vermin, can pull back while conducting attacks. We are assuming the other side is willing to press the attack. Maybe they just let the other party withdraw for some reason?

Every combat round the front line of combat can shift by roughly 10 feet.

A withdrawal can always be achieved, but as in the case of fighting from a bad tactical situation such as being the attacker in a doorway, it may be possible to gain a push back and enter the room with the enemy thus bringing more forces to bear on the situation.

My rule is simple and goes like so:

The side which gets more hits in a single round may force the other side back by 10 feet. Thus players in a doorway can force their way through and try to break the enemy line.

Sometimes I will even go into more detail and the player who kills his opponent can step forward one rank. This creates a chaotic combat with the lines getting broken up and a bit blurry, but it sure makes things feel more realistic.

If a single monster is coming through a door, I simply use the most rational explanation and judge things right in the moment. Yes, that Balrog is huge - it can press forward vs. several human sized PCs at will and is likely to do so.

I hope these ideas help you manage your game sessions more effectively. If you teach your players to use a Party Leader along with some of the other tools I described it will really make the game more collaborative between referee and players. Ideally, we want to be playing with everyone at the table even when as referee, we’re doing our best to keep the game in the realm of high stakes action where death stalks the dungeon freely.

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