Getting There's a Bitch

"However that might be, the mere fresh gale that endured for four days after the first storm then worked up again into a tempest, blowing eternally from the westward with almost hurricane force; grey dreary days of lowering cloud, and wild black nights, with the wind howling unceasingly in the rigging until the ear was sated with the noise, until no price seemed too great to pay for five minutes of peace — and yet no price however great could buy even a second of peace.

 "The creaking and the groaning of Hotspur's fabric blended with the noise of the wind, and the actual woodwork of the ship vibrated with the vibration of the rigging until it seemed as if body and mind, exhausted with the din and with the fatigues of mere movement, could not endure for another minute, and yet went on to endure for days. The tempest died down to a fresh gale, to a point when the top-sails needed only a single reef, and then, unbelievably, worked up into a tempest again, the third in a month, during which all on board renewed the bruises that covered them as a result of being flung about by the motion of the ship. And it was during that tempest that Hornblower went through a spiritual crisis."

C.S. Forrester, Hornblower & the Hotspur

The quote is here to provide evidence that the highest levels of adventure fiction have always acknowledged elements of nature that would set the character's teeth on edge.  Of all the cruelties that plague the heroes of novels, there is none so vile as those which keep the characters from carrying forward as they might wish ... and none with as long a history in story.  Storms and floods, earthquakes and blasts from the earth have always done the writer's work, maintaining the tension at the cost of some momentum — which is never really lost, since we know our heroes will get ultimately get there, just the same.

In D&D, we exempt this choice by the DM, given how obvious it would be that the DM was playing head games and nothing better.  Yet a set of circumstances has arisen, unforeseen, out of game rules that I've been running for quite some time, and yet have never produced the sort of frustration I'm seeing now.

One rule is the manner in which I calculate the weather — which, I'm sorry to say, I don't wish to repeat because saying it once on this blog is enough.  I'm quite happy that it's buried deep in the back catalogue — though I'm sure my players have a good idea how I'm calculating the weather.  Let's be clear ... it is out of my hands.  I don't decide when it rains and I don't decide which direction the wind blows.

The other is a quaint little rule I use when someone breaks their weapon in combat.  I've never written it down, but players who have participated with me can attest to my use of it going back decades.  In simple terms: when rolling a natural 1 on a d20, a weapon is dropped.  When the weapon is dropped on a hard surface, a 1 in 6 is rolled (some tougher weapons give a 1 in 8, some flimsier weapons, a 1 in 4); if that 1 comes up, the weapon breaks.  When a weapon breaks, I contend this is a very serious fumble, and the character must roll a "break check" on a d20.  Under perfectly normal circumstances, flat even surface, no teetering upon any slope and acting in traditional combat, this check can only be failed on a natural 1.  Otherwise, if the character is on a bad slope, or otherwise physically compromised, the break check is a "dex check" — roll equal to or less than the dexterity score.  If that fails, a bone breaks, using a location chart, which means an injury of 1-4 pts.  If that happens, roll another d20.  Roll a natural 1 on that, with no attention paid to circumstances and you ... die.  You fell and broke your neck.

In all the decades I've run, that has happened three times to monsters against the players and once to the player party; but it was a follower that died, not a player character.

Okay.  Here's the war story.

The players discover a dungeon east of Treborg in Norway, on June 25th.  They did well against nearly two dozen monsters in four encounters, took a surface level of treasure off the dungeon's first level and returned to Treborg to rest and equip themselves.  Getting to the dungeon a second time has been something of a problem.

They leave for the dungeon their second time on the 29th of June.  First, it was rain rain rain all the time, which isn't unusual for Norway but it is summer and clearly this was an unusual run of heavy storms.  When the party got up to the dungeon again, July 1st, there were two skeleton dire wolves to get past, which the party dispatched quite easily ... but then Lexent the cleric dropped his weapon in the last round, effectively after the last wolf was destroyed, standing at the crest of a gulley that had already been established as treacherous, blew his dex check and cracked his hip.  4 pts. of injury.

The party chose to wait nearby in the wild for the hip to heal, which it did in a few days thanks to a healing staff and a healing bottle; I ruled Lexent was in too much pain to cast spells.  They got the cleric on his feet (July 4th) and decided to scout a little around the mountain before returning up slope to the dungeon.  On the south side, they got pinned down by a giant eagle; the illusionist cast wall of fog to conceal them, which revealed there was also a goat among the rocks where they were hiding.  The party realized they could wrestle the goat into the open and let the eagle take it, a plan that worked.

Only, while wrestling the goat among the rocks, in a dense magically-generated fog, Pandred the fighter rolled a fumble; there being no weapon, and the circumstance being unusually dangerous, I had her roll a dex check, which she blew, so that she twisted an ankle.  3 pts. of injury.

Another round of healing in the wild, this time helped by the cleric, to get Pandred on her feet.  It's July 7th.  The party finally gets back up to the dungeon, meets with a creature that cannot be seen with infravision, with scary red eyes, "Grond" ... the master of the dungeon.  The party decides enough is enough, it's not the right day, so they retreat, all the way back to Treborg, which they reach on the 8th.  There they discover their new house is built, deal with some details and decide they've got to get off to the big city, Stavanger, for better supplies and to hire people to help with the dungeon.  They leave on July 9th in the morning.

The journey is 16 hours of hell, as steady rain comes in and threaten to swamp their boat, while a bare wind in the wide fjord leaves them a minimum of headway, with the wind in the wrong direction.  They get into Stavanger at 1 a.m. on the 10th, soaking wet.  They stay with friends.

It takes them that day and three more to buy their things and hire five sappers and a cook for their basecamp.  On the 14th, at last, they're ready to get out to the dungeon; and there is a hard wind blowing the wrong way.  The pilot tells them it will take probably 24 hours to make their way home to Trebord with the wind at the head, as they have only a lighter to get back and forth across the fjord.  They agree to wait.  Now it is the morning of July 15th when we're due to start again tomorrow.

It's been 20 days since they discovered the dungeon; they probably won't be ready to reach the dungeon itself until mid-day on the 17th (if the weather holds).  It has been a long, frustrating run of bad luck ... and there are quite a lot of players, I know, who would be demanding that we just "get on with it" and stop all this "wasting time."

When players act like that, DMs think it's a bad thing.

It isn't.  It means the players ARE frustrated, which is good.  It means the players are aggravated and pissed and motivated to kill something, which is good.  It means that when the players finally get there, they won't be so anxious to leave the moment they stub a toe.  And that is good.

I'm sorry too many DMs don't see that.