Hacking T1: The Moathouse and Dungeon Level

Last post, we converted the Village of Hommlet into a one-page dungeon. We have two design goals when hacking T1: to present its information in a more GM-friendly format and to add depth to its content.

Additionally, I also have a third design goal as I prepare my iteration of the adventure. I plan to replace the Temple of Elemental Evil with the Barrowmaze by Greg Gillespie, so that will require changing some story elements to make the adventure fit.

This post will contain spoilers for both the adventure T1: The Village of Hommlet and Barrowmaze, so please be mindful of reading ahead if you play in a campaign that features either of these adventures.

So here’s the story: I’m replacing Ironguard Motte in the Duchy of Aerik (the setting provided by Barrowmaze) with the village of Hommlet. The moathouse will be two hexes (twelve miles) away along the Moorwash River. The player characters will be adventurers come to collect a bounty on the bandits living in the moathouse.

 

This map is from Playing Dice at the Universe, but I altered Ironguard Motte to read as "Hommlet." The moathouse is in hex 0703.

The bandits have ambushed travelers along the road between Hommlet and Helix for a while now, but they recently absconded with a delivery of spider-silk dresses intended as a gift for a lady the Duke’s son is courting. The Duke’s son, being an entitled, cowardly, and proud young man, has placed a bounty of silver pieces on each bandit and a reward for returning the dresses. The bandits are worth more alive than dead, as the Duke’s son would like the pleasure of publicly humiliating them before sentencing them to death.

Next, here’s an idea from Seth Skorkowsky’s review of The Village of Hommlet: the bandits are hopeful initiates for an evil cult. Lareth the Beautiful is a cult member living under the moathouse who will initiate the bandits once they satisfy his demands.

Because I’m replacing the Temple of Elemental Evil with Barrowmaze, I think I can make Lareth the Beautiful a member of the Cult of Nergal or Orcus. That would make Lareth a necromancer, so my idea is that he’s tasked the bandits to bring him live captives to reanimate as undead.

Another idea I have is that Lareth is interested in necromancy to prolong his youth and beauty (if you’ve watched Game of Thrones, you can likely guess where I got this idea from). So Lareth is a vain, young, attractive man with selfish motives for worshipping his unholy god.

So, what about the moathouse itself? Here’s a picture of my notes on it:

Credit goes to the Thought Eater podcast for the map of the moathouse, who in turn got it from Spikepit.

Like the Village of Hommlet, I’ve annotated the map. My notes all fit on a single side of a sheet of paper. Although the layout of the moathouse is the same, I’ve made several changes to its content:

·         I used the Ruined Castle tables by the Raging Swan to add setting details. These hint that the moathouse was originally constructed by the goat-men of lord Fragglehorn (from Gavin Norman’s Dolmenwood campaign setting).

·         I replaced the giant frogs outside the entrance with alligators. My idea is that they will surprise reckless player characters that try to jump across the rocks and enter the castle through the broken walls.

·         I’ve replaced two of the bandits with two massive dogs (as wolves) to provide a bit more variety to any combat that takes place with them.

·         I took out the giant tick and the giant lizard. I’ve also moved some creatures around, such as the giant spiders and giant rats. Each pair of bandits now has their own room, save for the leader (who has a room to herself) and one who shares a room with the two dogs.

The idea here is that the bandits spend most of their time in rooms 6, 7, and 13-17, while rooms 8-12 remain in the hands of vermin.

Next, here’s my annotated map of the dungeon level.

Credit goes to Jasper’s Rantings on Wordpress for the map I used. Here’s some key changes from the original:

·         Removed the green slime from the stairs leading to the surface.

·         Replaced the ghouls with nightworms (from Gavin Norman’s Dolmenwood).

·         Replaced the giant crayfish with a brown mold.

·         Replaced the bugbears and gnolls with animated skeletons

·         Added detail to room #10.

·         Replaced the false door traps in areas #11 because they didn’t make much sense to me. They now lead to collapsed rooms. The trigger for the portcullis in area #9 is now a slightly proud stone in the hallway.

Here’s some final musings and lessons learned from this process:

·         I appreciate the “one-page dungeon” layout and design philosophy. It makes descriptions of rooms easy to access and interpret at the table. It also compels you (the GM) to put only relevant information in your notes. While this format would likely not work expansive locations or those dense with detail, it served well in T1 to unpack the dense prose and counter-intuitive formatting early modules came with.

·         Preparing to run Barrowmaze has me thinking about the differences between the cults of Nergal and Orcus, as well as the nature of necromancy in my campaign setting. Necromancy is always something I’ve taken for granted – magic-users cast spells that reanimate dead, and that’s that. However, if I plan on running a campaign that involves as many undead as Barrowmaze, I think it would be worthwhile to devote some thought and energy to the intricacies of necromantic magic and the differences between the two cults. I likely will make another post about that in the future.

·         Besides connecting T1 to the moathouse, I think I could also run Bogtown (also from the Duchy of Aerik) as Orlane from N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God. I could replace the cult of Explicita Defilus with a cult of Nergal or Orcus, though I could also simply keep that cult and have the lizardfolk and troglodytes of the Barrowmoor get involved.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this post. If you have suggestions or find these maps helpful, please let me know in the comments!

Hacking T1: The Village of Hommlet

Hacking T1: The Village of Hommlet

Last post, we established the two tasks we have with The Village of Hommlet.

First, we must present its information in a more accessible and GM-friendly format. T1 tends to bury information the GM needs in dense text, so we want to parse out that information and present it in a way GMs can access easily.

Secondly, we must add depth to its content. While the Village of Hommlet provides many details, such as the extent and location of each villager’s life savings, we need to provide details more relevant to the game at the table.

To tackle the issue of presenting the information well, I first thought about how I tend to run player time in cities at the table. Typically, I structure player interactions in the city as a sort of point-crawl, where players can move between points of interest in the city and declare the actions they take – usually downtime activities.

When applying this methodology to Hommlet, I took inspiration from the seven-hex system from the Collaborative Gamer here. Specifically, I took a hex grid and overlaid it with the Hommlet map to create “districts” in the village of Hommlet, like so.

Overlaying this grid on the map of Hommlet “chunks” the information, making it easier to remember and access. The original map of Hommlet contained over thirty keyed locations, not including the keyed locations inside the keyed locations (such as the inn and the chapel). This is a lot for GMs to use and reference at the table, and I found myself having a hard time managing it.

Now, with this hex grid dividing Hommlet into “districts,” we can think of each district as a distinct place and group details under it. The other advantage is that, at the table, the GM can use these districts to facilitate transitions as players move between them (such as by saying something like, “You leave the inn and head to the chapel, crossing over the bridge and river on the north side).

After grouping Hommlet into districts, I then organized the information presented in T1 into these seven categories, arranging these around the map separate spaces. This method effectively turns Hommlet into a “one-page dungeon,” where the GM has all the information they need on a single side of a single sheet.

By the end of this process, I took the information T1 presented in five pages and condensed it into one. This inevitably meant I left some things out, such as the stat blocks for villagers. As you look at my annotated map of Hommlet, you’ll notice that I left out any NPCs related to keyed locations. I did this intentionally, as I plan to describe those in more depth on the same page as annotated maps of those locations.

I also added a list of encounters to the map. I plan to use these to help the village appear “alive.” The GM could roll for an encounter as often or as little as they like. The idea that each encounter describes an event that naturally comes out of the situations described in the module. You have tensions between followers of the Old Faith and the Cuthberites, several prominent villagers away on missions, and construction happening on the castle.

I don’t know about you, but I personally feel most invested in a game when it feels like it has a sense of progression. In other words, I feel invested in a tabletop RPG game when the world moves and changes around the players, not just in response to their actions. So my idea is that, as your players spend more time in Hommlet, the castle should gradually rise, more Cuthberites should move to town, and the people who are there should pass away.

This, of course, requires that your campaign take place over a greater span of time than a few weeks or months, but the challenges I have with maintaining pacing in recent editions of fantasy rpgs is a subject for another post.

In thinking about this, it reminds of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. Part of what invested me in that game’s characters was the fact that you could watch their relationships change (and watch them grow old) over time. I think a tabletop RPG game benefits from that sort of progression.

Besides formatting Hommlet as a one-page dungeon, I planned to provide more depth where Hommlet does not already. Many villagers in Hommlet do not have names, so I created a list of twenty I like Using fantasy name generator’s “medieval” names. You can roll on this in the moment when your players interact with a no-name villager. You can roll 1d20 if the gender is undecided or 1d10 on a certain side if you know whether the villager’s male or female. If your players interact with more than twenty unnamed villagers, I can’t help you. I suppose you could just name everyone Bob.

I also created a roll table for villager personalities. The idea is that you roll a d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12 to generate a faceless NPC the players decide to converse with. Hommlet often fails to describe villagers’ personalities in more detail than “friendly” or “distrustful,” so I hope this table helps GM’s fill in those blank spaces. Every small village needs their grumpy misanthrope and judgmental prude.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this post. In the next post, we will give the same treatment to the upper level of the moathouse and, depending on the word count, possibly the lower level, too. I hope these resources make T1 more accessible for you to run. If you use this at your table or have advice from your own experience, please let me know!

Hommlet Villager Roll Table
Male		Female
1. Reinart	6. Hobard	11. Bethan	16. Elia
2. Alain	7. Searl	12. Lylie	17. Winnifred
3. Wymarc	8. Hancock	13. Rosalind	18. Emeloth
4. Geffroi	9. Raylin	14. Helenor	19. Thea
5. Sanson	10. Berolt	15. Loreena	20. Saara

1d4	1d6	1d8	1d10	1d12
1: Child	1. Farmer	1. Wants adventurers to not raise trouble	1. Remarkably dirty	1. Hardworking busybody
2: Young Adult	2. Animal Husbandry (Shepherd / Cowhand / Apiarist)	2. Wants adventurers to bring excitement	2. Remarkably clean	2. Lazy layabout
3: Mature Adult	3. Craftsperson / Artisan (Blacksmith / Weaver / Baker)	3. Wants to maintain the Old Faith	3. Weather- beaten	3. Talkative gossip
4: Elderly	4. Gathering (Hunter / Trapper / Herbalist)	4. Wants the Duke to leave the village alone	4. Wears a notable hat	4. Mistrusting xenophobe
	5. Militia (Guard / Soldier / Sellsword)	5. Wants the Duke to protect the village	5. No shoes, and proud of it	5. Vicarious adventurer
	6. Construction (Mason / Carpenter / Thatcher)	6. Wants the village to stay quiet and quaint	6. Brandishes a holy symbol or spiritual sprigs	6. Nervous worrywart
		7. Wants the village to grow and expand	7. Accompanied by a pet	7. Judgmental prude
		8. Wants to convert others to the New Gods	8. Looks like a season (1:Summer 2:Fall 3:Winter 4:Spring)	8. Aspiring zealot
			9. Ill-fitting clothes, obviously homespun	9. Greedy miser
			10. Bears a scar or significant injury	10. Grumpy misanthrope
				11. Sassy font of folk wisdom
				12. Doe-eyed innocent