Frog God Games - Tome of Adventure Design.pdf - [Dungeons and Dragons] - dre4mwalker

A comprehensive adventure-creation sourcebook for

Swords & Wizardry and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

By Matthew J. Finch

The answer to life, the universe and everything.

Developers

Matt Finch and Bill Webb

Layout and Graphic Design

Charles A. Wright

Producers

Bill Webb & Charles A. Wright

Calligraphy and Cartography

Matt Finch

Editing

Russell Cone

Special Thanks

To my wife Madison, my kids Tessa, Thomas, and

Atticus, to the forum fans at swordsandwizardry.

com, to Scot Hoover, as another inveterate table-

creator, and to the old-school warriors at knights-

n-knaves.com. And also to the various authors of

sword & sorcery iction to whom these tables owe

their fundamental inspirations: Michael Moorcock,

Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft,

R.E. Howard, Fritz Leiber and many others.

Cover Art

Rowena Aitken

Interior Art

David Day, Brian LeBlanc, Veronica Jones,

Erik Lofgren, Jim Nelson, Mark Smylie,

Tyler Walpole, UDON Studios

www.talesofthefroggod.com

www.swordsandwizardry.com

respective artists or by Frog God Games. “Mythmere” and “Mythmere Games” are trademarks of

Matthew J. Finch; “Frog God Games” and “FGG” are trademarks of Frog God Games. Books One

and Two were previously published by Black Blade Publishing, 2009.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................... 4

Creativity ....................................... 4

Book Three: Dungeon Design

Introduction to Book Three .................................. 126

The Creative Process ............................................127

Part One: Basic Elements of Adventure Design ..129

Part Two: Designing a Dungeon Adventure ........135

Mysteries and Clues ......................................... 135

The Map ........................................................... 149

Tricks ............................................................... 186

Traps ................................................................. 217

Dungeon Dressing ............................................231

Miscellaneous Useful Tables ...........................236

List of Tables (Book Three) ................................. 258

Book One:

Principles and Starting Points

Introduction to Book One ........................................5

Adventure Design: General Principles ..................... 6

Locations ..................................................................8

Missions .................................................................15

The Villain’s Plan ................................................... 27

Concluding Remarks ..............................................53

List of Tables (Book One) ......................................53

Book One Index ..................................................... 53

Book Four:

Non-Dungeon Adventure Design

Book Two: Monsters

Introduction to Book Two ......................................54

Part One: Monster Types ........................................ 55

Part Two: General Monster Tables ....................... 105

List of Tables (Book Two) ...................................124

Book Two Index ................................................... 125

Introduction to Book Four ...................................260

Aerial Adventures ................................................261

Castles and Ruins .................................................264

Cities and Settlements ..........................................267

Planar and Alternate Worlds ................................283

Underwater Adventures .......................................287

Waterborne Adventures ........................................ 288

Wilderness Adventures ........................................290

General Wilderness Tables ............................... 290

Desert Adventures ............................................ 295

Forest Adventures ............................................ 297

Hill and Mountain Adventures ......................... 298

Swamp Adventures .......................................... 300

Complete List of Tables .......................................301

Consolidated Index ..............................................304

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

A fantasy adventure game, at its very heart, is about developing an

open-ended “story” of the characters. The referee is in charge of the

fantasy world, and the players direct the actions of their characters in

that fantasy world. Neither the referee nor the group of players has

complete control over what’s going to happen, and the result is an

evolving set of surprises for both the referee and the players. Unlike

the players, as the referee and creator of the game world, most of your

“work” is done ahead of time. To some degree or other, you have to

create the groundwork for the adventure before the game starts. Even

though no battle plan survives contact with the enemy – and if you’re

an experienced referee you know exactly what I mean – the game has

to start … with a starting point. This might just be a vague set of ideas,

or it might be as complex as a set of maps with a detailed key and well

thought-out encounters for the players to run into.

The Ultimate Book of Adventure Design is organized as a series of

“books,” each one providing resources at every step of the way. The vast

majority of the content of each book is made up of random generation

tables that I’ve created over a quarter of a century (sigh) for my own

use. I should say up front that these are tables for deep design – in

other words, most of them are too long, and contain too many unusual

or contradictory entries, for use on the spot at the gaming table. There

are already many excellent books of tables for use on the ly; the tables

in these books are different. They work best as a tool for preparation

beforehand, providing relatively vast creative resources for browsing

and gathering, rather than quick-use tables designed to provide broad,

fast brushstrokes. My shorter tables tend to deliver cryptic results

designed to shock the reader’s creativity into illing in the gaps, whereas

my longer tables are unusably vast for easy random generation, being

designed to shock the reader’s creativity into operation by presenting a

sea of possibilities.

Creativity

Creativity is the ultimate heart of adventure design; producing a

masterpiece adventure involves many interlocking skills and talents,

but the foremost talent of all is the ability to tap into the depths of

the fantastic imagination and draw forth something startling and

unexpected. Creativity is not an easy skill to teach, but if you’re

reading this book it’s a fair assumption that you’re not in the ranks of

those who truly have dificulties with creative thought. You don’t need

to learn the basics, and you might not even need much help with the

highest reaches of the art. Either way, you know what I mean when I

say that there’s a mindset, a condition of openness, in which you’re on

ire – and when it’s not there, you’re basically screwed. How do you

get into that mindset, where you can grab ideas from thin air and whisk

them together with seeming effortlessness?

Virtually every prominent adventure author I’ve talked with about this

question has answered it in the same way. A creative adventure begins

with a visual image of some kind. It might be dreamlike or hazy; it

might seem, at irst, to be nothing of consequence; or it might leap forth,

demanding to be drawn into writing. But it’s quite clear that a visual

image is the most common form of “irst inspiration” for an adventure.

In my conversations with Rob Kuntz (one of the foundational authors

of Dungeons & Dragons) about creativity, Rob was quite deinite

that visual imagery is key to his own irst inspirations. Harley Stroh,

author of a number of modules for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line by

Goodman Games, agrees. In an interview with Bruce Cordell (Return to

the Tomb of Horrors, Sunless Citadel) on montecook.com, Bruce was

asked about his inspiration for the key monster in one of his modules.

The answer? “There was this old horror movie I saw years ago….”

So, how do we achieve these visual images – “the force that through

the green fuse drives the lower,” as Dylan Thomas might say? And

it’s a question cutting to the whole value of this book itself. After all,

if visual imagery is the key to creativity, isn’t the ideal creative tool

going to be a book of images and pictures rather than a book of random

generation tables?

In other words, if I may put my own spin on Einstein’s famous quote,

one visual image doesn’t lead directly to another visual image except

through some other process. The key to creating unique visual images is

to tap that other process – and that other process is the manipulation and

recombination of concepts. Let’s look at another quote from Einstein:

“The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in

thought are certain signs and more-or-less clear images which can

be ‘voluntarily’ reproduced and combined. The above-mentioned

elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type.”

– Albert Einstein

Again, we’ve got visual images mentioned in the creative mix

Einstein describes; but notice that the key factor is the combination

of “signs” and “images.” Deep creativity is a cloud-realm of diverse

symbols and images; combining and diverging, seeking the unforeseen.

And so, in fact, we reach the driving force of this book. To the fullest

extent possible, the tables in the Ultimate Book of Adventure Design are

designed to simulate the cloud-realm of deep creativity; to provide an

entry into the disembodied mix of symbols, portents and images that

populate the subconscious mind; to jar the reader – quite artiicially

– into the creative cloud. And thereby to create a pathway so that the

mind may follow more easily into this strange realm. It’s no accident

that the irst cover illustration for this volume focuses upon opening a

doorway.

With all that said, how does one best use this book to enter the realm

of deep creativity? Here’s my advice. First off, whatever results you roll

with your dice, treat the results not as words, but as pictures, abstracts,

concepts, symbols, or meanings. Treat each result as a half-formed idea,

ready for combination with others – leave it to drift in your mind while

you’re accumulating more random results. And then, once something

starts to coalesce – stop rolling dice! Daydream for a minute, waiting to

see if you’ve got something, and if it isn’t there yet, then start browsing

through the tables looking for whatever “second part” of that idea is

going to click it into shape.

No.

Drift, and find.

“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of

consciousness that created them.” – Albert Einstein

BOOK

ONE:

Principles and

Starting Points

Table of Contents

Introduction to Book One ........................................................................................................ 6

Adventure Design: General Principles ..................................................................................... 6

Locations .................................................................................................................................. 8

Missions ................................................................................................................................. 15

The Villain’s Plan ................................................................................................................... 27

Concluding Remarks .............................................................................................................. 53

List of Tables .......................................................................................................................... 53

Index ...................................................................................................................................... 53

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