Dungeon Parties

This post is primarily aimed at those involved in dungeon crawling adventures of the Dungeons and Dragons type. There is a blog, Hobgoblinry (see December '20 and January '21 entries) that I am currently reading that spurred me to put finger to keyboard as the author is currently going through the same thought processes as I am (although much further along the path than I am at the moment).

As a kid, when AD&D had just been released, I was involved in many of these types of adventure and they played a perfect role in my development as both a player and Dungeon Master. I lost myself in many a mega-dungeon, creating characters, fantasy tribes, and all sorts of menageries to inhabit the sprawling underground warrens I had created from my imagination. At the time, internal consistency did not matter.

Even when I restarted DMing (still using AD&D rules, even though I had toyed with Version 3 and Pathfinder in the meantime) a few decades later at my then local club, play was still more important than world building. However, I did pay lip service to a kind of internal organisation where the monsters weren't just sitting in their rooms waiting for adventurers to poke their noses in before attacking them. I built a little consistency and randomness into it too, to show that life was carrying on at that place even if the adventurers weren't around to see it happening. So, as a result of a little bit of maturing as both a player and DM on my part, my games were a little more coherent and made a little more sense from a player's point of view; there was something tangible that they could get their teeth into - something with a living background.

Fast forward another couple of years and I began to play 5th Edition (only played so far, not DMd yet). There seemed to be a big difference in style of play. Gone were the games with anywhere up to 15 players with an interesting array of different character classes; now we were in the realms of a limited number of charcters (5 or 6) that were hard-hitting and skilled up to the nines. I like both styles of play, but they are very different. Often, though, after a 5th edition game, when I looked back on the adventures of that particular session, I felt something was missing.

Today, I no longer live near that RPG club, and lockdown has prevented me from finding new players in the new area in which I now live. I am blessed in my friendships, as I am able to partake of a play-by-email sci-fi RPG to keep my gaming pangs at bay, but I still want some tabletop action. As a result, I have been trying to get my gaming fix in the solo arena. Frostgrave has grabbed my attention lately as it involves a party of adventurers looking for treasure in a long abandoned city. It is a game that seems to involve a larger than 5th Edition party, so it has got my creative juices flowing.

Now, I want to try to recreate some of those lovely adventures I had as a kid, so my thoughts turned to AD&D again as a source of inspiration. Unfortunately I no longer own a copy, but the wraparound cover of my trusty Players' Handbook kept hoving into view in my mind's eye (see the picture below)...

 

 

This picture portrayed to me, as an early adventurer in mega-dungeons, what a party should look like. The characters have just beaten a gang of troglodytes (or whatever) and are now ransacking the temple they were set to guard. Each member of the party has his/her own tasks to perform. Fighters are standing guard and cleaning weapons after the melee, the wiser ones are discussing what to do next with what looks like the party leader, and the lackeys (thieves, hirelings and henchmen) are collecting and collating the treasure.

So, what do we have here in this simple, almost throw away picture? I see a few hardy combat type figures, a couple of thieves, with a wizard and wise priest/monk fellow that most likely comprise the main player characters. These are backed up by a small force of hirelings, or NPCs, who carry the party's gains and clean up after them. Eleven people (in sight anyway - how many others are in the temple room and beyond the left-hand door?) are involved in this escapade.

Back in the day (when I was not yet a teenager) we played several characters at a time to increase the size of the party. Each time I wanted to take the party down a mega-dungeon (randomly rolled and huge, sprawling affairs) I made sure that there were enough people to carry the purloined and plundered treasures held within. Not only did I hire men-at-arms on a handful of silver pieces per day, but I also bought sacks, caskets and mules with panniers to carry all of the imagined treasure in them. Many of the hirelings were just local toughs (cheaper than a man-at-arms) brought along to hold torches and guide the mules. Very rarely were they called into a melee, but if they were, it meant that the players' party itself had failed and a TPK (Total Party Kill) was on the cards. Often many were left outside the dungeon to guard the entrance and create a safe base to return to at each break of play to dump off hoarded treasure and to heal up, replenish spells and maybe even level up. These NPCs provided the pool of talent from which new 1st level characters would be recruited if current party members died.

This method of playing was not an intentional way of adhering to the encumbrance rules set out in the rulebooks, but it did kind of get around it. It also served the purpose of giving a more realistic approach to how a dungeon would be plundered - a multi-layered approach that included a supply base, support infrastructure and a safe place to return to if badly beaten up. In real life, a handful of people would not journey into the darkness below, it would be a large undertaking that would involve many from the local environs. A band of adventurers would be seen in some instances as a means to earn a few pieces of silver.