Developing the Sandbox: The Town

This post is part of my series on developing the sandbox. You can read other posts in the series here. The series will, when necessary, go into detail on the development of my sandbox for Dungeon Module B1: In Search of the Unknown, but will also discuss sandbox development more generally. You can read play reports from my B1 campaign here.

(It's actually surprisingly hard to find a map from a classic D&D adventure of the sort of town I'm referring to here, since so many famous modules deal in either villages or cities - very little in between.) 

What I'll be discussing in this post are settlements which are big enough that it's not worth it to spend time detailing each individual location, where it's instead better to break the whole thing down into a few thematic "chunks" (for example, "Herald's Market" and "Alchemist's Ward" in the image above, which is taken from donjon's Fantasy Town Generator).

What I won't be discussing here is smaller settlements - thorps, hamlets, and even villages - where the whole place is essentially one big area. Development of those locations will look different, and I'll discuss that in another post.

If you refer back to my post on Prioritizing Points of Interest, you'll find why I decided to detail the town of Timbershore first and foremost when developing my B1 sandbox. The road into the region leads straight into town. Unless the players decide to go around it, it's the first location they'll interact with in their adventure.

However, a town like Timbershore is a complex environment, and it will require a great deal of development. It's one of those locations, like a tentpole megadungeon, which a DM could theoretically sink limitless hours into as the campaign progresses, fleshing it out as demanded by in-game events and the players' interests.

You can read a lot about how best to utilize settlements like this in play. There was a whole blog bandwagon about it (technically this was about cities, but any advice on that subject is equally applicable to towns as well). Of course, the most important writing on this subject is my own. Or, at least, being familiar with my writing on the subject will likely aid you in understanding my perspective and this post in particular. Check out my posts on settlements in general and the implied setting of towns and cities in AD&D specifically.

So, where to start? If you refer first to my post on minimalist location sketches for sandboxes, you'll find that, knowing that this first location is a town, I'll next want to know its population, any character-type NPCs who live there, who rules the town, and how the powers that be respond to the player characters when they first arrive there.

Let's start with population. This will determine the number of character-type NPCs in the town, which will in turn determine their level distribution, which will in turn determine who are the town's "bosses". I determine population using AD&D's INHABITATION table:

A town's population is 1d6 x 1,000 + 500. For Timbershore, I rolled a 5, so its population is 5,500. You are also free to look at your hex map and determine the hectares of airable land in the region and do some realistic calculations based off of that. I hope you have fun. I'm going to go with the dice roll.

My towns and cities and such are primarily populated by humans. Large groups of dwarves and elves and halflings don't live in such places - at least not at this scale (though perhaps they used to). They are "monsters" with wilderness "lairs". But, some of them do live in human towns and cities.

To determine racial demographics, you could use this table:

Or even this table:

I prefer the first. What's the difference? The first one is 80% human, 5% dwarf, 5% elf, 2% gnome, 5% half-elf, 2% halfling, and 1% half-orc. The second is 70% human, 8% dwarf, 5% elf, 2% gnome, 8% half-elf, 2% halfling, and 5% half-orc. Do you want fewer humans and more dwarves, half-elves, and half-orcs? Use the second table. Or make up your own arbitrary percentages. It doesn't really matter.

Timbershore has a population of 5,500. That's 4,400 humans, 275 each of dwarves, elves, and half-elves, 110 each of gnomes and halflings, and 55 half-orcs. This isn't really important, except:

While this excerpt applies specifically to the recruitment of henchmen, I extrapolate from it that 1 in 100 of the human and half-orc populations and 1 in 50 of the remainder are character-type NPCs. This is, incidentally, why I prefer the demographic breakdown which yields more humans and fewer of everyone else - it's fewer character-type NPCs that I have to deal with, which is less work.

Using our demographics and this rule of thumb, Timbershore has:

• 44 human character-type NPCs
• 5 to 6 of each: dwarf, elf, and half-elf character-type NPCs
• 2 to 3 of each: gnome and halfling character-type NPCs
• At most 1 half-orc character-type NPCs

That's 63 to 69 NPCs with character levels. That's a lot, and if we were detailing a city, it'd be even more. Surely we're not going to detail them all (not yet at least - you can do it, but it's totally optional). Instead, we're going to figure out who are the important ones, and detail those first. How do we determine who's important? 

First, let's go back to that excerpt on Number of Prospective Henchmen. 1 in 1,000 people in the general population will be interested in employment as henchmen. I generalize this a bit by saying 1 in 10 of those identified character-type NPCs will be interested in employment as henchmen. For Timbershore, that's 4 to 5 humans and, at most, 1 of any other given race. 

You can roll a d10 to determine this, with the number of total character-type NPCs of each race serving as a percentage chance that one is interested in employment as a henchmen. For example, if there are 5 dwarves in Timbershore, then there's a 50% chance that one is recruitable as a henchman.

Henchman are locked in at levels 1 through 3:

For these NPCs, I'll just determine their level (1d3), and give just those of 1st level (because 2nd and 3rd level henchmen can only be recruited at higher levels) a name, a class, and an alignment, then put them aside. Nonhumans will have a chance to be multi-classed (see Race and Multi-Class above). Their alignment can be anything. I will usually have demihumans tend towards their Monster Manual alignment (dwarves will often be Lawful and/or Good, elves will often be Chaotic and/or Good, and so on), whereas for humans I'll roll 2d3 to determine it. I determine class by rolling on the Character Subtable ("Used For Encounters On All Dungeon Levels" - but ignore that!):

(Note that just because this is all AD&D stuff does not mean you must be playing AD&D. You can change out the races for whatever you like. You could rule that a result of "Ranger" is actually a 50/50 chance of being a ranger or barbarian. A result of "Illusionist" could instead be a sorcerer or warlock. These are generally very useful worldbuilding tools regardless of your prefer system. I am merely attempting to demonstrate their usefulness. Adjust to taste!)

Henchmen are one of the most important NPCs to detail first because the players have a good chance of interacting with them early, if for example they feel the need to bolster their numbers before beginning their adventure. The next most important will be the high level NPCs - those who run thieves' and assassins' guilds, rule strongholds, and command factions within the town.

These high level NPCs will be drawn from those remaining - let's say 40 humans, 5 dwarves, 5 elves, 5 half-elves, 2 gnomes, 2 halflings, and 1 half-orc. What to do with these? I start with breaking them down based on a loose notion of "tiers" comparable to D&D 5e's "tier of play". 65% are Tier 1 (levels 1 to 3, or 1d3, but not interested in employment as henchmen), 20% are Tier 2 (levels 4 to 7, or 1d4+3), 10% are Tier 3 (levels 7 to 12, or 1d6+6), and 5% are Tier 4 (levels 9 to 20, or 1d12+8).

That gives me 26 Tier 1 humans, 8 Tier 2 humans, 4 Tier 3 humans, 2 Tier 4 humans, and so on. Start with the highest level NPCs and work your way down, detailing them the same way you did henchmen. Don't generate all of them. For now, you only need to worry about those NPCs which have strongholds. They are the ones who will have large amounts of henchmen and followers to command, which means they'll be factions.

These high level NPCs and the factions they command will provide the most basic level of color to your large settlement - a town ruled by an evil wizard is much different than one ruled by a paladin, and a city with half a dozen thieves' guilds is much different than one with a like number of temples.

So then, who can rule a stronghold? Luckily, I wrote a whole post about this. At 8th level, clerics can build places of worship, and monks can build moat houses and friaries. At higher levels, fighters, paladins, rangers, thieves, magic-users, illusionists, assassins, and bards can build strongholds as well (note that druids do not build strongholds in towns and cities - you might rule that rangers, monks, and bards do not, either, according to taste).

You might prefer a system in which a character can build a stronghold at any level provided they have the means and the desire to do so, but I find that woefully unhelpful when trying to develop a location like this. I for one really appreciate AD&D's black and white approach to this. "X class can rule a stronghold at Y level" is a very useful rule of thumb for a DM trying to build a setting.

So for now, we need be on the lookout for character-type NPCs of 8th level or higher only - that's our Tier 3 and Tier 4 NPCs. When I rolled up these NPCs, I got a LN human fighter 7, a N human magic-user 7, a LG human ranger 8, a LN human magic-user 11, a CE human cleric 13, and a NE human illusionist 16 (since AD&D 2e has specialists of all eight schools of magic, I treat the illusionist instead as a specialist and roll d8 for their specialization, determining that this one is instead a diviner). 

Surprisingly, that gives me just two NPCs who rule strongholds (fighters and rangers get their strongholds at 9th level, and magic-users get theirs at 12th level). I determine that the human cleric 13 rules a large shell keep and that the human diviner 16 rules a large walled castle with a keep, using this table:

I make some reaction rolls and determine that the cleric is unfriendly and the diviner is friendly. This suggests to me at least that the cleric will be uncooperative with the party and that the diviner is willing to work with them - he is NE, so this doesn't mean he's altruistic, only that he thinks he stands to gain something by working with the party.

Remember that while the powers that be may be willing to work with the party to accomplish their goals, high level NPCs view adventurers as a threat to the established order, and none will be permitted to grow too powerful without being checked by their overlords.

This bit tells me that NPCs with strongholds will have 1d4+1 henchmen and several men-at-arms:

And this bit tells me what level these NPCs' henchmen ought to be:

The 13th level cleric will have 2-5 henchmen of at most 8th level, and the 16th level diviner will have a like number of henchmen of at most 10th level. Some of those lower level characters I rolled up (the LN fighter and N magic-user) can fill those rolls (the LG ranger's alignment is incompatible with both). Since the LN magic-user 11 is too high level to be a henchman to either and also falls into that "Tier 4" 9th to 20th level range, I'll make her an important NPC too, even if she isn't high enough level to rule a stronghold.

With my three most important NPCs identified, I'll make some contested reaction rolls to determine how they feel about one another. I determine that the diviner is aligned with the magic-user (friendly) and has an uneasy truce with the cleric (indifferent/neutral), and that the cleric wants the magic-user dead (hostile). 

I mill this over a bit and determine that the diviner and the cleric have some sort of agreement wherein the cleric is allowed to collect tithes and is exempt from taxation. Although the diviner is higher level, AD&D clerics get a small army and tons of fanatical followers when they build a stronghold, whereas magic-users must rely on paid men-at-arms and henchmen, so the cleric actually wields the more threatening force in town. The place is probably crawling with the cleric's agents. 

At the same time, the diviner possesses powerful scrying magic and is aware of everything that goes on in his domain, rarely needing to leave his stronghold at all. The cleric is certainly not a good influence in town, but her agents sow chaos and keep the people divided and frightened, which makes them easier for the diviner to control.

The magic-user is, in turn, the diviner's boots on the ground agent, carrying out his laws and orders. She is on the cusp of being able to build a stronghold, so perhaps she is dutifully serving the town's overlord in hopes that he will grant her permission to begin construction when the time comes. Since the magic-user is an agent of law and order, the cleric wants her eliminated, which may push the town over the brink into all-out chaos. She's not bold enough to take out the magic-user herself, but would perhaps align herself with some outside agents to get the job done.

I think that's a pretty good initial sketch for my town. After this, I would move on to sketching out my other locations, then circle back around for another pass at the town.

Somewhere in all of this, you're going to have to stat out these NPCs. You can wing it to a certain extent. For example, if you know an NPC is a 7th level human fighter, it's easy enough to run them at the table by simply looking up the relevant statistics when needed. The tricky part is in the finer details, like what magic items the NPC possesses, or, if they're a wizard, what's in their spellbook, and what spells they usually have prepared. 

I don't particularly like figuring all that out at the table. And if the high level wizard happens to have a ring of three wishes or some other powerful magic item, I like to know that as soon as possible, as that is potentially game-altering information. Once I'm done with my initial location sketches, I will usually do a second pass through all of my locations, during which I jot down stats for monsters and NPCs and roll up their treasure hoards. 

This can be really tedious when dealing with a place like a town where there's a high density of high level NPCs. There's not really an easy way to do it - I just put my head down and power through it. The players are unlikely to decide to try and confront some high level NPC in their first session, but players are unpredictable, so I like to be prepared in case they do.

The next most important step - really the last one to get your town ready for your first session - is to break it down into districts. This is an idea I took from Brave, and I find it really brings settlements like this together in a simple, gameable way. There's this nifty little table:

Personally, I'm only really looking at the Districts row, though you may find the rest of the information illuminating. A town has 1d4 districts. Instead of rolling, I base it on population size. Timbershore has a population of 5,500, which is about 85% of the maximum population for an AD&D town (6,500). Since the maximum number of districts is 4, I multiply that by .85 and get 3.4. Thus, Timbershore will have three districts, with a 40% chance of a fourth. I check for a fourth and determine there are indeed four districts.

I want one of these districts to be where the diviner lives and one to be where the cleric lives, so I create the High Ward - a wealthy administrative district at the town's center, with the diviner's castle atop a high hill - and the Chapel Ward - filled with hostels, almshouses, and minor shrines (remember there are no other clerics of high enough level to have actual temples here), with the cleric's religious stronghold at its center. The town is on a river and right next to the forest, so I also have a River Ward with docks and warehouses and a Timber Ward with lumber yards and sawmills.

I draw up a little flowchart map to show how the districts connect and create a brief description for each, including what general sorts of locations and people are found there:

• Chapel Ward (NE): Blanchefleur’s Keep looms over this district. Features minor shrines, cult safehouses, “charity” kitchens, mortuaries, hostels, graveyards, and catacombs. Flagellant processions make their way through the streets daily. Devotees of Blanchefleur, desperate wretches, cultists, and hospice workers live here. Connections: Timber Ward (S), High Ward (SW)
• High Ward (C): Situated atop a hill. Surrounds Lambrecht’s Castle and observatory on an even higher hill ("the High Hill"). Features markets, spell licensing offices, the courthouse, elite guard barracks, and residences of wealthy merchants and officials. Senior officials, licensed magi, wealthy traders, and administrators live here. Connections: Chapel Ward (NE), Timber Ward (SE), River Ward (S)
• River Ward (S): Noisy, profitable, and corrupt, where outsiders enter town when sailing downriver. Features docks, warehouses, guildhalls, caravan yards, river shrines, taverns and flop houses, smuggler dens, and toll houses. Boatmen, dock workers, traders, caravan guards, smugglers, and transients live here. Connections: High Ward (N), Timber Ward (NE)
• Timber Ward (SE): The working population center, closest to the forest. Features woodcutters’ lodges, charcoal burners, sawmills, tanneries, cheap inns, labor markets, militia mustering yards, fence yards and animal pens, repair shops, and the hunters’ guildhall. Laborers, trappers, foresters, hunters, and militia families live here. Connections: Chapel Ward (N), River Ward (SW), High Ward (NW)

From here, it's pretty easy to improvise where different things might be located in town. Need healing or want to visit a shrine to a deity? Go to the Chapel Ward. Want to yuck it up with the elite or auction off a captive dragon? Go to the High Ward. Want to secure passage downriver or fence some stolen goods? Go to the River Ward. Want to sell some giant beaver furs or hire a guide to help you navigate the forest? Go to the Timber Ward.

From there I can flesh out a few additional locations, like an inn in each district, a graveyard in the Chapel Ward, a bath house in the High Ward, a smuggler's den in the River Ward, a boxing yard in the Timber Ward, or whatever. I try to think of what the players might want to do in town (looking over your list of downtime activities is a good place to start), then create a few locations that make sense for each, with maybe a sentence or two of description. For example, my list of locations for the High Ward looks like this:

For now, there's just one thing left to do, and that's encounter tables. You can pretty much get by simply riffing on AD&D's CITY/TOWN ENCOUNTERS MATRIX, but I like to be a little more prepared. I generate four encounters each for day and night in each district (that's eight encounters per district, so 32 total for Timbershore). This is probably overkill - I didn't roll up any encounters in either of our sessions which took place in town, so you can probably get by with like, one prepared encounter per district per time of day, improvising as needed.

Since the encounters are by district, the district in which they occur should color the encounter. A demon or devil encountered in the Chapel Ward was probably summoned by the high level cleric herself. A high level magic-user encountered in the High Ward could be the diviner (or a projected image of the diviner) wandering the streets. A press gang makes a lot of sense in the River Ward, but less so elsewhere. Laborers in the Timber Ward might be woodcutters, but in the River Ward they would be dockworkers, and so on.

These encounters can also aid you in fleshing out the town. Some encounters will include character-type NPCs with levels. You can use these to "backfill" those other character-type NPCs which were too low-level to detail up front, adding them to your roster as you go. By doing this, I was able to determine the identities of all my remaining character-type NPCs. For example, the River Ward's roster looks like this:

One can also encounter monsters like fiends, lycanthropes, and undead wandering the streets. Because these are unusual, they're worth rolling up ahead of time. These can further flesh out the town by allowing you to add monster lairs as locations. If I roll up doppelgangers in the High Ward, I may want to add a location to that district where a wealthy family has been replaced by imposters. If there's a vampire wandering the Chapel Ward, it probably lairs in some old mausoleum where the locals fear to tread. If there are wererats in the River Ward, there's probably a sewer or an abandoned ship where they make their lair. This is all worth adding to your rumor tables as well.

When rolling up these encounters, remember to disguise them using vagueness and similarity, and that dealing with NPCs should be expensive and irritating.

We're not quite done with this town. We will need to come back and fill in any monster lairs as determined by our random encounters, and we will need to key our high level NPCs' strongholds as well. Since the party is likely too weak to confront either of these locations at the start of the campaign, we can circle back around to that later. For now, the town is probably quite ready for play.

Play Report (AD&D 2e): In Search of the Unknown (Session 5)

We played the fifth session of our Dungeon Module B1: In Search of Unknown AD&D 2e game last night. You can read past play reports here.

The roster for this session was as follows:

• Llombaerth, CG elf thief 1 (Adam)
• Pommernar, CE elf mage 1 (Nael)
• Rory the Small, LN human fighter 1 (David)

Last session, the party wandered their way out of Quasqueton's labyrinth of corridors and found three near-identical empty bedchambers. They navigated a long, winding hallway and a few more tight turns before coming upon a room with a pearl on the floor and a crystal outcropping in the wall. As Pommernar stepped inside to take the pearl and break off a piece of the crystal, Llombaerth noticed that there was a new hallway just outside the room, where none had been before.

The party investigated the new corridor and found a well-stocked library with terrariums filled with fire beetles set into the walls shedding dim red light. Inside, Pommernar found a bronze statuette inlaid with silver and gold. They followed a curving corridor just outside the library and reemerged just down the hall from Grilk's goblins' headquarters. Somehow, they had gone in a big circle.

They decided it was time to leave the dungeon and return to town. They recovered their hireling, Bronson, and retrieved two barrels of spices from the secret room they had discovered earlier. A tense negotiation with Grilk followed, but he eventually agreed to let them take the barrels from the dungeon in exchange for a barrel of ale, the chunk of crystal, and 40 gold pieces to be delivered upon the party's eventual return.

With that, we picked up with our next session. The party strapped a barrel of spices over either side of their mule and began the hike down the forested hillside. It would take 11 hours to return to town, and they had three hours of travel left in the day before they'd need to rest. After that, they could use the entirety of the second day to finish the trek.

At the end of the remaining three hours of the first day, the party had made it to the bottom of the hill and was surrounded by lowland forest. They made camp, set up watches, and settled in for the night.

During Pommernar's watch, sometime between 3 and 5 a.m., he heard a rustling in the trees above him. Gazing upward, his elf eyes caught sight of a giant tick, just like the one that had attacked them in the dungeon. It looked just about to drop onto him, but luckily the tick was surprised and Pommernar was not. He leapt to his feet, threw a flask of oil from his pack onto the fire to stir the flames, and shouted for his companions to wake.

As they stirred, Pommernar took a long stick and shoved it into the oil-soaked fire to set it alight. The tick dropped in front of him, but he thrust the flaming stick at it, holding it at bay. Llombaerth grabbed his bow, left his tent, and ducked into the undergrowth to hide. Rory grabbed his halberd and a dagger. Stepping out of his tent, he threw the dagger at the tick and missed.

At the top of the following round, I rolled morale for the tick to see if it would still attack even though Pommernar was threatening it with fire. It succeeded, looking poised to strike. Pommernar drew his dagger and tossed it at the tick but rolled a natural 1, accidentally tossing the dagger behind him as he brought his arm back to throw it. Lombaerth fired twice with his shortbow, but missed both times (the first attack also a natural 1).

Rory was moving in to hack at the tick with his halberd, but the tick struck just a moment before he could get there. Pommernar was the only target near enough. He had 4 hit points. A giant tick's bite does 1d4 damage. It could fell him in a single blow.

It scored a critical hit. At 2d4 damage, Pommernar now had just an 18.75% chance to live. He did not. The tick did 5 damage, leaping directly at Pommernar's throat, its proboscis like a dagger, killing him instantly.

Since the tick was occupied drinking up Pommernar's blood, I ruled that Rory could slay it automatically. This was maybe the best potential outcome as, like the giant tick found in Quasqueton, this one had 4 HD. Unlike that tick, who had just 12 hit points, this one had 23. With an AC of 3, killing it by the conventional means would have been a tall order.

The surviving party members burned the tick, took a moment to mourn their fallen companion, put his body safely in his tent, and returned to sleep.

The next morning, they broke camp and set Pommernar's body alight as well, then headed off back towards town. The rest of the journey was mercifully uneventful.

Upon returning to town, the party was made to pay the gate fee again. They were also instructed to visit the money changer to exchange their currency (that which they found in Quasqueton was not the sort they could spend in town). If they wished to sell their spices or any other treasures taken, they would be subject to additional fees. There was a 5% tariff on their spices and a 10% sales tax  after that (because they are foreigners), costing them about 160 gold pieces on the sale. 

The players asked how they might become citizens, to which I answered that they must live in town for one month and pay off many bribes. Clearly, the more reasonable thing to do would be to locate some smugglers to help them sneak items into town through the back door. 

This is exactly how I figured players would respond when I wrote about AD&D's maddening system of taxes, tithes, tolls, and fees. They're a nuisance, yes, but they also encourage players to take risks and deal with untrustworthy characters to circumvent them, which may introduce complications and, dare I say, adventure.

I awarded experience for the treasure the party had returned with. Since we have players who cannot attend sessions as consistently as others, I decided to weigh the distribution of XP according to number of sessions played by each. Here was the count:

• Llombaerth: 5 sessions
• Pommernar: 5 sessions
• Rory: 4 sessions
• Millisant: 2 sessions
• Barthalo-gnome: 1 session

Pommernar's death actually freed up about a third of the XP total for the remaining members of the party. Since 5 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 12, Llombaerth would get 42% of the XP, Rory would get 33%, Milisant would get 17%, and Barthalo-gnome would get 8%. Thieves get twice as much XP for gold in AD&D 2e, so Llombaerth reached 2nd level.

The party visited the Chapel Ward to stay at the Pilgrim's Respite, a modest hostel with more decent rooms than the Mooring Post. On their way there, they spied a shell keep of black stone, bristling with weapons and defenses, looming over the district - the second stronghold they've spotted in town. 

The hostel was quiet, simple, and clean. Robed priests or monks made their way quietly about, tending to patrons' needs. Several small shrines lined the walls. The largest, at the end of the hall, depicted a cruel-looking woman with the horns of a ram and the wings of a bat. The injured members of the party would need two nights of rest to recover their strength. They had some healers look in on them, tending to their rat and tick bites to fend off disease.

During their stay, they encountered Robernar, a middle aged elf priest who claimed to be the father of Pommernar. He had tracked them down in order to settle some business with his wayward son, only to learn that he had died. Robernar accepted his son's belongings and, as is elf custom, pledged to travel with his son's former companions for a year and a day.

Robernar is Nael's new character, a CG elf cleric. Here's hoping he will outlive his son. We had a bit of a laugh upon learning that Robernar is about 550 years old, as determined by this table:

I love this table and what it implies about the setting. Among humans, magic-users and illusionists are the oldest, reinforcing that practicing magic of this kind takes decades of careful study, whereas a 16 year old can pick up a sword and call their self a fighter. Among dwarves, gnomes, half-elves, halflings, and half-orcs, fighters are also the youngest. Among elves, it's thieves. Yet for whatever reason, it takes dwarves, gnomes, and elves 250 to 500 years minimum to become clerics. Likely, this has something to do with the fact that in 1e, only NPCs of those races may attain those classes (as indicated by parentheses):

That's about where we wrapped for the night. The players expressed an interest in finding information about smugglers as well as possibly purchasing a barge and crew to take them downriver on their next foray into the dungeon. We'll see how that goes next time.

Developing the Sandbox: Prioritizing Points of Interest

This is the first in what will probably be a series detailing my method for developing a sandbox. I will be using my sandbox for Dungeon Module B1: In Search of the Unknown (which I am currently running and writing play reports for) as an example when appropriate. That post provides only a minimalist sketch of each location in the sandbox. Where do you go from there? This series will hope to provide some guidelines for proceeding.

To briefly summarize that post, my B1 sandbox contains the following locations:

• 01.05 Zerelda's Camp: A temporary camp for a party of high level adventurers who are looking to build a stronghold.
• 02.02 Timbershore: A large town ruled by an evil high level wizard and an evil high level cleric.
• 02.05 Giant Eagle Nest: The lair of a flock of giant eagles.
• 03.01 Fayette's Hold: A high level fighter's castle, now occupied by brigands.
• 03.02 Ebongrove: A humble thorp, terrorized and occupied by the brigands of Fayette's Hold.
• 03.04 Okorg's Den: The lair of a band of ogres.
• 03.05 Quasqueton: The dungeon which itself is the subject of Dungeon Module B1.
• 04.03 Owlbear Den: The lair of a pack of owlbears.
• 04.04 Jinglepuff's Burrow: The lair of a tricksy leprechaun.

I already have perfectly adequate sketches of each of these locations. I know who are the adventurers that make up Zerelda's Company, who rules Timbershore, who the brigands' leader is, how many giant eagles and owlbears there are, what the ogres want, what Quasqueton is like, and what Jinglepuff gets up to. I know that the evil wizard is plotting against the adventurers, that he was once aligned with the brigands but now desires to be rid of them, and that he is courting the ogres. I know that the ogres are pissed at the townspeople because they suspect them of stealing their treasure (when really Jinglepuff is responsible).

That's all gameable, and a DM who's comfortable with improvisation can probably make a little bit of detail go a long way. But the benefit of having a sandbox of this size is that you can go really detailed and still probably have most or all of the material fully prepped before or shortly after starting to run it. As of this writing, I have one and a half important locations within Timbershore left to detail. Everything else is pretty much done, and we're only a few sessions in.

But where do you start? Surely, Jinglepuff's Burrow, buried and secreted away deep in the woods, is not as important as the starting town or the dungeon. If I prepped all the monster lairs first, then showed up to the first session with only those ready for play, we wouldn't have much to work with. Surely there's some order of operations to follow. Where to begin...

Fortunately, I have a blog post which points the way. Here, I take a deep dive into settlements, strongholds, ruins, and monster lairs, describing each location type's gameplay feel and purpose. I also place each on a complexity/player agency gradient. Less complex location types like small settlements and dungeons offer the players a great deal of agency even at low levels, while more complex location types offer little agency until the characters accumulate the power and resources to deal with them as they wish. 

At 1st level, the players have more agency in the dungeon than they do in the 20th level wizard's stronghold. They can go to either place and poke around if they wish, but their lack of power and resources will limit the extent to which they can do so. They can go most places in the dungeon with the proper use of tactics and spells, but in the wizard's stronghold they might be limited to an audience with one of his henchmen in the receiving chamber, whereas at high levels they might be able to use their superior abilities to teleport directly into the wizard's inner sanctum to confront him.

To summarize, the final gradient I ended up with looks like this (from least complex to most complex): dungeons/simple settlements (thorps, hamlets, and villages) > simple monster lairs (where monsters are unintelligent/unorganized or very few in number) > moderate complexity settlements (towns)/moderate complexity monster lairs (where monsters are intelligent/faction-like but not huge in number)/strongholds > complex monster lairs (where monsters are intelligent, organized, and vast in numbers) > complex settlements (cities).

Looking at my B1 sandbox, the order of operations might be: Ebongrove/Quasqueton > Giant Eagle Nest/Owlbear Den/Jinglepuff's Burrow > Zerelda's Camp/Timbershore/Fayette's Hold/Okorg's Den. We do not have any complex monster lairs (this would be something like the lair of 300 orcs) or complex settlements (like a city), although we will see that Timbershore is plenty complex on its own.

This makes enough sense. Quasqueton should certainly be the first place I detail (and much of the work is done for me already), and Ebongrove should be simple enough. However, there is a wrinkle - the road into the region leads directly to Timbershore. This will likely be the first place the characters visit (unless, for some reason, they decide to navigate around it) and will probably be their base of operations. That should be a priority as well.

The town will prove to be plenty complex, however, and I will not need all of it fleshed out to navigate the party's first visit. In fact, I'll end up detailing the town in a series of passes, starting first with broad, important details, then drilling down into specific locations within the town, once again according to our complexity/agency gradient. It will be important to know the general layout of the town and where certain services can be procured immediately, but the thieves' dens, ruined mansions, and haunted tombs can wait, as can the strongholds where high level NPCs live.

Instead, my order of operations might look more like this: Timbershore (first pass - districts and broad details) > Quasqueton > Ebongrove > Timbershore (second pass - keyed locations and monster lairs) > Giant Eagle Nest/Owlbear Den/Jinglepuff's Burrow > Zerelda's Camp/Fayette's Hold/Okorg's Den > Timbershore (final pass - high level NPC strongholds).

Your order of operations may vary. If the characters enter the region in a hamlet before reaching the town beyond, you will start with the hamlet. If there is a monster lair blocking the way to the dungeon, you'll want to detail that before the dungeon. You should identify locations that your players will definitely encounter first, then anticipate those locations they are likely to want to investigate early.

Looking at my map, I might be more flexible with my order of operations. Timbershore and Quasqueton will still be first, followed by Ebongrove, but after those, I might want to mix things up and take a look at Zerelda's Camp, Fayette's Hold, and Okorg's Den (due to their proximity to inhabited lands). The Giant Eagle Nest, Owlbear Den, and Jingelpuff's Burrow can come later because they're more remote. Or, because they're relatively simple and easy to detail, I might wish to knock them out early. I might want to jump around for more variety, or simply maintain momentum by focusing on whatever seems interesting to me at any given time.

Just as I created minimalist sketches for every location before detailing any of them, I might do a "second pass" at each of them before diving in further, just to give me a little more to work with. For example, I might roll up exact numbers of monsters and their treasure and jot down their stats at each location before digging in to actually key them. That's the kind of stuff I definitely don't want to do at the table, but I can probably improvise an owlbear den on the fly if the players zig when I thought they would zag.

Don't panic if you don't have everything prepared by session 1. It doesn't have to be perfect by the time play begins. The intention is to anticipate the players' actions as best you can, but to also give yourself just enough to cover your bases when and if the players do something unexpected. If it goes according to plan, you'll have each location fully realized before it makes contact with the players. 

Then, they get to wreck it. That's where the fun is. But you have to build it for them first. Future posts in this series will describe how that's done.

Play Report (AD&D 2e): In Search of the Unknown (Session 4)

We played the fourth session of our Dungeon Module B1: In Search of Unknown AD&D 2e game last night. You can read past play reports here.

The roster for this session was as follows:

• Llombaerth, CG elf thief 1 (Adam)
• Pommernar, CE elf mage 1 (Nael)
• Rory the Small, LN human fighter 1 (David)

Last session, the party reconvened with Grilk's goblins near the entrance to the dungeon and traded a ring for an updated map. Nearby, they found a secret room filled with barrels and casks and battled some giant rats inside. They turned the rats over to the goblins and catalogued the room's contents, including a barrel full of exotic spices which would be worth about 1,000 gold pieces. 

They closed the room behind them and continued on into the dungeon, becoming lost in a labyrinth of twisting corridors. Eventually, they found what seemed to be Rogahn's training room, where Rory the Small was attacked by a giant tick. When last we left them, they had slain the giant tick, saving Rory's life.

We picked up from there. Llombaerth recalled that ticks employ a toxin which numbs the body when a bite is delivered, and wondered if he might be able to harvest the substance. While we're not using nonweapon proficiencies per se, when these sorts of things come up that might otherwise be handled as skills, I do defer to 2e's list of nonweapon proficiencies for guidance. There are five nonweapon proficiency groups: General, Priest, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard. Each class gets skills from certain groups according to Table 38:

Rather than have each player select skills with which their character is proficient, I assume each character is proficient in all skills within their class's groups. All are proficient with all General skills, and Llombaerth is proficient in Rogue skills, Pommernar is proficient in Wizard skills, and Rory is proficient in Warrior skills. I don't have all of the skills and what they do memorized, so this is largely vibes based.

For example, here is the list of Warrior proficiencies:

In this case, I saw that warriors get Animal Lore, so I thought "Sure, Rory might know something about how to extract this substance from a giant tick." (This is not really what the Animal Lore proficiency does, but again, this is mostly vibes based.) I had Rory make an Intelligence check with no modifier, and he succeeded, so was able to guide Llombaerth through the process of harvesting the toxin. There's no real skill for this that I know of, so I had Llombaerth make a Dexterity check with a +4 bonus (basically advantage). Unfortunately, Llombaerth failed, making a mess of tick's innards and rendering the toxin unsalvageable.

The party found nothing else of interest in the training room, so they returned to the labyrinth. They exited the room and went right, then left, left again, right, descended a flight of steps, and turned left again. They found a long hall with three doors on the right. After some investigation, they found each door contained a nearly identical room with identical furniture arranged slightly differently - a bed, a table, and a chair.

One room had a door at the far end which, while not stuck, would not open, as if locked. Llombaerth tried to open it, but he is not the party's lockpicker, and so only had a 5% chance of success, and failed. The party did not think it worthwhile to keep trying. They tossed the three rooms, but found nothing significant, and continued on.

At the end of the long hall of doors they found a long, winding, serpentine passage to the left. Following that, they emerged at the end of a long hall that stretched on into the darkness to their left. There was a side passage just to their right, another 20 feet ahead on the right, and another 60 feet ahead on the left. They took the closest passage and followed it to a door with an empty alcove across from it.

After searching the alcove and finding nothing, they opened the door. In the far corner of the room was an unfinished stone wall with a crystal formation protruding from the rock. When the light of Pommernar's lantern shone upon the crystal, it cast dizzying patterns on the walls. Pommernar dimmed the lantern so they could see better and spotted a gleaming white stone in the middle of the floor.

Pommernan stepped inside the room to pick up the stone while Llombaerth held the door. Pommernar identified the stone as a pearl and pocketed it. He examined the crystal formation, but didn't notice anything unusual about it. He chipped off a piece and took that as well.

While Llombaerth waited, he looked around and noticed something peculiar. Where behind him there was once an empty alcove, now there was a long corridor, with a side passage on the left. Nobody had noticed anything unusual happen.

The party explored the side passage and found a corridor with a pair of carved oaken double doors straight ahead and a side passage immediately to the left which curved to the right. They opened the doors and found a library illuminated with dim red light from some sort of lighting fixture set into the far wall. The floor was polished red granite with white granite blocks forming "R&Z" in the center.

Thinking this was an ideal place for a trap, they searched thoroughly, but found none. The library was pretty well stocked, just not with magic tomes or any particularly valuables books. I told the players that they could find books on a number of topics here and could return and use it as a resource if they wanted. I wished I had stocked it with a few specific books, which I usually do. I'll prepare that for the future.

While perusing the bookshelves, Pommernar found a bronze statue of a nude woman (Rogahn and Zelligar love their statues of nude women) inlaid with gold and silver. He pocketed it. On closer inspection, the light fixtures in the far wall appeared to be bioactive terrariums for fire beetles, which were the source of the red light.

Finding nothing else of interest, the party returned to the corridor and took the curving side passage, which looped all the way around the library and turned right. Upon emerging into a wide corridor at the end, they found Narka, the rat-obsessed goblin scout. Somehow, the party had wound up back at the goblins' headquarters. 

The players had long since lost track of where they were (the mysteriously appearing hallway outside the crystal room hadn't helped), and their heads were spinning. This seemed like a good time to return to town.

The party decided to reopen the secret room with all the barrels and casks, intending to bring the exotic spices with them. Narka was all up in their business, wanting to know how the door was opened and if there were more rats inside. The party told her that the door could only be opened with magic, and that the room contained treasure they wished to bring back to town. At this, Narka summoned Grilk.

The party had a testy negotiation with Grilk, who, after being gifted a barrel of ale and the chunk of crystal Pommernar had collected, agreed to let the party take the treasure out in exchange for a 50% cut, which the party negotiated down to 20%. Grilk wanted the party to leave the door open for the goblins to make use of what they wanted from inside. The party reasoned that just as Grilk carefully guarded information about the dungeon, they would carefully guard this.

Grilk respected this, pointing out that all good friendships are built on jealously guarded information and resources and the equivalent exchange of goods and services. He spit a goblin loogie into his hand and shook on it with Llombaerth, who did the same (Llombaerth had to remove his glove because, as Grilk pointed out, only liars shake with gloves on).

We reasoned that the party could probably lash a barrel to either side of their mule, so they took the barrel of exotic spices and a second barrel of as-yet-unidentified spices. They retrieved their hireling, Bronson, from the goblin kitchen. He was elbow deep in giant rat innards and was hoping the party would be staying for dinner, but they had other plans. They convinced Bronson to come with them back to town by promising him that they would procure supplies to restock the kitchen upon their return.

That was where we wrapped for the night. This was a bit of a slow session, with the party navigating confusing corridors and ransacking mostly empty rooms. They just so happened to explore areas of the dungeon with no monsters or traps and just a handful of treasure. When you play multiple sessions of a game you sometimes get these quiet sessions without much action or roleplaying, and that's totally fine.

Next session, the party will make the trek back to town and risk getting lost in the wilderness or running into deadly outdoor encounters. If they make it back, they can offload their treasure, get some XP, heal, and reprovision. We'll see what they get up to next.