Nightmare GLOG Hack Player's Guide & Ramblings

Here's my own GLOG hack. Pretty much a hack of Lungfungus's Valiant,  crossbred with The Nightmares Underneath(TNU), and stripped down in general.

EDIT FROM THE FUTURE

It's hot garbage, don't read this crap!

Or read it to steal choice ideas but take it all with a strong grain of salt, once I hit actual play there was very little I actually liked!

It's just a bunch of filters and scribbles in GIMP but I wanted something to make the file less words words words

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yx1_Mw3o4Xv5L9a7ZY49Hqlo55becgL6MWbZiZvyUr4
Ended up going pretty simple on the mechanics, and leaving a lot of signposts around saying 'go read this' or intentional holes like 'so how long DOES a lantern burn.'


Hopefully this
1. Makes it easier to get into because there's not loadsa bloat
2. Emphasizes that the game exists between the GM and players, not so much in the text, creating a sense of wonder and mystery rather than the staid rehashes many simple OSR compatible retroclones fall into

Rulings not rollings, that sorta thing. I was gonna write about my grand game design manifesto and the roles of novelty and mystery, then realized I don't actually give a shit about explaining it and would rather just talk about the game.

MAJOR DEPARTURES FROM THE GLOG AND MORE STANDARD RETROCLONES
You have HD and roll for HP. You reroll them after rests though. So you have good days and bad days, but a rousing speech and a square meal can usually get you in better shape.

Once you run out of HP you start taking Con damage. Hits that deal over 1/2 your con maim you.
This is pretty much straight outta TNU, and gives a better sense that HP=/=meat points. TNU calls them disposition which was a mistake because that's like 9 more letters, but mechanically it makes it easier to describe hits from things that either aren't all that lethal sounding, or are absurdly lethal sounding, only having to worry about 'real' injury when the meat points of Con come into play.

You also deal damage based on HD. I mentioned in an earlier post why I like this.

No more vancian memorizing spells- you have your spells, you have your magic dice, you use your magic dice to cast spells, and that's all. There's already mishaps and dooms limiting wizard power, plus spells are a lot more weird and less powerful in general than in, say, D&D. Also this just means that anyone with a spell and some magic dice can cast the spell, which I like. The niche of the sage is great power at great cost, rather than the loathed niche of the D&D wizard which too often slips into 'the class that gets to do all the cool stuff and monopolize problem solving tools.' Also, the line between 'spell' and 'magic item' are blurrier than usual- Magic Missile could be a haunted lantern as easily as it could be a weird math formula in a book, usable by anyone willing- just not at the mighty levels of magic a sage commands.

Also, ~4-9 choices for templates (renamed to traits) that you can gain in any order, though you're still limited to 4. I hope the traits are all distinct and incomparable enough that there's no feeling of 'optimal builds, ' just picking what style you like best.

Some assumed setting stuff, but nothing too obtrusive apart from the specialist classes near the end.

Childhood Bestiary

I think Glorantha has good versions of these, but no- this is MY walktopus that I made up years ago for my Fantasy Hero game I played with friends

  

Walktopuses lived in the mountains, and had 9 blisters on their inexplicably square... hips? that could be burst to release a noxious cloud of smoke. Something that grappled you and prevented others from assisting via a cloud of obscuring poison gas sounds like a pretty good monster, honestly. The aesthetic inspiration was some weird wire and shaft affair that I think was the internal mechanism of a blender or something.

THE WALKTOPUS

HD: 2- If you can hit them in their spine-pillar, they die pretty quick

AC: 13- They're flexible and quick, but squishy.

Attacks- 4-8 tentacles. Each tentacle pins 1 limb on a hit. Tentacles are severed if a player says they're aiming for one with a slashing weapon and hits, but losing tentacles does not cause HP loss, only the loss of an attack.

You take 1d[[attached tentacles]] of damage each turn you're being grappled, strangled, squeezed, etc. The leg tentacles can grapple too, but then the walktopus can't move.

Move- As human- they lose '1/4' of movement per leg tentacle lost, but jokes on you, they can flip upside down and use their 'arm' tentacles just as easily! And if you take out 2 from each, they can flip sideways and move horizontally like a really screwy horse!

Toxic Smoke Blisters- 5' radius of obscuring smoke, lasts until the end of the fight unless blown away. Being in the smoke makes you cough and screw your eyes shut- you're blinded for 1 round after leaving the fog too. Whenever you hit or threaten a walktopus, it usually pops a blister to protect itself. They have a keen sense of LOS, but cannot see in their own smoke, and generally only stay in their own smoke clouds if they're strangling someone. Works perfectly underwater. If you kill a Walktopus, you can harvest all the remaining blisters and huck them as grenades.

Motivations- Bioconstruct of the ancient Squidlords, whose ancient seafloor fortresses have been raised to the high mountains by tectonic action over the centuries. The Squidlords are long gone, but the durable Walktopi/puses remain and continue to enact their riot-control instinctual programming, choking out troublemakers and taking them to squidprison, and dispersing crowds with their gas.

 Hellmaw, or Hellmouth. But really, they should have been 'bogmaws,' because they lived in swamps and their thing was that they were rubbery floating balls 6-feet in diameter that had a super long tongue and swallowed you up. They also had defenses that made them right bastards to kill, and though I was too kind to ever have them grapple and eat a player and then fly off/squirm down into the muck, the players hated them anyway. 

Bogmaw

6HD

AC:16

Fly speed: 20. They can also drop out of the sky and take no fall damage, just bouncing squooshily

Tongue Speed- 60. Extends forever.

Bog maws probably can't detect you if you're further than 120' away. They usually are floating aimlessly about hunting for escaped prey, or submerged in mud or water, waiting to ambush the unfortunate traveller

Rubbery Bastard- Take half damage from physical attacks. Immune to bludgeoning.

Sticky Slimy Tongue. Drags the player 20' nearer each round, like a tape measurer sucking in its tape. I don't think tape measures were the inspiration though, I think it was some squishy green goo ball yo-yo thing that was all the rage in elementary school. The Bogmaw has infinite tongue, it's just a matter of how much is extended. Dealing 2 damage with slashing can sever the tongue, but there's always more.

In the original version the tongue lashed people to death but that just makes it kinda boring.

If a bogmaw swallows you, you're wrapped up by the tongue and then suffocated to death inside the thing. It's really hard to attack from the inside like this- -4 to hit, and only if you had a dagger. They're slightly translucent so at least other people can see you've been swallowed, and gauge your state of consciousness. The Bogmaw may fly away with you, or dive into murky waters, so really you just don't want to get caught.

Motivations: Eat things. Be a metaphor for the dangers of getting lost and drowning in a swamp. Be aerial encounters high in the sky, coming from clouds. They don't eat very often, and vomit up anything hard in a random bundle of loot.

Hellmaw pellet.

Roll another encounter for the area- the pellet contains bones, treasure, and equipment of whatever that encounter was.

METAL MAN- Each arm ends in a blade! Each leg ends in a tiny wheel! Somehow able to roll through forests! Made of solid metal and some sort of magitech computer in the head!

This is a terrible enemy, but in a really good way.
HD-1
AC: 20
Metal Men are as tough as iron golems- most weapons have no chance of harming them, most spells do nothing against their terrible body, etc etc. If your players see a top-heavy stiff iron statue rolling about on wheels and their first idea is 'I should hit it with a sword,' the Metal Men are here to teach them the folly of their ways.
Attacks- 2 1d6 scything blades
Special Attack- Spinning Death- On smooth, hard ground, metal men can spin like a murderous helicopter, becoming a blur of flashing blades. Anyone approaching immediately eats 2d6 damage. They drift 10feet in a random direction each round they spin, and if they impact another spinning man they rebound violently but do not fall.

Move- x3 Human- The tiny wheels of a metal man propel them at ludicrous speed across the ground, though it takes them 3 rounds to get up to top speed, and to slow down. They don't corner well. Cobblestones and most worked dungeons that aren't TOO old and crumbling slow them to human running pace. In a forest or cave or something, they're slower than zombies.

They can be walled off by wedging a 10-foot pole across a dungeon hallway. The daring could actually approach and push them over. Stairs and doors foil them utterly. Magnets stuck to their head disable them and their eyes show static or pop-culture references depending on your age. I think these are great things to throw at newbie players.

And, saving worst for last...These bad boys are foomflambers. They're basically stingrays that roll around on ballbearings that they have for feet. They come in Earth, Metal, and Plant varieties, and actually evolve into each other in some order that I don't remember because they ALSO come from the time when each player had to have a bajillion pets in the campaign and Pokemon was all the rage. Pokemon is still great but man, Foomflambers are lame. Still, for my 'totally not a pokemon gym' wizard school that exists, they seem like an okay thing.

FOOMFLAMBER
1d4 HP
AC 13 (15 for metal ones)
Surprise on a 5-in-6 if they burst from their home terrain

Foomflambers are some sort of harebrained elemental hybrid from Foreign Parts, because those Foreigners don't even use proper elements.

EARTH FOOMFLAMBER- Can swim through loose soil like it was water. Can spit pebbles at people. Does not create pebbles, it merely stores and spits them.

WOOD FOOMFLAMBER- Can swim through wood and vegetation. Can snag people with growing vines, possibly tripping them. Wooden weapons like quarterstaves and clubs pass through them harmlessly. I'm pretty sure this was the final evolution.

METAL FOOMFLAMBER
Immune to metal weapons and pretty hard to stomp to death. I think they could rust things, or maybe they could just eat metal. Having a bunch of these nibble on some poor guys fancy new platemail like a shoal of piranha could be funny.

Nightmare Realms: Nexus Of Ash

You ended up here somehow. Colors faded, the world dark beyond this bubble of sourceless light.

 The Forest- Dead and twisted trees, the pits of empty graves, and tunnels that lead to places of drying slime and dangling roots, and perhaps too the graves of flowers. If you came from there, you know what made the marks on the trees.

The Cliff- There is a drop into an abyss that way, the dunes of ash rolling into it. Ash blows into the void like snow, and is gone. If you came from there, you can speak of the sealed gates in the cliff face that you scaled, and the arid ocean bed, miles below, the dry shells the size of houses and just as empty.

The Dunes- Rising piles of ash, a grey desert stretching to blackness. If you came from there, you recall lights, rare and distant, fading as you marched. This place was the light you made it to.

The Ruin- A semicircle of crumbled stone, and an out-of place fallen pillar. Mementos shine in the dark. If you came from here, you crawled out of the pool of tar, your flesh black sludge, your skin a layer of ash, your bones your own.

Random Memento. Something to hold onto and claim its memories for yourself.

1. A broken sword, and a memory of betrayal on the field of battle. +/-STR
2. An idol of some serene saint, stained and scarred. But despite it all, still here. +/-WIS
3. Rope, fraying and knotted. You can't rely on it, only yourself. +/-DEX
4. A heavy iron grimoire, locked tight. You threw away the key yourself.  +/-INT
5. A shard of mirror. You can't bear to see your face like this. +/-CHA
6. The stone of a poison peach, or perhaps it is your own withered heart. +/-CON

The Tower. 4 stories or so, leading to a bridge over the forest that leads to darkness. Was there something bright atop it, briefly glimpsed?

Floor 1- Entered via a crack, not a door. A low prison that spirals ever lower, with others like you, but mad and empty, now. You weren't special after all.

The staircase was wood, and is half broken and high above your head. How to ascend?
Or, one could descend deeper, past the prisoner cells.

Floor 2- A arrow slit looks out to the tops of trees. The Jailer monopolizes the view. He has a chain of keys and plenty of manacles for all of you. The door up is locked, if you run through the smallcircle of rooms to find it.

Floor 3- A gate house to the bridge, which extends to the darkness, and into it. A barrel of torches in a supply chamber, and flint to light them.

The Bridge- Crumbling at the edges, supported by pillars of crumbling stone. But it has to go somewhere.

Floor 4- Ruined support beams. A little girl, or an old woman, pale and fanged, kicking her heels in dark and empty air. She can make you strong, if you feed her memories and let her chew on your rancid tar flesh. She'd like to leave this world, but is very weak, herself, and doesn't know the way
Basement Floor 1+-  Past the cells, the dungeons. They go down forever, the quivering memories of cities that died with their worlds. Maybe one yet remembers a way out.

Damage as HD and 1d12 Improvised Weapons

While reading The Nightmares Underneath I encountered the radical notion of 'You roll your damage for any weapon based on your own HD.' While abstract and initially icky-feeling, I decided I actually like it. I like it a lot. Because otherwise weapon choice is pretty much just 'Human Fighter, I use the d10 greatsword' or 'I'll use the d10 axe because I'm Gimli' with the occasional guy who wants the d8 longsword+shield or the madman who wants to dual wield.

HD as damage means you just pick whatever weapon you want, and if you're a fighter you do in the realm of D10 damage because you're a fighter and by the gods, if you want to kill someone with a teacup YOU WILL.

If Vin Diesel wants me to take down this image I will

And if you're a noodle-armed mage, you do 1d4 damage even if you're wielding a double-ended orcish flamberge because while mages are welcome to contribute to combat, they steal enough showtime already and shouldn't be as rad/badass (Radass?) as fighters when it comes to fighting.

This lets you use whatever weapons you want aesthetically speaking. If you're a warrior, you can cleave people in twain with that greatsword or expertly ram a dagger into their hearts for the same amount of killy and you also get away from the implication that HP are meat points and every 'hit' makes the red water come out because big weapons no longer deal bigger damage. Keep HP abstract like Fate 'Stress' and have a death and dismemberment table for when people actually are having their limbs hewed, that's what I say.

I hear that back in the bad ol days of D&D, Gygax's (or maybe Arnesons?) players all used iron spikes because everyone did 1d6 damage and iron spikes were the cheapest weapon available, so weapons got a little more detailed to discourage that. Personally though, I am totally down for the early-game aesthetic of 4 rag-clad nobodies wielding an iron spike, a brick tied to a rope, a frying pan, and a femur as they venture into the dungeon.

1- Pointy broken bone from that skeleton you just found
2-Iron spike, recovered from tent equipment
3- Rusty portcullis lever that snapped when you tried to use it
4- Sack with some rocks at the end, whirled with much enthusiasm
5- Beast claw, still attached to hairy/scaly beast limb. Is not from a bear unless you want a pun overdose
6- Silverware, sharpened if spoon,somewhat rare and expensive in medieval economy if fork
7- Heavy cooking pot. Can be used as helmet in pinch too.
8- Extinguished but hefty torch
9- A dead giant rat, stiff with rigor mortis save for the long tail
10- The curved horn of a bull from the family farm
11- Clapper from church bell
12- A Shovel. Call yourself the Shoveller.

1d30 odd things abandoned on the side of the road.

1. A long trail of discarded plate armor, then a sack of skin, flesh, and entrails.
2. A clockwork wind-up doll, impaled on a spear.
3. A crying baby with features indicating unusual parentage.
4. A huge and forlorn dog leashed to a stake.
5. A handkerchief with flecks of blood and the initials LG.
6. A bucket of water with a live fish inside.
7. A moonshine still.
8. The moon.
9. A bloodstained stump, in which an executioner's axe is embedded.
10. A pouch of foreign coins.
11. A key to a very, very small lock.
12. A dozen grandfather clocks.
13. A feather, 10 feet long.
14. A sign post to the nearest town, half-buried in dirt and leaves.
15. A sack containing a roast potato, salt beef, an apple, and an honey-and-oat bun.
16. An invitation to a fancy party addressed to someone who almost has a PC's name.
17. A dueling glove with 6 fingers, stuck 15 feet off the ground in a thornbush or something.
18. The private diary of a traveling maid.
19. A church bell.
20. A neatly arranged stack of blank papers, only some of which have been blown away.
21. A giant ice cube. Roll again or decide what's inside, if anything.
22. A coffin. Possibly occupied.
23. A wagon with no wheels, but stocked with some valuable but perishable good.
24. A catapult. 
25. 6 identical chests. 1 is a mimic, 1 is just a carving, 1 is locked and full of its own keys, 1 is full of live mice, 1 contains sensitive information, and 1 contains 6 identical jewelry boxes...
26. A bottle of excellent wine.
27. A game board, set up mid-game. Air around it is unnaturally cold (or hot)
28. Wanted posters of the PCs describing crimes they haven't committed.
29. A portable altar of a god so inconsequential and petty that this is actually their only altar.
30. A wacky-looking caterpillar in a cage and a single mithril fish-hook.
31. Roll Twice

The way I see it, tables are only half the story, and the other half is for another GM to look at and go 'hmmm... okay that's what this means.' 

30, for instance. I could say 'oh this is for a ritual where you catch something outrageous by baiting a fishing line with the caterpillar and whatever you catch is bound to be your loyal steed for a year and a day and some mustache-twirler planned to catch a dragon with it to destroy his rival in love but abandoned it because he found out that his rival had been called off to war where he'd surely never return, leaving the fair Melissandra to remain an eligible bachelorette'

But since every campaign is different, I think it is better to give you a fraction of that and let you fill in the gaps with stuff that suits your campaign and your players.

Halflings, Children, and other Innocuous Characters

I've never really been a fan of any of the 'classic' nonhuman races, but I've always been even more skeptical of the value of the little guys. A stealthy human, with some darkvision, no big weapons, maybe some magical tricks? I liked The Hobbit too, but you don't have to be 3 feet tall to be an underdog, and if all being 3 feet tall means is no big weapons and like, -2 Strength, who cares, especially if you're swimming in other bonuses like +4 vs ogres and so on. That just makes you an inexplicably durable badass tiny tank.

I'm also a great fan of this post
http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-class-noncombatant.html

Anyway I tried to make a Little Person class that encourages actually playing like a 6-foot tall guy with a sword is as dangerous to you as a giant is to that 6-foot guy. Works for children characters as well, because you occasionally get someone who wants to be a kid. Or even just someone with a pacifistic noncombatant role.

Little Person
Each template of Little gives you-
-1 HP
-1 Encumbrance Slot
-1 Damage dealt
-1 Move (but only for running speed, agility is unaffected)
Also, d8 weapons probably take 2 hands, and d10 weapons are just too big to wield.

Or if you're using HD, d4 hd

A- Beneath Notice
B- Mostly Harmless
C- Good Karma
D- Willing Meatshields

Beneath Notice- If you're trying to hide from something bigger than you and have a reasonable hiding spot, it won't find you*. This applies to magic crap as well- if Dark Beige Wizard Sauronemon tries to scry for you in his crystal ball, so long as you're trying to be stealthy and not rampaging around in combat or a party, he shouldn't be able to find you.
*But I'm trying to encourage a certain kind of gameplay, so. If you've attacked someone when you had the option to sneak by or otherwise avoid them, you lose this protection against them. So sure, go ahead and backstab wildly, but once you're stained with blood, well, whatever you've offended will be coming to get you and you are no longer Beneath Notice. Maybe you should have just taken a thief level.

Mostly Harmless- You get +1 to reaction checks for each level of Little Person (to a max of +4 in case you're translating this to a bigger system) when attempting to appear harmless, sympathetic, innocuous, etc. People let their guard down around you and don't expect you to be some sort of psycho killer or uber wizard (pretty much the only options for characters) and are more prone to treating you nicely and both doing you favors and asking you to do favors for them. In combat, you'll usually be the last choice of target (unless you just shanked someone in the junk) and even stuff like maneating alien squidmonsters from beyond whose first action against Gruff McStuff would be to eat his face will probably ignore you so long as you don't bother them or interfere with their plans and don't linger about TOO long. Also, if you surrender, you will be captured but able to escape in 1d6 hours by loosening your bonds or befriending the jailer or whatever.
Again, this sort of protection vanishes once you break the 'truce.'

Good Karma
Whenever something notably bad happens to you (like getting smacked for max damage or having your in-laws show up to visit), you get a Fate Point. You're not actually playing Fate but that's okay, you're playing a janky frankenstein homebrew. You can only have 1 Fate Point at a time, and it's technically called Good Karma because copyright, just in case. Spend it to tweak a roll by +1 or -1, or do narrative Fate Point stuff, like declaring the window has curtains to hide behind or you remind the cultist of his dead daughter whose death turned him to dark rituals of resurrection in the first place or something.

Willing Meatshields
Retainers, pet dogs, sympathetic NPCs, etc can sacrifice themselves for you like a sundering shield (-1d12 damage)+the ability to move you a few feet out of harms way, so long as they've grown to have even a little fondness for you. This lets them also take the hits from things like basilisk gazes you failed your save against, or being crushed by a boulder, or whatever. Other players can do this too if they wish, taking the damage/awful effect themselves- they aren't automatically killed, but do automatically fail saves and have 0 defense. If you become a ruthless murderhobo exploiting the nurturing instincts of others for the sake of mechanical benefits you lose this level and have to take something else, you little monster. This is for good little children/hobbits/goblins who make connections with the world and learn the value of friendship, not munchkins.

Though come to think of it, it could be funny to go that route. Howzabout there can be a 'Manipulative Psychopath' class that has a nasty version of this ability so you can continue your NPC sundering with fake smiles and a cold heart. But that's for later.

BFRPG version as per request of one of my players.
The Noncombatant- You receive all the above abilities at level 1. You cannot use weapons that deal more than 1d6 damage, but may inflict melee damage as nonlethal subdual damage for no penalty. Wearing armor heavier than leather or a shield makes you look threatening enough to remove your 'mostly harmless' abilities, and may be too loud and clanky for you to stay 'beneath notice.' You can utilize magic items as a wizard, though you do not cast spells yourself- magic tends to be as friendly towards you as anything else.

Finally, you also should have some sort of skill or background. You could be an indolent elf princess, a canny dwarf horse merchant, a halfling baker, an undergrad human psychologist from another world, etc etc. This skill shouldn't be an adventuring skill, but you never know when it might come in handy anyway. If you build a stronghold (generally at level 9ish), you'll attract 2d6 1st level noncombatants related to your skill, +1d6 unusual friends you made during your adventures who give up their old dungeon habitats in favor of hanging out at your house, or at least nearby if they're a manticore who won't fit though the door or something.

	Exp.
Level- to hit	Points	Hit Dice
1- +1	0	1d4
2-+1	1,250	2d4
3-+2	2,500	3d4
4-+2	5,000	4d4
5-+3	10,000	5d4
6-+3	20,000	6d4
7-+4	40,000	7d4
8-+4	75,000	8d4
9-+5	150,000	9d4
10-+5	225,000	9d4+2
11-+5	300,000	9d4+4
12-+6	375,000	9d4+6
13-+6	450,000	9d4+8
14-+6	525,000	9d4+10
15-+7	600,000	9d4+12
16-+7	675,000	9d4+14
17-+7	750,000	9d4+16
18-+8	825,000	9d4+18
19-+8	900,000	9d4+20
20-+8	975,000	9d4+22

Saves

Level	Death Ray or Poison	Magic Wands	Paralysis or Petrify	Dragon Breath	Spells
1	11	12	14	16	15
2-3	10	11	13	15	14
4-5	9	10	13	15	14
6-7	9	10	12	14	13
8-9	8	9	12	14	13
10-11	8	9	11	13	12
12-13	7	8	11	13	12
14-15	7	8	10	12	11
16-17	6	7	10	12	11
18-19	6	7	9	11	10
20	5	6	9	11	10

Demon Masks and Other Wandering Monsters of Depth 1

My encounter charts for the 1st level of my megadungeon were pretty simple, but I think they worked well- mostly.

Honey Skeleton
This is just a slow skeleton, burdened skeleton with a beehive inside them. You can charge and bash them apart just like you could any other lone, unarmed skeleton, but then you're fighting a swarm of angry bees. But you can't just ignore it like you could a regular beehive, because the skeletons want to rip out your skeleton!

My players didn't find many in the dungeon, but bees that colonized various zombies and skeletons were found above ground fairly frequently. They required specific tactics to kill, but weren't huge threats so long as you applied a modicum of strategy and respect to how you dealt with them. I was kinda proud of this enemy because it punished straightforward approaches but was really easy to deal with with even simple spells, flasks of oil, and/or Turn Undead. It's good to encourage and reward lateral thinking, lest fights devolve into mindless HP vs Attack Value slugathons.

Anyway, these haven't seen much use outside of 'enemy that you should outwit rather than fight head on.' Combining them with other encounters is something I keep meaning and forgetting to do, but honey skeletons are a great mix of trashy minion and hazardous complication.

Demon Mask
Stats as a stirge- latches onto people, sucks blood, not a lot of HP. Turns out with low-level to-hit rolls and bad luck, even a single one attacking from surprise can horrify low level adventurers.

But these added a degree of caution to the players- they attacked if you walked in front of them, but were otherwise inert. They don't even have peripheral vision, so crawling foils them. Good for making the players think about how they approached things, spatially speaking. I hoped players would walk into a double encounter of a Honey Skeleton and a room full of these hanging on the walls, with the honey skeleton blundering around activating the masks and the players having to either deal with a swarm of masks, or take down the skeleton fast without rousing the beehive. But alas, they listened at a door, heard bees, and walked away.

Demon masks feel like great encounters to me because they have rules, and obvious ones. Lots of monsters have these 'rules.' Don't look at basilisks. Don't cut off hydra heads unless you can burn the stumps. That sort of thing. Demon Masks had a clear set of rules, and clear punishments if you violated the rules, but exploiting the weaknesses of those rules let the players get easy victories. They may be minor victories, but they earned 'em by examining how the masks worked, not just how tough they were when it came to dice rolling. I think they enjoyed getting the upper hand on the demon masks, sneaking up on them from the side and burning them, even when they were strong enough to just beat them down.

Oh, the demon masks also turn corpses into undead if left alone to fuse to their faces. So that's a neat built in dungeon repopulation mechanic I got to use, both to reanimate a bunch of goblin corpses that the players sicced masks on, and once to turn a dead player into a shambling zombie to chase the surviving players out of the dungeon with. That was fun.

Shrieker
To be frank, I totally used shriekers wrong most the time, putting them in random dead end corridors where their screaming was pretty much irrelevant as they were chopped up, burned, and so on. What I should have done is put them in the middle of pathways and near other, scarier monsters, turning them into danger amplifiers rather than arbitrary extra wandering monster checks+ burning oil tax.

One thing shriekers are good as is dungeon repopulation- have them grow on dead flesh, so returning to the scenes of slaughter in 'cleared' areas turns out to be not so safe after all.

Still, one thing I don't like is rolling to kill a creature with no attacks- kinda a waste of time, but at the same time shriekers are pretty durable. This could be solved by either making shriekers fragile and easy to kill, or possibly more threatening- deafening characters, or having other fungus buddies that are poisonous or mobile and angry or whatever. Next time I use shriekers, I'll make them cool I swear.

Sideways Goblins and Rightways Goblins-
There was a deeply entertaining magic crystal that reoriented people to face south. As expected and hoped some players used this to help explore the dungeon, even venturing out into the open as a cleric balloon lashed to donkeys, other players, and so on. One character, Townlocke the cleric, stayed sideways for a very long time.

But more importantly, there was a bit of dungeon politics going on- the Sideways Goblins could walk down long holes and engage players from weird areas due to their altered gravity, while the Rightways goblins were your standard dungeon goblins. Though their hatred of each other didn't manifest into full blown goblin politics sessions, having both factions was still important to me because it had the potential for more than just goblin bashing. Being Sideways wasn't even good for the sideways goblins in most encounters with the players, but that's just it- it showed that the dungeon was an environment that existed independently of the players. The sideways goblins had to string up ropes and iron spikes hammered into the walls to get around.

Or maybe this just tickled my GM sensibilities and the players didn't think it was all that cool. But I really liked the sideways goblins- goblins with one weird gimmick that totally changed how I ran them and saw the dungeon, looking at the dungeon as a series of deadly shafts and rooms with the doors halfway up them, because that's how the sideways goblins saw it.

Oh, and the Rightways goblins were important to have around because if everything is weird, nothing is. Rightways goblins keep it real.

Zombie Ogres
Not just zombie ogres. Zombie ogres in plate mail, with iron spikes driven through them and iron chains dangling and occasional really bizarre weapons, like a giant multi-headed flail where the flail heads were collected from petrified basilisk victims.

Kinda like this, but with more armor and demonic masks on its back instead of candles

Anyway, I described this thing as horribly as I could the first time the players found one because it had twice as much HP as the entire party combined, could squish any given player in one hit pretty easy, and had so much AC that they didn't have much chance of hitting it.

Anyway, these are wandering 'miniboss' encounters that offered a minor reward (master keys to depth 1, though the players got their hands on those from the key room before ever killing one) and a double reward of both removing the zogre from the encounter chart and of stopping demon masks from resupplying in certain areas... and also hinting at the presence of undead more horrible than the relatively innocuous Honey Skeletons. The idea was that players could wait until they were strong enough to destroy them in fair combat (Which they did, and it was a tedious, regrettable slog) or they could maybe use the environment to kill them early on.

Why Wandering Monsters
Wandering monsters prevent the 5 minute adventuring day problem. If there's a chance of meeting dumb resource draining monsters all the time, you want to make sure your expeditions matter, that you go in deep and come out rich, even if you have to take risks and push your luck.

Masks and Honey Skeletons provide initial exciting gimmicks, but soon become nothing but drains on oil reserves and maybe HP unless encountered in weird terrain or with other monsters (which I wish I had done more often, but alas).

Goblin packs were mostly drains on Sleep spells rather than real threats, but were also a goal in a way since each goblin head was worth 5GP. A classic minor risk, minor reward encounter, but as the demand for gold became higher, goblin hunting became less appealing. Furthermore, goblins were a source of information if you could capture one and convince it to tell you about traps and treasure.

The Ogres, of course, were 'oh no' moments when one came wandering up, but as the clerics grew in level, it became simple enough to just Turn and ignore them.

But while it lasted, this was a solid encounter table, despite being so simple.

Of course, as the characters outgrew these encounters, they were also wiping them out and making room for new encounters... over the course of play, the random encounters of depth 1 now look more like this.

1-Honey Skeleton
2-Wererats from Depth 2 impersonating another human encounter
3-Riikhites (Essentially Paladins)
4-Escaped Demons (Totally the players' faults)
5-Lightspear Bandits (Servants of an evil wizard wielding Spears of Continual Light)
6-Zombie Ogre (or Rival Adventurers if the zogre of the area is slain already)

Though still dangerous, the dungeon has mostly been overrun by humans from the surface, and become a real mess of talking and diplomacy and factional nonsense compared to the old stuff. Remember- Megadungeons don't get 'cleared' they get changed by the actions of the PCs, and that's definitely happened here. The fatty loot and player interest is more directed towards the lower levels, but the altered encounter charts means that they now have a different set of 'rules' to learn and exploit on their way to the lower depths and back.