Donjon test drive, w/ questions

[kalyptein]

Every year there comes a time an our anual gathering of friends when we start playing DnD.  Most people have succumbed to sleep and the ravages of way too much junk food and we survivors just want a nice, quick dungeon romp.  When I read the Donjon review I grabbed a copy and tried it out with my roommate a couple days ago.  It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to pitching it to the group in a few months.

The Session

My friend made a 'Tomb Raider' with 'Run Fast', 'Knife Vital Organ', 'Swindle', and 'Sense Value' as secondary abilities and 'Dungeon Exploration' as his primary.  'Dungeon Exploration' we decided was a kind of lore and perception skill for the flora, fauna, traps/dangers, and geography of natural caves, temples, tombs, and similar structures, but no good in ordinary buildings or outdoors.

He started out in a town I decided was built on the ruins of an ancient city sacked by barbarians long ago.  Some of the aquaducts of that city were still in use as sewers, and he hoped to find a way into the buried city through them, where he might be able to find a rumored shrine that went unlooted.

We weren't sure when or how often he could invoke his Dungeon Exploration to invent stuff, so we decided he could do it whenever he wanted.  He invented a crumbling wall in a cellar which led into an aquaduct.  After going a way, I told him that a thin flow of water was leaking from a wall into the tunnel (previously dry).  He invented that this had eroded the tunnel further down, causing a crack that led into some other chamber.  He had to roll to keep his footing on the slime growing under the water and made it through the crack, which I decided led into an old crypt.

He invented a booby-trap and then successfully triggered it while standing out of harms way.  I had it crack the floor and reveal a coffer full of grave goods.  Yay, loot!  He got to add his Sense Value to the roll.  I mistakenly thought you had to try to loot an item and then sell it to boost your wealth, rather than trying to raise it right then and there.

He pulled a grappling hook from his provisions and used it and the swinging blade from the trap to pull the crypt door open.  He narrated that the shrine was outside.  Since this was just a quick playtest I didn't fight it, but keeping your players in a specific chapter against their will seems really hard.

In the shrine he escaped a ghostly priest who tried to possess him, fought and killed a Big Snake, and shifted the heavy altar to get at the treasure below.  He had Virility 1, so he tried to loot a dagger of +2 damage, but failed to get it from both the snake and altar.  I had intended this to be the end, but he didn't want to go home empty handed.  He invented a zombie priest, leaving me scrambling to convert the daolite from the 'Fungus' adventure into a passable zombie.  That fight took forever, since he couldn't Knife Vital Organs on a zombie and it was one big mass of damage resistance.  Once again he tried to loot the dagger and failed.  At this point he was kind of discouraged and also had to go, so we stopped.

Questions

When a player uses a sensory type ability to describe finding or seeing something, what kind of difficulty is good to assign?  I usually went with Easy if I had no ideas myself for a scene I wanted to set, and Medium if he was trying to get himself out of trouble or I wanted to limit his successes so  the scene would be less completely detailed.  It still seemed like he got tons of facts, often 4 to 6 (Dungeon Exploration 4, Discernment 4 vs Dungeon Level 2, Medium 3).  Did I overpower his skill?

The looting seems pretty rough.  He was rolling 5 dice vs 4 to get his Worth 4 dagger and failed 3 times.  I could easily imagine a party going and slaying a dragon, failing their loot rolls, and coming away with nothing, or at most one thing each, which doesn't jibe with the idea of a great hoard.  How do people handle this?  Could you have a trove grant multiple loot checks?  Is there any way to gain multiple Wealth points at a time, say if you're penniless and then find a big treasure?

He got 18 experience for the adventure (4 for the booby-trap, 5 for prying open the altar since it gave him so much trouble, 4 for the snake, and 5 for the zombie).  Does this sound right for a solo adventure lasting a few hours?  Actually I think I forgot to give him xp for the ghost, which should probably be another 3-4.

We had an inconclusive discussion on how "big" facts could/should be.  I'm still kind of hazy on that.  I suggested that if you wanted a wooden door on the north wall, that would be 3 facts, but reading some of the examples in the rules, that seemed excessive (in one case "a stone slab" was 1 fact, and "with runes on it" was another).  Can anyone offer advice for how much to allow per fact and how that shapes the nature of play?

Other than the looting, everything went great.  It'll take me a little while to figure out the proper balance between adversarialness and playing-along.  We had a lot of fun and my friend interrupted one fact declaration with "okay, fact, I see--damn this is cool".  Hopefully we'll see the further adventures of Whatshisname the Tomb Raider at some point, with some more bugs worked out.

Alex

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Alex,

I don't have my rulebook with me, but here's some answers from memory:

When a player uses a sensory type ability to describe finding or seeing something, what kind of difficulty is good to assign? I usually went with Easy if I had no ideas myself for a scene I wanted to set, and Medium if he was trying to get himself out of trouble or I wanted to limit his successes so the scene would be less completely detailed. It still seemed like he got tons of facts, often 4 to 6 (Dungeon Exploration 4, Discernment 4 vs Dungeon Level 2, Medium 3). Did I overpower his skill?

It sounds like you got it exactly right. Determine the difficulty based off how much control you want as the Donjon Master in the scene. He's got an exceptionally high ability with that, and you were on a low Donjon Level, so lots of successes seems right.

The looting seems pretty rough. He was rolling 5 dice vs 4 to get his Worth 4 dagger and failed 3 times. I could easily imagine a party going and slaying a dragon, failing their loot rolls, and coming away with nothing, or at most one thing each, which doesn't jibe with the idea of a great hoard. How do people handle this? Could you have a trove grant multiple loot checks? Is there any way to gain multiple Wealth points at a time, say if you're penniless and then find a big treasure?

You could split a trove into multiple pools, I suppose. A Level 10 trove could be two level 3, and one level 4 trove, for example. Also, don't you gain Wealth for every success in a loot for wealth roll, or am I off my nut?

Your XP sounds great.

As for "fact size," that's really a social contract issue. I'd count "wooden door on north wall" as three, and still count stone slab as one, as stone slab is one piece of rock, and a door is something useful that isn't always made of wood.

[kalyptein]

You could split a trove into multiple pools, I suppose. A Level 10 trove could be two level 3, and one level 4 trove, for example.

Ooo, or even better, maybe let the players decide.  Do you want one shot at something really nifty, or do you want to fill out your inventory with several more basic items?  I like it.

Also, don't you gain Wealth for every success in a loot for wealth roll, or am I off my nut?

Do you?  Oops, didn't catch that.  Thanks.

Alex