SMARTASS TEST

Hey.

So I’m thinking of running a little game called Dungeons & Dragons. Fifth Edition? What is that? All it says here is “Rules for Fantastical Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures”. I haven’t played wargames, but I do like me some medieval fantasy.

So first things first, I need some EQUIPMENT. Namely, a copy of Dungeons & Dragons, Chainmail miniature rules, Outdoor Survival, the inventory of a small bookstore, players, and one patient referee. I don’t know any patient referee (or patient football players for that matter) so I guess I’ll have to do with me.

D&D comes in three brown booklets called Men & Magic (Vol. I), Monsters & Treasure (Vol. II), and The Underground & Wilderness Adventures (Vol. III). Vol. I says to “read through the entire work in the order presented before you attempt to play”, which is what I’m going to do.

...

Alright, so it took me around half an hour to get through the booklets and like four years of my life to understand it. I now know what Kriegsspiel is and that I’m not supposed to be a football referee.

A (D&D) referee is someone who prepares maps, monsters, treasure, and makes sure everyone on the table is following the rules of the game… except for the referee, who can just shrug it off and amend or make up rules on the fly.
The football D&D players meanwhile are a bunch of people that spend their time beating up the legal residents of an area, steal their riches, and get better at beating up other people and stealing their riches. They also control the player characters.

But before we start our long journey through human (and non-human) rights violations, I, the referee, must jumpstart this whole thing. I must first draw six maps of my “underworld”, people them with monsters of various horrid aspect (so, people from [insert here a state or province of your choice for laughs]), and note the location of the latter two on keys, each corresponding to the appropriate level.
And is so simple, really, just look:

Look!

LOOK!

But wait! I also must keep in mind that downward (and upward) mobility is desirable. Nobody likes to stay on the same boring floor. Also, rich treasure should be relatively difficult to locate, and access must be limited.
There must also be plenty of free real estate, ie. rooms without monsters, treasure, or both. The most important treasures will consist of gems and jewelry (coins are for peasants after all), and magic items, the latter should be guarded by powerful creatures, and Vol. II says that I can just roll in a table if I’m a lazy bastard.
If for some reason treasure happens to be unguarded, it must be invisible, under the floor, behind a curtain, taped into the ceiling, or locked in a chest with poison needles or copies of Cats.

Finally, I’m ready to start drawing. After like 15 minutes of staring at a blank piece of graph paper, my brain is ready to start drawing too.

IT'S RAW!

I rip off make a quick tribute of the sample dungeon and decided that this little innocent room (the one with the “A” in it) will harbor an encounter of great importance to my characters. Yes, this will be their proving ground.
But first, let’s break it up a bit:

1. The black area is solid rock, and the “1.” on it, is the designation of the zone. There’s some corridors and rooms in this zone, and they all fall in this jurisdiction. Okay that doesn’t make sense, but I’m doing this kind of like the books say.
2. The solid black lines are walls, and the white squares in the middle of them are doors.
3. The slim black lines are, of course, squares on a graph paper. But in the underground setting of this game, they represent 10 feet square area.
4. The “A” represents a monster encounter.

The legal residents monsters the players will meet are going to be terrible Kobolds, creatures from germanic mythology. These fellas are of chaotic alignment, have a morale of 5, carry shields only, and are armed with daggers. Each of them are also carrying little sacks with 200 copper pieces in them, they all have the same amount (they’re germans, so they tend to keep everything organized). Also their hit points are 2, 1, 1, and 2.
If you’re familiar with the terminology I used, keep on reading, there’s a few twists in the old formula. If you’re new, well…

I’ll finish up the rest of the level and perhaps the first six three levels, as these Rules for Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with MS Paint, continue to baffle me.