Room #12: 2d6 Goblins, 23gp, and 2 Potions of Cure Light Wounds...

[Ashrem Bayle]

I want to talk about how role playing game in general are prepped for. Read any given D&D module, and you'll see the same basic format, a room number and what's in it. That's all well and good, but is there a better/different way?

I've been looking into GURPS, and taking the "thinking outside the box" train of thought, I got off on how RPGs adventures are typically put together, and then started thinking about how I wish there was a way to implement something like the PC/XBox360 game, Oblivion's, radiant AI into a pen-and-paper RPG. For a DM of 17 years, a different way of laying out the adventure is a welcome break from the norm.

Now obviously the advantage a computer has is that it can randomly generate thousands of possibilities in seconds, and you don't have that luxury at the gaming table. But what about a dumbed down version of it?

Here's what I came up with. It's essentially a random encounter table tied to each location in the "dungeon". For example:

Area A & B - Hallway
Check for encounter each time the hall is entered. Check again if characters leave the hall for five minutes and return. If characters stay in hall, check every three minutes. At night, check after an hour, or every thirty minutes.

Bandit                                         Day   /   Night  
Tannis                                           3         --
Joryn                                            4         --
Kallib                                           5         3
Remus                                            6         4
None                                            7-11     5-14
Farber                                         12-13      15
Severn                                         14-15      16
Aeman                                           16        17
Branson                                         17        18
-Roll Twice                                     18        --

This is tagged on a hallway. Simply put, the first time a character enters or looks into the hall, you roll 3d6 to determine if anyone of the Fort's inhabitants are in the hall, and who that person is. If it is an NPC they know to be located elsewhere, reroll or declare it empty. Same if that NPC is dead. (Apply common sense as needed)

For a room:

Area 9 - Training
Two standing training dummies, an archery target board, a rack full of lower quality swords, spears, axes, and maces.

Bandit			          Day   /   Night  
Barnell			            --        3
Dorrien			            --        4
Tannis			            3        --
Joryn				    4        --
Kallib				    5        --
Remus			            6        --
None			           7-9      5-11
Farber			          10-11     12-13
Severn			          12-13     14-15
Aeman			           14	     16
Branson			           15	     17
-Roll 1d3 times		          16-18	     18

This simulates NPCs who are active and don't just sit in their assigned rooms waiting to be killed. Now obviously, and good GM is going to have his NPCs react in a realistic fashion to the sounds of battle down the hall or in an adjacent room, but I think this adds a level of realism when the PCs are trying to sneak into a location, and it helps the DM fairly determine who is where.

Thoughts? Do you have any ideas that would improve upon this system? As a DM, I think it's interesting to let the dice decide how the adventure will play out, removing some of the work, while allowing for more realistic and dynamic situations that wouldn't normally arise in your typical "structured" adventure.

 

[Bad Paper]

I like your setup a lot better than some adventures that say "roll % every hour; there's a 10% chance that a wandering monster happens by. Roll on that table over there." So...there's a 10% chance that someone will be walking down the hallway each hour? WtF?

It's really hard to get a feeling for a living and breathing dungeon. Nearly everything that WotC puts out is a series of static rooms. I do everything I can to have someone down the hall hear what the PCs are doing, just because I am totally sick of the "oh, your party gets the jump on this room, too" way of doing things.

This said, I don't think that your system could work in a published adventure for every room. But I just...might...yoink your tables, because they're a better way of writing up wandering NPCs and monsters.

 

[kenobi65]

This simulates NPCs who are active and don't just sit in their assigned rooms waiting to be killed. Now obviously, and good GM is going to have his NPCs react in a realistic fashion to the sounds of battle down the hall or in an adjacent room, but I think this adds a level of realism when the PCs are trying to sneak into a location, and it helps the DM fairly determine who is where.

I had a module, a few years back, written by Mike Mearls, in which he had developed an "alert system", based on how much noise / commotion / etc. the PCs made as they went through the dungeon. The locations and preparedness of the NPCs in the dungeon were keyed to this system. It was pretty ingenious, and I'm surprised I haven't seen something like it more often.

 

[VirgilCaine]

L2: The Assassin's Knot. Schedules for all the NPCs and when and where they would be.

Edit: Not all of them, but the ones the PCs would likely go after or do something shady around or go after because of the plot.

 

[SgtHulka]

There have been many types of approaches to this I've seen through the years.

TSR Adventure WG4 Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, by Gary Gygax, has a full-on defense of the Temple during which every single denizen rushes to the surface to repel the characters. It starts with a list of initial defenders, and then has a list of "Arriving at the end of 3 Melee Rounds", "Arriving at the End of 4, 5, or 6 Melee Rounds", and so forth. Then, once the characters delve the Temple, it's most likely empty, depending on how quickly they penetrate it, as each defender is assigned to a room from which it came.

The Gamelords' RPG "Thieves Guild", by Richard Meyer and Kerry Lloyd, came with a number of "heist" adventures. One was ripping off a safebox as it travelled through the city from location to location. An itinerary was shown for exactly where the safebox and its guards were at different periods in the day, and had full decriptions of NPC's and geography of each location it visited. The idea was that smart characters would shadow the Safe Box for several days, determining its exact route and routine, and then hit it during a "weak point".

In the FASA magazine "High Passage #2", there's an adventure for Traveller written by Scott Walschlager and Craig Johnson where the characters are stealing a jet fighter from a military base. Every soldier on the military base is given basic stats, and a list is collated, using military time, showing exactly where that soldier is at a specific time and whether that soldier is "on" or "off" duty. For example:
Soldier 1:
0001-0800 Off Duty MC-5 0801-1600 On Duty R-1 1601-2400 On Call MC-9
Means that the soldier is Off Duty in the Main Complex Area 1 (probably sleeping) from midnight to 8 am, On Duty at Runway Area 1 (probably patrolling) from 8 am to 4 pm, and off duty but "On Call" if alarms go off at Main Complex Area 9 from 6 pm to midnight. The list goes on to give this information for the 41 employees/soldiers of the base.

The Solitaire Boardgame "Ambush" has a system much like Kenobi described, where different "Threat Levels" indicate how different enemies will react and how alert they are when they're encountered.