Running Castle Blackmoor (Early Access B)

The attached zip contains updated keys for Castle Blackmoor.

BLANK TEMPLATE: This file is a blank template for  stocking the dungeons of Castle Blackmoor. It includes the first seven  levels, with a table including spots for Protection Points, Creatures,  and Treasure/Notes. When I stocked the dungeon, I did three passes:

1. Check each room for habitation and, if so, generate Protection Points.
2. Go back to each room with a Protection Point budget and generate creatures.
3. Make treasure tests for all of the rooms.

It stops at Level 7 because that’s where Arneson’s guidance for  protection point budgets stopped. I’m not certain whether it makes more  sense to continue increasing the point values at higher levels or allow  them to plateau at 50 x 1d10, and I figured putting the current material  into play might help elucidate the matter. (So we’ll see where that  leads us the in future.)

GLENDOWER TEMPLATE: I’m referring to this format as a  Glendower template because it’s modeled after the presentation of the  Glendower Dungeon in the First Fantasy Campaign:

As I described in Reactions OD&D: The Arnesonian Dungeon,  I found this particular format fascinating because the combination of  treasure + protection point budget creates a specific tactical “shape”  for the dungeon, but allows the GM to completely reinvent the dungeon  on-the-fly each time they run it: This time you spend the protection  point budget on goblins and ogres and the Glendower Dungeons are an  outpost of the Goblin King. Next time you spend them on Nazgul and it’s a  wraith-infested ruin haunted by the ancient nobles who once ruled its  halls. The next time it’s infested with giant spiders. And so forth.

A Glendower template can also allow the GM to more precisely indicate  what the inhabited areas of “interest” are in a dungeon while still  providing an ample opportunity for random generation to create  spontaneity in actual play. (That is not the case here; this Glendower  template of the Blackmoor dungeons was randomly generated.)

SEED 1: This was the result of me fully stocking the  Blackmoor dungeon levels. This is the version of the dungeon that I’ve  been running (and which it looks like I’ll be continuing to run for  awhile longer as an open table).

SEED 2: To demonstrate the flexibility of the  system, I started over and started a second seed of the entire dungeon.  (This took about 45 minutes to do all seven levels.) Perhaps the most  notable take-away, in my opinion, is how the same stocking procedure can  create radically different versions of the same dungeon.

For example, in the Seed 1 version of the dungeon I generated only  one encounter (featuring 23 hobbits) on Level 1 and Level 2 was also  sparsely inhabited. In Seed 2, however, the upper level is filled with  hostile fey (including an attack force in the very first room!) and  Level 2 is crawling with bad guys. In play, entering the Seed 1 version  of the dungeon was a slow, tense build as empty corridors rolled out  behind the party. The Seed 2 dungeon, on the other hand, would be an  immediate meatgrinder.