Donjons (and Dragonnes)

[Rich Forest]

Hi—I'm new to the forum, having started lurking around a month ago following the links in the back pages of Sorcerer and Sorcerer & Sword.  I got a kick out of Donjon when it first appeared, and since then I've managed to play it three times—twice as DM and once as a player.  Each time went splendidly.

The two times I acted as DM, we did our best to go red box with it.  We used the seven character classes from D&D and set the game right in the Known World.  I went in with zero preparation.  Luckily, I didn't need it.  It was the middle of the night, so we jumped right in.  Using the character classes, we were able to make characters and start play in about ten minutes.  

Here are the characters:

Malek the Red-eyed (Thief)
Description:  Malek is a thin, unshaven man wearing slick black leather armor.  He has an eye patch over one eye, and the other eye is bloodshot red.
Main Skill: Burglary (we used this for stealth, climbing, and dealing with locks)
Supporting Skills: Find/Remove Traps, Hear Noise, Pickpocket, Backstab

Cleric Jon Pole (Cleric)
Description:  Cleric Jon Pole is a white haired, aging cleric wearing all white robes.
Main Skill: Prayer Magic (Words= Create, Destroy, Air, Strength)
Supporting Skills: Turn/Smite Undead, Fight with Blunt Weapons, Heal, Preach

Solomon Ares (Fighter)
Description:  A tall, powerful black man with a shaven head, Solomon Ares wears white robes beneath his chain mail and carries a great axe.  
Main Skill: Fight
Supporting Skills: Endure Damage in Combat, Break Things Apart (only works on objects), Tactics and Leadership, Shield/Weapon Parry (passive defense—this was before I read the possible solution to the shield question in the forums)

Because it was already 3:30 a.m., I just let them begin with some basic weapons and armor.  We counted on the provisions save to take care of the rest.  Then I dropped them right into the dungeon:

"You live in the city of Threshold, in the Grand Duchy of Karmeikos.  Recently, reports have been surfacing of raids of vile humanoids against trading caravans just beyond the keep on the borderlands.  These humanoids are said to reside in a warren of caves in the wilderness.  Now you stand before those caves (here I took out a blank grid and just drew the outline of the cave complex) that the locals have come to call the 'Caves of Chaos.'  

As GM, I just had some vague ideas from old memories of the module—enough to sketch the outline of the outside of the caves and to know it was filled with warring humanoids.  I figured I'd let the players take care of the rest, so I asked them "Why are you here?"

Cleric Jon Pole: "I'm in it for the money."  

Malek: (in a gritty voice) "I feel that I can trust a man like Cleric Jon Pole, and I am here because I heard that somewhere in these caves the Legendary Dagger of Assassins can be found."  

Solomon Ares:  "I run an orphanage in the city.  I'm here to find funds for the children."

They really threw themselves into it, and characterization came fast through dialogue.  Cleric Jon Pole was an aging church patriarch, and he spoke calmly and always reassured his companions.  But yes, he was in it for the money.  Solomon Ares started out as the strong, silent type, and ended up searching for some very creatively named magic items.  Malek's player really used his hear noise to drive forward and direct, and the other players played well with what he created.  They fought goblins, mostly, and a torturer orc.  Malek discovered (1 success) a mysterious, deep well.  He set it up to make it a wondrous, unknown thing, giving it plenty of potential.  Raising the bucket and tasting it carefully, Cleric Jon Pole then determined that it was filled with (1 success)... water, setting us all into an uncontrollable laughing jag.  As they headed up the tunnel, Cleric Jon Pole shouted out, "Is there anybody out there?" but failed his roll.  Before I could narrate my (2) successes, however, further up the tunnel, Malek triggered (3 successes) a secret door that spun around, putting him in a torture room with a whip-wielding orc.  Cleric Jon Pole then (1 success) triggered the door, spinning it back around putting him in the room and Malek back in the hallway.  Finally, Solomon Ares just broke down the wall, hitting a pressure crack with his axe and using his break stuff apart skill to good effect.  After the encounter with the Orc, Cleric Jon Pole's failed roll from earlier came back to haunt the party, as an NPC thief backstabbed the party thief.  After defeating (and looting) him, Malek listened once more, and (1 success) heard a rumbling up ahead.  Cleric Jon Pole (1 success) realized at once that it was coming their way.  It turned out to be a goblin war cart with goblin archers.  

The next week, we returned to the caves of chaos with a slightly different party—Malek returned, as did Solomon, but they left Cleric Jon Pole to tend the camp and their friend Goldenaxe the Dwarf joined them.  

Goldenaxe (Dwarf)
Description:  A bearded little madman with an ax, of course.
Main Skill: Resist Magic (added to saves against any magical effects)
Supporting Skills: Hack and Smash (use axes and hammers in combat), Battle Hardy (take damage in combat), Earth/Underground Awareness, Smith

This adventure included kobolds, an invisibility potion that Goldenax hurled against the wall, revealing a room full of gold, and a failed attempt by Solomon to break the wall that set forth a cave in, dropping the characters into a room below.  Goldenaxe's player was fearless in narrating dangers for the characters, using his "Underground Awareness" skill to cause the cave-in and then again to create a fire-breathing dragon in the room they fell into.  I made the dragon too tough (it was a dragon, you know) but just as I was beginning to fear a slaughter Goldenaxe crawled down the great beast's gullet and started hacking his way out from the inside.  Oh, and it was during this adventure that Malek managed to find the "Legendary Dagger of Assassins," which he determined caused "paralyzing dread" at 2 dice.  Yup, just 2 dice.

In addition to all this, I was able to play a Diablo inspired game of Donjon.  The player of Malek the Red-Eyed was the DM this time.  The characters were:

Christoph Valentin, a member of a caste of demon hunters
Asmedos, the half-demon from the 9th level of hell
Thaddeus Scourge, the white necromancer, who has a grudge against evil

These characters took longer to make because we were making more choices rather than just using D&D classes.  Once we got started, however, we enjoyed using the characters we'd created.  This time we actually started in town, and all of us had terrible rolls and ended up getting almost no equipment—Christoph got a whip, and that was it.  As a necromancer with the words "eye, rot, bone, and flesh," I was able to put together some interesting spells.  Early on, Thaddeus began plucking the eyes out of corpses to use as material components.  In fact, looking back, I unintentionally gave myself a limitation.  I only used my spells if the materials were there.  It just didn't seem right for a necromancer to create bone and flesh.  No, I needed to find some to work with.  

Some comments:
All in all, we had a lot of fun each time, something you might guess since we keep playing it.  There were a couple of things we noticed (I apologize ahead of time if any of this has already been covered).  

Player authoring skills:  It might be worth mentioning in the game rules that players should think about an authoring skill when they are creating their characters.  They are so much fun, and so important to the game, but it's easy to overlook them when first creating characters.  We ended up giving the seven character classes from D&D the following authoring skills:
Cleric: Detect Evil
Fighter: Break Things Apart (you narrate what's on the other side if it's a door, wall, etc)
Magic User: Detect Magic
Thief: Near Noise, Find/Disarm Traps, and Burglary (for locks)
Dwarf: Earth/Underground Awareness
Elf: Forest/Wilderness Awareness and Notice Hidden and Secret Things
Halfling: Hear Noise  

Some of these are broad, even though we've used secondary skill slots for all of them.  We decided that was ok because the broader they are, the more fun they add to the game.  With D&D, the nice thing was how the specific skills of the classes let them create adventures that play to their own specialties.  Clerics can Turn/Smite Undead, and having the Detect Evil skill lets the Cleric player make sure there ARE undead about.  

Broad/Narrow Combat Skills:  We weren't sure just how much this distinction matters as it stands.  I can narrate my character as only being able to use axes, but the game itself doesn't care if I'm using and Axe or a sword (size of the weapon determines damage) and I can make sure that when I'm searching for a magic weapon, I find one in the right variety.  This made us wonder what the advantage was for a fighter to use up a broad skill on fight, when the dwarf can fight just as well.  Of course, the fighter can use missile weapons.  We ended up playing around with it, and allowing the broad fighter skill to do more.  Basically, there are five different combat skills: Initiative, Attack, Damage, Passive Defense, and Soak.  There are two broad types of weapons: Melee and Ranged.  And there are three sizes of weapons, plus the blunt vs. edged distinction.  Now, granted, we got pretty broad with a lot of things, but we broke up our D&D classes something like this:

Cleric: Fight with blunt weapons (this works only for Attack)
Fighter: Broad—Fight (Melee and Ranged, Initiative and Attack)
Magic-user: Magic Missile (Ranged Attack, DMG is as +0 weapon)
Thief: Backstab (Melee and Ranged, but only from hiding/behind)
Dwarf: Hack and Smash (Axes and Hammers only, Attack)
Elf: 2 skills: Swordplay (sword only, attack) and Archery (bows, attack)
Halfling: Fight with Small Weapons (Ranged or Melee Attack, must be small)

The purpose of this was to give the Fighter that extra edge, which, combined with his ability to Endure Damage in Combat, makes him pretty good at what he does.  We also gave the Magic-user "Magic Missile" as a skill, so he had a combat ability that was magical but didn't require gathering energy, etc.

While we're talking about equipment, we also limited our classes to certain types of armor.  That's because we were doing D&D, of course.  We did it kind of informally—there's nothing on the character's we made that says they couldn't wear any armor.  If we needed to formalize it, we'd probably just connect it to combat skills somehow.  The official rule seems to be that there are no armor limitations for any classes.  We used that as the rule with Diablo, and I'm not sure that anybody really had a preference.  It might be worthwhile to mention the rule explicitly, however, as it is something that some people will wonder about.

Enjoying Donjon very much,

Rich

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Wow, Rich - I think you've played Donjon as many times as I have now. :)

It sounds like you're having a great time with it, which is exciting. I really love the parts of your play where player narration took over. I saw your note about how important it is to let players know about these skills, and have added a bit about that in the Character Creation chapter of the new rules:

The option to choose any abilities you want for your character may be daunting. Remember that successful actions will let you narrate what happens in the game, and plan your abilities around that.

If you chose an ability like "Hear Noise," you could use this at any time, not just when your GM called for a roll. A successful roll would allow you to create an encounter by saying that you hear footsteps behind you,  the sound of a giant eagle in the trees, or the scraping of a huge worm ahead in a tunnel.

If you chose an ability like "Find Secret Doors," you could use this to find a short-cut around big trouble in a dungeon, or even use it to find a way out of a combat that's not going your way.

It sounds like you had no problem making up an adventure, which was the part of the game I worried most about.

On other topics:

Broad/Narrow Combat Skills:  We weren’t sure just how much this distinction matters as it stands.  I can narrate my character as only being able to use axes, but the game itself doesn’t care if I’m using and Axe or a sword (size of the weapon determines damage) and I can make sure that when I’m searching for a magic weapon, I find one in the right variety.  This made us wonder what the advantage was for a fighter to use up a broad skill on fight, when the dwarf can fight just as well.  Of course, the fighter can use missile weapons.  

I see your point on this. It's really a device the GM has to use against the players, or it will turn into the problem you describe. I know this isn't in the rule-set I put out on the web, but enemies can have "free equipment facts." That is - if the GM states that the orc has a scimitar when he's fighting you, you can look for that scimitar for free after combat. You can even look for a magic scimitar, and only pay the amount you need for the magic, not for the weapon. This makes finding a different sort of weapon much harder and inconvenient for the player.

In addition - the GM can do his best to take weapons from characters. Someone with "Beat People with Weapons" as a main skill won't be affected, as they can pick up anything lying around.

The new weight rules for armor and weapons should have some effect, as well.

Thanks for playing Donjon, and I look forward to hearing more from you. Welcome to the Forge!

[James V. West]

That seals it for me. Since I have a new realtionship with some actual players, I'm playing Donjon. Maybe after the next TQB session, I'll squeeze in a quickie Donjon adventure.

Thanks for the great post.

[Rich Forest]

I like the stuff about player authoring skills that you've added.  It makes me feel good to know our gaming can contribute to the game itself as well as our  own enjoyment:)

It sounds like you had no problem making up an adventure, which was the part of the game I worried most about.

I've been thinking about this.  In fact, when I look over what we did... I didn't actually make up an adventure.  The players made pretty much every single encounter, and I just reacted.  This is pretty common stuff for me, I usually don't prepare much more than an idea and a starting point.  What would have made this easier, however, would be example monster stats.  I've actually started statting up some of the monsters I know I might need--if you'd like to see any of them, let me know.  They're all of the "humanoid" variety so far.  Soon I'll be adding the Rust Monster, however.  That little guy--I always hated him in the original D&D game.  He didn't make any (simulationist) sense to me.  Now I understand him.  He's a gamist moster, has been from the beginning.  And a valuable one, at that.

What I did do (and it worked) for monsters was set them up based on a rating.  I treated Goblins as rating 4 monsters.  Unless I had a reason to change something up or down, I just rolled 4 dice.  I did the same thing with the Orc, and later, with the Dragon (too tough, at 15 dice, but the players did damage to reduce its soak and once the Dwarf was inside, well, it had no armor...).  Actually, this worked pretty well, and I'll use it again.  I just need to work out what it means-- how tough is a rating 4 monster (not very).  How tough is a 15 (too tough).  

I liked the adventure creation tips from Donjon, actually, and I suspect I'll actually use them more in the future.  With the Caves of Chaos/Keep on the Borderlands I just didn't need them as much.  I think I would have been in trouble (or at least, under more pressure) if the players hadn't come through and authored so actively.  I'm going to have more ready for them next time, just in case.  Of course, we've only begun to explore the caves... I can't wait to find out what's lurking in its depths.

Rich