Actually, before we start, just a quick aside here - in the Labels section to the right of my main blog page I have listed DnD and D&D. In case anyone is interested, the former label is for older Dungeons and Dragons versions (AD&D, Basic, 3rd Edition and occasionally Pathfinder), and the latter is for 5th Edition onwards. Not sure why I differentiated them, but there you go, it probably meant something to me at the time. Sorry, back to the nuts and bolts of this post...
I didn't think that I would write another blog entry so soon on my old AD&D gaming days, but as I was writing the post on hirelings some of my old DMing moments kept coming back to me, so I made a note of them for future use. These thoughts all tended to be about dungeons and the monsters within them, so here is a post on just that as well as the tactics utilised by the denizens of those dungeons deep and caverns old.
So, to get around some of these anomolies I used to roll up mega dungeons in advance and part play them through in my minds eye prior to actual game play. I would check what was in each room and its adjacents to see how these beings would interact...
So, the aforementioned troll might allow the goblins scattered throughout the close by rooms to live because they can supply it with a constant stream of other food types. The troll would therefore become some kind of boss monster and I would rearrange the room contents accordingly. In other words the inhabitants could be worked into some kind of tribe/gang-type encounter.
That dragon may have been brought down as a youngling by a family of ogres as a plaything, but after a while it got too big to get out, so the ogres smashed out the roof to allow it to fly out in order to hunt.
These points then brought me onto local ecology issues. The dungeon obviously holds many small factions of hungry and dangerous beings. How would they eat, acquire weapons and armour and so forth? Why would they not just fight against each other until only one gang was left, or maybe two warring factions? This brought me to consider whether the goblins raided the local human farmers for their crops/livestock or did they trade with them? No point in killing the farmers if that meant the food source dried up in a couple of weeks is there? Better to keep them alive so supplies are available all year round would be my best interpretation. How would they pay for the food? Why, with adventurers' belongings hat have been killed in the dungeon seeking their own fortunes. Therefore, the dungeon ecology is directly linked to the local above ground economy.
Getting back to the tribe/gang point above, they would obviously set up some kind of hierarchy and certain troop types would be in certain rooms to aid in the defensive capabilities of the inhabitants. It would make sense to have the boss away from the edges of the mini kingdom so he can have a bit of peace and quiet and somewhere to store his treasure safely. The goblins would form the perimeter guards in a series of slightly tougher rooms as the boss troll is approached. These rooms might also be interspersed with the occasional one-off monster like a roper or mimic for a bit of fun, which leads me to my next couple of points...
Why do dungeon room occupants just charge pell-mell into combat at the first sight of a party of adventurers and not employ tactics?
Why don't they put together a reasoned out defence depending on who/what comes smashing through that dungeon door?
One of the first times I really thought this through was when I was running a small dungeon for a friend of mine to work his way through. In several rooms there were orcs, with the room inhabitants getting gradually tougher the deeper the player characters delved. Our usual style of play was along the lines of; characters listen at the door...they are told they can hear the guttural voices of orcs beyond the woodwork...the door is kicked down after PCs prepare spells etc... combat is joined with orcs just charging the party and getting wiped out in a few rounds.
This time round, things were different. The characters kick down the door and pour in. The orcs split with the larger brutes confronting the party in melee, the ranged weapon owners sniping from the rear and sides at the thieves and magic users, and the 1HP wonder running down the far corridor to warn their fellow guards. The party got the better of the brutes and ranged weapon orcs, but not without taking some damage, and headed to the corridor. At the end they could see a couple more orcs behind a make-shift barricade. The fighters duly charged the sorry sight, backed up by their lesser armoured compatriots. Combat was joined, but the party noted that there were a few more orcs behind the barricade to plug any gaps from their fallen brothers in arms. This didn't deter them until the large ballista showed up. They decided to about-face and run back down the corridor so as not to be hit by the powerful weapon, but stopped dead when they heard that the jeers from behind them were joined by roars of defiance ahead of them (the little 1HP scout had informed the orcs in the next few rooms what was occurring so their defence systems kicked into action). The party were trapped in the corridor and were cut to pieces - TPK.
Ordinarily, these three bands of orcs would have been pulled apart piecemeal by the party (we almost always played 6-8 PCs with several hirelings in tow, so a sizeable force) as they went room to room, but this time round, the orcs easily got the upper hand with a little thought. It also showed how powerful a 1HD monster actually is when used properly. They are as tough as most party members in a toe-to-toe fight.
This just goes to show that tactics can be employed for monsters to up the challenge ratings for the PCs. In future games I dialled back the number of critters in an encounter to take into account the tactical advantages that the residents of the dungeon would have. However, in addition to the tactics, I also included the noise factor - a combat will attract those in adjacent rooms to see what is going on or what advantage they can gain, as well as additional rolls on the wandering monster tables.
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