A Guide to Stonehell

Ah, Stonehell. The picture of the stairs got me thinking.

If you can't see that for some reason, the second book of the Stonehell megadungeon is coming out on October 27. That is awesome, and I want to talk about it a bit, having run the first book for a number of sessions and thought about what could be done better.

Presumably Stonehell Dungeon: Into the Heart of Hell will be available both as a PDF and in print-on-demand. I'd recommend getting the PDF (volume 1 PDF), because you can't really run a megadungeon from a perfect bound book. Also make sure you get Supplement One and Supplement Two.

I have had some ideas since I ran it on how I'd actually want the book presented. This is how I'd recommend preparing and running the dungeon.

First, there's the physical preparation of the materials. I'd recommend printing the front matter, the master maps, the monster lists, and the sublevel descriptions – but not the sublevel maps and keys – in a big spiral-bound book. You can get the print-on-demand versions, but a single spiral bound book is going to be easier to reference. Then get the appendices printed on good cardstock, so you can reference them frequently. Then get the two-page spreads printed out on sheets of white 11"x17" cardstock, so each sublevel is one big spread that you can reference while running the game.

Second, go through the sublevel keys with two highlighters. Find every monster and highlight it with one color. Find every treasure and highlight it with the second color. You will want to be able to tell at a glance what is in a room.

Third, get a copy of B2 Keep on the Borderlands. The entrance to Stonehell is located in a canyon almost identical to the one housing the Caves of Chaos in B2. The titular Keep is a solid home base for adventurers, and the wilderness map is perfect for an expanded version of Stonehell's surroundings. the Dragonsfoot index to B2 contains an overwhelming amount of writing that has been done on B2. The Zenopus Archives resource page is a more compact guide, and The Project on the Borderlands is a solid set of enhancements.

Fourth, dig in and make it navigable. As you get familiar with the dungeon, create maps (which may be partly inaccurate or out of date, see the sixth point below) and write out directions that monsters or NPCs can give to PCs. Add in some extra treasure (Stonehell is pretty stingy with the gold stuff) and sprinkle in hints about where it is. The goal here is to encourage play that goes for bigger treasures rather than blundering through every room that Stonehell has to offer. You may want to also discourage players from taking a "typical" bash-in-the-door approach to areas such as the Quiet Halls or Kobold Korners (or later, Monster Dorm) as this can turn into a grind.

Fifth, make it your own. Stonehell is a campaign, not a few sessions, and it cries out for a referee's individual stamp. It needs more treasure, it needs more weird monsters, and it needs sublevels. Take either material you've written, or from other modules, and steal it for Stonehell. If I were to run it again, I'd work in a lot of material from Geoffrey McKinney's Isle of the Unknown and Dungeon of the Unknown. It's fresh, distinctive material that contrasts well with the classic D&D feel that is abundant in Stonehell. Just one example: the "dragon" in level 1A could easily be creature C11 in Dungeon of the Unknown, which has a "breath weapon" consisting of razor-winged butterflies; that would totally change the complexion of the encounter. You can hang a lot of other material on what has been written here.

Finally, make it a living dungeon. The kobolds are a great mechanism for doing this. Throw up "under construction" signs, block off passages that PCs have previously taken, and create a roster of new monsters to move into areas that have been "cleared." Slap fresh coats of paint or have a slime monster create a tunnel that wasn't there before. Especially when PCs choose to spend time away from the dungeon, it should not be the same place when they come back.

One side note: while Stonehell can be run reasonably well in pretty much any system you like, it pays to have a copy of Labyrinth Lord handy, just for reference to the monster descriptions. Stonehell's stat blocks are tight, but they don't list out any special abilities of the various creatures. B/X, and hence Labyrinth Lord, critters are a touch different from those found in non-B/X derived games.

Stonehell is a neat place, and if the first half is any indication the full thing will be worth the work. Michael Curtis has created a huge, coherent dungeon that is a solid basis for a D&D campaign. But it needs to be treated as a collaborative effort; the very style of a megadungeon campaign deserves no less.

Fast and Slow Dungeon Levels

More time running Stonehell and thinking about Blackmoor has me considering a certain principle of dungeon design that I think can be best summarized as "fast" and "slow" levels of megadungeons.

A lot of what we see in the field of published megadungeons are composed of slow levels. I think the reputation of Gygax's early levels (such as the one glimpsed in the photo above) and the general desire to have big maps had a definite influence on this. By a slow level, I mean a level that encourages a party to spend multiple sessions exploring it and finding its secrets. Big levels tend to be slow, but a small level with a lot of rooms and secrets and not many passages down will also be slow. Most sub-levels will be small, but slow, levels.

Fast levels, by contrast, are levels like the first level of Blackmoor. They are designed to encourage the PCs to get through quickly and down to another level. A fast level isn't necessarily a small level; a level with a few big cavernous rooms could be fast if there was nothing in particular to keep the players in full-on exploration mode. Likewise, a level where some local condition makes in-depth exploration difficult or dangerous could be fast.

There is a lot of value in having slow levels; this is where much of the meat of the gameplay will take place. I think the error in modern megadungeon design is an assumption that every level should be slow. We see big intricate maps and think - "I want that in my dungeon." It's understandable. And I think Barrowmaze represents the extreme end: a first level so massive it has its own book. That is a slow dungeon level.

One reason I think good design should lean more towards fast levels in the early parts of the dungeon is that low levels shouldn't always be a grind. The average OD&D piece of jewelry is worth 3,410 gold pieces. There should be jewelry in one out of 15 rooms on level 2 based on the chances of finding jewelry, and there should be 3.5 pieces on average. On average it will be worth 11,935 gold pieces and at 1 GP = 1 XP, that's almost enough for 6 characters to gain a level, more than enough if they have prime requisite bonuses. So in theory, a dungeon should have a single treasure on the second level that first-level PCs can go in, get it, get out, and come back second level. If that second level has 30 rooms, it should have two such treasures, which will get the PCs to third level.

Now, that might require some reconnoitering and planning to extract with a minimum of PC deaths, but that's the nature of the game. I think the ideal pattern for a megadungeon would be a fast first level, a big slow second level, and then two fast third half-levels that each lead to different paths down. After the third level, of course, things begin to be weird.

I have some more ideas about fast levels that I'll get into detail on, hopefully later this week.

Mapping Around Stonehell

A lot of interesting stuff can happen in a megadungeon when players don't have complete maps.  Last night didn't see much new exploration on the first level but it did get to a few new rooms, and wandering encounters did the rest of the work.

The first interesting thing happened when the party found a new area early in the adventure. There is a statue early in Stonehell where a bowl containing 400 SP is nearby, unguarded. If the silver is disturbed, everyone around saves or takes 2d6 damage. The party - which has normally been cautious - rushed in and lost a second-level magic-user to this trap. Which proved a point about caution.

Unquestionably the best moment of the night came after a fight with a group of orcs. First, the orcs had been at a portcullis, which they raised to get to the PCs - who took advantage and took out an orc before meeting combat. Then they won every initiative and got good rolls, slaying four out of the remaining five. The last orc broke morale and surrendered.

All this happened a room away from the Wheel of Fortune, one of the really neat rooms in the first level. The characters debated for a while what they were going to do with the orc, and a new player suggested barricading him in the room with the Wheel. The other players re-inspected the room, found the wheel, and there was a bit more debate - until the new player had the excellent idea of having the orc give the wheel a spin. He did, and the wheel obligingly landed on the "dies immediately" result. You can't script how this stuff is going to turn out.

On the way around the PCs found a pit trap literally 50' from the dungeon entrance that they had never run afoul of before - sometimes I just don't roll a 1 on 1d6. It's a curiosity of old school traps that I really like: even what you think is perfectly safe is occasionally an old, deadly trap. Of course, in this case it only wound up doing 1 damage to the party's new monk, but still.

A bit later, the PCs discovered a love of fire. They actually sussed out a couple of green slime traps and burnt the slime before they would get struck by it; that's quality dungeoneering. One quibble in S&W: green slime isn't listed as having hit dice, so technically it doesn't give experience; I had to overrule that particular bit and give it an arbitrary value. Beating green slime is definitely worthy of experience points.

The last encounter involved wolves and more fire - the wolves had come up at another portcullis, this one keeping the PCs safe for the moment. They successfully used oil as an incendiary, which brings up the second quibble with S&W: I always wind up using Moldvay style rules for this because S&W doesn't cover it.

There are a lot of little things like this in most rulesets; that's what house rules are for. But at this point I've inserted a good chunk of Holmes and Moldvay into my S&W game, between scroll rules, morale rules, and rules for oil as incendiary weapons. It leaves me wondering whether those aren't a better baseline for me than S&W. If I were starting again I'd be tempted to use Labyrinth Lord as suggested.

Stonehell itself has been a quality dungeon. While I think the first level is kind of dense and not "get down already" like Blackmoor is, it's continued to provide an interesting play experience over eight sessions. Or to put it another way: while I wish Stonehell were structurally more interesting, it certainly makes up for any deficiencies with what it puts on its levels. If I were to start over, I'd probably cut it up and move some things around so it's more of a 3-dimensional dungeon and less of a stack of five huge levels (for book 1 anyway).

Once More Unto that Vast Stony Hell

I ran Stonehell again last night. It went well: the PCs hired two clerics in the keep to investigate the Quiet Halls, and they actually turned the Bone Thing which had some of the best treasure thus far. They both failed to turn skeletons, who killed one of the clerics (he was laid to rest properly on one of the biers) and a crypt thing was fought off successfully, though it involved a burning door and some smoke inhalation.

After that, there was some adventurous touching of teleport glyphs, which led them ultimately to the third level and the obelisks that bring fresh air into the dungeon. They were close enough to get up to the stairs, which led (through two hobgoblins) to a part of level one they hadn't seen before. There was a fight with kobold slavers, which killed the other cleric but won the freedom of the slaves, two of whom became new henchmen-types.

Some thoughts:

1. There haven't been PC fatalities in a while. This is for two reasons: they keep making saving throws, and they haven't been outnumbered in a fight since the first session.
2. Swords & Wizardry has an omission from the OD&D rules that I consider pretty serious: magic-users don't have the ability to make scrolls. I've found in running OD&D and Holmes that this really makes M-Us much more useful at low levels, where scrolls are basically bonus spells in return for time and money.
3. I've found that giving +1 to damage for a natural 20 keeps the "critical" hit exciting without overdoing things and making the game too swingy. At higher levels I may increase it but for low levels I'm really liking this as a simple method.
4. The treasure the PCs found was really quite excellent and re-affirmed my feelings on 1GP=1XP. It rewards exploration much more than fighting.
5. I liked how the PCs shifted tack on Stonehell's kobolds once they found the slave market. The whole adventure really reinforced how well Stonehell is actually built as a dungeon, between wondrous things and great monster factionalism.
6. I'm so used to thief skills at level 1 sucking that I was surprised when the party thief actually found a trap on a treasure chest.
7. I've come to hate making up names on the fly. So I've resorted to naming NPCs with interesting names from the backers list in Swords & Wizardry Complete. RIP Kimmo and Diogo. Hopefully Thaldon and Bracton have better luck. Seriously, any good naming lists out there?

Stonehell Again

Finally got to run another game in Stonehell last night. Assorted thoughts follow.

1. The party druid has developed pyromaniac tendencies. This has proven useful so far, but may backfire at some point in the future. (Rimshot.)
2. I used one of the glops (ultramarine) from Geoffrey McKinney's Dungeon of the Unknown in what I feel was an effectively weird encounter. The PCs were intelligently cautious about it and wound up killing it with fire (see point 1 above).
3. Stonehell's layout sometimes makes it hard to find that there's a monster or NPC listed in a particular room. I almost missed some brigands who were hiding in one of the caves, even though I went through my print copy and highlighted every NPC, monster and treasure in the listings. Fortunately they were hiding so that was at least kind of appropriate.
4. I really need a couple pages of quick-reference charts, including NPC names, motivations, pocket change and things to liven up otherwise empty rooms. Thing is, I'd like a fresh one for each game. Maybe I'll start making them and posting them up after each session.

Actual Play: Stonehell

As is typical on a Sunday, some thoughts from last night's Stonehell game.

1. I called for more saving throws in last night's session than I have in quite a while. The party thief was on the receiving end of far too many of them. He somehow managed to fail on all the nonlethal things (nonlethal poison, save or laugh uncontrollably for d6 turns) and nailed the save the one time it would've actually ended him.

2. Still love Stonehell kobolds, who I've been running as a cross of my own description of kobolds with Stonehell's janitorial staff kobolds. They don't actually have any interest in fighting and have become more concerned with extorting the PCs, who they consider unforgivably messy.

3. My players picked up on Stonehell's "Wheel of Fortune" to the point where they talked about "Vanna Whiting" when giving it a spin.

4. The difference between Labyrinth Lord's giant centipedes and Swords & Wizardry's giant centipedes is significant (1/2 HD and nonlethal poison versus 3 HD and lethal poison), and I couldn't understand why Michael had put them in the first level until I double-checked their entry in LL.

5. The party has been very smart about not engaging kobolds or giant rats in combat. This has meant that since the orc fight in the first session (where the orcs got surprise and rang a gong for reinforcements) they have outnumbered their opponents in just about every fight, which explains why nobody's been dying.

Some More Thoughts on Stonehell

Some points after a second session.

1. One of the strengths of the dungeon is the way the factions are laid out. I particularly love the kobolds, who have started to get tired of the PCs leaving dead orcs all over the dungeon. Stonehell's kobolds are pretty much dungeon janitors, which is just fun. One got a bit short tempered and offered to let the PC dwarf, Tybar Thunderaxe, test the trap they were working on. The NPC dwarves are also great, I rolled them again on a wandering monster check. Snorri Broadshoulders is offended that the orcs thought he was allied with Tybar.

2. The party has survived pretty well, largely because they haven't been attacking giant rats, fire beetles or kobolds when they're encountered. Of course that means that they aren't searching those rooms, but it's an interesting trade-off.

3. I may have to sub out the crypt contents chart for the one I used in Dungeon Crawl #2. Level 1B is a bit of a grind.

Overall I'm still really enjoying Stonehell. I'm thinking that things are going to change more as they get further down, both with the existing factions and one or two new twists I intend to introduce. (Not to mention some large-scale reworking in some of the lower floors.)

Side note: ever since I was in high school, I've had a set of these dice from the Middle-Earth card game in the '90s. One of them is always my wandering monster die.

Brief notes: actual play in Stonehell

Some short thoughts on running Stonehell last night.

1. Two encounters with giant rats were neatly avoided by the PCs distracting them with food. I enjoyed that aspect, particularly because actually running that many giant rats in combat would've been either a TPK or a slog.

2. By pure coincidence, in my Holmes game I had run an encounter with a dwarven archaeologist mapping the dungeon, and since the PCs ran into Snorri Broadshoulders I wound up running another in Stonehell. It was also a nice opportunity to give some of the dungeon's history and an impression of it.

3. Stonehell's vision of kobolds is pretty compatible with mine: instead of being little guerrilla warriors, they're the dungeon's janitors. This meant that the first four encounters were non-combat, which was promptly fixed with encounter #5.

4. I love that the orcs in room 16 of level 1A got to ring a gong for backup. Built up a nice sense of dread, because the party had almost won when the orcish reinforcements came. One orc got away, which is always good for potential.

5. A player wound up playing a monk and noted that their powers were fairly imbalanced in S&W Complete. The orc captain in room 14 of level 1A had a philosophical disagreement with this, and used his battle axe to demonstrate that the monk's low hit points balance things out. The party now has a druid.

Overall, I enjoyed how Swords & Wizardry Complete ran, and I thought Stonehell offered some nice encounters. Only the monk died. Stonehell overall is a bit stingy with treasure and I may fix that a little bit as time goes on.

Stonehell as Centerpiece

I'm currently preparing to run a new game that will be using Stonehell as its "tent pole", and I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do with the module. As a referee I have very rarely used modules in the past, and one of the things I've always talked about on this blog is the difficulties of publishing megadungeons. Stonehell was the first OSR megadungeon to come out, and is generally excellent. There are some quadrants I'm less fond of than others - I don't really care much for the "monster dorm" on level 3 - but overall I think it's a very viable basis to use as the center of a campaign.

Any fan of older D&D should know instinctively where Stonehell goes. Level 0, the box canyon with the opening of Stonehell, fits very neatly over the map of the Caves of Chaos from B2 Keep on the Borderlands. I'm not the only one who has noticed this, and following it through the wilderness map of KotB seems to be the perfect place to actually locate Stonehell. As needed I'll be able to expand the wilderness map with other places of interest pilfered from here and there; for instance if the players want to go to a town I have Verbosh.

One of the things I love about Stonehell is how it solved the basic problem of flipping back and forth by putting the room keys on the same two-page spreads as the quadrant maps. With modules it's terribly inconvenient to actually use the room keys when they're separate from the map, and a lot of recent modules don't use the TSR folder format so you often have to flip back and forth between key and map, or photocopy/print the map, or have the PDF open on two screens at once. None is a great solution. Stonehell embraces a modified one-page dungeon template and gets it done, keyed with a fairly minimal level of detail but enough to make Michael Curtis's intentions clear.

The problem with this approach is that Stonehell winds up being a dungeon that fits in a set of 600' x 600' squares. All 5 levels in the first published book basically seem to stack more or less on top of each other, like a giant layer cake of evil. But I've always felt that a megadungeon should look more like this:

Part of my evil plan is to get closer to the above by adding sub-levels into Stonehell. Level 1 is not as high on treasure as I'd like so I intend for there to be another dungeon on the B2 wilderness map (probably Tomb of the Iron God) to allow a "breather" session outside of Stonehell with some XP and gold. And there are several other modules I'd like to use as sub-levels, particularly Rob Kuntz's Bottle City deeper down, and if Allan Grohe ever publishes it, his interpretation of the Black Reservoir from Castle Greyhawk. I'd also like to be able to fit in some of Matt Finch's work, particularly Demonspore which is made to drop into a dungeon.

But the real megalomaniac in me wants to do something much weirder: specifically I want to stick part of Anomalous Subsurface Environment into Stonehell. That's right, a megadungeon in a megadungeon. I'm thinking of accomplishing this by using part of ASE level 2 as a sub-level and then having level 3 instead of a chunk of level 3 in Stonehell (specifically the "monster dorm" quadrant). I think this would benefit both works: ASE is really weird in comparison to Stonehell, and it scratches my science fantasy itch without having to go live in gonzo-land full time. It's going to take a bit of figuring but as I see it I have time.

I'm very interested to see how this goes. The whole concept of using someone else's megadungeon and modifying it really appeals to me, since the base work of building a big underground complex is already done. And I think it fits well with the ice cream cone approach I outlined - you take something that is a good base and you add other flavors to it to make harmony, rather than either going full-on chocolate or vanilla.