Friday Fantasy: Just A Stupid Dungeon

Just A Stupid Dungeon is pointless. It is also a dungeon published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. It is suitable for use with other retroclones. It is also a dungeon which can be played by characters of any Level. It is a dungeon which is located in the default setting for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying of the early to mid-seventeenth century. It is though, easy to drop into almost any setting. It is a dungeon in the style of a death trap dungeon with not a lot of death traps. It is a plain dungeon in comparison to the tone of some titles for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. It is an exercise in trap design by the author, James Edward Raggi IV. It is potentially a means to really overturn the status quo of a Referee’s campaign. It is all those things, and still, Just A Stupid Dungeon is pointless.

Just A Stupid Dungeon does not even come with an introduction. It promises and delivers a dungeon without anything in the way of a backstory, setting, or context. The nearest it gets to that is the fact that local children have been warned not to touch the key in the door to the dungeon entrance lest they drop down dead. Instead, it starts at the door to the dungeon and goes from there. Inside, the complex consists of several similar rooms around a central hall. The hall consists of just a statue and a lectern, both holding valuable treasure. However, getting to either is unlikely to be certain given the surprisingly bouncy flooring of the hall and both treasures being destroyed is more likely. The surrounding rooms are all identical bar the nature of the traps they contain, most of which have an elemental theme. By the time the Player Characters have set off and experienced survived two or more, then they should have an idea how each room works. Here the designer gets to play with deep water, fire, light, darkness, and more, and in the main, not in a way that will necessarily kill the Player Characters. They will be hurt and they will be imperilled and they will be punished.

Just A Stupid Dungeon involves almost no combat and despite it being set in a tomb, there are no undead. Instead, it is built around traps and the designer playing around with time. There are traps in the complex, itself consisting of twenty-four locations—less if the repetitious nature of some of the doors is taken into account—that will really twist the continuity and confluence and the causality of the campaign. One trap in the short term and one trap in the long term. These traps are fantastic in their scope and repercussions and the effects of long-term trap will effectively undo a campaign. They are brilliant in their simplicity and capacity for entertainment, though more for the Referee than her players and their characters.

Physically, Just A Stupid Dungeon is clean, tidy, easy to read, and comes with a clear map.

Just A Stupid Dungeon can just be dropped into a setting and left there. It does nothing, it is inert. It awaits the arrival of the Player Characters. Of course, the Referee is free to add context, detail, and backstory to entice the Player Characters to investigate further. Or indeed, not. The Referee could drop it into a session and run it as is, and that is essentially what Just A Stupid Dungeon is designed as—a scenario that can be run without any fuss or mess. Once the Player Characters do penetrate the halls of the not-tomb in Just A Stupid Dungeon, rewards will be few and the punishments harsh, all in response to the curiosity of the players and their characters. Ultimately, Just A Stupid Dungeon is pointless, but if the Player Characters do push through to the end, the effects of the final trap will be entertainingly disruptive.

Friday Fantasy: The Obsidian Anti-Pharos

In the year of our lord, 1631, a strange island came to be on the coast of the city of Plymouth, in the fair county of Devon, where none had stood before. From all around it could be seen, far and wide, for a great light shone from atop a lighthouse that stood at very centre of the strangely circular isle. When sailors saw the light, their only thought was to sail their ships until they beach them upon the shores of that very island, and soon there was not one ship at sea for many miles to see. The merchants of the city did rain much in the way of complaints, for the light was clearly a danger to their livelihoods and did raise fair sum with which to reward brave adventurers who would venture to the shores of the aberrant isle and seek out the reason for the beguiling light. This is the set-up for The Obsidian Anti-Pharos, a scenario designed for low Level Player Characters for use with Lamentations ofthe Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay. Published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the scenario is primarily a short mini-dungeon that slots easily into the default historical period for Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay—that is, the early modern period of the seventeenth century—and equally, is as easy to adapt to the retroclone of the Game Master’s choice. The dungeon though is tough and unforgiving and if the Player Characters are to survive, they are going to need to have a lot of luck on their side.

The Obsidian Ant-Pharos provides the Player Characters with two options for their getting involved. However, whether offered a reward of a thousand silver or being shipwrecked on the shore of the island itself, what the Player Characters discover is a perfectly round island at the centre of which stands the strange tower, fifty foot tall and apparently cut from one piece of black stone. The thickly wooded island itself is divided into two hemispheres by a barricade, each occupied by a different, but antagonistic tribe. In addition to each tribe hating the other, primarily because of the way it worships the occupant of the tower, Khepegoris, each tribe practises cannibalism and will happily eat any sailor washed up on the shore. Which is just the second problem that the Player Characters has to deal with getting onto the island—the first being withstanding the effects of the hypnotic light beams cast by the type of the tower. (Of course, the aim is the scenario to get to and investigate the tower, but players do object to their characters being pulled about so obviously…) Neither tribe, both descended from the Khepegoris’ servants, can agree on what colour the doors to the tower should be either—one side believes it should blue, the other it should be yellow, and wear wooden masks painted accordingly.

The third big problem that the Player Characters will face is getting into the tower. The doors on the outside—the ones which one tribe wants to paint yellow, the other tribe blue—are false and if anyone touches them, they vanish. This is the fourth big problem. The actual entrance is a hatch in the ground that appears at random, so initially, the players are going think that there are multiple hatches across the island. The key to the hatch is also missing (sort of). The Game Master will definitely need to drop some hints as to how the Player Characters might find the clues to getting into the tower. That fourth big problem remains in the meantime, because when a Player Character touches either of the false doors, not only does he vanish, but reappears on a platform in a room, surrounded by water (but which is actually potent acid) with a door by the wall, some forty feet away. This is the tower prison. It is left up to the player’s ingenuity to work out exactly how his character is going to get out of the situation, but the fourth big problem is not the true nature of the problem. Instead, it is the fact that it separates the Player Characters from each other and splits the party. Touching the false doors on the outside of the tower is not the only method the scenario has of splitting the party by dumping one or more in this prison.

As the Player Characters proceed up the tower, they will encounter a maze, a grotto with a bejewelled alligator-shaped automaton, a bed chamber, and more. There is a clue to be found to how to proceed through the maze, but beyond that? The tower has very much been built to dissuade visitors and intruders and so any attempt to move forward upon the part of the Player Characters will be down to guess work as there are no clues whatsoever. For example, the bejewelled alligator-shaped automaton contains two keys, one of which will open the door to the next room. Pull that one out and the Player Character will be fine, but pull the other out and the Player Character loses a limb. There is no way of knowing which is the right key. In effect, The Obsidian Anti-Pharos shares elements of the death-trap dungeon a la S1 The Tomb of Horrors, but with less of a reliance on puzzles. Plus, Khepegoris returns and is really not very happy about anyone having been meddling in his home. How exactly he returns is unlikely to turn out well for at least one Player Character…

Which leaves the fifth and final big problem for the Player Characters—what do they do about Khepegoris if he does return? He need not return, that being down to Player Character invention, but if he does, Khepegoris is very much of a higher Level than they are and they unlikely to pose a real threat to him. He may even reward them for bringing him back to life. If he stays, his research will remain a regular threat to local shipping, so the Player Characters may be back again, this time to kill him—if they can. Ultimately, the best outcome for the Player Characters is not to summon him at all—inadvertently or otherwise, as his presence will radically alter the campaign.

Physically, The Obsidian Anti-Pharos is laid out white on black and has solid artwork and cartography. Unfortunately, the editing is slipshod, and the result is the scenario feels rushed in places.

The Obsidian Anti-Pharos does have its moments—the interaction and roleplaying with either of the two tribes should prove entertaining and watching the players come up means to escape the acid pool prison should prove either inventive or frustrating. Yet the end result is underwhelming, a dissatisfying death-trap dungeon that does not seem to reward the players and their characters for their guesswork and is likely to end in an exercise in frustration for both.

Tomb of the Warden

Doom on the Warden is a scenario for Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures on a Lost Starship. The first Science Fiction roleplaying game and the first post-apocalypse roleplaying game, Metamorphosis Alpha is set aboard the Starship Warden, a generation spaceship which has suffered an unknown catastrophic event which killed the crew and most of the million or so colonists, and left the ship irradiated and many of the survivors and the flora and fauna aboard mutated. Some three centuries later, as Humans, Mutated Humans, Mutated Animals, and Mutated Plants, the Player Characters, knowing nothing of their captive universe, would leave their village to explore strange realm around them, wielding fantastic mutant powers and discovering how to make use of the fantastic devices of the gods and the ancients that is technology, and ultimately learn of their enclosed world. Originally published in 1976, it would go on to influence a whole genre of roleplaying games, starting with Gamma World, right down to Mutant Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game – Triumph & Technology Won by Mutants & Magic from Goodman Games. And it would be Goodman Games which brought the roleplaying game back with the stunning Metamorphosis Alpha Collector’s Edition in 2016, and support the forty-year old roleplaying game with a number of supplements, many which would be collected in the ‘Metamorphosis Alpha Treasure Chest’.

Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Doom on the Warden is a special scenario. Written by James M. Ward, the designer of Metamorphosis Alpha, it is intended to be played using between six and eight characters with plenty of play experience behind them and plenty of scavenged equipment and artefacts. It can be played as a convention scenario and there are guidelines towards that end, but Doom on the Warden is definitely a scenario which experienced and long-time players of Metamorphosis Alpha will get the most out of. This is primarily for three reasons and why the scenario is so special. First, the scenario takes place on the fabled Level Zero, the equivalent of a lost Xanadu or Atlantis where some, all, or even none of the answers might be found as to exactly what is going on aboard the Starship Warden. Second, in exploring this Level Zero and discovering its secrets, one potential outcome is that Doom on the Warden could set the Game Master’s campaign on an entirely different course—literally and figuratively. Third, Doom on the Warden is inspired by another scenario all together—S1 Tomb of Horrors.

Published in 1978, and more recently in the 2013 Dungeons of Dread and Tales from the Yawning Portal from 2017, S1, Tomb of Horrors was designed by E. Gary Gygax and has always had the reputation of being the ultimate ‘Deathtrap Dungeon’, being filled with puzzles and traps which when combined with a seeming random factor makes it a challenge that is almost impossible to beat. It would be reprinted multiple times, receive a boxed sequel in the form of Return to the Tomb of Horrors, and its legendary status would ensure that it appeared at number three in Dungeon #116’s “30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time” (November, 2004). S1 Tomb of Horrors was always intended to present a challenge to the most experienced of players and James M. Ward has taken the same approach to Doom on the Warden. It is designed to challenge the players of Science Fiction roleplaying games, presenting difficult situations and fearsome opponents, but is different to S1, Tomb of Horrors in a number of ways. Obviously, it is a Science Fiction rather than a fantasy adventure—although buildings and bunkers to be found in the scenario could lend it the description of being a Science Fiction ‘dungeon bash’, but the puzzles and traps to found on Level Zero of the Starship Warden are less random and less arbitrary, and there is not the feeling that there is with S1, Tomb of Horrors that the Game Master—and thus E. Gary Gygax—is trying to kill his players’ characters. Lastly, where the title of S1, Tomb of Horrors suggested that as a scenario it was a combination of horror and fantasy, and was not, the title of Doom on the Warden does not suggest that it is a combination of Science Fiction and horror, but actually is. Doom on the Warden takes its Player Characters from megalophobia to nyctophobia to triskaidekaphobia to phobophobia to simply a sense of quiet dread…

Whether through discovery of their own or learning of it through a myth or legend, perhaps imparted by a tribal shaman, Doom on the Warden begins with the Player Characters at the entrance to ‘heaven’, an engineering hatch through which rises a great chimney, ascending to the home of the Ancients. Inside they discover several bodies of the Ancients—perhaps cast out of Heaven?—and as the chimney turns into a walkway, the Player Characters find themselves seemingly in a land of the giants, a forest of Brobdingnagian proportions, filled with giant trees, hornets the size of fists, and beasts such as rabbits and squirrels large enough to become beasts of burden. As with other levels on the Warden, Level Zero is a large oval shape, approximately eighteen miles across from the bow to the stern and fourteen miles from port to starboard. The level is divided into three concentric ovals or zones, working inward, a forest of giant willows, a berry plantations laid out with patches of mutant berries, and extensive flower gardens full of glens of mutated flowers, each one of different character and invoking a different sense of fear. There are plenty of encounters to be had in each of these zones, depending upon the direction in the Player Characters want to explore. They are free to wander and there is a table of random encounters included for each zone. Most of these encounters will either be dangerous or hostile, but there are plenty which are not and many of these are quite lightly done, adding an element of humour and roleplaying which nicely contrasts with the dangers and hostilities to be found elsewhere. One thing that the Player Characters will discover is that there is something or someone at work on the level—forestry robots work the forests, others work to restore the damage done by the catastrophe centuries ago, and there are transport devices readily and willing to ferry the Player Characters onward.

Ultimately, the Player Characters should make their way to the centre of the level and the island in the centre of Blume Lake—the latter a nod to the brothers who were early investors and co-owners of TSR, Inc. The island is home to a bunker, a place of the Ancients, and clearly an important one. Numerous robots protect it, but whatever intelligence is at work on the Level, it seems to want help… The final scenes of Doom on the Warden will see the Player Characters either save the Starship Warden or…?

Doom on the Warden is a difficult and challenging adventure. There are numerous encounters which will kill the Player Characters, a few simply by design, many through a player’s foolishness, but most through luck and the roll of the dice. As they proceed across this secret level, the players and their characters will be rewarded if their play is both careful and intelligent—and not just in terms of their characters’ survival, for there are plenty of artefacts and equipment to be scavenged too.

There are two ways in which Doom on the Warden can be run. One is as part of an ongoing campaign, the author suggesting that it be run as the midpoint of such a campaign. By that time, the players and their characters should have accumulated plenty of playing experience of Metamorphosis Alpha and the Starship Warden, as well as their characters having collected numerous artefacts, devices, and weapons of the Ancients. Even then, Doom on the Warden may be too challenging a scenario and its degree of lethality too high, such that it may even be a campaign-ending scenario. If so, it might be better off run towards the end of a campaign, or even as the culmination of campaign, more so because if the Player Characters are successful, the scenario sets the campaign and the Starship Warden in a wholly new (old) direction.

The other way of running the Doom on the Warden is as a tournament scenario much as S1 Tomb of Horrors was originally intended. This is run as a more linear scenario, rather than allowing the Player Characters the freedom to roam, the aim being to get them to Blume Lake and the bunker on the island at its centre. As well as advice on running the scenario, the author includes three sets of different pre-generated Player Characters and their motivations for exploring Level Zero aboard the Starship Warden. For the purposes of tournament play, each of the three groups of pre-generated Player Characters begin play with more knowledge about Level Zero than they would if the scenario is being as part of an ongoing campaign. The first group consists of Pure Strain Humans, members of the Vigilist tribe which dates back to the original Metamorphosis Alpha campaign run by James Ward. The Vigilists and their village were created by E. Gary Gygax and their inclusion is a nice tribute to him alongside the author being inspired by S1 Tomb of Horrors. The aim of the Vigilists is to ascend to Heaven and restore the Starship Warden to its original course. The second group consists of Wolfoids from Epsilon City—as detailed in the supplement of the same name—and like the Pure Strain Humans, their aim on Level Zero is to take control of the ship. Lastly, the third group consists of Mutants, drawn from across multiple levels of the Starship Warden, who also want to take control of the ship, primarily to deny control to the Pure Strain Humans. Almost a fifth of Doom on the Warden is dedicated to character sheets for the three different groups. They consist of eight Mutant, one Pure Strain Human, and six Wolfoid pre-generated character sheets, there being just the one Pure Strain Human character sheet because they are easy to roll up in comparison to Mutants and Wolfoids. Lastly, Doom on the Warden includes three pre-generated Player Characters inspired by backers of the Kickstarter.

Physically, at just forty-eight pages, Doom on the Warden is a nicely presented hardback. Both writing and editing are decent and as you would expect from a title from Goodman Games, the range of artwork is excellent. In particular, Peter Mullen’s double-page spreads inside the front and back covers really capture the scope and scale of the Starship Warden. They, like much of the artwork can be used as handouts when running Doom on the Warden.

If there is an issue with Doom on the Warden, it is perhaps that it is difficult to use, that it has the potential to end a campaign. That though is by design and by inspiration, S1 Tomb of Horrors itself suffering from both issues. Fortunately, Doom on the Warden is very much less arbitrary in its play and its design than S1 Tomb of Horrors. If there is anything missing from Doom on the Warden, it is a gallery of its artwork which the Game Master can use as handouts for her players. 

Doom on the Warden is a fantastic scenario. It is big, it is nasty, it is dangerous, and it has the scope to either end a campaign, whether as a Total Party Kill or as the culmination of an ongoing campaign, or set both campaign and the Starship Warden on a wholly new (old) course. It lives up to its inspiration, S1 Tomb of Horrors, but goes beyond it to have the Player Characters’ actions have an effect upon Level Zero of the Starship Warden, on the Starship Warden itself, and on the campaign, and is better for it. Doom on the Warden is deadly and if the Player Characters are not careful or smart, they will get killed, but not necessarily in as arbitrary a fashion as S1 Tomb of Horrors. Which means that if the Player Characters can succeed and overcome the challenges presented in Doom on the Warden, then both they and their players truly have the right to feel a sense of great accomplishment.