Borshak's Lair - is this thing supposed to be good?

[The1True]

I don't understand why she can't understand the physical distances without also knowing that the room has walnut paneling, but it is definitely a thing.

Fascinating... Like the room is basically unknowable grey haze to her until you give her something to solidify it in her mind? So if you said "This 30x40' room used to be a library, she'd be utterly lost til you gave her some dusty shelves and loose, blowing pages.

Meanwhile the other guy would be demanding to read the bloody, loose blowing pages?

 

[Malrex]

When I wrote this used to be a library but now it is empty...my intent was to say that the room was actually empty--no shelves, desks, books...nothing in it. That's when I think it's useless info.
Also, I think a missed opportunity if it used to be a library but now empty (but actually still has shelves, desks, etc. like in your example)--then I think you could still get some interaction from the players if you say there is a crumpled remains of a shelf in a corner so that maybe a player goes and pokes at it. Nothing there, but players dont have to be rewarded everytime..

 

[Beoric]

Fascinating... Like the room is basically unknowable grey haze to her until you give her something to solidify it in her mind? So if you said "This 30x40' room used to be a library, she'd be utterly lost til you gave her some dusty shelves and loose, blowing pages.

Meanwhile the other guy would be demanding to read the bloody, loose blowing pages?

This pretty much exactly. If I mentioned wood paneling, he would assume it was hiding a secret door and spend a lot of time checking and re-checking because the paneling would have to be there for some reason other than aesthetics.

Re: libraries, I think libraries are generally done badly. They are either empty, or full of books that are described as worthless, even in a pre-printing press game where any book has to be made by hand. My hypothesis is that DMs want to avoid the densely packed treasure trove that a library really ought to represent. Whereas I feel like a library should be treated like a marble statue - valuable, but heavy, and possilby losing its value if it is broken up.

And possibly hard to find a buyer for. Say you find a clerks' office in an ancient imperial ruin, with books detailing tax records. The books are heavy, and even your average bookseller isn't interested in it. It has great value to historians, but individual scholars may not be able to afford it, unless they are scions of aristocrats. But insitutions of learning, which existed during the medieval period, would be interested, and the set as a whole would be of more value than the sum of its parts.

Basically, if your random table - or whim, as the case may be - indicates that non-magical treasure is present in an area that could hold books, you might want to consider making books part or all of that treasure.

 

[The1True]

Nothing there, but players dont have to be rewarded everytime..

I agree with this in principle, but if you write anything more in a description, then you are rewarding the players. Like, even if it's fluff, they're rewarded for searching the room. Meanwhile, that fluff is bloating up the word count. I mean, I love fluff, and for a short adventure, I think there should be lots of it. Like searching the room doesn't turn up treasure, but it turns up curiosities, lore, and engagement. I think that's great, but for mid-to-long products it's going to rapidly get out of hand. I've obviously got ulterior motives for this argument though, since I'm currently actively trying to rationalize not adding to the rapidly balooning page count on my never-ending project...

my intent was to say that the room was actually empty

Yeah, sorry, I took that example and ran with it for the above selfish reasons. Of course saying what a room used to be when it's been scraped down to the walls to the point where there's no way the PC's could ever determine that on their own, and even if they did, it would serve no practical purpose and doesn't add to the lore of the place, is just a waste of words. At best, you're giving the DM a name for the room so they can quickly reference it and differentiate it from other empty rooms. In which case, put it in the Title, like:

4. Former Library:
This room is empty of all but dust and cobwebs. Scars on the floor and plaster suggest where furniture and shelves once stood.

Even there, the Scars fluff might be too much for word count, particularly if the design objective is to encourage the explorers to not linger imho

 

[The1True]

My hypothesis is that DMs want to avoid the densely packed treasure trove that a library really ought to represent.

Libraries are usually specialized things, so I like to sum them up for PC's who choose to peruse. Like, the texts are mostly alchemical tracts, if you had a month to read them, they'd give you +5 to your Alchemy Skill, and they'd be worth 2k to a collector. They weigh 300 lbs and take up enormous bulk, though. Motivated players break out the Bag o Holding or come back with a cart. If you're feeling frisky, you can throw in a couple of rando novelty tomes for a laugh. You never know; they might spark a side quest.

 

[squeen]

.. rando novelty tomes ...

That tool is like an opium den!

 

[Beoric]

That tool is like an opium den!

There are so many good tools, and I never remember that they exist when I need them.

There is this thing I do with fantasy languages. I write whatever needs to be said in English, then put it through Google translate, then take that and put it through Chaotic Shiny's language mixer. For instance, for Orcish I first translate it into Swedish, and then use Chaotic Shiny's "harsh 3" mixer. So the langages always have a consistent sound and noticeable grammer. I also have different dialects, so orcs from the Shadow Marches are translated into Swedish, but orcs from the Mror Holds are translated into Norweigian.

So, for the English "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", you get:

Swedish: Den kvicka bruna räven hoppar över den lata hunden.
Norweigian: Den raske brunreven hopper over den late hunden.
Shadow Marches orcish: Dov kxadku klivu läxov hakkul öxol kov rudu hivkov.
Mror Holds orcish: Dov lukko klivloxov hakkol axol kov rudo hivkov.
Draconic (latin + sybilant 2): Vuhir sirruuhr iszur ri'asuhs rizus si'arun zuhphsin.
Goblin (mongolian + harsh 2): Kissi'ar as üruph i'ashii rahauhr suuphüüs ürusru.

I chose "harsh 3" for orcs because it has no "b" or "p" sounds, which I think would be hard to make if you have tusks protruding from your mouth.

 

[The1True]

Going the extra mile, eh

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Right? I just make up gibberish and word-esque noises, like baby talk mixed with Simlish. Takes ten seconds, works pretty well.

You do you Beoric.

 

[Beoric]

To be clear, I do this for written language. I don't try to speak it, unless it's for names. So the orc's name "Krakak'kodo" means Bloody tusk, and the dragon "Gsui'as zasn zuhs zuhrphr i'ar si'ash i'ar ruhphs", or "Great worm with wings as black as night" goes by "Ruhphsin-sasri", or "Blackwing" for short.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

To be clear, I do this for written language. I don't try to speak it, unless it's for names. So the orc's name "Krakak'kodo" means Bloody tusk, and the dragon "Gsui'as zasn zuhs zuhrphr i'ar si'ash i'ar ruhphs", or "Great worm with wings as black as night" goes by "Ruhphsin-sasri", or "Blackwing" for short.

Commendable, but if you aren't making the players manually translate anything, then I don't see much purpose to it other than hobbyist worldbuilding.

I mean, there's no real functional difference between handing them a sheet that says "Ugok-khaa al'bheni baas tor" or a sheet that says "Pabalak chinu sawys obritan anokak" if you're just inventing gibberish and going to tell them what those words mean anyway. Unless you regularly have players saying "wait a second, I know the word 'chinu' means 'danger', we better look out!", it strikes me as a lot of work for almost no payoff.

 

[Beoric]

I mean, don't we all indulge in hobbyist worldbuilding?

It actually doesn't take that long. I write whatever I am going to write in English. I copy/paste that to Google Translate. I copy paste the result to Chaotic Shiny. I copy/paste the result to whatever medium I am using to record the translation. The longest step is the first, figuring out what I want to say. I actually find it less work that trying to come up with a made-up phrase from the start.

It also rarely comes up, so it's not something I do at the time. But I do think it would be pretty cool to have a dungeon with current/historical factions that use different languages, where recognizing different words or grammar would give clues regarding current/historical faction behaviour, in a way that benefits the players.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Well, to each their own...

I do think it would be pretty cool to have a dungeon with current/historical factions that use different languages, where recognizing different words or grammar would give clues regarding current/historical faction behaviour, in a way that benefits the players.

Hard agree, would be very cool. I always felt dungeons should do more with languages - there's so many of them, presumably to some better purpose..

 

[The1True]

Would definitely love to see a riddle that doesn't depend on English language word play.

 

[Osrnoob]

Okay, so I did a bit of digging. I had never heard of this module before, but it looks like it was published in 1976, in a fanzine created by Jaquays and some friends, while she was still in college. She had been playing for about a year.

To be clear, this was published the same year as Palace of the Vampire Queen, reputedly the first published standalone module. I don't have a copy of PotVQ, but I think I recall seeing pages from it, and it wasn't exactly slick. For that matter, Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower, and pretty much all Judges Guild stuff from this period, aren't particularly slick when compared to the early TSR stuff.

So a kid in college who wasn't very experienced with the game and with extremely limited "professional" examples to reference, in a time before ready access to word processing, knocked this thing out. "Amateurish" is less of a criticism than a description here.

Also, this module had me at Fred, the temperamental amulet of protection. @Melan called it "the gold standard of low-level orcs-in-a-hole modules" and I'm not surprised. I'm skimming it now and it's just packed with imagination. The text could be clearer, but I'm confident taking the time to grok it would be worth it.

This is going to the top of my "review to figure out if I can use it in one of my campaigns" pile.

Totally agree with this

I do feel you can't judge it by the same standards. POTVQ is urr history of the hobby and this is right on its heels. So much so I doubt they read it. That's quite something to think about

 

[Osrnoob]

This is a great thread! Thanks to OP and all posters we got somewhere really interesting

 

[Beoric]

Libraries are usually specialized things, so I like to sum them up for PC's who choose to peruse. Like, the texts are mostly alchemical tracts, if you had a month to read them, they'd give you +5 to your Alchemy Skill, and they'd be worth 2k to a collector. They weigh 300 lbs and take up enormous bulk, though. Motivated players break out the Bag o Holding or come back with a cart.

The last time I was a player in a campaign that went more than a few sessions (I think I got to 8th level before it petered out), the early sessions involved bandits raiding merchants, which ended up with a few wagons lying around with nobody to claim them. So we started driving the wagons to the dungeons, recruiting some men at arms to watch them while we were delving, and stripping the dungeons and our opponents of every last rusty dagger and dented suit of armor we came across, which we (literally) carted back to town for sale. Our party ended up being nicknamed the "Wagoneers" by the locals.

 

[The1True]

Yeah man, we did that in Lost Mines of Phandelver. When you bring a wagon, you can take the looting to an industrial level! Guarding the wagon and carting it around becomes its own minigame.

 

[Malrex]

The last time I was a player in a campaign that went more than a few sessions (I think I got to 8th level before it petered out), the early sessions involved bandits raiding merchants, which ended up with a few wagons lying around with nobody to claim them. So we started driving the wagons to the dungeons, recruiting some men at arms to watch them while we were delving, and stripping the dungeons and our opponents of every last rusty dagger and dented suit of armor we came across, which we (literally) carted back to town for sale. Our party ended up being nicknamed the "Wagoneers" by the locals.

Heh...this is where our group was started to be called The Merciless Merchants. We did the same thing.