Dungeon Pope and Other Jobs

I was thinking recently about how games struggle with "Why are we Dungeoning? Are we even Dragoning?". Often times the reason to go down there is there's treasure or someone needs "Heroic warriors to clear out the savage barbarians". These aren't great as one is very colonialist which isn't morally good. Gold is fine but at higher level gold starts to have less meaning as you need thousands of gp to level up. Furthermore, I find that player want to pursue their own goals once they are higher level once they better slot into the setting. 


The Goal with a Dungeon job is to find a way to integrate the players into the setting faster and gives better for motivation. Below are 2 examples of a Job. What makes a Job is this:

  1. The Job must have a goal that is relevant to the setting and it has to take multiple sessions. 
  2. The job results in a level up or foreground growth if you don't use levels. 
  3. People react to your Job. Some despise you, Some love you and most do not care.
  4. There has to be opposition. Mostly monsters, but can be political at higher levels. 

From National Catholic Reporter

Dungeon Cardinal

The Great Messiah has fallen! Your faith is crying out for a new shepherd to guide the flock! The good news is, there are rumors of disciplined mortals (or immortals if in a pinch) in dungeons. You and your party has to find our messiah and bring him to the church. Be wary of heretics and nay sayers.

Your party gains a level (500 or 1000 XP if XP-pilled) if you convert an entire dungeon faction into followers or you find the Messiah (Stats as Baby). You gain the title of Cardinal once a new Messiah is found. 

Wonder Workers

You see weapons, food and shelter in a dungeon. A faction can survive. But they will eventually get bored. Boredom leads to lower morale and  any faction leader worth their salt know that the first battle lost is the one of will. They are crying out for performers to come down, do a concert while surviving the other denizens, the dungeon itself and the perils of being famous. But hey, that's show business!

You gain a level if all members of your party perform a concert in front of 5 different dungeon factions, you gain a level.

Clickables

Fun Fact, Conclave and Eurovision are in the same month. 

Thanks Prismatic Wasteland for the Blogwagon and the Baby Post. 

Vivanter rounds up some GLOG.

Farmer Gadda rolls about when you pick up the polyhedrals. 

Got Tarot cards you don't use? Cratered Land has the solution.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OSR games should have a lot of classes

Image
I couldn't post to my blog due to life being a lot and various tech issues. I did however back the newest Shadowdark Kickstarter so now I feel it is time for a theory post, as I didn't post one in a while.  From The Arcane Library In OSR games, you die often. There are often around 4 to 7 classes (if the game sticks to the B/X model) and it doesn't take too long to play them all, at least each class's early levels. In shadowdark's newest kickstarter, there is plans for 20 classes to be in the one book. I like this. In modern games, having a lot of classes feels overwhelming as I am playing each class for a long period of time due to the lower lethality in those games so my choice matters a lot. In shadowdark, this isn't the case. Death is not only around the corner but right behind you and should your plans go south, that's the end of the character. It is unlikely I will be playing a character for a significant amount of time in shadowdark.  The 24 classes t...
Read more

Everything-as-XP (my home game)

Image
My in person game is starting up. I have chosen to avoid a system for a number of reasons: I am given an hour and a half per session. 90% of my players are new to tabletop. My player count varies. So I have chosen a simple system that they create. One thing I love to leverage is what fantasy does everyone have in their heads. Some have LotR, Harry Potter more lesser known books or movies. There is also video games. Because of this, "fantasy" isn't a singular set of tropes and conventions but multiple.   But how? Characters are simple. Here is the character sheet drawn in Microsoft Paint: a rough mock up of the character sheet Path:  There are only 2 choices. Steel for martial warrior types and Spell for spellcasters. These set how many wounds you can take, whether you get access to magic or deeds. Steels get 2 wounds before getting unconscious, the ability to do mighty deeds of arms if their dice matches. (this is a 2d6+mods system). Spell gets the ability to cast magic (...
Read more

Every system teaches you something. Even bad ones.

Image
Introduction I have played many systems, from narrative focused games to more simulationist games. Over time my tastes have changed from wanting the rules nearly out the picture to wanting the rules to be the focus of the game. Nowadays it leans somewhere in between. Here is a list of all the games I have played and what I learnt from them.  The Games Dungeons and Dragons 5e: advantage is a great mechanic for simply adding to a roll with little tracking.  Pathfinder: It's very hard to make a one-trick pony so every character has at least a dozen toys. Shadowdark: The perfect amount of character abilities (at least from the get-go) is 2. From The Arcane Library's website GURPS: I love how the numbers are done in the beginning meaning once character generation is done, you just need to look at your sheet.  Dungeon Crawl Classics: I love level 0 as it answers the only question a backstory should have and that's why are you here. Troika: Give your players weird and cool toys ...
Read more