Stocking a Sandbox with the AD&D 1e DMG (Part 2)

I am back to do more sandbox stocking with the AD&D 1e DMG! I'm continuing from Part 1, here.

I start by filling in the terrain in the next ring of atlas hexes using Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design:

I ended up with three more plains hexes, a forest hex, and two water hexes, which was unexpected (water is a "wildcard" terrain for plains). To keep things varied, I'll stock the hexes in this order: plains (SW) > water (NW) > plains (S) > forest (SE) > plains (NE) > water (N).

I start by rolling for inhabitation in the southwest plains hex:

I ended up with two hamlets, a thorp, and another totally deserted fortress complex. 

I determined that the fortress is the former stronghold of a master thief, conquered by invaders. I'm thinking that the bandits to the northeast might have rolled through here, killed the fortress's defenders, and looted the place. Probably a bunch of them died to traps. But I think there are also secret areas the bandits did not find, which contain even greater treasures protected by even deadlier traps. I imagine this dungeon has very few if any monsters, and is primarily a deadly maze of traps and secrets.

I don't like the two hamlets right next to each other, so I'm going to combine them into a single settlement of 500 people. It's too big to be a hamlet, and too small to be a village, so it must be a secret third thing. A villet. A hamlage.

In any case, it has five character-type NPCs: a 2nd-level fighter, a 2nd-level halfling fighter/thief, a 3rd-level fighter, a 3rd-level magic-user, and a 6th-level magic-user. No doubt many of them are here to plunder the fortress to the north. The player characters can seek out lower mid-level spellcasting services here, which is nice.

The thorp is totally mundane, with no character-types. The people there are at risk of being eaten by the lions to the northeast. I'm also pretty sure that the peoples of the hamlage and thorp are within range of predation by the bandits to the northeast (who have something like 100 horses, mind you). The thorp is likely "ruled" by the bandit leader in all but name, with one of the bandit lieutenants stationed here to keep the thorpers under the bandits' heel and collect "taxes".

Next, I determine monster lairs:

I've got a troll hole north of the fortress and an orc den in the forested wetland southwest of the thorp.

There are five trolls in the troll hole. They're definitely capable of getting out to the fortress. If the bandits left any sort of garrison behind after invading the fort, there's a good chance the trolls showed up to carry them off to their lair, and might show up to investigate any adventurer activity in the area. The hamletfolk have probably encountered them as well.

The orc den contains 149 orcs, which includes four leaders, a subchief, a chief, and all their assistants and bodyguards. It probably seems strange that the orc den is right next to the tiny thorp, but keep in mind that it takes an entire day for a humanoid creature to travel from the edge of the forest wetland hex to its center and vice versa The orcs are actually fairly isolated, though they likely carry off the occasional fisherman intruding in their territory.

Overall, this hex gives me another big dungeon for early adventures, a larger settlement with higher-level henchmen/spellcasting NPCs, and two more interesting monster lairs for mid-to-high-level play. All welcome additions to the sandbox.

Moving on to the northwest water hex:

Again, I don't like two settlements right next to each other, so I'll have the village absorb the thorp, giving it a population of 950. It's too big to be a village but too small to be a town. It's a villown. A tillage.

The big village contains a 1st-level fighter, a 1st-level magic-user, a 1st-level illusionist, a 2nd-level ranger, a 3rd-level cleric, two 3rd-level fighters, a 3rd-level magic-user, a 5th-level ranger, and a 5th-level gnome thief. A nice mix of henchman options.

One complication that becomes apparent is that settlements can wind up in strange places, like in the middle of this large body of water. I try to see this as a feature, rather than a bug. Perhaps this village is a conglomerate of boats docked together, or it's situated on an island too small to be represented on the map. The village might be built around an important bridge which spans from one shore to the other.

Continuing along with the monster lairs:

This is a strange one! Two huge koalinth (marine hobgoblin) lairs right next to each other, and one within range of the village. One contains 117 koalinth, and the other contains 101. When I rolled the first one, I thought surely the village was doomed. But, I usually give settlements a militia of 10% their population. I figured a militia of 95 plus the settlement's myriad character-types would be sufficient to hold off 117 hobgoblins.

When I rolled the second koalinth lair, I considered combining them, the way I would two adjacent settlements. However, the Monster Manual description says that tribes of hobgoblins will fight each other unless some strong leader is able to bring them together. I decided the two tribes (the Rippers and the Breakers) are at war over who will reign supreme in the region (fortunately for the village). Perhaps some sort of mercenary third party outsider could unite the tribes or provoke them into all-out war with one another...

To the southeast is a nest for a single giant water spider. It's close enough to prey on villagers who stray too far from their home waters.

Moving on to the south plains hex:

I rolled a lonely single dwelling as well as my biggest settlement yet, a town of 4,500 people. 

The single dwelling doesn't have any character-types, so there isn't much to do with it. Just some isolated homesteaders.

The town has 45 character-types, at which point it's worth asking if it's necessary to determine who all these people are. The town will have about 29 characters levels 1 to 3, nine characters levels 4 to 7, four from levels 7 to 12, and two from levels 9 to 20. I will only detail the ones the players are likely to interact with - the 1st-level ones that will be the first to become henchmen, and the highest-level ones that are most likely to have a great deal of influence in the settlement and that can provide high-level spellcasting services.

There would be around nine 1st-level character-types, which are: two clerics (one half-orc), four fighters (one dwarf), a half-elf fighter/magic-user, and two thieves. There's also an 8th-level cleric, a 9th-level thief, a 10th-level magic-user, a 12th-level fighter, a half-elf fighter 8/magic-user 8, and a 17th-level cleric. Wow!

Next, I roll for monster lairs:

Uh oh. There's a castle full of brigands in the forest. Brigands are just particularly nasty (Chaotic Evil) bandits who are more likely to live in cave complexes and castles rather than impromptu camps. In this case, they live in a castle.

One thing I find weird about this is that when you randomly generate a castle, there's already a chance that it's inhabited by non-character-type humans, one of which can be brigands. So there are multiple ways to end up with a castle full of brigands.

The castle contains 104 brigands. They have a 9th-level leader, an 8th-level magic-user, plus guards, lieutenants, and other 3rd- to 6th-level fighters.

Otherwise, they're not too different from the bandits in the first atlas hex I stocked. They're not in open terrain, so they don't have as many horses. They're more entrenched in their position and they're more aggressive.

They can't bully the town, which has a militia of 450 plus very high-level character-types, but they can easily destroy the single dwelling if they want to. I'm tempted to just turn it into a ruin, but it's probably more interesting if there's just a small group of brigands there forcing the inhabitants to feed and house them. The players could liberate the homesteaders from the small detachment of tyrannical brigands only to get themselves mixed up with the larger faction in the castle.

There's a also a den of fifteen wolves (with just two cubs) right outside of town, which is a bit odd. The den must be very new to be there at all, and they are likely just a nuisance to lone travelers. They are much more likely to prey on the isolated homesteaders than on the townsfolk.

Moving on to the southeast forest hex:

Two single dwellings, a village, and a thorp. I'll combine the single dwellings into one but leave the others, who are far enough apart for me.

Neither the single dwelling nor the thorp have a character-type. Like the last single dwelling, this one is in brigand range and has probably been taken over. They're also potentially lion food, so I guess they picked a bad place to settle.

The village has eight character-types: a 1st-level ranger, a 2nd-level fighter, a 2nd-level thief, a 3rd-level fighter, two 3rd-level magic-users, a half-orc fighter 3/thief 3, and a 6th-level cleric.

Now, I add the monster lairs:

This is great! I have a halfling shire, a leprechaun burrow, and a bugbear cave. 

There are 169 male halflings, which includes eight 2nd-level fighters, three 3rd-level fighters, a 4th-level fighter, plus another 169 female halflings and 101 halfling children. They also have 1d4 dogs per halfling! It's unclear if this is referring to the 169 halflings I initially rolled (the halfling men) or if every halfling man, woman, and child has 1d4 dogs all to themselves. I went with just the initial roll and got a whopping 422 dogs! Safe to say that they are well protected from the nearby brigands.

Leprechauns are either solitary or found in groups of 1 to 20. I rolled d2 and got 1, so I decided that a solitary leprechaun lives here. Leprechauns love to play pranks and steal things, so I'm sure this one causes headaches for the nearby homesteaders. That should be a whimsical little adventure for a party of low-level characters.

Lastly, there's a bugbear lair near the thorp. There are 17 bugbears along with a chief and sub-chief, eight female bugbears and eight bugbear children. The bugbears could likely overwhelm the thorp if they wanted to. In this case I would say that the bugbears are snatching the occasional thorper wandering the forest but haven't launched an attack against the thorp just yet.

Next is my final plains hex:

This hex has a village, a hamlet, and a small, totally deserted "castle" (a friary, in this case).

The village has a 1st-level magic-user, a 2nd-level half-elf magic-user, a 3rd-level fighter, a 3rd-level magic-user, a 6th-level druid, and a 7th-level fighter. The hamlet has a 3rd-level cleric and a 3rd-level thief.

I assume the friary was used by an order of friars, because that's what a friary is. I rolled that it was shunned after being curse by the gods. That's interesting. The PHB has this to say about monks:

I roll to determine the monks' alignment and get Lawful Good. Perhaps these monks lost their Lawful alignment for some reason, and this is why their friary was cursed? Much to think about.

There's another den of wolves, which is nothing to write home about, but there's also a lair of three criosphinxes (a non-spellcasting, goat-headed species of sphinx) and a nest of nine griffons with three fledglings (which sell for 5,000 gold each).

The griffons, of course, fly all over the place looking for horses to eat. There's plenty of settlements in the area for them to prey upon. The criosphinx "lusts after gynosphinxes" and "extorts passersby" for treasure. There are no gynosphinxes nearby yet, so I suppose the criosphinxes are here to collect treasure from the region's inhabitants.

Finally, the north water hex:

Just a hamlet with 100 people. There's a single 2nd-level fighter there.

Onto monster lairs:

Hell yes. I have a lair for the infamous AD&D giant beavers as well as a kopoacinth (aquatic gargoyle) lair. 

There are just 10 giant beavers living at the dam with a like amount of young beavers. No doubt the nearby hamlet has some nefarious trappers who hunt the beavers for their hides (500 to 2,000 gold each) and to sell their children into beaver slavery (100 to 200 gold per hit point, up to 700). The players could get in on the action or stand up for the beavers' rights.

The kopoacinth lair (I prefer 2e's term - margoyle) contains 14 of them. They attack anything they find 90% of the time and love to torture their prey. The poor beavers likely have to contend with them as well as the villagers.

Here is the map now that I've stocked another ring of hexes:

Honestly, this is probably all I would need to run a full campaign. There are four dungeons (all of which could be restored and turned into proper strongholds for the player characters) and a multitude of monster lairs (five of which could sustain proper late game mass combat scenarios - the two koalinth lairs, the orc lair, the bandit camp, and the brigands' castle).

A few things to note. I still do not have a city (every hex has a 1% chance of containing one, so it is statistically likely that I would have one by now). I have just two non-ruined strongholds (only one of which is a proper castle). All of my ruins are former strongholds (I did not roll any ruined villages, cities, or shrines). I have four humanoid lairs (two koalinth lairs, an orc lair, and a bugbear lair), but only one demihuman settlement (the shire). Perhaps most importantly, I don't have a dragon lair yet!

Perhaps I will simply have to continue some other time!

Review: The Death Ziggurat (Mörk Borg)

The Death Ziggurat is "a cosmic necrocrawl" scenario for Mörk Borg. It is written by Carl Niblaeus with editing, graphic design, and art by Johan Nohr.

As always, the art of Johan Nohr is evocative, pulpy, and generally great. The illustrations include a small hex map, an illustrated border around a page of random tables, the death ziggurat itself, and the scenario's primary BBEG - Big Bad Evil (Demon) Girl, in this case. 

The whole scenario has a light blue and yellow aesthetic theme which looks great. If Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch's green and black palette evoked the swamp, then The Death Ziggurat's evokes the frozen wastes.

SPOILERS for the Death Ziggurat!

The scenario takes place within Sarkash, the great northern forest of the Mörk Borg setting. Inside the forest is an unnaturally cold depression. Inside the depression is the ziggurat, where the demon child Akünh was imprisoned long ago. The magic imprisoning Akünh has weakened, and she has escaped to raise an army of undead and, along with her fanatical rot priest followers, ravage the world before its end.

An order of Cretun monks hires the party to investigate and, presumably, thwart Akünh. They tell the party that the ziggurat is "hidden in another realm" and that "the [rot] priests carry keys". 

Apparently the monks are paying the party generously for their services, though the scenario doesn't specify what qualifies as generous pay. Mörk Borg itself never gives any indication as to how much silver is considered a little or a lot, so it's entirely up to GM discretion. Not my favorite, but not terrible either. I went with 200 silver for my game, which in retrospect may have been too much.

The presentation of information is not as elegant as in other Mörk Borg scenarios like Rotblack Sludge and Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch. Information is not organized into bullet points with bolded keywords. Instead, all information is presented as prose, broken up by bolded headings. Names of NPCs and monsters are bolded, as well as the occasional important location or item, but it's rather inconsistent. 

I'm not always crazy about the bullet points and bolded keywords approach, particularly because it favors terseness and at-the-table utility over clarity or thoroughness, however I do wish the writing here was a bit more utilitarian.

The Depression Crawl

The scenario includes an illustrated hex map of the depression. There are two locations outside of the depression: a camp of death-obsessed cultists (not to be confused with the camp of demon cultists that shows up later) and a bloody, rotting mouth which conceals a tunnel leading into the depression. You need to feed it blood for it to open.

The walls of the depression are 150 to 300 feet high, so as far as I can tell the only way to get down is to climb (which seems highly unlikely) or pass through the mouth. I started the players traveling through the forest, with only the smoke from the death cultist camp in sight. The cultists told them about the rotting mouth. The players went there, had a fun social interaction scene with the mouth, and figured out how to open it.

The cultists are kind of a weird inclusion. They are different from the rot priests who worship Akünh. The death cultists and the rot priests both have camps. Perhaps the players are meant to expect that the rot priest camp is another death cultist camp? I don't mind the inclusion of both, but it seems that the players could easily get confused by the two camps of religious people fixated on death.

Inside the depression, there's a cave connecting to the rotting mouth, a frozen lake, a rot priest camp, the Spiral Chapel, and the necropolis and ziggurat, both of which are hidden in the Death Realm.

The hexes in between locations are also filled with ruins. I think all of the hexes that aren't otherwise keyed are supposed to contain ruins, but it's not entirely clear. Some of the hexes obviously contain ruins, but a few look empty, and others may only contain trees. The map isn't super clear.

Random Rules

Once per hex, the GM rolls a random event, which range from nothing happening to an important NPC showing up. Five of the twelve possible results are of the "nothing happens" variety, but the "nothing" is described evocatively: clouds gather and thunder rumbles, everything gets cold and freezes over, or a spiraling galaxy opens up above. I could take or leave these. They're the sort of things that the players will either fruitlessly fixate on or go "Oh, okay. So...we keep walking..."

One result is an undead attack (personally, I'd have them burst out of the snow). Two results are encounters with rot priests (which aren't explicitly combat encounters). Two results are encounters with Sarku, Akünh's former closest advisor who is now a blood-sucking ghost, and who knows that to defeat her, her heart (hidden in the ziggurat) must be destroyed. Best of all, two results are encounters with Akünh herself.

Sarku, unfortunately, doesn't show up anywhere else in the scenario, so there is a chance that the players will miss him entirely. I just decided that he could be found in the Spiral Chapel if the players didn't encounter him elsewhere. I think he's an important NPC to include, and he ended up being quite important when I ran the scenario myself.

The only other random encounter I rolled was with a small group of cautious rot priests, which presented a unique opportunity for the players to obtain the priests' medallions. So that was fun.

There's a table for generating ruin types (short descriptions like "Unholy chapel" or "Basalt mausoleum", not a procedure for running a short dungeoncrawl on the fly, which might have been cool). The party can also take 15 minutes to search the ruins for treasure, but might trigger a trap or another random event in so doing. 

I rolled "overgrown ziggurat" something like three times, which was really funny considering that the party knew only that they were looking for a ziggurat. I explained to them the meta mechanics of searching the ruins (i.e., you can take a bit of extra time and maybe find some treasure at the risk of triggering an encounter), but they weren't interested at all.

The frozen lake is covered in black flowers that have strange effects when crushed, which are tied to a table of hourly, weekly, and permanent effects. The effects are fine. One of them turns the character into a ghoul and the other causes them to age in reverse. The implications of both are left entirely to the GM. The players didn't engage with this location at all.

The rot priests are nothing to write home about. They're fascinated by the metaphysical. They have mouths in their abdomens. They carry medallions that allow them to find the necropolis and ziggurat in the Death Realm. They don't really seem to be doing anything besides two that are summoning horn beasts from a bottomless pit in the necropolis, and a few guarding the ziggurat. I wish the others were a bit more active. My players just snuck by most of them.

The Spiral Chapel houses a little puzzle which, when solved, yields the Spiral Crown. The Crown turns its wearer into a cosmic vessel. The wearer gets three DR 12 Presence tests to remove it, otherwise they are "irrevocably lost to the Cosmos", whatever that means. It sounds like a "Your character is now an NPC, through no fault of your own" situation. I had Sarku allude to the awesome power of the crown, and the players had a nice long discussion about who should wear it. 

Wearing the Crown also reverses Akünh's channeling of the demonic world's power, which she needs to raise her undead army. Reversing the channeling also drains Akünh's health each round, causing her to appear and battle the Crown-bearer. My understanding is that, even if she dies here, one still needs to destroy her heart at the ziggurat to destroy her permanently. That makes the Crown a very useful but dangerous and not necessary tool, which I like. 

I did change it so that passing the Presence test allowed the character to wield the Crown without being lost to the Cosmos, rather than to simply remove the Crown. The character could instead attempt a Strength test at any time during the "attunement" process to remove the Crown. This way, there are three outcomes: wear the Crown but be lost to the Cosmos, remove the Crown before becoming lost to the Cosmos, or master the Crown and retain your personality.

One of the player characters wore the Crown and mastered it. Akünh showed up and tried to kill them. That character had 1 hit point. Fortunately, the party's Fanged Deserter scored a critical hit with their Croaking Trident from Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, slaying Akünh (temporarily) instantly. Cool! Now, all that was left was to go find the ziggurat and destroy Akünh's heart.

The Death Realm

To find the necropolis and ziggurat in the Death Realm, the party needs a rot priest medallion. Otherwise, they find only a barren waste, concealed by fog or mist, swarming with undead. If the party doesn't have a medallion, they see a funnel of clouds being sucked down into a sinkhole where the ziggurat would be.

At the necropolis, there are some rot priests summoning horn beasts from a bottomless pit. They are seemingly the only proactive rot priests in the whole area. It's unclear if their summoning is tied to Akünh's channeling and whether disrupting the channeling stops the summoning. My players saw the horn beasts crawling out of the pit and asked "Can we sneak around them?" I didn't see why not.

Finally, inside the Death Ziggurat are some rot priests and their horn beasts, guarding a rotten mouth sucking in the cloud funnel. If the party crawls down the wet throat, they'll find Akünh's heart. Destroying it banishes her to the void and instantly triggers a Misery from Mörk Borg's Calendar of Nechrubel.

My players encountered the maximum number of rot priests here. Not good! A battle ensued (one of the characters was still wearing the Crown, so the rot priests instantly recognized them as enemies). As the party's Shedding Vicar summoned a gang of zombies to tilt the numbers in the party's favor, the Forlorn Philosopher slipped past the priests and down into the mouth (they slipped and fell in, actually, barely surviving the fall), where they found Akünh regenerating around her still-beating heart.

Before they could destroy the heart, a horn beast tore the Crown-bearer apart. Akünh's power was restored! Her eyes snapped open. The Forlorn Philosopher stabbed her heart. She screamed in pain and fury and pursued the Philosopher. The Philosopher barely managed to climb back up out of the throat. The party's Gutterborn Scum rushed to put on the Crown, struggling to master it while the rest of the party held off Akünh and her priests and beasts.

Akünh drew the Crown-bearer towards her with her scream, grabbed them, and bit them in half, killing them instantly. But not before the Fanged Deserter once more delivered the killing blow. I described Akünh falling backwards into the mouth-pit, Crown and upper half of Crown-bearer chewed up by her abdomen-mouth. Through the hole in the top of the ziggurat, the Cosmos swirled. A bolt of prismatic lightning shot down from the heavens and smote Akünh in her pit. The priests' morale broke and they fled. The day was won, but not without great cost!

Monsters and NPCs

The scenario's final spread provides details about monsters and NPCs, plus a great illustration of Akünh. There's a lot to like here.

The rot priests have mouths in their abdomens. They try to grab you and stuff you inside. Any damage they cause does not heal except by magic or after resting one night at least a day's travel from the ziggurat (which means characters are unlikely to heal mid-scenario).

Horn beasts are moderately armored masses of horns and bones with lots of teeth that attack twice per round (which is pretty rare in Mörk Borg). They are pretty nasty and, as I mentioned earlier, managed to score the (surprisingly) first player character kill since we've been playing.

Undead are slow. You can always outrun them, unless they grapple you (which is the first thing they try to do). They are weak, but only stay "dead" for one round before rising with 1 hit point. I like them a lot. Unfortunately my players did not encounter any.

The death cultists are not too exciting. The "most high ranking cultists" (the scenario does not say how many such cultists are in the present group of 25) can deafen you for d10 minutes, which doesn't seem like it would be that big of a deal.

Sarku is awesome. He's a ghost that sucks people's blood with his long, sharp tongue (which also stretches the victim's tongue for some reason). He hangs their desiccated husks from trees. He has combat statistics, even though he's immune to physical harm, and I can't see why he would fight the player characters anyway. His goal is to be freed from his earthly prison. The scenario does not suggest how this is to be accomplished, but I imagine that slaying Akünh would do the trick.

Akünh is also awesome. She can scream to magically pull you within arm's reach. She can attack twice with her claws, and if both hit, the target must test Strength or be devoured by her abdomen mouth and die instantly (this is what killed the party's Gutterborn Scum, who's been with us since the beginning). She can shoot lasers out of her eyes, affecting d6 targets. She can also teleport to anywhere inside of the depression, climbing from a rotting mouth eating out of the ground. The scenario is not clear as to how much of this stuff she can do in a single round. When she reaches 0 HP, she resurrects at her heart beneath the ziggurat, though it isn't clear if this is at full health or if she needs time to heal.

Conclusion

All in all, this is a solid scenario. While the information presentation isn't the most utilitarian, and there are some holes to fill and things I changed, this is the most ready-to-run-as-is Mörk Borg scenario I've reviewed yet. It's not setting the world on fire, but it also isn't trying to do too much, which makes the GM's load significantly lighter. 

I managed to run it in just one 3-hour session, which is the quickest we've gotten through any Mörk Borg scenario so far. It was exciting and deadly. I can imagine that multiple playthroughs would be sufficiently distinct to keep me coming back to this one. My favorite Mörk Borg scenario yet. Run it!

Where to Buy/Download

You can get the Death Ziggurat for free on the Mörk Borg website. Here is a direct link to where you can download it from Google Drive.

If you want a physical copy, you will have to purchase Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory, which includes Death Ziggurat and many other adventures and Mörk Borg content (travel and hunting rules, random tables, magic items, new classes, etc.). I can't really recommend it enough.

Review: Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch (Mörk Borg)

I just finished running this scenario for my Mörk Borg group, so I thought I'd do a review while it's fresh in my mind. 

On a purely aesthetic level, the art and layout are fantastic. I love the black and green color scheme. There are multiple full-page illustrations that look really great. The dungeon key is extremely usable. As is often the case, I think the terse keying leaves a lot to be desired conceptually, which I will get to in a bit.

SPOILERS for Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch!

The scenario takes place in the Slithering Swamp, east of Lake Onda, which is itself east of the "sad-but-gaudy" city of Schleswig. The Mörk Borg core book tells us that Schleswig is ruled by the "paranoid, fat, and increasingly mad" King Fathmu IX, who is obsessed with the basilisk Verhu's prophecies and aggressively taxes and raids the surrounding lands.

The scenario begins by describing the Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, which contains an altar of dead roots. Legend has it that if one chants forbidden words at the altar, any wish is fulfilled. The altar can even stop the Doom foretold by Verhu.

Unfortunately, the Sepulchre is now home to the Strange Serpent Drug Cult, a psychedelic free-love sex cult formed by Ueth the Scalehunter after he was bitten by the Emerald Serpent, causing him to come under the influence of a permanent hallucinogen. Ueth returned to his village, recruited many of the villagers to the Cult, and kidnapped the rest. 

The Cult makes regular sacrifices to "the serpents" (it's not immediately clear if this is the Emerald Serpent, if there are multiple Emerald Serpents, or if these are some other serpents entirely - eventually we learn that this refers to one other Emerald Serpent as well as a bunch of mundane snakes who live in a pit) in exchange for permanent happiness after the world's end.

The party has "stumbled on" the forbidden words that they need to chant at the dead root altar "on a murdered messenger wearing mad King Fathmu IX's crest in a ditch". Was the messenger bearing the words for some reason? Were the words carved into his flesh? Who killed him? Is the ditch in the Slithering Swamp, or somewhere else? Why is the party in the swamp, or wherever they were when they found the messenger?

It's not super important. It framed the scenario by telling the players that they had passed through a nearly-deserted village and that the few remaining villagers begged them to save their children from the sex and drugs snake cult. Sprinkle in that the cult is hiding out in an old tomb with an altar that grants wishes, and even the more self-serving characters might be interested. But the scenario doesn't suggest what the players' motivation might be.

I am beginning to feel that there's something to be said of Mörk Borg's "motivation problem" - that is, in a world so awful, on the brink of Doom, why do anything? It's easy enough to run Rotblack Sludge and say, "You have to do this or you'll be executed," but it's more difficult when the players have to decide they want to do something. Why would they? 

Because we're playing a game and this is what I have prepared, of course, but that doesn't always cut it for every player. Things did not go well for my players in the first session of this scenario, and after narrowly escaping from the Sepulchre once, they asked, "Why are we doing this again?" I said, "To save the children from the sex cult. And get a wish at the altar, maybe." They said, "Well we don't even know what we would wish for. And saving the kids doesn't seem that worthwhile because the entire world is extremely messed up anyway. Something else equally bad will just happen to them as soon as we leave." And honestly, fair enough.

(I think the scenario is trying to imply that the characters are at the Sepulchre to make a wish. The scenario does not at all suggest that the cult members need saving. I added that in myself because I felt the altar motivation was extremely tenuous and I didn't think my players would want to wish for anything. In hindsight, I would recommend simply asking the players: "You've journeyed to the Sepulchre to make a wish at the altar. What is it?" Eventually, one of the players rolled an arcane catastrophe that gave them a magical STD which caused everyone they had sex with to turn into a zombie that wanted to kill them, so they decided to wish that away. That was halfway through the scenario, though.)

The adventure summary includes a d6 rumor table, which is...whatever. There's some foreshadowing about elements of the scenario, but none of the information was especially useful. I just gave all the rumors to the players. More information equals more agency. 

The tomb contains eleven areas. The main gimmick is Emerald Venom, which players can contract from the Emerald Serpent guarding the dungeon's entrance. The Emerald Venom makes the dungeon interior appear differently, gives the affected a penalty to initiative (which I don't think matters at all because presumably all of those inside the dungeon are also affected), an expanded fumble range, and most importantly, it reveals the presence of hidden passages.

Three of the four players allowed themselves to be bitten by the Serpent. The fourth wasn't too keen on that, and started a fight with the Serpent. Surprisingly, he dodged all three of the Serpent's attacks, then killed it. Hilariously, he then attempted to harvest its venom and fumbled, sticking himself with the hallucinogen anyway.

After the players retreated from the Sepulchre the first time, they rested, and the hallucinogen wore off. Then they went back, with clear heads, and noticed no passage where there had been one before. They correctly concluded that certain passages were hidden by illusions, which tipped them off that they had to search every room thoroughly for secrets. That was really neat.

One strange thing about the scenario is that the cultists don't know about the Swamp Witch or her tomb. One of the rooms, the garden, connects directly to both the tomb and altar, and the room is empty of any danger. Ueth "has heard the rumors of the Swamp Witch buried somewhere in here but hasn't gone farther than the garden, where he felt threatened and turned back." This is Rotblack Sludge's "Fletcher hates Lesdy but can't fit through the tunnel and won't send his guards to kill her for some reason" all over again. Extremely hard to believe as a GM, and not at all a conclusion I would expect the players to naturally reach.

To be fair, the garden is a little spooky, with glowing flowers, ancient symbols, and giant three-eyed toad skulls littering the floor, and Ueth is perpetually tripping, but this feels like somewhat lazy writing. The author included too much stuff in too small of a dungeon and handwaved the explanation. It's difficult to justify in-game, and I need to be able to justify it if my players start to ask questions of me or the NPCs.

Another strange element is that Ueth's lair is one of the first rooms the players can go to when they enter the tomb (if under the influence of Emerald Venom). If the party's main motivation is to kill Ueth (as it was for my players), they can try to do that pretty quickly. My players tried to do it, and got close, but were chased out of the tomb by a dozen or so cultists and had to take refuge in the swamp. Admittedly, this is something of a flaw in how I set up the scenario (with one of the two goals being "kill Ueth"), but I did that because the scenario doesn't provide what I feel is a sufficient hook. I felt the need to supplement it with additional incentive, and nearly broke the adventure as a result.

That being said, I appreciate that the majority of the cultists are friendly towards the party if they're affected by the Venom (which they are very likely to be). It allows the party to scope out the area, figure out what exactly they're up against, and then figure out a plan. (Oddly, my players did exactly this in Rotblack Sludge to resounding success, but essentially went in guns blazing in this adventure and made things so much worse for themselves. They eventually regrouped and figured it out.)

There's also the Croaking Trident, a magic weapon that eventually turns its wielder into a chaos frog warrior. That's pretty cool. I made sure the party's strongest warrior found it, and can't wait to see the results.

Eventually, we get to the Swamp Witch's tomb and she's just...floating there. You know, like an NPC in a video game who's just waiting for the player to show up? She wants the players to make a sacrifice at the altar, which is pretty interesting, but it does beg the question...why haven't the cultists found her? 

We're even told that if the Witch dies, the Emerald Serpents and Venom hallucinations disappear, suggesting she is connected to them. The Cult worships the Serpents. The Witch controls the Serpents. The Witch wants people to make sacrifices at the altar. Why don't the Serpents just tell the cultists to go to the altar and make a sacrifice?

I thought I had a good idea for how to get around this. Wishes at the altar only work if the sacrifice is unwilling. Since this is a drug-addled cult, perhaps they're too enthusiastic about being sacrificed for it to work? But no, the Cult has unwilling prisoners, and those are the people they're sacrificing. The scenario also explains that if a willing sacrifice is made, the Witch shows up and fights you with her cool sword. So, none of that works.

The only way to defeat the Witch permanently is to destroy her altar, which can only be done by making an unwilling sacrifice, making a wish, and rolling a 2 on the resulting d6 table. Otherwise, she just regenerates in her sarcophagus if the party defeats her. 

I like that it's difficult to truly defeat the Witch, but it does feel like the scenario will lack a satisfying climax 83% of the time. If the characters successfully make a wish and the altar doesn't break then they just...turn around and leave. And if they get it in their head that they need to defeat the Witch for some reason and haven't lucked into destroying the altar first, then they just fight her over and over until they die or run away.

Lastly, there's a black pit with a magical barrier behind which lurk Srolki and Yaoxl, a pair of antediluvian three-eyed humanoid toads who seek the Croaking Trident. Obviously this is a weapon of their people, but it's not clear why its especially important. After all, allowing it to stay up above will cause those who wield it to turn into chaos frog warriors, which seems like a win for the toad people. If the Witch is killed, the barrier vanishes, and more of the toad people will move into the area following that.

But of course, the scenario is not interested in suggesting what their deal is or what they might do once freed. Are the players to believe that the toad people are worse than the Cult or the Witch? Better? A lateral move? 

None of this really seems to matter. If left to their own devices, the cultists will get high and have sex and sacrifice some people who were going to live miserable, short lives in a terrible world anyway. The Witch will float in her tomb, collecting souls and granting wishes for...reasons. The toad people will stay where they are, or maybe some day be freed, at which point they won't really do anything except call their friends, who will then "appear in the area" and, presumably, do nothing.

The party can come here and make a wish at the altar, which the GM is encouraged to use to screw them over. If they wish to forestall the Doom (which is implied to be the main reason they would come here), it of course only postpones the inevitable next Misery. Obviously, Mörk Borg is something of a masochistic game for nihilists, so this fits the theme, but it could benefit from everything feeling a little less pointless.

Verdict

This is a solid dungeoncrawl with good ideas. It looks like a million bucks. The map, key, and monster stats are all highly usable. Unfortunately, I don't really see the point of it, and the scenario makes no effort to tie together its disparate pieces into any sort of coherent narrative. 

I overhauled it entirely, rethinking the factions and their relationships and motivations.

In my game, the Cult knew about the Witch and her altar, but they saw her as a goddess of love that they had to feed with the souls of the blind - those unindoctrinated into the cult. 

I decided that if someone were to make a willing sacrifice at the altar, it would break automatically, and the Witch would become weakened and vulnerable to being killed. The Witch thus ensured that the Cult only sacrificed the unwilling (either non-cult prisoners or cultists who have lost faith), and stopped anyone intending otherwise. 

The toads knew this information and would have shared it with anyone who talked to them so that they might be freed. They were bad news too, of course (they wanted to carry all of the cultists off to their underground cities and then invade the surface). The player never found the pit, so it didn't come up.

With this setup, the players have to explore and talk to different people to figure out what's going on, then decide what to do about. If they're here just to make a wish at the altar, they shouldn't have too much trouble. If they want to free the cult's prisoners, they'll have to hack through all the cultists. If they want to liberate the cultists (who are people too), they'll have to slay Ueth, the Emerald Serpents, and the Witch. And if they want to defeat the Witch, one of them will need to sacrifice themselves, or they'll need to find an enthusiastic cultist to offer themselves up. Then, they unleash the toad people, and have to decide whether to try to battle them back or surrender the Sepulchre to them.

What ended up happening is that the characters went to the Sepulchre to save the indoctrinated cultists. They tried to kill Ueth, but had to retreat back into the swamp with a bunch of cultists on their heels. One of them managed to lure several cultists out of the Sepulchre while the rest charged in at dawn. They caught Ueth sleeping, restrained him, and snuck through the tomb, killing isolated cult fanatics. The Witch got in their ear, urging them to sacrifice Ueth at the altar, and they did

I've said this before, but I run prewritten scenarios like this because I don't want to do a bunch of work to figure things out. This scenario has done the work of creating the map, stocking the dungeon, detailing the NPCs (barely), and coming up with big ideas. Unfortunately, it hasn't done the work of "figuring out" those ideas, leaving the GM holding the bag. It still beats coming up with the entire scenario on my own, but I wish it was more "ready to run" as written.

On Elemental Damage

D&D 5e has thirteen damage types. This post is concerned with the most fundamental of these damage types - the most primordial ingredients in the great soup of D&D combat. No, not bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing - the elements!

There are five damage types which are generally considered "elemental":

Acid. The corrosive spray of a black dragon's breath and the dissolving enzymes secreted by a black pudding deal acid damage.

Cold. The infernal chill radiating from an ice devil's spear and the frigid blast of a white dragon's breath deal cold damage.

Fire. Red dragons breathe fire, and many spells conjure flames to deal fire damage.

Lightning. A lightning bolt spell and a blue dragon's breath deal lightning damage.

Thunder. A concussive burst of sound, such as the effect of the thunderwave spell, deals thunder damage.

What's that you say? "But the elemental planes in D&D are air, earth, fire, and water"? Well, I'm talking about damage types, not the four elements. What's that? "The chromatic dragons, which more or less personify the elements, represent acid, cold, fire, lightning, and poison"?

Well, trust me. These are the five elemental damage types. Acid and thunder are definitely elements. And I have proof! Absorb elements is a spell which can be cast as a reaction, "which you take when you take acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage". The Elemental Adept feat allows the character to specialize in a damage type, choosing between acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder.

Moving on, there is something to be said about the fact that D&D's damage types come into play only when and if a creature is resistant, immune, or vulnerable to a type of damage. Sure, skeletons are vulnerable to bludgeoning and trolls can't regenerate if you hit them with acid or fire. Demons have a bunch of resistances that make them marginally more difficult to fight. But that's pretty much it. 

I think every damage type could use a little love - a reason to use one type over another in a given situation, besides overcoming the "challenge" of resistances. To start, though, here are my ideas for just the elemental damage types:

• Acid: Effective against pretty much anything that burns. Ineffective against oozes, water elementals, and any creature submerged in water. 
• Each instance of acid damage reduces a creature's nonmagical physical armor class by 1 (i.e., it does not affect adjustments from Dexterity or magic), to a minimum of 10. At AC 10, worn armor is destroyed. Natural armor heals at a rate of 1 AC per day. 
• A creature killed by acid damage has a part or all of its body dissolved (requiring more powerful resurrection magic to bring them back to life). Player characters reduced to 0 hit points by acid damage usually lose at least a hand or a foot, or suffer serious scars.

• Cold: Super effective against plants and creatures accustomed to warmth. Ineffective against creatures magically adapted to the cold (i.e., yetis) and against undead. 
• Freezes water and other liquids. Underwater, cold spells which originate from the caster (i.e., ray of frost, cone of cold) have half range.
• Each instance of cold damage reduces a creature's speed by 10 feet until the end of their next turn (reminder: when their speed reaches 0, flying creatures fall unless they can hover).
• A creature killed by cold damage is frozen solid for a number of days equal to the level of the spell which killed them. This preserves the body similar to a gentle repose spell. For the duration, the creature is basically petrified. Any potions, poisons, or oils the creature carried are frozen for the same duration. Quick-thawing the creature with a heat source of any kind is generally ill-advised.

• Fire: Super effective against dry, papery creatures (i.e. scarecrows, mummies, and origami golems, a tumbleweed blight but not a shambling mound) and creatures accustomed to the cold. Instantaneous effects are ineffective against water elementals and any creature submerged in water. Sustained effects, however, can boil them alive.
• Sets thing on fire. Don't cast fireball in the ancient library, obviously. Fire also doesn't care if things are worn or carried. Clothing and spellbooks are set on fire just the same as scenery. 
• Each instance of fire damage causes a flammable creature or object to take one die of damage (die size determined by the original effect, e.g., 1d6 from a fireball or 1d10 from a fire bolt) at the end of each of its turns unless it takes an action to extinguish the fire or submerges itself in water.
• A creature killed by fire damage continues to burn. Its body becomes ash in a number of turns equal to 9 minus the level of the effect (cantrips and equipment like torches and burning oil count as level 1). A player character reduced to 0 hit points due to fire damage also continues to burn (meaning they automatically fail a death saving throw every round). Creatures/player characters reduced to 0 hit points by a 9th-level fire spell/effect (an ancient red dragon's breath) are immolated instantly.

• Lightning: Super effective against wet creatures and those made of/wearing metal. Ineffective against creatures made of stone (earth elementals, gargoyles, stone golems, etc.) or rubber (rubber band golems).
• Water and metal conduct electricity. Lightning attacks made against a wet creature or a creature made of or wearing metal have advantage. Wet creatures and creatures made of or wearing metal have disadvantage on saving throws against lightning effects. When a lightning effect targets a creature in the water, all creatures in that body of water are affected. No saving throw.
• A creature that takes lightning damage loses its reaction until the start of its next turn.
• Lightning can defibrillate dead creatures. A creature with access to a lightning spell can attempt a spellcasting ability check when adjacent to creature that has been dead for less than 1 minute. The DC equals 20 + the number of rounds the creature has been dead. On a success, the creature regains 1 hit point. If the creature is a player character, a success instead cancels out one failed death saving throw, allowing the character to continue making death saving throws.

• Thunder: Super effective against creatures with keen hearing (many animals and animal people) and those made of glass (stained glass golems). Ineffective against deafened creatures or within a zone of silence.
• A creature that takes thunder damage is deafened until the end of its next turn. While deafened, a creature has disadvantage on any checks or saving throws made to maintain balance (i.e., Acrobatics, resisting the prone condition) and cannot cast spells with verbal components.
• A creature killed by thunder damage which is resurrected is permanently deafened unless magical healing which restores lost body parts is employed. A player character reduced to 0 hit points by thunder damage who does not die is instead deafened for a number of days equal to the level of the effect.

And there you have it! Is this good? I don't know, but it's something! I really like the idea of taking a more "common sense" approach to 5e next time I play it. I think D&D in general and 5e especially sings much more sweetly when you let yourself be immersed in the fiction instead of the rules. 

Hopefully, these rules take what are normally nondescript beams and blasts of different colored energies and turn them into lifelike elements that create their own varied effects.

Stocking a Sandbox with the AD&D 1e DMG (Part 1)

I thought it would be a fun exercise to try stocking a sandbox using the procedures presented in the appendices of the AD&D 1e DMG. I'll be using Hexographer to create the map.

A good chunk of this post is very thorough. My intention is not to bore, but to demonstrate how detailed the rules for AD&D can be - whether this level of detail is a strength or a weakness of the system is for the individual's judgement.

I start with a blank map:

I have the map divided into large "atlas" hexes of 19 hexes each because it breaks the map into manageable chunks. I'll only be stocking those hexes which are fully contained within an atlas hex (so none of those bordering two atlas hexes). It's a bit odd, but it's a small concession to make the work more manageable.

The map is 37 hexes by 37 hexes, at a scale of 6 miles per hex. This is my preferred scale for many reasons, but mostly because I've internalized the overland travel costs by terrain from 2e at that scale (i.e., it takes one hour to travel from the center to the edge of a plains hex, two hours in a forest hex, three hours in the hills, etc.), making it very easy for me to eyeball how long it takes to get around. 

Appendix B of the 1e DMG suggests using a 1-mile scale, but says other scales can work as well. I think a 1-mile scale using the DMG procedures would result in a play area that's way too dense, so I'm spreading everything out.

I'm going to start with a plains hex in the middle of the map because it's the most "vanilla" terrain type. The climate is temperate, again because it's "vanilla". It is a fun challenge to do this with an odd terrain or climate type like an arctic wasteland or a tropical island, of course, but a challenge is not what I'm looking for right now.

Instead of generating the map using the random terrain tables in Appendix B, I'm going to use Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design (which I'm much more familiar with) to generate the terrain. I tried using the DMG's terrain tables and I simply don't like that much randomness/variance. Using the Welsh Piper method, my first hex looks like this:

Next, I'll roll on Appendix B's inhabitation table once for each of the 19 whole hexes in the atlas hex:

A hex is inhabited only on a roll of 16 or less, so those are the numbers I'm paying attention to. I roll (in order) a 12, 11, 13, and 5. That's three castles (!) and a thorp. 

As the above table indicates, I have to roll on a different set of tables for the castles:

I roll 92, 23, and 98, which is a large walled castle with keep, a tower, and a fortress complex. I roll again for inhabitants and get 91, 53, and 8. That means the large walled castle is inhabited by character-types, the tower is deserted with a monster lairing there, and the fortress complex is totally deserted. I'm going to record the tower and the fortress on the map as ruins.

Then I have to figure out all this stuff for the large castle:

Remember when I said this post would be thorough and detailed?

The master of the castle is a 13th-level druid - definitely not what I was expecting! The PHB says this about high-level druids:

Seems weird, then, that the castle master table includes a footnote for illusionists and monks, but not druids. In any case, it sounds like this castle is instead a "building complex" in natural surroundings. Let's just call it a fortified grove (if you've played Baldur's Gate 3, it's like that).

Then I have to roll for the druid's magic items using this table:

I got potions of fire resistance and speed, a +1 shield, a +1 dagger "(or +2) et. al" (I have no idea what this means, so +1 dagger it is), two +3 swords, +3 plate mail, a +2 shield, and a ring of spell turning. That's quite the haul! Druids can't use metal or whatever, so I would flavor these appropriately. The swords are scimitars or they're made of bone or something. The plate mail is a super hard, enchanted monster hide or insect chitin.

The druid has five henchmen. They are 8th-level according to this:

Again referring to the PHB, this checks out:

Our 13th-level druid is an Archdruid, so they should have three 8th-level druid followers attending to them. I find it really impressive that the information in the PHB lines up so nicely with that presented in the DMG's appendices. Maybe the bar is too low. I do wish the DMG mentioned that druids of a certain level have a certain number of druid followers, just so I wouldn't have to go to the PHB to find out.

These druids are not considered henchmen (I think the intention was for them not to count towards a player character's maximum number of allowed henchmen), but I'm going to consider them henchmen in this case.

To determine the other two henchmen, I roll on a different character subtable:

I got a cleric and a fighter. I'll assume they're all True Neutral since that's the necessary alignment of druids in AD&D. There might be some variance among them but I don’t want to get too into the weeds with that right now. Now, I have to roll magic items for the five 8th-level henchmen:

I rolled potions of fire resistance, healing (2), heroism (2), human control, giant strength (2), invulnerability (2), levitation, and speed, a scroll with a 1st-level and 2nd-level spell, a ring of mammal control, a +1 ring of protection, a +1 shield, 10 +1 arrows, a +2 javelin, rings of fire resistance and invisibility, a wand of illusion, three javelins of lightning, a crossbow of speed, a +2 hammer, +3 plate mail, a +2 shield, and a +4 defender sword. 

Wow! Here, I rolled for all the henchmen together, and would probably assign magic items to the most appropriate person (the scroll to the druids or the cleric, and the best weapons and armor to the fighter, for example). Another option could be to roll individually for each henchman and have them "trade" unusable items amongst themselves, but that sounds even more tedious.

Next, I have to roll to determine the grove's garrison. I rolled 12 heavy horse (splint mail and shield, lance, long sword, and mace), 12 light horse (studded leather, light crossbow, and long sword), and 28 men-at-arms (19 with scale mail, shield, spear, and hand axe, and 9 with scale mail, heavy crossbow, and morning star). 

Each unit is led by a fighter of 3rd- or 4th-level. I rolled two of each. They then each need magic items:

Fortunately, I did not roll any magic items for these fighters.

Lastly, because it is a "large castle", the grove would be armed with four ballistae scorpions, four light catapults, and eight oil cauldrons.

That took a long time! Don't worry - I just wanted to go through the process for the first "castle" as an example of how much rolling is needed when character-types are involved. I won't be going into that much detail again.

Of course, if I wanted to finish making this location ready for play, I would also have to roll stats for all of these leveled characters, record bonuses from Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and the like, and determine HP, AC, THAC0, spells, and special abilities. And this is just one location!

In order to determine what type of monster dwells in the deserted tower, I have to roll on the corresponding outdoor encounter table (plains). I rolled giant owls. Cool! Now, I have to jump over to the Monster Manual:

(Note that if % in lair equals zero, I take that to mean that the monster does not keep a lair, in which case I will reroll.)

There are two giant owls here. There are no eggs or hatchlings (which is too bad for any mercenary adventurers that might come here hoping for a 1,000 to 6,000 gold piece payout). 

I roll for treasure using the Monster Manual appendix and learn that the owls have ten gems. I then have to go back to the DMG to determine the gems' base values:

I roll one with a base value of 10 gp, three base value 50 gp, two base value 100 gp, two base value 500 gp, and two base value 1,000 gp. Then I need to roll for variation:

I am left with the following gems: one worth 12 gp, one worth 45 gp, one worth 50 gp, one worth 65 gp, two worth 100 gp, two worth 500 gp, one worth 600 gp, and one worth 1,000 gp (2,972 gp total).

I have to decide whether the point of the tower is the giant owls, or if there's some sort of proper dungeon contained within. The owls on their own aren’t super exciting, so I’m thinking there’s a dungeon underneath the tower too.

The deserted fortress complex would definitely need to be a proper dungeon, and is probably the tentpole dungeon in the area. Realistically, this would be the most important location to detail before starting play. That's beyond the scope of this post, so I'll leave it for now.

The thorp's population is 20-80 (2d4 x 10). I roll a 6, so 60 people live there. My rule of thumb is that 1 in 100 people is a character-type, so there's a 60% chance of a character-type in this thorp (technically it's a 1% chance per inhabitant, but I'm not going to roll 60d100). I roll 31, so there is a character-type here. 

I then roll d100 to determine level, using the "tiers" from AD&D 2e. A roll of 01-65 is level 1-3, 66-85 is level 4-7, 86-95 is level 7-12, and 96+ is level 9-20. I roll 57 and then 1, so this is a 1st-level character. I go back to the character subtable in the DMG (for dungeon encounters, not stronghold rulers) and get a magic-user. A nice henchman hedge wizard for the party if they want one, and he could also provide low-level spellcasting services like identify.

This what my map looks like now:

I have some initial thoughts about this process. It's weird that inhabitation is determined irrespective of terrain. A settlement is just as likely to be on a major river next to the coast as it is to be in the middle of a dismal swamp or desert wasteland. It's also weird that I rolled three "castles" in this one small area. I do really like, however, that those castles can end up being deserted and/or inhabited by monsters. Players could potentially clear them out and then claim them as their own.

The Archdruid's grove was a delightful surprise. It is, however, a pain in the ass to determine henchmen, garrisons, magic items, and the like. At this stage of prep, I don't necessarily have to determine those things, but if I want this area to be ready for play, I will have to figure it out before the players interact with the location, which could be during the first session. It's not like the grove is "gated" within some high-level area where the players can't go. Assuming play begins in the thorp, it's just over a day's travel to the grove.

But I'm not done with this hex yet! Now that I've determined areas of habitation, I need to figure out where the monster lairs are. I'm going to check for a random encounter in each unstocked hex. If an encounter is indicated, that will become a monster's lair.

I like the terrain type to determine the chance of an encounter (for example, encounters are more likely in the forest than on the plains). As far as I can tell, AD&D 1e doesn't account for that, but 2e does, so I'll use those rules.

I ended up with two encounters on the plains (one south of the druid's grove and one south of the deserted tower) and one in the forest (southwest of the deserted fortress).

The encounter next to the grove is within half a day's travel of it, so I consider that hex inhabited/patrolled. I need to first check for a patrol from the grove (indicated by 16+ on d20), then roll for a monster encounter on the inhabited/patrolled areas table if no patrol is indicated:

No patrol was indicated, and I rolled merchants on the encounter table. Merchants have 0% in lair, so I roll again. This time I roll bandits:

Because of the note at the very bottom there, I roll d100 for the type of lair. I get an informal camp. It contains 127 bandits, plus six 3rd-level fighters, four 4th-level fighters, three 5th-level fighters, two 6th-level fighters, a 9th-level fighter leader, six 2nd-level fighter guards, a 7th-level fighter lieutenant, a 5th-level cleric, and a 3rd-level assistant cleric. Of course, I will have to determine all of their stats and magic items as I would other character-types! The bandits also have nine important prisoners and thirteen camp followers/slaves. I did another d100 roll to determine if any of those prisoners/followers/ slaves were character-types, but they were not.

I also have to determine the mix of arms and armor used by the bandits, and if any of them are psionic:

Since these bandits are on the plains, 90% of them will be horsed (which I guess means that 90% is split evenly among the three mounted categories listed above).

They have treasure type A, and end up with 1,000 copper, 26 gems, 21 pieces of jewelry, a ring of three wishes (!), a +1 shield, and a +1 mace. I'm not even going to touch all those gems and jewelry for now.

I would probably tell my players that they shouldn't even try to take on these guys unless they possessed an army of their own. They could try, but I think they would die very quickly!

Here I might normally make opposed reaction rolls to determine how the druids and bandits feel about each other, but it would seem pretty weird if they were friendly, wouldn't it? I can only imagine that the bandits are engaged in a prolonged siege against the druids, trying to storm their grove and plunder its treasures. Their "important prisoners" are probably captured soldiers or other inhabitants of the grove - maybe even awakened animals!

The druids have 52 soldiers to the bandits' 127, so they are quite outnumbered, but the druids have higher-level spellcasters and a fortified position. I could see them being evenly matched, requiring some mercenary third party of outsiders to tip the balance one way or the other. I wonder who that might be...

The other two lairs are easier. I roll on the uninhabited wilderness tables and get giant eagles in the forest (the Monster Manual entry says they are only found "in places where there are great bluffs, cliffs, mesas, or mountain crags to nest on", which doesn't describe the area, but whatever) and lions on the plains. 

First, the giant eagles:

I rolled 3 of them. The text says "If there are young (50%) or eggs [in their lair] they will attack any creature within 50'. There will be 1-4 young per nest, 1 nest per 2 giant eagles." It is not clear to me if this is saying that there's a 50% chance of there being young or eggs and if so there are 1-4 per nest or if there are always 1-4 per nest and it's 50/50 as to whether those are young or eggs. I'm going to read it as there's a 50% chance of there being young or eggs per nest, then a 50/50 chance of those being young or eggs. 

In any case, there's just one mated pair, and their nest has no eggs or young. They have no treasure. Kind of boring! But I guess they can't all be winners.

Next, the lions:

There are eight of them - three males and five females, plus six cubs. I think the implication is that 1-4 of the five lionesses stay with the cubs to protect them, rather than there being an additional 1-4 lionesses. They don't have any treasure either, so this is also something of a nothingburger lair.

Now I think the two ruined strongholds need a bit more life. Appendix A has tables for generating the layout and contents of a dungeon, but not a theme, which is all I want right now. Instead, I'll go to 5e's DMG, whose dungeon tables I've praised in the past.

I determine that the tower was created by a lich and destroyed by a natural disaster. Now that's cool. This was once the archetypal evil wizard's tower, but some disaster brought it crumbling down. Who hates unlife, is capable of magically creating natural disasters, and lives nearby? Oh right - an Archdruid!

Now I'm thinking the lich was an enemy of the druids. They wrecked his tower with an earthquake, defeated him, and sent some giant owls to make sure no one went poking around in the tower's dungeons. The lich is probably still down there - maybe as a demilich, waiting to be reawakened. 

The tower is half-sunken into a fissure in the earth, and its interior and the dungeon beneath are all jumbled up and unstable. The lions roam around the area and eat adventurers who come to the tower. The upper levels of the tower's dungeons are filled with blighted plants and zombie vermin - natural lifeforms corrupted by the lingering necrotic energy of the site - while the lower levels house what's left of the lich's magical creations - undead, constructs, conjured beings, and the like.

Next, I determine that the fortress complex was created by elves and destroyed by attacking raiders. I bet the lich had something to do with that. Perhaps this area was once more heavily forested, then the lich set up shop, starting cutting the trees down, got into a war with the elves, and destroyed them. That means the fortress complex is actually an ancient, destroyed elven ruin. That's more interesting than "deserted fortress complex".

The druids might even be the inheritors of an ancient elven tradition. The giant eagles might also be in league with the druids, protecting the ruin from plunder. The people of the nearby thorp (thorpers? thorpfolk? thorppeople?) live in the ruin's shadow, afraid to go there lest they be carried off by a huge bird or devoured by the remnants of the lich's undead army. But I bet that hedge wizard would pay some mercenary third party of outsiders to go digging around in there. I wonder who might be up for that job...

I can also begin to brainstorm random encounters:

• Druid patrol
• Bandit patrol
• Giant eagles
• Giant owls
• Undead/blights
• Lions
• Thorpers

And I can make a list of the area's important NPCs:

• Archdruid
• Bandit leader
• Lich
• Hedge wizard/whoever is in charge of the thorp

Here's what I ended up with:

There's a decent amount of adventure to be had here, and this area is only 30 miles across! There's a small home base, two dungeons which could each easily support early adventures (I'd have to decide how many levels they have, whether they start at 1st-level and go up in difficulty as the party delves deeper in the traditional style, or if they have some different difficulty progression), one of which is right outside the village, the other which includes a minor monster lair, plus two other low-to-mid-level lairs, and a truly epic power struggle in one corner of the region for the late game. There are at least four factions to get involved with - the druids, the bandits, the lich, and the thorp-dwellers.

For all the tedium of rolling up henchmen, bandit leaders, magic items, and gems, this was quite an engaging exercise. Gygax was a strange person, and while I can't necessarily recommend using this method for stocking a play area, it is quite impressive in its thoroughness and attention to detail in a way that Gygax's style often is. 

At any rate, I much prefer this to modern D&D's style of "Here are some things that might be found in a D&D game. You decide how to integrate them into an entire world for your players to enjoy!"

Perhaps I'll do more of these in the future. I had a quite a bit of fun!