Eyes of Idola, Part 2

This is Part 2.  Here is Part 1.

Concept 1: Entering the Dungeon

Descending the stairs into B1, the party reach rooms that are dark, crowded, flooded, and don't have any apparent ways out.  Then after solving some simple training puzzle (for more complicated puzzles later), they open a door and enter B1.

It's a crumbling stone bridge across a huge gap.  The real floor is 20' below you.  No visible walls, the sound of water lapping below, stale seaweed stink.

Approaching the bridge and the undead archer across the bridge will audibly (and slowly) draw his bowstring, giving the party time to react.

Charging across the crumbling bridge will break it and send the whole crumbling thing into the dark water below.

There's also a safe way down like stairs, but players will probably look at the bridge before they take the stairs down a second time.

If they want to kill the skeleton archer on the far side, they'll have to find to approach from the other side, or do some tricky climbing.

Sketch 1

Sketch 2

I'm not sure what shape the big room takes, but it can be a hub room for the Area 1.  (I've decided that this is the public-facing side of the temple grounds.

Area 1 Hub Room

Other ways to enter the dungeon are the elevator and the sealed door, back in the Mouth of Mormo dungeon.  The elevator goes to the crypts.  The sealed door goes to the cloister/monastery portion on the far side of the juggernaut.

Concept 2: The Juggernaut

Crushed bones on the floor, scrape marks on the wall, and ceilings higher than your torchlight illuminates.  The wall is covered with a repetitive motif: warped men and women, all uniquely deformed, carry offerings towards Area 6 (Inner Sanctum).

Of in the darkness, a pair of eyes flares to life 12' above the ground.  Something huge begins grinding its way towards you.  Slow and first, but rapidly gaining speed.  Sparks flash where metal wheels scrape against the walls, illuminating a huge, rigid shape.

Up close, the thing is a stone-and-iron juggernaut, topped with an elephant skull, bound to the machine by silver wires.  A pair of red flames dance in its skull, focused on you with homicidal intensity.

Originally, the area 2 hub was going to be a flooded crossroads that the players would cross on a rowboat or something, and the monster (that is trapped in this zone) was going to be a blob or water weird, but after mulling it over, the juggernaut sounds more fun, and more accessible.

I know that this was supposed to be a water dungeon, but I'm rethinking the flooded rooms bit.  It's something new (yay) and it offers a new challenge (yay) but flooded rooms actually seem to reduce player options (boo) compared to dry rooms.  (This dungeon was also supposed to have the gimmick of water levels that changed with the tide, but I might take that out, too.)

Mechanically, the juggernaut behaves kinda like those big crushy-stabby spike chariots in Elden Ring dungeons.  Although the juggernaut is rudely sentient, not mindless.  (My toxic trait is that I don't think that anything in a dungeon should be truly mindless.)

Cross-shaped areas won't work anymore, we need a new shape for Area 2.  I have a few ideas but I'm thinking about making it triangular, with an opening on each corner and in the middle of each side, for a total of 6.

W goes to Area 6 (Inner Sanctum).

E goes to Area 4 (Crypts)

The two N exits go to the remainder of Area 2 (Cloister/Monastery)

The two S exits go to Area 1 (flooded statue hub)

The reason that some of them are doubled up is because the juggernaut likes to park itself in corners, so it can watch two directions at once.

Area 2 - Built around a square cloister.  Rotating statue puzzle is in the center (rotate the statue to unlock whatever blue door it is currently pointing at).  Scriptoriums, weird cultic induction rooms, and evidence that the abbot was up to some weird shit.

Area 6 - Inner Cloister.  Put all the high weirdness stuff here.  This is the conceptual climax.  Contains Eolalia the Forgotten (the lady of sand).

Area 3 - The Reef Beneath.  I'm moving away from cursed reef and more towards weird goddess of prophecy and mutation.  This area is going to be changed to a little town in the sea cave.  A few buildings on a rocky shore, with a bridge to area 5.

The Sea Cave contains a family of dolphins--some of the most evil creatures known to man.  (Sharks are beloved because they are simple beasts, but dolphins are all allied to the merfolk, and they delight in the murder of men.  They are intelligent enough to know their own magic.  They taught themselves to laugh like humans do in order to taunt us.  The only thing they prefer above murder is rape.)

The dolphins will family tackle people off the bridge, knock them in the water, and then a pair of dolphins will grab your arms and drag you down to the bottom of the save.  They can also squirt water to put out your torch.  (They can echolocate just fine in the dark.)

Area 5 - Ralupon the Red is here.  He believes that you are here because he summoned you.

Factions and NPCs

Ralupon the Red (Manamanian enchanter).  

Metal rings sewn into his hair.  A thin black veil covers his eyes while a huge pair of eyes looks out from a painted wooden “hat” that stands tall upon his forehead.  He is either a wizard, or very superstitious.  He carries a staff.  A small eyebat hangs upside down from one of his ears.  (Eyebats intercept the first spell cast at their wizard.  If they are lucky, they can reflect it.)

Currently a nest of giant starfish + an evil wizard.  They are human hypnotists, enchanters, and illusionists.  They are closely aligned with the Empire of Dathroya, the largest nation of the merfolk.  Most claim that they are their secret vassals.  (This is true.)

He believes that he summoned the party here by burning weird stuff in a fire for a couple of days, at the advice of his master.  (“That curiosity in your heart?  The greed in your belly?  I put that there.”)

If befriended, he can pay you, or teach you enchantment.  You’ll need to travel to Manamar to study under a master and get your spellbook, though.  (Seek out Shaymish.)  Shaymish isn’t a person, it’s a river.  The spirit of that river can teach you enchanting.

He is the son of Razubek the Bey, the guy who originally assaulted this place and killed the cult.  

Ralupon is back to finish what his father started.  He wants to claim the Chalice of Immortality from the Inner Cloister.  He will tell you that strong enchantments prevent him from entering the dungeon.  (False, but contains elements of truth.)  Offers to geas you to help with your resolve.  Will attempt a suggestion if he thinks he can get away with it.  (This isn't evil.  It's not even rude.  It's practical.  Still intends to pay you when you're done.)

When the party meets him, he'll be sitting on a crown of thorns (Giant starfish, stats as ogre) but there is no puppeteer tentacle up his butt.  The giant starfish actually serves him.  If combat breaks out, two more giant starfish burst from where they were burrowed, nearby.  The stars serve him--or maybe he serves the mind stars.

Friendly guy, but the enchanters of Manamar grow up in an environment where love potions are considered completely normal facts of life.  Everyone enchants everyone all the time, for all sorts of reasons.  Because of this, most of his normal behavior (enchanting people) would be considered evil by most civilized people.

He smiles and wishes you well, and he genuinely means it, but he'll never shake your hand.  (Too risky.)  Nor will he ever let you within 10' of him.

Makes a good stew though.

Eolalia the Forgotten

Lives in the Inner Sanctum, wants you to kill Ralupon, destroy the merfolk ghouls that still linger her, and restore the wards.  Will reward you with the chalice of immortality (very reluctantly) and teach you how to be a cleric of Idola.  Long term, she also wants you to find the surviving members of the Idolan cult and convince them to make her human again.

Lives in the inner sanctum, which is completely covered with words.  Eolalia is immortal but her mind is not, and she forgets things constantly.  Because of this, she needs to write her entire history--literally everything she knows--along the walls and floors of the inner sanctum.

At first she wrote on the walls with blood (back when she still had blood) and then scratches.  But now her body is too crumbly to scratch the walls any more, and so she now writes on the floor with sand.  Every square inch of the floor in here is covered in minute sand writing.  A stray footstep would erase parts of her childhood that she would never recover.

Keeper of the Chalice of Immortality.  She is made of sand and can have a very normal conversation with you if you allow her enough time to read things off the walls and floor.

She is made of sand.  As long as she is touching sand, she will instantly regenerate.  (All of the rooms in the inner sanctum are covered in sand.)

The Mannikin

A paperclip maximizer demon thing.

Completely and utterly evil, but also completely focused on maximizing the number of clean and beautiful sets of clothing available for the Abbot to wear.  Cannot leave the a certain area (the cloister?)

Mother Narshay

One of the fully sentient undead, and one of the two leaders of the crypt.  

Wants you to kill all of the remaining merfolk ghouls (she'll know when you're done) and leave the crypts the fuck alone.  

Seriously, why do people keep coming into the crypts?  Its for the dead, not the living.

Salakhan Latsu

Huge, mad, evil ghast.  Distended, elongated, and twisted into a new shape that is better for grasping and swallowing than his living body ever was.  

Leader of the mer-ghouls.  Currently trapped between two portcullises in the BAD HALLWAY.  (This will be the first- or second-most difficult combat in the dungeon.  It'll be telegraphed well--the players can open this useful shortcut at their own discretion.)

(Digression: why the fuck are lacedons just regular dudes?  They should be undead merfolk ffs.)

Cloakers

I forgot they were here.  Led by Mwoheth.

Goblin Merchants

Hatchi Matchi and his "sons".  The goblin king commanded them to open up shop here for 7 years.  He had a good business tip.  (False.  Hatchi Matchi was sent here because he's annoying as fuck and everyone hated him.)

Grandmaster Grunky

Living frog statue that sells maps.

Some Secret Doors

Obvious Door, Hidden Switch

1. 

A round stone in the wall with a pair of holes in it, about 8 inches deep.  About the right size and height for two dudes to stick their peepees in.

One room over is a metal thing shaped like TT.  

This is a handle meant to be inserted into the two holes and rotated.  (You can achieve the same thing with three spears, if needed.)

2. 

Evolved version of the previous switch.  Now the pair of holes is in the bottom of a pool of water.  You'll have to try a little harder to get leverage.

3. 

Next to the sealed door is a doorknob inside a blood-soaked hand mutilation machine.  Reach inside, turn the blood-slick knob, and your hand is painfully removed.

Door is opened by pulling the chandelier.

4.

All of the bricks on the wall are covered with random words.  Print this out and give it to your players.

Except some of them aren’t nonsense words, and can be pressed to spell out “PRAISE IDOLA MOTHER OF WISDOM”, a phrase that is seen elsewhere in the dungeon.  Wrong piles = poison gas or something.

All of the correct tiles are directly above one another.  Once all of them are depressed, you hear a mechanism click inside the wall, something shifts at the top of the wall.  Not clearly visible, but the depressed tiles form a perfect ladder up to the trap door in the ceiling.

5. 

An inscription reads “The key to this door cannot be seen, though all can feel it.  It cannot be held, although all have it except for the dead. From your mouth produce the answer.”

The answer is “breath” or “wind”.  Blow into the hole (a little narrower than your finger) to open the door.

(Eh, this is a fiddly puzzle–put something non-essential behind it.)

6.

This is one of the rooms hidden behind the rotating statue puzzle.  To open the secret door, you need to actually close the entrance door to this room by splitting the party, having half of the party rotate the statue out of alignment.  This reveals the switch on the backside of the door that you opened to enter this room.

Once the secret door is opened, it stays opened, and the party can rejoin and go through the secret passage.

The secret passage holds some monsters to fight, of course.

7.

Maybe combine this with #2?  

Flooded room with switch underwater.  When flipped, all of the water flushes everyone into the next room and into a pit trap.

8.

A bunch of tiles covered with random objects.

A door has a symbol of an egg.  Press all symbols that hatch from an egg.  (Rooster, Snake, Fish, Frog).  

Another door depicts a knight.  Press all the symbols that are weapons (Shield, sword, bow).  The incorrect answers: Crown, Whale, Shepherd’s Crook, Jug of Water, Cottage.

(Rating 2/5 stars.  Kinda fiddly.  Too escape roomy, not OSR puzzly enough.)

Secret Door, Secret Switch

Secret/secret doors should only be used in non-essential cases.  They make good shortcuts to areas that can be reached in other ways.  This lets skilled players access other areas earlier (like the Inner Sanctum), allows them to go around monsters they don't want to fight, and lets them sneak up behind monsters that they do want to fight.

1. 

One of the giant statues is holding a treasure chest.  Find a giant key, unlock the chest, and you can crawl through it into a new area (or maybe it just contains treasure).

(Might make for a fun, simple AHA! moment when the party finds a giant stone key.)

2.

Fountain pipe comes out of the wall, and water spurts from a fish head.  Examining it reveals that the pipe connected to the fish head is pretty big.  Knock the fish head off and start crawling.

(For exploration completionists.)

3. 

Behind a mirror.  No clues for this one--you just gotta smash it.

(For exploration completionists, and vandals.)

4. 

The bottom of a pit trap.  The floor and 3 walls are covered in spikes.  The fourth wall is hollow.  One of the wall spikes can be rotated to open the door.

(Maybe too easy?  It's tough to tell.  Players walk past this kind of stuff all the time.)

Dwarven Gender, Continued

Remember that post I did about dwarven gender?  

If you haven't read it--you're in luck.  You can be just as confused as Podrick, below.

It occurs to me that dwarves would also struggle to understand human genders, and would ask us as many stupid questions as we would ask them.

So this is some fiction about that.

Some Dwarves Learn About Human Gender

Featuring:

    - Podrick, human, age 41, male, father of 2, knight of the realm

    - Snorri, dwarf, age 191, blacksmith, 3288 total lbs forged, total debt 2400 silver

    - Osto, dwarf, age 284, blacksmith, 5910 total lbs forged, total debt 10,500 silver

Snorri

Look, I don't want to be rude, but Osto says its not rude to ask a human this, but, eh, what are ye?

Podrick

Am I a what?

Snorri

Are ye, hmmmmm, are ye . . . a blacksmith?  Or a miner?

Podrick

. . . what?

Snorri

And don't say that humans don't have blacksmiths and miners.  I know they do.  I just can't tell what ye are.  No offense!  Of course.

Podrick

Er, I'm a knight of his majesty the king.  I've never mined nor smithed.  

Snorri

Yeah, sure, sure.  But what are ye really?  You got a bronze belt buckle but your boots lace all the way up.  Little bit of cross-dressing, eh?  I'm not against it!  No judgement here.  I know a few dwarves that enjoy the same.

But how were ye raised?  Did yer parents dress you in bronze buckles or did they lace your shoes all the way up?  

When ye were little, I mean, on your name day.  Not what ye decided for yerself later.

Podrick

Have you gone mad?  Explain yourself.

Snorri

Calm your heels, man!  I apologize.  Osto said that humans weren't shy discussing stuff like this so I thought I could ask ye without being a prat.  'Pologize if I made ye feel a bit tetchy.

Podrick

You asked me if I've ever been a blacksmith?  And then if I wore bronze?  Is this something dwarves do?

Snorri

Yes, but not usually at the same time.  *laughs*

Look, let's try this a different way.  When does your heart sing?  When yer getting something?  Or when yer making something?

I'm sure you've done both.  (Hell, even I've done both, but don't tell Osto.)

Y'know.  What was your body born to do?

Podrick

I feel most at home when I pray in the House of the Authority, before the nine icons of the Prophetessa (may she live again).

Snorri

*tugging his beard* Okay. . . hmm.  There are two genders, right?

Podrick

Right.

Snorri

And which one are ye?

Podrick

I am male.  I have--

Snorri

That's not what I asked!  Who cares about yer pisser?

Osto

*entering the room* Humans are always talking about their pissers.

Lad, why are ye asking the man about his pisser?  I told ye to mend the tent.

Snorri

I asked him if he was a blacksmith or a miner.

Osto

Humans don't have--

Snorri

Yes, they bloody do!  Who makes their armor, then?  Who pulls their ores out of the earth?

Osto

All of them do both.  Each one is 50/50, right down the middle.  The Authority saw fit to make them all the same.  Don't know why, but I'm sure it was done in wisdom.

Snorri

That makes sense.  Then why's he talking about his pisser?

Osto

*straightening his monocle*  Well, humans divide everything into field and seed.  It's because they're obsessed with breeding.  Breeding children, breeding livestock.  It's the accumulation of things, see?  Can't have money without cows to sell.  Can't have land without children to work it.  That's why they always pair off, a seed with a field, every time.

Plus, they don't have much time to breed, so they have to start early.  Makes sense when you think about it that way.

Podrick

Do dwarves always talk so coarsely?  I have children of my own, but their purpose is not to work my fields.  And my wife's purpose is not to bear children.

Snorri

I'm sure your "wife" is a nice lad, but if he were here I'd ask him the same questions.

Podrick

My wife is a woman!  She is referred to as "she" not "he".

Snorri

Why are ye bringing yer wife's pisser into the conversation?  No one's talking about his pisser.

Osto

Snorri, at least try to use the human's pronouns.

Snorri

Okay, I'll bloody well try, but I don't know if I can remember them.

Osto

Good lad.  You'll sound less ignorant when we get to human lands.

Snorri

I'll try!  But it's a bloody infuriating thing to ask of me.  Does this mean I don't know how to refer to someone until I know what kind of a pisser they have?

Podrick

*sighs* I'm going to go tend to my horse.  Good day, dwarves.

Snorri

Angels below, I hope I didn't offend the boy.  There's really nothing wrong with being half and half.  I'm not prejudiced!  I'm not.

Do you think the human thinks I'm prejudiced now?

Osto

Snorri, yer a good lad, but you ask too many questions.  Go fix the tent, and then I'll tell you about the two kinds of human bathrooms.

Snorri

What?  Two?  Do they expect me to go into a different bathroom based on what kind of pisser I've got?  That's none of their bloody business!

Osto

Nah, all dwarves use the bathroom for seed.  They all get huffy if you ever go into the one for fields.  Don't know why, but I guess only human pissers matter.   

Snorri

It's still another hundred miles to the human kingdom, huh?  This is a long fucking trip.

Damn, I wish we had some miners with us.

*not a Patreon post, just for fun.

A Dungeon of Your Own

Have you written your own dungeon?

Everyone should write a dungeon at least once.  You'll be able to write stuff that you like, and stuff that your players like.  You can make it as small or as large as you'd like, based on the length of your sessions.  If your group likes puzzles, then you can dump three of them in there.  And by the time you're done, you'll basically have memorize the damn thing.

And you'll learn all the things that work and don't work.  When you run a pre-made dungeon, you come away with a sense that some rooms were more fun than others, but it might not be clear why.  When you run your own dungeon, your head will be full of the all of the alternatives, and it'll be easier to come up with improvements the next time you iterate on it.

Reasons Not to Write Your Own Dungeon:

1. Arnold, I don't have enough time.

        Fair point.  Have a nice day.  

2. Arnold, I can't write a dungeon as good as published modules.

        Absolute hogwash; get the fuck out of here.

There's some good published modules, but there are many, many more mediocre ones.  One of the oddities of this hobby is that you can have a lot of fun with bad dungeons, as long as you're hanging out with your friends and cracking jokes.  As a result, there's not a lot of evolutionary pressure for dungeons to improve.  

Trust me on this one.  The guys writing published dungeons are not lightyears beyond you.  It's not like comparing yourself to a brain surgeon.  It's more like comparing yourself to someone who is good at making sandwiches.

And even the guys who do write dungeons well and playtest them haven't playtested them with your group.  Everyone is different, so make the sandwich that your group likes.

The Missing Chapter

Writing your own dungeon is a pretty big cornerstone of our hobby, especially in the OSR space.  There's so much other stuff written that it's honestly surprising how little ink has been spent describing how dungeons are made.

I'm not sure if these is because dungeoncraft is a field that is still in its infancy, or because there is no wrong way to do it.  (I'm leaning towards the first one, though.  I certainly notice bad level design in video games, but that's because I've played hundreds of video games and its easy to compare them.  In contrast, I've probably only run a few dozen TTRPG dungeons over my whole life, and there are so many other things distracting me at the table that I don't think I've spent as much time thinking about the topic.)

A few DM's guides have chapters on creating your own dungeon.  A lot of them don't.

A bunch of them have sections on how to stock your own random dungeon, with random rooms and random monsters with random treasure, which I think is absolutely insane.  Imagine if you went to video game school to learn to design good levels for an FPS game, and your teacher was told you to roll dice to determine how big each room was, which weapons there were, and how many enemies there were.  (I am not a fan of procedurally generated dungeons.  You can do better than random.)

I am damn certain that the level designers in Halo didn't roll dice.  They had a system.

The System

I suspect that there are lots of ways to do this, but everyone starts with a concept, like "tomb" or "buried spaceship".  Certainly better is to have a couple of concepts, like "poisonous tomb" or "musical prison".  

It's frequently good to frame things in terms of what they were, and what they are now.  (Dungeons are almost universally old places.  It's how we justify their ruin, isolation, complexity, and contents.)  Examples would be "tomb that is now a hideout for bandits" or "magical library taken over by goblins".

It's also good to have some friction between your themes.  Don't just pick things that align neatly.  "tomb taken over by a necromancer" is a little thin--it's doesn't inspire anything, although it's a perfectly useable concept by itself.  "tomb taken over by necro-artists" is a bit more interesting, since I can already think of a couple rooms.  How about "zoo taken over my a necromancer"?  Also fun.

"temple to a benevolent god of rot"?   Or maybe "underwater prison for a god of fire"?  A little bit of contradiction can generate a lot of creativity later on.

Prior Works

Once you have your concept, you can move onto the dungeon itself.  I found a few good blog posts on this subject.

Chris wrote a really good one, which includes advice on how to include teaching encounters.

Dyson recapitulates the five room dungeon, which is a perfectly serviceable way to make a small dungeon quickly while ensuring that you have some good variety in it.

Gus has an excellent one where he talks about dungeon naturalism, and gives good advice for writing room descriptions.

Lastly, I have the dungeon checklist, which is just a list of things that I think all dungeons should include (except for maybe the smallest, most specialized dungeons).

Other Considerations

It's also useful to think about a few other questions when you are beginning.

1. How big do you want this dungeon to be?

Or to put another way, how many sessions do you expect your group to spend in this place?  Some groups do 2 rooms an hour, others can do 6 rooms an hour.  (You should already have an idea of how fast your group moves in your game.)

I also know that when I write dungeons, they usually bloat by about +20% or +50% from my original sketch as I think of new things to add, usually after running it once or twice.

2. Is this a dungeon with a singular goal (usually a boss the party needs to beat) or is it something that can just be explored partially and then happily abandoned?

3. What do you want the split to look like between combat, puzzles, exploration, and role-playing?

4. Do you want it to be naturalistic (i.e. it's a dungeon in a monastery and it has a floorplan that looks like an IRL monastery) or gamified?

Next Steps

Some people start with maps, other people start with key rooms.  A few people start with factions and random encounter tables.

Starting with maps is very common, and is probably what I've seen the most.  

I do think that dungeon creation is iterative for most people.  The first map you draw probably won't be the final one.  You'll constantly correct and improve, especially after playing through it the first time.  The same can be said for your encounters, NPCs, and magic items.

Beneath the Mouth of Mormo

I'm currently writing the sequel to the Mouth of Mormo dungeon that I posted a couple of days ago.

I want something much bigger, complicated, and challenging.  If Mouth of Mormo is a beginner's dungeon, I want something for experienced groups.

Anyway, I'm going to try to develop it on the blog.  Maybe it'll be useful for some people.  I do think that what I'm doing here is definitely overengineering--you can make a successful dungeon with a lot less work.  I just want to try doing something ambitious.

Concepts

1. Temple to the second goddess in the pantheon.  Mormo's sister.  Mormo is the semi-benevolent goddess of mutation (the sea-change).  Sister is something analogous (except perhaps mind instead of body) or prophecy.

2. Continues the theme of the Mouth of Mormo.  A fallen holy place destroyed long ago by starfish and merpeople.

Map

1 - Flooded rooms, half-sunken statues, and locked doors.  Seems abandoned at first.  Connects to Room 20 in the Mouth of Mormo.  Puzzle required to open doors (put matching hat on statue).

2 - Flooded halls.  You need a boat to navigate.  Some large monster threatens this hub area, but is too large/enchanted to leave.  Eel swarms in water.  You'll need to find a boat to navigate, or find a rowboat in nearby area.

3 - The Reef Beneath.  Navigate around a huge reef.  Morays, crabs, fish-things.  Sleeping monster (don't wake it up).  Giant archerfish spit water to knock you off bridge.

4 - Crypt.  Skeletons seated in chairs, beginning their slow transmutation into a living reef.  Body horror.  History of goddess.  This is where the elevator comes down.

5 - Sea Cave with island in it.  Hard to Reach.  Boss area?  Temple of minor god.  Wizard is here, an ally of the guys who destroyed the dungeon, wants to hire you to kill/loot the place.

6 - Inner sanctum of the Goddess.  Starts out locked.  Boss area?  The woman of sand sits here writing.  She’s writing the whole history of the world on sand.  When she finishes a section, she rakes it flat and starts again.  Wants you to kill the wizard.  Sand = mirror = prophecy = illusion.

Each room has 5-20 rooms, except for Area 2 which is a smaller hub area.

Gimmick

Tides.  Room water level rises and falls.  Combat is worse when the water is higher

History

Was a temple and a monastery.  We need an inner sanctum, monastery bits, some public areas of the monastery, and a crypt.

Factions

Lady of Sand - Cursed remnant of old temple, still loyal.

Wizard in Sea Cave - Wants to finish destruction/looting.

Sentient Undead - Wants you to leave them the fuck alone.

Goblins - Wildcard.

Random Encounters

Drowners.  Ghouls.  1 Elder Ghoul.  1 Necrophidius (forces focus).  More Cloakers.  Giant Fish.  Dungeon Moray.  Dungeon Clam (contains pearl).  Two Giant Starfish.  Flying Worms.

Treasure

I'll do treasure last.  (I'm not lazy!  I just think you can do treasure last, since nothing depends on it.)

Revised Map

Okay, after a little revision I have something like this:

HALLS is area #2.  It's the hub area that has a guardian that cannot leave the area.  Somewhere in this dungeon, there's probably some weapon or tactic that lets you kill it more easily.  I'm thinking a giant water weird that is powered by a skull.  Turns into a couple of different animalistic forms.  If you manage to pull the skull out (trick it into running through a net) you can smash the skull with a warhammer for an easy KO.

BAD HALL is between a pair of closed portcullises.  You can easily open it to get a useful new path, but the bad hall is crammed with a shitload of horrible undead, so maybe you don't want to do this.

Room 2A has a rotating statue puzzle.  Whatever door the statue points at will unlock.  The rotating statue can rotate to unlock 2B and 2C.  However, there's also similar locked doors that lead to 2F and 1D and clever players will realize that the statue's range is unlimited, and that's how you unlock those doors.   Can also use it unlock a treasure vault door on the sea cave island.

Timekeeping

In my last post, I dropped a DM Cheat Sheet in Appendix D but I never actually explained how to use it.

You are of course free to use it however you wish, but here's how it looks when I've had a chance to fill it out.  The format is [room]-[Underclock].  

S    Searching a room for 10 minutes.

L    Eating lunch for 30 minutes.

X    Random encounter triggered.

"1-0" means that they were in room 1 and the Underclock was equal to 0.

"2-0" means that they were in room 2 and the Underclock was still equal to 0.

They didn't light a torch until they returned to room 2 at 0:30.  Since torches last for 1 hour, you can see them relighting a new torch at 1:30 and and 2:30.  (Most buffs also default to 1 hour.)

At 1:40, the Underclock finally triggered a random encounter.

From 1:50 to 2:20, they ate lunch.

The nice thing about tracking time like this is that it makes it easy to draw a wander map that shows where the party wandered through the dungeon, which is nice for DM notes and write-ups.

I even added an "X" and an "L" to the map for the random encounter and the lunch.  You could probably add timestamps if you wanted a more comprehensive wander map.  (I sometimes make these after sessions.  I just think they're neat little artifacts.)

The Mouth of Mormo

 I wrote a dungeon.  It's about 25 rooms.

It still needs work, but I'm getting bored of it and I need to post it now or else it'll join the scrapheap of all of my unfinished projects.

 

BEHOLD!

Here's the regular version: HERE.

And here's a jumbo version HERE.

The jumbo version has a bunch of essays and rants, mostly directed to new OSR DMs but also just anything I might have thought was useful at 2 am when I was writing them.

GLOG Class: Lackey

 Hopping on the bandwagon: this is a single-level class that might be compatible with Cloak-and-Sword.  (See here.)

From what I can tell, it is a single-level class that uses the concept of espirit, which I think is when you meet a new NPC and they feel the opposite of neutrality.

GLOG Class: Lackey

You are a henchman.  You found yourself in this status because you bear a strong and unrequited loyalty to someone who is possibly quite undeserving of it.  

You are not ethical, and you have no higher loyalties than your master.  

You are also not especially motivated, nor talented

Squad

There are three of you.  You can do simple physical labor as fast as two normal people.  (The third person slacks off, complains, or tries to do things in a "better way".

Due to your incompetence, laziness, and surliness, you can't actually do a skilled task any faster than one average adventurer.

Whenever you take damage, one of you "dies".  The dead person revives after combat (they're very durable).  If all 3 of you die, you're dead for good.  Whenever a lackey dies, the remaining lackeys are stunned for the next round (knocked to the floor by the same attack, or something similar).

If the player attempts to gamify this ability (e.g. "I can run across lava because I can only lose 1/3 of my HP per turn" the whole group dies painfully.)  

Discussion: This does make the Lackey Squad very tanky for a level 1 character against very strong opponents.  Which is really as intended, since they are intended to be the meat shields.  However, the stun effect can be frustrating, since they'll often spend 1-2 rounds stunned in every combat.

Red Shirt

Monsters will preferentially attack you.  (This is a narrative effect, not mind-control or anything.)  If you are killed, the monster will (1) kill you in a way that reveals their motivations and/or special powers and especially if they waste the ability (e.g. using their fire breath to kill the lackey instead of targeting the rest of the group), (2) stop to gloat/intimate/feed.  This effectively stuns them for a round.

If all 3 of you are killed in combat, the enemy is "stunned" for 1 round as they stop to dismember/eat/monologue.  

You still need to explain why the monster was so eager to kill you.  Maybe you are very annoying, or maybe you stepped on its tail, or maybe you were very threatening, or maybe you jumped in front of an attack that was meant to be for your master.

You can turn this ability on and off whenever you wish.

Group Identity

Although you are a group of people, you must develop an identity for them.  They have a shared identity and you must still roleplay it like you would any other character.  Although they are a group, they have a reason for adventuring like any other.  

You may serve the group (probably because they hired you), or you may serve one particular PC as their henchman.  If you choose the latter, you are technically supposed to obey their every command, but in practice you can act freely due to your incompetence/forgetfulness/surliness/

Some ideas for why you serve your particular master:

1. They raised you.
2. They alone showed you kindness.  (You have severe emotional damage.)
3. They promised to make you strong.
4. They saved your life.  (Blood Debt)
5. Literal enchantment.  (Something Magical)
6. You believe them to be the world's savior.  (Religious Reasons)

Faceless Goons

You all wear masks, or at least have something that make you semi-anonymous.

None of you have names.  However, you must have a clearly defined identity (e.g. "ninja clan", "alchemical homunculi", "crime family", "goblins".  You get a specific ability based on this background.  Here are three suggestions--feel free to come up with more.

1. Ninja - Get a free attack at the start of any combat, but one of one of your ninjas instantly dies.  Ninjas that die in this way do not stun the group.
2. Homunculi - Can squeeze under doors, etc.  Any space up to 1" wide.
3. Crime Family - Whenever you arrive at a new town, you always know someone who owes you a favor.  Roll a d6 when you arrive.  1 = surly drunkard, 6 = the king.
4. Goblins - Ignore the first time each day when a goblin dies to a trap.

Underclass

You have espirit for all other lackeys, henchmen, goons, lieutenants and they for you.  ("Lackeys" are defined as all servants held in low esteem, and used for illicit and unskilled tasks.)

When possible, the DM should engineer scenes where you meet other lackeys in 1-on-1 encounters, where the espirit roll can be made.  

Most of the time when lackeys hang out with other lackeys, the way to traditionally break the ice is to complain about your bosses.  

Named Character

You can level up normally, by taking templates in other classes.

Alternatively, one of you could suddenly become a named individual by gaining some distinguishing mark, such as (1) your mask is knocked off, (2) you get a critical scar, (3) you do something central to the plot instead just being a background character.  When this happens, a new character "buds off" from the group of lackeys as a level 1 character of the appropriate class.  The player can choose to either (a) play as the named character and relegate the lackeys to hirelings, or (b) vice versa.

Stargazer (A New System)

 I haven’t had a regular over-the-table tabletop game in years.  In that time, I’ve wandered pretty far afield.  Time for a new system, methinks.

Inspirations / Design Goals:

• Dice Pools!  I haven’t meddled in them yet.

• Lots of rolls with a small chance of success!  (I’ve been playing Pokemon Pocket.)

• Parrying, baiting, and kiting enemies.  (I’ve been playing Dark Souls.)

Dice Pools

While a d20 roll generates a flat distribution, a dice pool generates a Poisson curve.  Poisson curves are fun because they can model large numbers of rare events, like how many holo cards you get after opening 20 packs of Pokemon cards, how many letters will arrive at an unpopular person’s house on a given day, and how many Prussian officers are kicked to death by a horse in any given year.

Of course everything turns into a bell curve eventually with enough dice rolls.  That’s true for Poisson curves as well as for flat d20 curves.  (Add enough d20 curves together and eventually you’ll see the bell emerge from the flat muck, proud and unbent.)

Other design goals:

• Broadly compatible with all the OSR modules I already own.

• Faster Combat:

• Single roll attack (no separate attack and damage rolls)

• Players act, monsters react (like Dungeon World)

• Chainmail HP (1 HP at level 1, 2 HP at level 2, etc)

The Core Mechanic

Roll a bunch of d6s.  If you get at least one 6, you succeed.  

Optional: If you get more 6s, then you get extra success, or critical success, or whatever you want.

Optional: If you don’t have at least one single die that’s at least a 4 or higher, that’s a critical fail.

The midpoint is 4 dice.  This gives you a 52% chance of success (including a 13% chance for an extra success).  You also have a 48% chance to fail, including a 6% chance to critically fail.  Most rolls should center around 4 dice.  See below.

Easy tasks: add one or two dice.  Hard tasks: do the opposite.

# of Dice	Fail	Any Success	1 Success	2+ Success	Crit Fail
1	83%	17%	17%	0%	50%
2	69%	31%	28%	3%	25%
3	58%	42%	35%	7%	13%
4	48%	52%	39%	13%	6.2%
5	40%	60%	40%	20%	3.1%
6	34%	66%	40%	26%	1.6%
7	28%	72%	39%	33%	0.8%
8	23%	77%	37%	40%	0.4%
9	19%	81%	35%	46%	0.2%
10	16%	84%	32%	52%	0.1%

Most of these cluster around what I consider the sweet spot: 20-80% chance of success.  There’s a lot of diminishing returns after 5 dice, which I consider a great feature.

Is it fun?  More fun that rolling a d20?  (I fucking love rolling d20s.)  After playing around with it: yes?  Four dice doesn’t feel like a 52% chance to succeed.  It feels lower.  Which might have negative impacts on player confidence (“I don’t think we can do this, guys.”) but positive impacts on how lucky people feel (“I can’t believe we did that, guys!”).  A trade-off, maybe.  Please let me know what you think.

Anyway, I’m calling is Stargazer, because Poisson is both “fish” and “poison” depending on whether you are in France or in 3rd grade.  Stargazers are poisonous fish that are just as elegant as this system.  Here’s a picture of one.

STARGAZER

Two columns!  Rules on the left, discussion on the right.

Characters

Everyone has the regular 6 stats, unless you prefer that they have 4 or 3 or 8.   Stats are all set to 4 (the average).  Then, for each stat, roll 2d6.  For each 6, increase the stat (up to 6).  For each 1, decrease the stat (down to 2). If you want exceptional stats to be more/less common you can change the size of the die. Alternatively, just roll a d6 to see which stat is higher than average (5), and roll another d6 to see which stat is below average (3).	Each die here is worth a +2 modifier in other systems, which is pretty big.  Maybe just limit yourself to the 3-5 range unless you want to have really strong and really weak skills. It really sucks to have low numbers.  3 is rough.  2 is brutal. However, diminishing returns means that you can give players 6s and 7s and they won’t be able to abuse it too bad.
Everyone starts with 4 points spread across 1-2 skills, based on their background.	4 in a skill gives you a 50% chance of success, but remember that the default assumption is that you’re making this check in a dungeon while orcs kick down the door, not if you were practicing your profession in town. Like if you have “Cobber 1” on your character sheet and you want to make some basic shoes out of leather scraps over the weekend, I wouldn’t even make you roll for it.  Rolling is only really for stressful situations (where orcs are imminent) or ambitious projects (fancy shoes).
After each session, each player rolls a die for each time they attempted a skill in a dungeon, or had an interesting training montage in town.  Up to 5 dice can be rolled this way–in the same skill or in different ones, whatever.  If you get a 6 on your roll, you advance a point in that skill. That’ll get you up to 7 ranks in a skill.  Above that, you’ll need to find the appropriate legendary NPC and get your Skill Quest assigned.	I like the little “roll for skill-ups” minigame at the end of each session because (1) players get to review what they did, and (2) players only get to level up in skills that they actually performed. It’s like a miniature level-up after every session.
Everyone has HP equal to their level. 1 HP in Stargazer = 1 HP elsewhere. Fighters get +1 HP, but only if they wear heavy armor.	I know this is a big departure from the norm.  It has the benefit of being really fucking simple, though.
If you hate that, and you want to differentiate between different types of armor: Heavy Armor: Sacrifice to reduce any incoming damage by 1 HP, but you sink in water.  (Fighters also get +1 HP.) Light Armor: Sacrifice to reduce incoming fire/Reflex/Dex/AoE damage by 1 HP. Wizard Robes: Sacrifice to reduce incoming magic damage by 1 HP.  (Wizards can also restore 1 MP at lunch.)	I’ve actually cooled on armor over the years.  I don’t think it’s a super-interesting part of the game.  There’s rarely any interesting decisions to be made there, and players usually just gravitate to whatever fits their character concept. HOWEVER, I know that people hate it when leather armor and plate armor are the same mechanically.  Hell, even I feel the urge. Note that these are all active effects.  (Passives are boring.  You could say that Light Armor gives you +1 to save against AoE.  Don’t do that.) Yes, this is kind of an extension of “all shields shall be sundered” but I like these rules because (1) I like active mitigations more than passives on average, (2) I like things that help survivability at low levels, and (3) I like item breakage/consumables.  It helps players know when it’s time to leave the dungeon without having needing anyone to die first.

Initiative & Turn Order

Surprise rounds (against the players) are usually caused by the players knowingly taking some risk.  Examples: moving faster than exploration speed (basically tiptoeing through the dungeon), going into an area with a known enemy, going through some vulnerable environment. Surprise rounds typically don’t deal damage, but instead impose some situational penalty.  Examples: enemies might run for help, barricade a door, or take the high ground.	It’s no fun when you get surprised, enemies get critical hits, and you die without ever having a chance to make any decisions.  Feels bad, man. Surprise rounds are still useful as Bad Consequence of Player Decisions, though, so I do believe in deploying them.  I also support being a little cruel with surprise rounds (especially since they’re the consequence of players taking a known risk, rather than just bad luck).
Every round, every player gets 1 turn. Players take their turn in any order that they want. The round is over once everyone has taken their turn.	No rolling initiative.  Just straight to the part where the players open the door and you get to shout “ORCS!  WHAT DO???”  Faster is good, I think. I’ve been playing a lot of games with newbies, and stuff like initiative sometimes serves as a psychic barrier–one more layer of “what-is-this-rule-again?” cruft before they get to thinking “okay-what-do-we-do-about-orcs?”.
When you make an attack, you roll a bunch of attack dice (details below).  The number of 6s is equal to the damage that you deal.	Single roll, no calculations. We do lose out on a useful distinction between accuracy and power, but alas, no treasure was reached without great sacrifice.
After each player turn, there is one monster turn.  This is true no matter how many monsters there are. Minions are also an exception.  For example, goblins take 2 turns after every player turn. This also assumes that there is a line of scrimmage in combat.  If the players are completely surrounded, they may suffer more than the typical # of attacks.	Okay, this looks simple, but there’s a few interesting consequences of this rule. First, it balances out different party sizes.  If a party of 3 is fighting a pair of ogres, the ogres make 3 counterattacks. Party of 6?  6 Counterattacks.  So if your run a game for an unusually big/small table, this will help things feel appropriately scaled. Second, it’s a boon for solo bosses, who won’t get screwed by the action economy as much. Third, it makes fighters more relevant in combat, because they’re the ones with the best armor and HP.  But more on that below.
However, monsters get a -2 (cumulative) penalty if they take more than 1 turn per round.  So they take their second counterattack at -2, their third counterattack at -4, etc. The exception to this is boss monsters, who only get a -1 penalty.  (Boss monsters also get a special boss action at the end of the round.)	Basically, an enemy’s first attack is their deadliest one.  Each counterattack they make afterwards is weaker and weaker.
If you hit an enemy, they gotta target you back with their counterattack. However, once someone misses their attack roll, the enemies are unrestricted, and are free to target whoever they want for the rest of the round. This only applies to melee attack.  If someone shoots an orc with an arrow, the orc is not obligated to chase you down across the battlefield. Also note that this doesn’t stop enemies from pulling levers or running away.  It just means that: if they’re going to attack someone, they need to attack the person that just hit them.	This represents the players controlling the tempo of battle, keeping pressure on their enemies without giving their opponents opportunities for clever tactics. However, the real purpose of this rule is to empower fighters to set the pace of battle.  Since fighters are the most likely to land their attacks, and can handle damage the best, it makes sense for fighters to make the first couple of attacks.  Sure, the players can attack in any order they want, but you probably want the fighter to attack first, and afterwards you probably want to attack the same person the fighter did. Downsides: (1) This creates a little bit of overhead, since the DM has to keep track of whether the players have missed an attack roll this turn yet.  (2) Potentially straining credulity with “Why can’t the dragon attack that guy?”

Action Dice

Players have 3 Action Dice every turn, that they can spend on whatever actions that they want.  You can split your AD across a movement and an attack.  Or you can put all of your AD into a full attack action.	I think this is pretty easy to explain to newbies. “You have 3 dice to spend on actions every turn.  You can split them up, or you can spend them on the same thing.  The more dice you spend on a single action, the more effective you are at it.”
When you spend AD on something, you don’t just spend those dice.  You also roll your bonus dice. Lots of stuff has bonus dice, recorded on your character sheet.: A fighter might have Attack +3 and Move +1. If the fighter spends all 3 AD to make a Move action, they’ll roll 3 AD, plus 1 from the table above, for a total of 4 AD.  If they get at least 1 six, they succeed. This gives them a 52% chance of success. If the fighter wants to split their action, with 2 AD going towards the jump and 1 AD being used to attack the orc on the far side, they’ll instead roll: 2 AD + 1 from Table = 3 dice for Movement 1 AD + 3 from Table = 4 dice for Attack Translated, they have a 42% chance to make the jump and 52% chance to hit.	So the best way to look at an attack roll is by considering both the hit chance and the average damage done. Level 1 character has Attack +1 giving them a 52% chance to hit something if they spend all 3 dice on it (and rolling a total of 4 dice).  This feels about right. They’ll also deal about 1 HP of damage if they hit (equal to 1d6 elsewhere), so that’s about spot on. This is roughly compatible with all of my OSR modules on the shelf, so that’s cool.   Character damage will eventually scale a little bit higher as they level up compared to other OSR systems (since they improve both to-hit and damage), but that’s okay–I don’t really give out magic swords +2 so it should be fine if the characters do little more damage than before.
You deal 1 point of damage for every 6 that shows up on your Attack roll. If you deal less than 1 point of damage, it counts as a miss.  Otherwise it’s a hit.	If converting to other OSR games (or GLOG), each HP here is worth 3.5 HP there. Each +1 to Attack Dice here is worth:    +1½ point bonus to Attack Roll, or    +½ point bonus to Weapon Damage Single roll is nice, but you lose a useful distinction between accuracy and power.
You have bonuses for: Attack Movement Parry	I’ll add more to this list as I think of them.
You get +1 to your attack bonus: Per character level (up to 4). If you are a fighter. If you have a magic weapon OR you are strong and wielding a 2H weapon.	At level 1, this is very close to OSR expectations.  It scales a bit faster, but with the level 4 cap it should never feel like the characters are OP.  Like a level 4 fighter will do roughly 2x the damage of a level 1 fighter but that sounds okay to me.
You get +1 to your Movement bonus: If you are a thief. Per level of Acrobat.	Acrobats can have more.  That’s kinda their thing.
You get +1 to your Parry bonus: If you have a shield.	I want to keep a tight lid on defensive moves and healing.  Both of those things slow down combat, but I want to leave a little room for them.
Movement is usually a binary–do you make the jump or not. Alternatively, the DM can just state that running into the next room takes 1 AD, climbing onto the table takes 2 AD, etc.
You can also dedicate dice to Parrying.  Each success here reduces incoming damage by an equal amount.  Example: Fighter spends 2 dice attacking and declares 1 die for parrying.  They attack and maybe deal damage. Orc counterattacks, rolling their attack dice. Fighter rolls their 2 parrying dice (they had a shield) and reduces incoming damage by 1 point for every success.	Since this is usually trading dice on a one-for-one basis, it doesn’t give any net advantage to the player UNLESS they have a shield.   If they have a shield, they will want to be setting aside 1 AD for parrying every turn against a foe that is similar to them. However, it’s still a potentially interesting choice, since they might be better served by just using their full attack against weaker opponents (when they don’t care about reducing incoming damage).

Monster Stats

Monsters get 1 HP for every HD they have. Beefy bastards get +1 HP. Armored bastards get +1HP. Solo bosses can have double.	Good enough. I’m also a big fan of most groups of monsters having a leader with +1 HP, just to give some texture to the encounter.
Monsters have Attack dice equal to 3+level. Give them other stats as needed, bearing in mind that 4 dice = 52% chance of success.	3 Attack dice is roughly equal to attacking with a 1d6 dagger and having a 50% chance to hit. Weirdly enough, this scales weirdly well with OSR expectations for ogres and 1d12s and all sorts of other stuff.
Clumsy monsters have bigger penalties for subsequent counterattacks.  Instead of the normal -2 cumulative per counterattack, they might have -4. For example, a clumsy ogre (Lvl 4) might have a first counterattack that uses 7 Attack dice, but its second counterattack will only use 3 Attack dice.	Needs playtesting. This is just to sharpen the distinction between the first attack and the second attack. And the third.  Our poor ogre doesn’t get to make more than 2 counterattacks.

Combat Options

There’s more ways to attack an enemy than to just attack them.  You can also: Group Attacks Baiting. Kiting.	I’ve been playing a lot of Dark Souls. I love it but 30% of that game is just strafing around some big armored fuck and waiting for them to take a swing at you.
Group Attacks If multiple people attack the same target at once, they put all of their dice together in a single bowl.  They get +1 Attack dice for every person beyond the first.   Roll all of the dice as one huge pile. If you do damage, everyone describes how they used teamwork to kill bad guys. After the players attack, the surviving enemies makes the same numer of counterattacks as normal (1 per player).	Narratively, I think this is a win.  You look at the roll, you see that you’ve done 4 damage to the dragon.  The DM tells you it’s dead.  Awesome!  The 5 players get to narrate how they do some cool bullshit to use all of their abilities together to kill it.  Credit is shared along with high-fives. Efficiency-wise, also great.  A whole bunch of people can attack simultaneously, turning 10 dice rolls into 1.  Much faster. Mechanically, it’s always advantageous for players to attack as a group instead of individually, since they have a better chance to kill it before it makes any counterattacks. The few extra dice are nice, but the real benefit is killing the enemy before it can hit you back. Of course, if there are multiple enemies alive, you may waste your turns overkilling one enemy when it would have been better to spread it out.
Baiting Normally you attack, and are then counter-attacked in return. However, you can bait an enemy into attacking, and then you can perform the counterattack. If you do this, you get to make a critical hit.  Your d6s explode.  For every 6 you roll, you can grab another 6 and add it to the roll, with each of these also being able to explode recursively.	This might not seem like a lot, but this is a flat +20% bonus to average damage per turn.  That’s a lot! However, the risk is that the enemy might flat-out kill you before you get to counterattack, so there’s a balance to be struck here.  Don’t counterattack if you think that the enemy has a good chance to bring you to zero. You also don’t want to Bait an enemy with only 1 HP left.  What’s the point of exploding a d6?
Smart enemies can make an Int check to see through your baiting attempt, and will be free to attack someone else (not necessarily you).	Maybe.  Needs playtesting.
Kiting The whole party all spends an action die backing up into an adjacent room (or area). The monsters make their attack(s) normally as they would during Baiting, except that the players get to roll +2 free Parry dice during the enemy’s attack.	Needs playtesting.  This rule might be shit. The idea is that kiting an enemy is a great defensive maneuver against a tough opponent, and that cautious players will want to kite enemies instead of fighting them toe-to-toe.
When you kite enemies, roll for random encounters normally.  There’s always the chance of bumping into more enemies. Smart enemies might see through your kiting attempt, and might just use a ranged attack or something.	Works best against stupid enemies, and enemies without melee attacks. The risk of bumping into a second encounter is pretty harsh, but maybe kiting will be a good idea for (1) very tough fights or (2) in a relatively safe area.  I’ll get back to you after playtesting.

Bosses

Bosses make an additional attack at the bottom of the turn, after everyone has gone.   After they have made this attack, they telegraph the next one.  For example, a dragon might inhale deeply, signaling that they’re going to breathe fire on their next boss attack (after everyone has had a turn).	All my bosses have telegraphed attacks now.  I honestly think it’s the best way to keep fights feeling dynamic.
Whenever a boss fails a save to a save-or-die spell or effect, it can choose to take 3 damage and instead suffer a minimal version of the effect. For example, instead of being petrified, a boss might just have a limb turned to stone.  Or it might just be petrified for a single round.	I also highly recommend this one for bosses.  Save-or-die effects are still very useful since they deal 3 points of damage and inflict some other penalty. It helps your bosses not get one-shotted by bullshit, but still pay a hefty penalty when they escape petrification.

Spellcasting

It takes 2 action dice (AD) to cast a spell.  These are different than magic dice (MD) which are used to cast the spell. MD are tracked the same as the GLOG.  Each MD that is rolled as part of a damaging spell will deal 1 HP of damage as long as it shows a 2 or higher. AoE spells give enemies a Dex save for half.

Needs playtesting.

Dungeoncrawling

The Underclock starts at 7 and counts down to 0. Each time you roll on the Underclock, roll 6 dice. Each time you roll a 6, decrement the Underclock by 1 point. If the Underclock count reaches 1 and you roll a 1 at the same time, the players get an Omen of what the next encounter will be.

Kinda ugly but all of the parts are there.

If you need more rules just refer to GLOG version 16.