Gelatinous Icosahedron

 Being able to assess the risk of adventure locations is a vitally important aspect of old school play, especially the sandbox style. In dungeons, this is a relatively simple matter: the danger increases as you descend deeper into the dungeon. Dungeon levels are typically numbered, starting with 1 for the first level, typically the most easily accessible, and progression to higher numbers with each level farther from the main entrance. Monsters found on a given level will tend to have the same number of Hit Dice as th e dungeon level (e.g. on the third level of the dungeon, 3 HD monsters are most common) and more loosely, traps and other hazards become more deadly. The amount and value of treasure also tends to increase with dungeon level. There are some twists on this formula; some dungeons may have additional entrances that lead directly to deeper levels, and some dungeons may be "layered" horizontally rather than vertically, but the overall principle is that players will b...

 Factions add an extra dimension to the role playing part of RPGs, allowing players to ally with some and play others against each other. Probably the most well-known examples of dungeon factions are the various humanoid tribes of the Caves of Chaos in B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. Not only is the opportunity for politicking, diplomacy, and subterfuge prominent in the module, but arguably a vital part of any viable strategy for dealing with all the orcs, goblins, bugbears, and other assorted nasties far too numerous for a party of beginning characters to tackle with brute force.  Factions in a dungeon or dungeon complex like the Caves of Chaos tend to be limited in scope (usually to the dungeon itself and possibly its immediate environs) so they're relatively easy to handle, but it's worth fleshing them out a bit so you can role play them with confidence. Here are a few details you might want to consider having ready to go in advance of actual game sessions: What does the f...

 Thinking about dungeon design and mapping today. I've always had a tendency to cram as much into a sheet of graph paper as possible. Sometimes this makes sense due simply to the type of structure, but I'm starting to think that however paper-efficient it may be, it's often suboptimal in terms of a fun, playable dungeon. Thus, I'm exploring another dungeon paradigm, one featuring lots of long corridors connecting clusters of rooms. Don't underestimate the importance of corridors. I've drawn a fair number of dungeon maps in my time, and I've tended to think of corridors as simply connections between one chamber and the next. This, I believe, has been a mistake. Look at any large public building with many rooms -- a courthouse, a hotel or convention center, a school, even a shopping mall. In all of them, corridors aren't connections between rooms, but more like roads through neighborhoods. Roads provide access to each lot, not connection between rooms of a...