Pulp Donjon Actual Play- The Dark Hunger Castle

[tk421]

(This is a cross-post from a thread I started on RPG.net.  Just thought I'd share the love and get this info to a forum dedicated to this sort of thing.)


So I've had Donjon for a while but never had a chance to play it. Seems like ages I've been trying to court my normal gaming group into giving Donjon's wacky, player driven goodness a go, but there was really never any time for it with our full compliment of other games.

A good friend of mine from my undergraduate days dropped in recently with his wonderful wife and we decided to give Donjon a whorl. I'd never actually played or run the game before, so it was learning experience for everyone.


Bottomline for entire session: I LOVE this game. It's kickass crazy cool. There were some wrinkles that cropped up as we played, though I'm sure a more experienced Donjon Master would have known how to handle them.


The game itself: Before we got going, I asked my friend and his wife (whom I will call "Shelton" and "Terra" because, well, those are their names) what kind of game they'd be interested in playing, as you can do basically anything with Donjon. Having just watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, they were in the mood for something Pulp-ish. Battling Nazis, maybe something supernatural, maybe some international mystery. After a few hours planning (2), I had the following adventure, which took about five hours to run. Think of it as Indiana Jones, plus Hellboy, plus a little Delta Green.

The Dark Hunger Castle

In the mid 1930s, after Hilter's rise to power but before the beginning of another Great War, prophets for the International Association for Supernatural Investigation (IASI, pronounced "Icy"), a private organization tasked with keeping the paranormal from intruding on the mortal world, foretold the Nazis using artifacts or allies of great arcane power to conquer the rest of the world. IASI opperative all over the world (including the PCs) are mobilized to find out what the Nazi researchers are after and stop them from gaining this power.

So Shelton and Terra made characters that fit as IASI agents. Shelton wanted to have a sort of Macguiver meets Indiana Jones type, always with the appropriate device or the means to make said device, so we settled on his Main Ability as "Produce Gadgets." We used this to add to Provisions checks to pull out some crazy gizmo he could then use to his advantage. In play, this worked very...interestingly. For supporting Abilities, he went with Fist-a-cuffs as a brawling ability, Keen Sighted, Hiking and Climbing, and Resiliance (to add to Wherewithal tests when resisting blunt trama). He called the guy Buckminster Worthington, a Two-Fisted Innovator (goes by Buck).

Terra wanted something with more of a lighttouch, but also wanted to be able really get a lot of use out of how the system worked. So she came up with a character who was a psychic. We discussed whether the character's psychic ability should be freeform (and therefor Magic) or with one type of applications. She decided the character would be a mindreader, and made "Read Minds" her main ability. This she used on meeting any new character to dictate what they were thinking. (As you can imagine, this really really really changed how things were going to work with the campaign, but I was cool with it, as that's the beauty of Donjon.) For supporting abilities she chose Shooting Things with Pistols, Good Reflexes (her passive defense ability), Deception (which was probably too broad, but I let her have it), and Finding Hidden Objects. Ruth Green, IASI mentalist was born.

After allocating some dice and rolling up some stats, we got things under way.

Two of the things I was initially worried about with doing a pulp game of Donjon were a) nobody has armor so damage might be a little harsh and b) how damage works with firearms, as adding Virility to the damage here makes no sense. I eventually decided that these two factors canceled each other out mostly. And it worked pretty well.

Chapter 1: the Town

The PCs started in the Town of Colmar, France (my apologies to anyone who actually lives in the town; I just saw the name on the map and went with it), very near the German border. I described it as a sleeply little place currently gripped by fear of war with Germany. Ruth and Buck had been sent there because of rumors that an ancient, long forgotten castle in the region (Castle Von Herrkin) was the subject of recent Nazi attention. They were sent to find what the Nazis are searching for and keep it out of their hands if there is something there.

Cutting to the chase, Ruth Green used her mind reading to find (dictate, really) that an old woman in the tavern she staked out was working with the Nazis and had been to Castle Von Herrkin. As the Donjon Master, I went with that and worked it out that she was being forced to bring the Nazis food, as they had captured her son. So the PCs offered to rescue her son if she helped them get into the Castle.

Chapter 2: The Forest

Beyond the small village of Colmar (or at least this ficitonal one) is a dark and deadly forest that contains, somewhere, the Von Herrkin Castle. The old woman lead them through toward the dark castle. Buck's Hiking and Climbing ability helped them greatly here and Shelton used some successes on that roll to state that they met no one on the way. However, a Discernment check by Terra's character revealed a wolf in the nearby underbrush.

Leaping to the fray, Buck literally wrestled the wolf to the ground and beat it unconscious. The poor wolfy go a single nip in, but Buck's martial prowess and nice initiative roll really polished him off. Danger averted.


Chapter 3: Getting Inside

Soon the Castle Von Herrkin loomed before them. Using her Deception ability, Ruth pretended to be the old woman's neice and went in with her, helping her bring the Germans soup, as Buckminster failed to find a secret entrance to the Castle with his Binoculars. Using her mind reading, Ruth "discovered" that the soldiers completely bought her disguise and even "found out" that the Commander of the operation was attracted to her. Using this knowledge (ie, bonus dice from the mind reading successes), she offered to take the place of the old woman's son. And it worked (or at least she read the Commander's mind and dictated that he thought it a good trade). But there was also an ominous, dark power pulse from with in the castle. The darkness inside was aggressive and any unwatched light would be somehow snuffed out.

Discovering the situation, Buck decided it was time to kick it into high gear and went to the castle wall to find a hidden door. Using his Gadgets ability, he constucted a crude sonar gun (!) that aided him in finding hidden doors. Then he was able to find a secret passage way that lead into the interior. He felt the cold, hungry evil within the place.


Chapter 4: In the Castle

Following the passageway, Buck came to a trap door in the ceiling. Listening carefully, Buck "heard" the Doktor Klaus himself, head of all Nazi Germany's occult research! Buck understood little, as he didn't speak German, but a quick look in his pack revealed that he had had the foresight to bring a German-English Dictionary.  Using this, he determined that Doktor Klaus was in the Castle to negotiate with something.

Meanwhile, Ruth had been taken up to the prisoner's room, a single doored tower room. Despite her efforts to Find Hidden Objects in the room several times, she found nothing. Her mindreading found only a single, stupid guard on her door, because the rest of the guards were arguing about whether she should be used, as the last prisoner, to search dangerous places, or put to "other uses."

Buck had gone up through the secret door to a dark room. Another quick look in his pack and Buck found the German military uniform (!) that he had packed, allowing him to move freely through the castle. He quickly and effectively made his way to where Ruth was kept and easily overpowered the single stupid guard. (An interesting, if onesided combat. He used a successes on his first attack to dictate that the guard dropped a key to Ruth's cell, which I thought was an intelligent choice.)

Moving together now, Ruth and Buck ran across the Commander, who (according to Ruth's mindreading) assumed Buck was the soldier he sent to take Ruth to meet Doktor Klaus. After the Commander left, Buck used his Dictionary to translate what the Commander said to him, revealing the exact location of the Doktor, down in the dungeon of the Castle.

Chapter 5: Dark Meetings and the Climax

Moving through the Castle, the duo had the bad luck of running across a German Officer who recognized that Buck wasn't one of his soldiers (thanks to his "Notice the PCs" ability). The resulting battle was fairly quick (one flurry), but had an exchange of gunfire and some charging and resisting movement. I noticed here that have a high ability devoted to dodging is REALLY powerful, as a soldier who used his "Duck for Cover" ability was very hard to hit.

After defeating the officer and the soldier he summoned by using his "Call for Underlings" ability (which I had no idea what to have the PCs roll to resist), the PCs attempted to find a universal key and a map on their bodies. Despite being allowed to use her Find Hidden Objects ability on looting, Ruth nor Buck found anything useful.

Moving on down the tunnels and passageways, Buck decided to listen as he ran. With successes, he dictated that in the room ahead he heard Doktor Klaus talking with something. Ruth used her successes on a mind reading attempt to determine that he was negotiating with a demon lord (!). This sort of cut through a number of things that I had planned, effectively jumping right to the climax of the adventure. But that's ok.

So the PCs threw caution to the wind and charged in. First, however, Buck checked his pack for a demon ward, but couldn't find one. He did find, however (on his next roll), a bracelet that allowed him to hurt a demon as he could a mortal, which proved to be very useful.

The resulting fight was rather long. Both the Demon Lord and Doktor Klaus had high passive defensive abilities the PCs had a hard time getting around. The demon's magic ended up being hard to impliment, but powerful when it really got going. While Buckminster went fullbore after the Demon, Ruth and the Doktor exchange pistol fire all day long until Ruth finally used an attack success to disarm him. He closed for melee combat with his ritual dagger, but that didn't work too well for him (as he lacked a melee ability).

The demon was a powerful enemy, but Buck used an early successes to change the entire bent of the combat. For his first successful attack, he dictated that, since he was still dressed as a German soldier, the demon thought he had been betrayed by the Nazis. So right before he was finally defeated, the demon let loose a rather powerful spell that animated the shadows of the Castle to attack every living thing inside.

After beating the demon to dust (literally), the PCs made a break for the exit as the castle started to crumble around them. Buck FINALLY got to make use of his Resiliance ability to shrug of a sizable piece of the castle falling on his head.

And the PCs escaped as the Nazis were swallowed by the darkness of the castle and the castle instead fell into the earth. Yay! The world was saved from an evil Nazi-demon pact.


Huzzah! So that was the adventure. I quite enjoyed it and I'm pretty sure the players did too. In the future, however, I'll make more limitations on how an ability like Mind Reading can be used, as it was the powerful "adventure controlling" ability here. Not that it turned out badly, but with a less cool set of players it could have been an issue.

Now I wants to play and run more Donjon. Sigh.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I really like your solution about armor and firearms; makes a lot of sense.

I also wanted to point out something I've wondered about Donjon ... that when characters and foes are matching up with lots of dice on both sides, then the dice-on-dice and inserting various facts can be exhausting.

So ... that leads me to your final fight scene, in which Ruth wins her fight not by "bang bang, bang bang back, bang bang back at you, bang bang again," but by switching to a venue in which the Doktor can't compete. Makes a lot of sense to me that this is the way to get stuff done in this game.

Mind Control is an issue in all role-playing, because it almost always crosses the existing lines of authority over various "portions" of the game-world among the participants. I agree with you that it can only be managed/used when the folks at the table agree, tacitly or otherwise, that such line-crossing won't be an issue.

Best,
Ron

[tk421]

So ... that leads me to your final fight scene, in which Ruth wins her fight not by "bang bang, bang bang back, bang bang back at you, bang bang again," but by switching to a venue in which the Doktor can't compete. Makes a lot of sense to me that this is the way to get stuff done in this game

Yes, very much so.  Also, I enjoyed it because it was dramatic and interesting.  

I just wished she'd thought of it sooner.  The "attack...miss!"  "attack....miss!"  back and forth really became tiresome quickly.  After the fight I pointed out to her player that since she knew the NPC had as a defensive ability "Duck for Cover", she could have easily stated an early fact that "There is no more cover" to keep him from using it.  That would have certain made things move more quickly.

Another thing I notice now, looking back on the whole experience: I wasn't nearly as adversarial with the PCs as the game assumes.  I can see the ways and times I could have twisted the PCs' facts back on them to trip them up, but I was just having too much fun working with their ideas and letting them roll.  It would be a different, though still hella fun, experience to play trying to screw them more.  

Last note, the one thing I found very difficult to do in the game was have "normal" things happen.   I suppose that's just how the game works, but I couldn't figure out how to have, say, a trap for the PCs.  Also, how would I work things that could apply to multiple characters? (For instance, if three characters walk into a room and all three look around, who gets to dictate what's there?  All of them?)

[aplath]

Last note, the one thing I found very difficult to do in the game was have "normal" things happen.   I suppose that's just how the game works, but I couldn't figure out how to have, say, a trap for the PCs.  

1) Give them abilities like "Detect tresspassers" and "Hit with hidden spiky things".

and/or

2) Work with the PC's attributes as you would in other games. Call for a Discernment + Applicable Ability to make them detect the trap or a Adroitness + Ability to avoid falling in a hidden pit, for instance. These would be both uncontested actions.

Also, how would I work things that could apply to multiple characters? (For instance, if three characters walk into a room and all three look around, who gets to dictate what's there?  All of them?)

I guess there are several ways of handling this.

If they are all successful, I would let the players talk among themselves and state a number of facts equal to the sum of all successes they had. Then I would narrate the outcome as per normal rules.

Another interesting way of doing it would be allowing each to state one success in arbitrary order (left to right, best discernment scores first, whatever), and then again for second success and so on until all successes are used up.

If they all fail, the GM state facts and let all players agree on narration.

If there is a mix of successes and failures, I would let the successful players state facts, narrate the outcome, state facts about the unsuccessful PCs and let them narrate last.

Just ideas ... I never actually had this situation in play.

Andreas

EDIT (Actually a PS) : Your game rocks! Thanks for sharing.

[Zak Arntson]

I can't remember whether Donjon is explicit with this or not, but a big important rule behind these player-assisted improv games is this: Once someone has declared something as a fact, it remains a fact. This means you'll have to be very proactive in causing "normal" events to happen. Spring the trap before allowing any player rolls. Once you have established that there is definitely a trap being sprung at them, well, then the players roll and create all sorts of facts, riffing off of this initial event.

That's the DM's big power in a game like Donjon: Establishing the situation for the players to use as a springboard.

Also, during a gunfight, rather than shoot, shoot, shoot, prepare a list of facts the NPCs can use against the players. This should help break that kind of monotony. Things like, "The Doktor shoots out the lights, plunging the room into darkness," or "He shoots a panel on the wall, initiating some sinister mechanism." Sure, you may not need to use these things, but it's a good resource when you're in a bind.