Cavegirl's Really Simple D&D&D

Cavegirl’s Really Simple D, D & D

(D,D&D stands for Dice, Delves & Dangers, for copyright reasons).

SO I WROTE WP&WS, and that’s me taking my idea of basic D&D and making it stone-aged. And I’m making one that’s the same engine but for world-of-darkness style urban fantasy with vampires and druggie witches and shit. Here’s the engine stripped of all the fluffy bits and made generic, so you can hack it for your own games set in wherever. It’s like 6 pages of a4, so even the thickest of players can read it and play.

Maybe I’ll put this in a dirt-simple PDF so you can print it out for your lazy-ass players. You should maybe chuck me a couple of bucks when you do, ‘cos I’m poor. Hey, it’s 4AM and I’m slightly drunk and writing D&D&D (it’s even D&Dier because of the extra D), so don’t expect concrete plans from me.

                         

Character Creation

You start at level 1, with 0 XP. Note this down. Hopefully, both those numbers will go up.

Roll 3d6 6 times in order for your base attributes. These give you your six stats; strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma.

If your stats are shit, you can invert them. Flip them so that a 3 becomes an 18, etc. You can flip all your stats or none.

Record your modifiers. These depend on the stat’s value.

If it’s 3 (or less), it has a -3 mod.

If it’s 4 or 5, the mod is -2.

If it’s 6, 7 or 8, the mod is -1.

If it’s between 9 and 12, there’s no mod.

If it’s 13, 14, or 15, the mod is +1.

If it’s 16 or 17, the mod is +2.

If it’s 18 or more, the mod is +3.

If the attribute changes, so does the modifier, and everything that mod has adjusted.

Wisdom is basically for perception, but I’m calling it wisdom still for compatibility purposes.

Now pick a class. There are 4 classes: Fighter, Skill Expert, Survivor and Spellcaster. Fighters kill things, Skill Experts are good at non-combat stuff, survivors are hard to kill, and spellcasters get magic, which is powerful but can only solve some problems some of the time.

Next up is hit-points. These come in flesh (your meat-points), and grit (your plot-armour). You get a dice of each. Which dice depends on your class. It’s a d4 for spellcasters, a d6 for experts, a d8 for fighters, and a d10 for survivors. Roll a dice of each and add your constitution modifier.

When you take damage, you lose grit first, and then extra damage means you lose flesh. With no flesh left, you die.

When you gain a level, you gain a new Grit dice, and so more grit points.

Flesh and Grit is like my pet houserule, I fucking love it. 

After this, your saving throw. This is 16+ for most characters. For survivors, it is instead 11+. Apply your Constitution modifier backwards to this number (so, with +2 constitution, you get a 14+ save instead of 16+).

Then, your skills. 

Skills start out with a base 1-in-6 chance. If you have a modifier for the relevant skill, apply it to that chance. The chance can’t go above 6-in-6 or below 0-in-6.

The skills that exist are:

Alertness (wisdom modifier applies)

Athletics (strength modifier applies)

Charm (charisma modifier applies)

Medicine (intelligence modifier applies)

Stealth (dexterity modifier applies)

Technology (intelligence modifier applies)

Translation (intelligence modifier applies)

If you are a survivor, improve one of your skills by 2. If you’re a spellcaster, improve either your Charm or Translation by 1. If you’re an expert, you have 6 points to spend; each one improves a skill by 1.

Record your to-hit bonus. This is your dexterity modifier (for ranged attacks) or your strength modifier (for melee attacks). If you are a fighter, you add your level to this. You add your strength to all damage rolls.

If you are a fighter of a survivor, you get to fight defensively or aggressively without taking the penalty.

If you are a spellcaster, you get to cast spells. Pick the source of your power; faith, the occult, or inner power.

Your spells are chosen randomly. If your magic comes from inner power, you roll 1, if it comes from faith, you roll 2, if it comes from the occult, you roll 3. See the bit later on about magic for more.

1.       Cure Wounds. Heals d6 damage, +1 per level.

2.       Magic Attack. Deals d6 damage, +1 per level, no save allowed. When you get this spell, pick what type of damage it is (fire, electricity, aging, poison, mutilation, etc)

3.       Invisibility. Something becomes invisible for 1 turn per level. Violence/other dramatic acts end the spell early.

4.       Unseen Servant. Lasts 1 turn per level. An invisible force moves things about for you.

5.       Animate dead. Turns a corpse into a zombie (a 1HD undead monster). You can have 1 such zombie per level.

6.       Dispel magic. Ends a magical effect.

7.       Fortune Telling. Ask the GM a single question, get a yes-or-no-or-N/A answer. 1-in-10 chance the answer is actually inaccurate.

8.       New Ability. Gives the subject creature a new ability, for the duration of the spell, which is 1 turn per level. Pick one when you roll this spell, abilities include breathing water, being immune to fire, walking on walls, being able to see in the dark perfectly. Or ask the GM for something odder.

9.       Cure Sickness. Cures a disease/poison and all related symptoms, instantly.

10.    Command. Make a 2-word command. Victim makes a saving throw, and if they fail obeys.

11.    Illusions. Creates illusions that do whatever you want. Look, sound, smell real, but no physical presence. If disbelieved, instantly vanish. Illusion lasts 1 turn per level.

12.    Sleep. 1 Victim/level. Save or fall asleep.

Other spells exist. You might find them in play.

Fluff your spells however makes sense for the type of character you want to be.

Lastly, pick equipment. You can have up to 5 items. A Skill Expert gets 6 instead.

Carrying more than five items (+strength mod) makes you encumbered. -1 on a d6 or -3 on a d20 to rolls when being weighed down hurts you, and you move at half speed. A fighter can carry a base of 6 items instead of 5.

Equipment’s kept generic. Fluff this shit how you want, it might matter later on (maxes hurt skelingtons better, and werewolves are immune to normal bullets) and it gives people an idea of your character. Items available are:

·         Light Weapon. (IE knife, blackjack). Doesn’t count towards encumbrance. Does d6 damage.

·         Hand Weapon. (IE sword, mace). Does d8 damage.

·         Two-handed weapon. (IE greataxe). Does d10 damage. Needs both hands.

·         Polearm. Does d8 damage. Uses two hands. Can attack from a second rank.

·         Thrown weapon. Does d6 damage, ranged. You get 5.

·         Heavy ranged weapon. (IE crossbows, guns). Does d10 damage. Requires ammunition. Does not use strength mod for damage. Takes a turn to reload.

·         Simple ranged weapon. (IE bows, slings). Does d8 damage. Requires ammunition. DOES use strength for damage.

·         10 units of ammunition.

·         Light armour (IE leather). Base AC 12. Does not count towards encumbrance.

·         Medium armour. Base AC 14.

·         Heavy Armour. Base AC 16. Counts twice towards encumbrance.

·         Shield. Uses a hand. +1 AC

·         Light source. Uses a hand.

·         Rope. Uses a hand.

·         Holy Symbol.

·         Pitons (10).

·         Poison. Save, or does 10 damage. 5 doses.

·         Craftsmans tools. +1 to technology rolls.

·         Healing kit. +1 to medicine rolls.

·         Camouflage. +1 to stealth rolls.

·         Oil. Does d6 damage when it sets stuff on fire (save avoids).

·         Fire-source (IE matches). Does not count towards encumbrance.

·         Writing tools. Does not count towards encumbrance.

·         10 foot pole. You can tell it’s OSR by the ten-foot-poles.

·         Nice clothes and stuff. Doesn’t encumber you. Useless, except for impressing people.

·         Other shit. Ask your GM if you want something weird or cool that’s not on the list.

At this point, you’re basically done. Your AC (armour class) is a base of 10 if unarmoured, or else set by your armour.  Modify this by your dexterity modifier. Come up with a name. Come up with some basics. Why are you adventuring? Where do your spells come from if you’re a spellcaster? Etc etc.

You’re a level 1 character with no XP, so you’ve not done anything badass yet, nor are you important. You don’t really have a backstory. Badass stuff, backstory and importance will come when you gain some levels.

Your race is entirely a fiction thing, and has no rules attached. You can pick your species, but if your GM thinks your species is stupid, you’re human instead.

Rules:

Time.

An exploration turn is 10 minutes. An exploration turn lets you explore a room, go down a corridor, etc. A combat round is 10 seconds, long enough to attack once. THESE ARE DIFFERENT. JEEZ PEOPLE.

You all know how long a day is.                                                                 

Bad shit.

You die if you hit 0 flesh.

You die if an attribute hits 0.

You die if the GM says so, although they should probably give you a save. They don’t have to, though, maybe if you git gud this won’t happen to you.

Stuff might break if the GM thinks you’ve been misusing it (you drop your torch in water, use your sword to jam a big door open, or whatever). Roll a d6. On a 1, it breaks and is useless. On a 2 or 3, it’s damaged; -1 to all rolls in future.

Use the breaking system to see if you run out of supplies, maybe? And to see if your light goes out.

Poison is make a saving throw or a bad thing happens.

Diseases and parasites are make a saving throw every so often, and a bad thing happens if you fail. You recover if you pass twice in a row.

In pitch darkness, if you fail a roll, something hilariously bad happens: you fall off something, hit your ally by mistake, break something.

Going Mad probably fucks with how you gain XP and levels, or maybe you just roleplay some shit. Your GM will tell you what sort of crazy you are.

Skill rolls.

Roll X or less on a d6 to succeed, where X is your chance in 6. So, if you’ve got 2-in-6 chance, roll a 1 or 2 to succeed.

If you’ve got 0-in-6, roll 2d6, and pass if both are 1s.

If you’ve got 6-in=6, roll 2d6. Fail if both are 6s, otherwise pick 1.

YOU WANT TO ROLL LOW HERE. JEEZ PEOPLE, THIS SHOULDN’T CONFUSE THE PLAYTESTERS SO MUCH.

Saves.

Roll that much or more on a d20, or bad shit happens to you. Some books give this an entire page of its own, can you believe it?

XP and Levels.

When you recover treasure, get as many XP as its value in cash. (IE a crown you sell for 200 gold is worth 200 XP)

When your XP total is high enough, you gain a level. You get level 2 when you have 200 XP. The amount doubles for each level after that Level 3 is 400 XP, level 4 is 800, level 4 is 1600, then 3200, 6400, 12800, 25600, 51200). You don’t gain levels after level 10.

When you gain a level:

·         You get an extra dice of grit.

·         Your save improves by 1.

·         You get +1 to hit, if you’re a fighter.

·         You learn a new random spell, if you’re a spellcaster. Random, or the GM picks based on what you’ve been doing. It might be a spell not on the starting list.

·         You get 2 more skill points, if you’re a skill expert.

·         A survivor improves that skill they put a point in at level 3, 6 and 9.

When you hit level 10, maybe you get a castle or a cult or something.

Healing.

Grit comes back when you rest for  turn. All of it.

You heal 1 flesh when you sleep at night. +1 flesh if you slept somewhere nice, like an inn.

You can be treated if you’ve lost flesh. They roll their Medicine Skill. If they succeed, then you heal them by the amount on the dice; the healing kicks in when you next sleep. If you fail, then you take 1 more damage immediately. This takes a turn to do. You can do it as much as you want.

Encounters.

The party picks a leader. Use their skill rolls for everything. It’s just a rules thing, they aren’t in charge, we just care about their stats more.

Surprise:

Both sides roll Alertness. If both sides pass, then they see each other a way away and approach. If both fail, they blunder into each other suddenly. If only one side passes, that side catches the other by surprise. They can get into position and then get a free round’s worth of actions.

Reactions:

Roll Charm. If you pass, they’ll talk, if you fail they’re hostile.

Initiative:

Flip a coin. First everybody on one side goes, then everybody on the other.

Attacking:

Roll d20 + attack mod. You hit if you get the victim’s AC or better. Roll damage based on weapon type. They lose this much from grit, then flesh. A 20 to hit deals damage straight to flesh. An attack from ambush deal damage straight to flesh.

Unarmed attacks deal d4 damage.

Combat actions:

·         Attack. Roll to hit and damage.

·         Move and attack.

·         Draw/drop an item and attack.

·         Fight defensively. +2 AC, -2 to hit.

·         Fight recklessly. +2 to hit, -2 AC.

·         Aim. Do nothing this turn. Next turn, +4 to hit.

·         Sneak attack. Roll Stealth. Your next attack goes straight to flesh.

·         Cast a spell. See the magic section.

·         Wrestle. You roll d20+strength mod. They roll d20+something. If you win, you get to grab them, take something they’re holding, make an attack vs them damage them if you’re already wrestling (regardless of who’s winning) or pin them if they were already grabbed.

Morale:

If the enemy might run a way, roll charm. If you pass, they flee, otherwise they don’t. Roll to check only when shit’s going REALLY bad for them.

Fleeing:

You both roll athletics. If both pass or fail, then the chase continues for another round. If the run-away-er passes and the chaser fails, the run-away-er gets away. If the chaser passes and the run-away-er fails, the chaser catches up and gets a free attack.

Tracking sneaky enemies works the same. The tracker rolls alertness, the sneaker rolls stealth. This takes a turn.

Magic

How you cast spells varies. Like I said in CGen, you get to pick Faith (for clerics and mystics and stuff), The Occult (for brainy types using spellbooks) or Inner Power (for psychics, supernatural creatures like vampires and elves who get magic without trying and so on.

Magic should be weird and a bit scary. Not mundane and easily quantified. It also, however, shouldn’t devolve into a giant fractal nightmare of random tables every time you cast. So most spellcasters can safely cast spells most of the time, but if they push their luck it gets riskier. This is a TRAP and you SHOULDN’T DO IT but whenever I play a caster I always do because frankly my head exploding when I try to cast Cure is hilarious.

If you picked Faith, each time you try to cast, make a Charm roll to see if your god listens. On a success, cast successfully. On a fail, roll d4:

1.       Your god demands a sacrifice (GM choses what). You can’t cast spells until you provide that sacrifice.

2.       The spell fails. Your god places a restriction on you (GM choses something). No spells can be cast for the rest of the day if you break that restriction, and you take d6 damage.

3.       The spell just fails.

4.       The spells succeeds. A Magical Fuckup happens, roll for it.

If you picked the Occult, you have a spellbook. Your spellbook has all your spells in it. With your spellbook you can either cast a spell (taking a turn to do it), or memorize the spell: this takes a turn, and ‘hangs’ the spell almost complete. You can have 1 spell memorized at a time, per level. You can finish casting a spell that you memorized instantly.

You can put new spells in your spellbook if you can study them. Doing this requires a translation roll and a magical ingredient (the GM picks one). If the translation roll is failed, a Magical Fuckup happens.

If you picked Inner Power, you can cast as much as you want. Each time you do, it deals 1 damage to your flesh, that only heals by sleeping.

Most other games give spells ‘levels’. Ignore ‘em. Some spells are better than others, and the GM just doesn’t put spells in the game they don’t want.

Any spellcaster can cast experimental magic. This lets them make a spell do something it wouldn’t normally: it’s effect is inverted, applied to a different target, condensed, stretched out or used for something weird. The spell can’t just be made better at what it already does.

When you do experimental magic, make a Saving throw. If the roll is failed, the spell is wasted, and a Magical Fuckup happens.

Magical fuckups (roll here or pick a more fun table).

1.       Something minor and spooky.

2.       The Caster takes d6 damage. Magic Is Bad For Your Health.

3.       Everybody takes d6 damage. KABOOM.

4.       The caster is mutated somehow.

5.       Everybody is mutated somehow, saving throw resists.

6.       The environment is made dangerous (on fire, reverse gravity, angry trees).

7.       The caster goes a bit crazy. Magic will open your mind.

8.       Everybody goes a bit crazy, saving throw resists. I CAN SEE FOREVER.

9.       Some sort of horrible monster shows up, it’s your fault.

10.    Something REALLY FUCKING BAD happens. You FUCKED UP. GM, make this one nasty as hell.

Optional Rules!

Multiclass characters.

Pick two classes. Get the better saves and HP from the class you picked, and all the benefits of both. It costs you double to level up.

Bleeding out.

When you hit 0 flesh, you pass out, and bleed for some rounds, and THEN die.  You bleed for as many rounds as your level, modified by constitution. A successful medicine roll can slow the bleeding to turns. Or it can give you 1 flesh back, if you’re on 0. Or if you’re bleeding in turns, it stops it entirely. Or it wakes you up again.

You might start bleeding even if you’re not on 0 hits if, say, a vampire bites you.

Horrible Wounds.

If you hit 0 flesh, make a Save. On a failure, you die. On a success, the hit fucks you up in some way (GM’s choice). You might lose an eye, be made ugly by scars, have a leg chopped off, lose fingers, get brain damage, or something else.

Switching Class.

You can do this only if there’s a really good fucking reason. (A faith-based spellcaster might be rejected by their god and become a fighter, or a previously pacifist survivor might go kill-crazy and become a fighter, or a skill expert might make a pact with something eldritch and become a spellcaster). You go down a level when you do this.

More Complex Saves.

Apply Strength against Paralysis/webs/restraints. Apply Dexterity vs Dragon Breath/explosions/lightning bolts/lazers. Apply Constitution vs Poison/sickness/inexplicable death. Apply Intelligence vs Magic Items/traps/machinery. Apply wisdom vs Spells/magic effects/psychic monsters. Apply Charisma vs Mind Control/temptation/looking like an idiot.

Spells Having Levels.

I guess you can put this in. I CBA to do the maths, though.  Use another game’s system.

So what am I doing with Ynn, anyway?

It's somewhere between a module and a setting. A sub-setting that you can bolt onto your game, I guess.  

The idea is that you've got a bunch of random tables to produce an encounter/location generator. Just pick it up, roll dice, get something to throw at your players. Kinda procedural generation as you go along. I really like modules that do that (Castle Gargantua and Scenic Dunnesmouth come to mind, as does Corpathium), for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, a module that proceduraly generates content has a load more replayability to it. The different combinations in encounters mean that although there'll be a consistent 'feel' to encounters and locations, you can go ages before it gets old. In Wolfpacks, for example, the basic terrain/cave tables produce enough content to run a campaign off by themselves. Compare to a module with 'set' encounters written by the author, where you play through maybe 20 to 50 scenes and then your done. (Of course, the advantage of 'set' encounters is in the pacing and links between encounters, and the inividual details).

The second is in how you actually use the module at the table. In my experience, a GM's comprehension of stuff somebody else wrote will be sub-optimal. When you're frantically skimming the  module at the table, you're gonna miss bits. Whereas if you wrote something yourself, because it's your creation, you're gonna grok it. Random generators are good because they're a tool for GM creativity. They take the pressure to 'quick think of something cool right now' off the GM by providing concepts, but let the GM put them  together themselves. This has the advantage of fixing the ideas in the GMs mind much more easily.

I want the feel to be kinda fairytale-ey. A bit surreal, a bit liminal.
One idea that always stuck with me was the 'wood between worlds' from the narnia books. That place was always written with this weird dreamlike quality that makes you want to explore further. I like that.
The castle from the Ghibli film 'Laputa, Castle in the Sky' is a big influence here. Ruined architecture, magitech still working, slowly falling apart, even with all the inhabitants gone. Lush nature in a garden left to go wild.
Alice in Wonderland is in there a bit. Mostly via A Red And Pleasant Land. But focussed on the whimsical ideas more. The tea-parties and ambulatory puddings rather than the vampires doing atrocities.
I'm liberally nicking ideas from The Stygian Gardens Of Aemelia Premm. It's a good module.
Made In Abyss continues to mull around in my head. The idea of going 'deeper' into a naturalistic planty setting with abandonned structures came from there.
I want there to be whimsy. I want it to be comfy and chill but weird and unsettling. My standard medieval-fantasy game is LotFP (with a few houserules taken from Corpathium), but while the engine is cool this module's tone is gonna be very different. None of the grimdark and shock value.

I'm using old public-domain illustrations to illustrate it. Mostly from fairytales. There's some absolutely wonderful Arthur Rackham pieces that will work wonderfully with very little editing.

I'm planning to use Sidhe in this. Not quite elves, not quite aliens. Art-nouveau aesthetes with magitec plant powers. They're almost entirely gone now. Those that remain have retreated into solipsistic feral decadence. But, their presence lingers, their mark on the place is indelible. 

Some locations in the Gardens of Ynn

Here's some location's from the module I'm working on. Each gets paired with a 'detail' so that a given lawn might be burned, or have a pile of treasure, or have exposed pipework, or whatever. So, although they seem a little bare-bones, this is only half of the detail a given location will have in practice.

Manicured Lawn

Short, cropped grass, studded with daisies. Surrounded by a low brick wall over which ivy climbs. Quiet, save for distant birdsong.

Nothing much here.

Herb garden.

Neat rows of exotic herbs in raised beds, gone to seed and overflowing their allotted space into the brick paths between. D6+depth herbs with useful properties growing here. D6+depth doses of each herb can be harvested.

  Roll for what a given herb does:

1. Analgesic, heals 1 hp.

2. Hallucinogen (2d6 damage to wisdom)

3. Strength Tonic, +1 to damage.

4. Psychedelic; instantly re-memorize a spell cast today.

5. Re-roll save vs the last poison/disease suffered.

6. Paralysis, d6 turns, Save vs Poison avoids.

7. Vomiting for d4 rounds, no save.

8. Irritant, +1 to all damage suffered for the next day.

9. Tastes really nice. Each dose worth 10 silver.

10. Roll for Ynnian Alterations (see page XX)

1-in-6 chance to identify a plant’s effects from pre-existing knowledge, except for characters with improved chance at  survival skills (such as druids and Halflings), who get to use that chance instead. Otherwise, identify by trial-and-error.

Vine Trellis.

Steel frameworks hold up a tangle of overgrown vines, producing dappled shade beneath them. Hiding is easy here (double chance). The vines produce deep blue fruit that can be fermented like grapes, producing a liquor that induces psychedelic visions.

Orchard

Fruit trees spaced out every few yards, coppiced so their branches start five feet above the ground. Trunks now gnarled  and  grizzled with age, branches extending into a tangled canopy that ends fifty feet up.

Fruit no longer harvest drop to the floor, where they rot and ferment. The place stinks of alcohol. Just breathing here is intoxicating,  on entering Save vs Poison; on a failure 1 damage to flesh each turn you remain.

Fruit still on the branch is edible and tastes good. Combine this with the flesh of stuff you hunt, and you could have a pretty good diet.

Ponds

Ornamental ponds, their surfaces covered in floating lilies.  Huge drifting fish like bright orange and pink carp and catfish beneath the surface. Rushes and cat-tails grow here in abundance.

Rose Garden

Roses grown in neat beds, in huge varieties. Now overgrown, tangled masses of thorns dotted with brilliantly-coloured exotic roses.

Movement here is half speed due to the thorns. Alternatively, if you don’t care about getting scratched up, move at full speed for a turn (d8 damage) or a round (1 damage).

Only one rose grows here that’s pure black. Eat it, and you get +1 HP and black rosepetal-patterns like tattoos, permanently. It’s visible at the centre of the rose garden, but reaching it takes d6 damage with no clear route that avoids getting scratched up.

Gazebo

A jolly little wooden pavilion. Bright paint faded and peeling. Within, a few wicker chairs and manky cushions. Cobwebs, perhaps. Knickknacks such as tea-sets, decks of cards, opium pipes, worth d10+depth silver, plus roll for treasure.

A safe place to camp at night; so long as there’s a flame within the Gazebo (from a candle, lantern or campfire), no monsters will attack those within.

Hothouses

Glass buildings that housed tropical plants. Now the window panes are cracked and broken, and the plants within either died off in the unsympathetic climate or overgrowing the place.

Regardless of the weather outside, it’s warm, dry and pleasant within. Mist makes hiding easy here; double everybody’s chance to hide, and the chance to be ambushed.

To generate the map, drop a small handful of dice onto some paper. Where a dice lands, draw a hothouse. The cross-section of dice is the floorplan of the glasshouse. Each corner on the upper face points to a doorway. D12s are two stories high, d20s 3.

Each hothouse contains one of the following (look at the number rolled for what):

1. Rare plants worth d4+depth silver.

2. Nothing of note.

3. Plants with medicinal properties. D6 doses, each heals 1 hp.

4. Fruit you can eat safely.

5. Poisonous plants. Ingesting or injection causes 2d6 damage. D6 doses.

6. Tables and chairs, now rusted over.

7. D4+1 Carnivorous plants. Can’t move from the spot. Armour as leather. 3 HD, 10HP, attacks d6 times a round (+3, d6 damage), saves as fighter 3, immune to all the stuff you’d expect plants to be immune to.

8. No plants at all.

9. Digestive green slime growing over the ceiling. Make a sudden or loud noise and some drops on you (treat as an attack,  +0 to hit, d6 damage). Be stealthy and you can see how every little noise causes it to ripple in response.

10. Ornamental gold birdcages, with dead songbirds within.

11. Horrible spores. Breathing them in results  in 1 damage per turn. No saves. Damage continues at the same rate once you leave, but roll a Save vs Poison.  If you pass, it stops after as many turns as the dice roll. If you fail, it continues indefinitely. If you die from the spores, your corpse sprouts delicate flowers that spew more of the spores into their environment.

12. Under the greenery, human skeletons with creepers growing out of their rib-cages. Reanimate when approached. Plant-skeletons have AC as leather,  1 HD, 4 HP, claws (+0, d6), saves as fighter 1.  Undead. Those killed reanimate as plant-skeletons a turn later.

13 or more, or anything else shown: the glasshouse I sealed from the outside, the doors boarded over. Inside is dense with greenery trying to get out. If opened up, a carnivorous plant emerges each round. Stats as above, but the plants aren’t immobile. Furthermore, anybody killed by the plant has a seed planted in them; a turn later, a new carnivorous plant rips free of their flesh.

Orchid Houses

Like the hothouses, these glass buildings  protect from the weather. Generate where they all are like hothouses.

Each glass house contains rare orchids worth d6+depth silver to a collector. 

Silk-garden

Steel frameworks eerily reminiscent of trees, but lacking in leaves, are spaced evenly. Hung from these, draped from tree to tree or suspended from the branches, are a mandala-like network of strands of silk in a brilliant rainbow of colours.

The silk is sticky. Save vs Paralysis or get stuck fast if you deliberately touch it. Running, combat, or anything else of a vigorous nature probably calls for a save each round to avoid touching the silk (but  roll twice and take the better result).

Once something’s stuck on the webs, the spinner worms arrive. Like fat silkworms as long as your arm. D4 of them per person stuck in the silk. Carnivorous.

AC as  chain, 1 HD, 3 HP. Bites (+1, d4 damage), saves as fighter 1. On a 20 to hit, spins more webs, fastening a limb to the body. Immune to the effects of the webs. Insectile intelligence.

Chess Lawn

A wide square lawn. 10-yard squares of neatly manicured grass alternate with black stone slabs. Scattered about are chess pieces in obsidian and white marble,  each twice as high as a human. Here and there, scattered bits of human bones.

Actually perfectly safe.

Hedge Maze

A tangled maze of thorny hedges. Once you’ve gone in, each turn you’ve got two options;

à Explore the Maze. Each PC rolls a d20. For each 20, roll for a random encounter as something finds the players. Other rolls that are higher than the PCs intelligence score are discarded. Rolls equal to or lower than the intelligence score are added to a running total. Once the running total equals 50, the maze is fully explored and the party can go back or go deeper freely.

à Go back the way you came. Once you’ve decided to do this, it takes 1 turn to get out again per turn spent in the maze so far, and then you can go back to the last location before the maze.

Hacking through the hedges helps, at a cost. Each player who hacks gets to add their d20 to the progress total, regardless of if it was greater than their intelligence or not. However, doing so attracts attention: automatically roll for an encounter.  The same applies to other plans to circumvent the maze, such as climbing over.

Once the maze is fully explored, the centre is found: roll a random treasure to see what’s there.

Kennels

Little wooden shacks that once housed various beasts and birds of the garden. Now abandoned and falling to ruin.

Roll twice for events each turn here; things still nose about.

Statuary

A formal garden full of elegant, classical style statues.  Many seem to depict people in great pain, surprised or frightened. Many statues are over-grown with ivy.

1-in-6 chance that one of the statues is of a famous missing person from the real world.

Anybody who dies here turns to a statue immediately. Until turned back to flesh, they can’t be resurrected.

Woods

A scattering of trees. The further in you go, the denser the trees get. Each turn exploring the woods brings you deeper in. After three turns, the light under the canopy is dim , after 5 it’s dark enough to need lamps, after 7 it’s as dark as night. Getting to the other side of the woods in order to go deeper takes at least 8 turns.

Mausoleum

A stone tomb surrounded by formal gardens and low hedges. A big rectangular block of marble, topped with a statue.  12 feet across.

It’s hollow. You can pry away the slabs that make up the sides or lift the top to get inside.

Inside, a grave. D4 skeletons, and roll for treasure. If you steal the treasure, Save vs Magic or be cursed; roll a d12 for the curse.

1) -1 HP, permanently, and the word THIEF branded on the character’s forehead.

2) Transmutation! Roll for Ynnian Alterations (page XX)

3) Blind in one eye. Once both eyes are gone, your pretty screwed.

4) Somebody you care about dies of unrelated causes. Probably just a coincidence.

5) Gold Lust: halve all XP from any treasure that’s not coinage or precious metals.

6) Karmic Misfortune: when you roll your next PC, treat all 6s as 1s.

7) No longer gain nutrition from eating meat.

8) -1 to all saves vs other curses, forever.

Shooting Range

A long lawn, with large stakes driven into the ground at one end.  Some of the stakes have bullet-holes in them. Some still have skeletons tied to them.

There’s nothing much of not e here beyond that.

Fountain Court

Cracked pavement, grass growing between the slabs, surrounds a shallow pool with a fountain in the middle. The fountain still flows, water trickling into a crystal clear pool.

At the bottom of the pool, there’s coins that have been thrown in.  If you take any out, you can’t get any benefit from the fountain,  from that point on, and lose any benefits you might have gained.

Throw a coin in the fountain and something good happens. You only get this the first time, after that you need to throw in something more valuable than the last one you threw in. The sequence is:

à Coin

à Coin purse

à Minor item (lantern)

à Important item (sword)

à Valuable item (spellbook)

à Unique item (artwork)

à Drown a living person.

Roll a d10 for the benefit a given fountain grants.

1. +1 HP permanently.

2. +1 to hit permanently.

3. +1 Strength permanently.

4. +1 Dexterity permanently.

5. +1 Constitution permanently.

6. +1 Intelligence permanently.

7. +1 Wisdom permanently.

8. +1 Charisma permanently.

9. +1 AC permanently.

10. D20 x Depth XP.

Drinking from the fountain after you toss a coin in doubles the effects of the benefit.

Shadow Theatre

A semi-circular amphitheatre with stone steps for seats, now overgrown with moss and ferns.  A central stage, with the rusted, rotted, crumbling apparatus for shadow-puppets.

Shadows here don’t move normally. They react when their owners remain still, and grope towards light-sources.

Linger here, and the shadow begins to detach.  1 damage to charisma per turn spent here. On leaving, this effect continues each turn, and make a Save vs Magic. On a failure, the effect carries on indefinitely. On a success, the damage stops after as many turns as the number rolled.

If Charisma hits 0, the shadow is finally free.  Heal all lost charisma. From this point on:

à The character casts no shadow.

à The character has no reflection.

à Attempts to draw the character become unrecognisable. Whole movements in abstract or stylized art might stem from their futile attempts at drawing an accurate picture of themselves.

à The character’s sense of self is eroded. Whenever they level up, re-roll all previous hit dice for a completely new hitpoint total.

à The shadow itself becomes an animate shadow; an intangible monster that hates light and warmth.

HD 2, HP 12, Armour as chain, intangible claws (+2, d4 and 1 charisma damage), intangible and immune to physical damage, bright light does d6 damage a round,  dead victims transform into more shadows.