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What do icy waterfalls, greasy floors, and light stealing smoke have in common?
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They're all hazards.
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Welcome to the Lair of Secrets.
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In this episode, we're talking about Shadowdark hazards, the things that drown you, crush
you, blind you, and steal your memories, and more.
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What is a hazard?
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Ken, you brought this up as a topic to me a little while back.
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What are hazards?
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Why are hazards?
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So I struggled with hazards in Shadowdark because they're very open-ended and there's no
rules governing them, but what are they?
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So I mean, they kind of seem kind of self-explanatory, but we're talking about the
environmental effects like quicksand, rushing water, falling debris.
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There are things you might be able to mitigate or evade, but per the rules, there's often
no way to permanently defeat them or disable them, And so core rule book goes into some...
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light amount of detail on page 115 and divides them into basically three types of So
you've got your movement types, which are going to slow or stop your movement.
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So quicksand, I don't know, concrete, rapidly freezing ice.
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They also have examples of caltrops, tar fields, maybe a steep incline.
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Something's going to slow you down.
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Then damage, these are things that are gonna expose you to ongoing damage while you're in
the vicinity of the hazard.
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So examples of that would be acid pools, or presumably acid rain, know, fantasy acid rain
that just dissolves things.
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Lava, pummeling hail, which I have practical experience on, with on the trail.
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Don't do it, it sucks.
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And then weakened, which is uh sapping your physical capabilities, mental grit, resources.
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So stuff like blinding smoke, memory stealing, something that's going to extinguish your
light source.
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So it's messing with your mental and physical resources.
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And so the rules also note that you can combine these to create particularly difficult and
dangerous threats.
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So like you might combine moving and damage with to have exploding rocks that do damage to
you, but then loose debris afterwards that causes issues with
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movement.
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You can combine movement and weaken so you can have perhaps grasping vines that reach out
at your characters and slow them down but then release sleep inducing spores which weaken
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you and then damage plus weaken okay icy water which is going to do maybe damage to you as
you start experiencing hypothermia and stuff like that but it also douses your light
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sources so then that's weakening you because you're you're losing a material resource.
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You know, it sounds pretty good, but it doesn't give you specific stats or mechanics for
the hazards, which I found kind of odd because on just the previous page, they give you
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stats and additional information for traps, right?
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They talk about damage and special effects for traps, but then hazards, it's just like,
yeah, they're tough.
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Do mean things to your characters, right?
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Yeah.
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And I can, I mean, I can kind of see why, cause like, how do you define a bunch of these
things easily?
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Uh, you know, succinctly, I should say, um, you know, when it's as wild and varied as
like, you're having to jump from solid stone to solid stone in the caldera of volcano of a
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volcano for your movement side of things.
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And,
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The sulfurous smell coming off is sapping your physical abilities.
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Having the categories makes sense to me.
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But yeah, initially I wasn't quite sure how to put them together but the more that you and
I have talked the more I've I've thought about things like Predator not Predator.
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What was the the?
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The newest Predator movie where the Predator was the main character
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Predator: Badlands.
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they had those those pineapple like things on stalks Which I found there are plants that
look very much like that, but that's an aside.
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Those are also a hazard.
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But you know, would it would inflate and then shoot spines out at you.
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That was one where you and I kind of went back and forth is like is that a hazard or a
trap?
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Yeah, that entire planet, if you haven't seen Predator: Badlands, I enjoyed it.
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I mean, it's a PG-13 Predator movie, so it's violent, but it's not gory.
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And I thought it was fun.
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I mean, I really enjoyed Prey by the same director.
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But yes, the entire planet is trying to kill you.
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So it's a great example of hazards.
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And I will say, I'm coming from Dungeons & Dragons.
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I still have a 5e campaign.
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And so, you know, the Dungeon Master's Guide has a number of different examples in both
the current version and the previous version and really scattered throughout the game
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since pretty much Third Edition, where they did stat out hazards.
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I mean, I can remember, I have a whole book of hazards for Star Wars Saga Edition, which
had all kinds of crunchy mechanicalness.
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so with that,
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background coming to Shadowdark with no mechanical stats for hazards was a bit
challenging, but they did give us examples of hazards in adventures.
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For example, in the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, Room 2, Blinding Cave, is a
cruel cave that blinds people when they enter with their torches.
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Walls, dazzling reflective, DC 12 checks when entering with a bright light, or blinded for
1d4 rounds, and by the way, spoilers, there's monsters off to the side that are not
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affected by this that will come and eat you as you are suffering from this attack.
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Yeah, belated spoiler warning.
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We are going to be talking about ShadowDark published modules.
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So if you haven't played them and you want to play them.
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we'll mark it, skip ahead um and forget what you just heard.
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You don't know what is room two on the map anyway, so.
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Yes, this is true.
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This is true.
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So anyway, but this is a pretty good example.
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It's something that's messing with a party from a, you know, mechanical perspective,
because you could be blinded.
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And it's also turning what is normally an
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advantageous thing having a light source into a detriment.
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pretty nefarious.
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There's also a webbed choked cave filled with, well, webs.
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Left by what?
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Well, you'll find out.
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Webs are sticky, DC 12 strength to break free and move each turn.
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Highly flammable, so a d6 damage to stuck creatures and it burns for 1d4 rounds, which
I've, my characters in D&D 2nd edition burned down a quarter of a
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city using the web spell.
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So this warmed my heart.
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It's also one of the cruel things that you can do as a GM is you can put things that are
burnable in the webs that are treasure
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Yes, but again, you're turning an advantageous thing, your torch, into a possible
detriment if you're trying to make your way through the choked webs, or you're just gonna
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burn the webs, and then yes, a mean DM who put like, ha ha, the valuable treasure just
went up in flames, but we're not mean DMs.
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uh Thus triggering the fireball as the magic leaves the page.
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I'm not that kind of DM.
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in the Hoard of the Sea Wolf King, which is a zero-level gauntlet set in the ruins of a
Viking-inspired tomb from Cursed Scrolls...
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3, which is the great Norse one that I've used a lot for my campaign, there is a Stingbat
Cave, which has tarry Black Mud, which is mud, cop...
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Tarry Black Mud.
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oh
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Well, if there are also sting bats in it, that is really mean, making people move slow
while they're trying to avoid death mosquitoes.
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Yeah.
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Mud, coppery smelling stingbat guano, PCs moving at more than half speed must pass a DC 12
Dex check or slip and fall, which then, you you have the aforementioned stingbats, which
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must be out there somewhere, right?
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arriving just in time to attack you as you fall into the ground.
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And then there's the Flotsam Cave, which has towering piles of driftwood.
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Piles, precariously stacked piles, precariously stacked debris.
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Each time a PC touches it, it's a DC 12 Dex check, or you take 2d6 points of damage as
you're crushed under a collapse.
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like walking through a hoarder's house with precariously balanced piles places.
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Having been in situations where I've had to clean out houses like this, I can attest to
the fact that sometimes it's a little dangerous folks.
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So yeah, so I think those are those are cool examples of the hazards.
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And so what I did, and I'll include this in the in the blog post is built a hazard chart.
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And so what I tried to do is kind of borrow from what we saw in the traps chart.
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and kind of assign a hazard level.
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There's another chart further on in the random encounters section, like when you're
building a dungeon that goes into more detail as to like, uh basically lightweight hazards
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versus heavyweight hazards.
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And so using that, I basically said, okay, hazard level zero through three, well, that's
gonna be like a short fall or dense rubble.
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It could potentially do a D6.
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damage and it's going to be a DC 12 check because again this is going off of the DCs that
we see in the zero level and first level dungeon.
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Then hazard level four through six well that's going to be like collapsing walls,
enfeebling magic, so potential for 2d6 points of damage.
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A harder DC so hard that would be 15 and again these are the DCs from the Shadowdark book
so I didn't pull these completely out of thin air.
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And then at hazard level seven to nine you're talking drowning hazards, uh
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Falls, Toxic Gas, Crushing Terrain, 3d6 points of damage.
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The DC check goes to Extreme, which is an 18.
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And the last one I just have 10, which is just kind of catastrophic, like complete cave
collapse.
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You're not getting out 4d6 points of damage.
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Here there'd be dragons, right?
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Just I don't know what the DC is of the piece as the Dungeon Master, you figure it out on
the fly.
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And I think you could
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for that.
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Rocks fall, everybody dies.
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Rocks fall, everybody dies, yes.
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So I think you can also, going back to the previous page, which talks about traps and does
have things like triggers and damage or effect indicators, you can just steal the damage
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from there.
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So the damage there is a little bit more severe.
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You've got like a rolling boulder will do two to eight points of damage, or it's 2d8
points of damage.
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A slicing blade could do 2d8 points of damage and sleep.
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So it gives you some more options to kind of mix and match if you're looking for
additional inspiration.
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Yeah, I'm still working on hazards as well.
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I can also understand why they didn't put it in a chart because not all traps like do
actual damage.
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Like the sting bat guana one is making people fall down or they're moving at half speed.
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So doesn't always, the hazard doesn't always have to do something dangerous, but because
the hazard is there, something else that is dangerous can be more effective.
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my take on it was as a chart you're picking and choosing right so if there's you know if
there's a weakness hazard well here's the DC it's a 12 and there is no damage and so
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that's I think the the falling down and getting stuck is more of a weakness thing maybe or
a movement thing so it's not like oh short fall, well it must do a d6 so damage well it
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might be a shortfall into water but what's in the water
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Right, right.
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And maybe the water is deep enough that as you're moving through it, know, walk walking at
five deep in, you know, in a lake, you're not moving nearly as fast as you would on land.
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That's a hazard if if there is something in the water coming after you.
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And it might have been in the Sea King's tomb where they have a lake that's filled with
jellyfish.
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I have not run it for my players, but it sounds fiendish.
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it at Origins and it was funny we went in and the way it was described to us, was like a
trial by combat to become full members of the tribe that we were with.
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And we had to get some treasure out of there.
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it's huge and expansive, but we got a little piece of treasure for everybody and we're
like,
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Yeah, I think we're done.
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We don't need to explore this whole thing.
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There's no reason to explore this whole thing.
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We're just gonna leave.
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Yes, right, because why stay and die?
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So kind of pulling it all together, could see a geothermal vent is kind of a minor hazard.
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You're venturing underground and maybe you give the huddle, the huddle, you're venturing
underground and you give some subtle hints like there's a little bit of smell of sulfur in
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the air, right?
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Or a rumbling in the ground beneath you and then the vent erupts.
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Dex DC 12 check to avoid otherwise you take a D8, D6 of points of damage if you fail.
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So it's kind of basic.
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You could also foreshadow it the way they do in movies where, you know, they see event
erupting, you know, 30 feet ahead.
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And now they're realizing, oh, all those weird mound things with a hole in the middle that
we should avoid those.
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Some of them are pretty close together.
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Why are all these corpses next to all of these holes, and why are they all so scorched?
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If you go combined, so you could have the geothermal vent, which is going to do damage to
you, plus noxious gas, which could weaken you,
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So we'll take geothermal vent, which is damage.
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So again, it's going to do some physical damage to you.
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So DC...
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DC12 checks check to avoid and then but wait if you manage to avoid that we've got the
noxious gas which erupts from the vent as well you didn't see it but what's that smell uh
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Con DC 12 to avoid passing out for 1d4 rounds and because you're on the ground maybe
you're taking damage from the geothermal vent you just fell into until somebody wakes you
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up or you're dragged to safety I think uh
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ah that if you avoid the gas, if you avoid the noxious gas for the damage, you would still
possibly get the Con to avoid passing out.
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But if you fail the noxious gas and take the damage, you still have to make the DC 12 and
avoid passing out.
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yeah, it's just bad all around.
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yeah, it's bad all around.
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but I think it's fun.
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So to me, this helped me kind of get my head around how I might use hazards in my game.
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I have two scenarios right now for my lunchtime Shadowdark campaign, and we're gonna use
some of those to inspire our next episode where we're gonna talk about d12 Hazards for
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Shadowdark.
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There's two possibilities.
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They adventure into the Deep Crawl, which is basically like an underdarkish kind of
adventure where they're going to find the Rat King, or try and find the Rat King.
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They go on an overland journey to Varden, which is the city to the south, to sell all
their loot.
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They are presently planning to go to Varden because Nattham, the town they're currently
in, refuses to buy their stuff for reasonable prices.
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And they don't want to deal with the Rat King right now.
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And they just leveled up.
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And, you know, Varden's a bigger city, more opportunities for carousing.
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And wait, I have this lovely new Cursed Scroll book, number six, which has expanded
carousing charts.
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Yes, yeah, I saw that.
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That was pretty cool.
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um And it's carousing per class as well.
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Yes, yes, which the the fan created GM book I have also did something similar to that, so
I'm going to need to decide which one I want to use, but I really like the idea that
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there's now
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class-specific carousing options, and I think it's gonna be really fun with them being
invited, but they have to get there.
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And so my campaign is set in sort of an alternative Scandinavian north.
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It is deepest winter.
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almost the solstice, so there are going to be all kinds of monstrous threats out in the
dark.
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But at the same time, there's other hazards they might encounter.
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It's cold, blizzards come, you get run over by reindeer,
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We will see next time exactly what we come up with to threaten my characters with.
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Sounds good.
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Thanks for attending our latest minion and future overlord training, everyone.
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Coming up in the near future, as Ken mentioned, we've got d12 Shadowdark Hazards that
we've created.
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00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,125
What do icy waterfalls, greasy floors, and light stealing smoke have in common?
2
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They're all hazards.
3
00:00:06,907 --> 00:00:08,348
Welcome to the Lair of Secrets.
4
00:00:08,348 --> 00:00:16,436
In this episode, we're talking about Shadowdark hazards, the things that drown you, crush
you, blind you, and steal your memories, and more.
5
00:00:16,436 --> 00:00:17,397
What is a hazard?
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Ken, you brought this up as a topic to me a little while back.
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What are hazards?
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00:00:21,962 --> 00:00:22,774
Why are hazards?
9
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So I struggled with hazards in Shadowdark because they're very open-ended and there's no
rules governing them, but what are they?
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So I mean, they kind of seem kind of self-explanatory, but we're talking about the
environmental effects like quicksand, rushing water, falling debris.
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There are things you might be able to mitigate or evade, but per the rules, there's often
no way to permanently defeat them or disable them, And so core rule book goes into some...
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light amount of detail on page 115 and divides them into basically three types of So
you've got your movement types, which are going to slow or stop your movement.
13
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So quicksand, I don't know, concrete, rapidly freezing ice.
14
00:00:59,193 --> 00:01:03,735
They also have examples of caltrops, tar fields, maybe a steep incline.
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00:01:03,735 --> 00:01:04,764
Something's going to slow you down.
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00:01:04,764 --> 00:01:11,905
Then damage, these are things that are gonna expose you to ongoing damage while you're in
the vicinity of the hazard.
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So examples of that would be acid pools, or presumably acid rain, know, fantasy acid rain
that just dissolves things.
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Lava, pummeling hail, which I have practical experience on, with on the trail.
19
00:01:22,445 --> 00:01:23,806
Don't do it, it sucks.
20
00:01:23,806 --> 00:01:28,608
And then weakened, which is uh sapping your physical capabilities, mental grit, resources.
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00:01:28,608 --> 00:01:33,652
So stuff like blinding smoke, memory stealing, something that's going to extinguish your
light source.
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00:01:33,652 --> 00:01:37,004
So it's messing with your mental and physical resources.
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00:01:37,004 --> 00:01:43,367
And so the rules also note that you can combine these to create particularly difficult and
dangerous threats.
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00:01:43,367 --> 00:01:51,964
So like you might combine moving and damage with to have exploding rocks that do damage to
you, but then loose debris afterwards that causes issues with
25
00:01:51,964 --> 00:01:52,684
movement.
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00:01:52,684 --> 00:02:02,120
You can combine movement and weaken so you can have perhaps grasping vines that reach out
at your characters and slow them down but then release sleep inducing spores which weaken
27
00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:10,477
you and then damage plus weaken okay icy water which is going to do maybe damage to you as
you start experiencing hypothermia and stuff like that but it also douses your light
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00:02:10,477 --> 00:02:14,580
sources so then that's weakening you because you're you're losing a material resource.
29
00:02:14,580 --> 00:02:24,004
You know, it sounds pretty good, but it doesn't give you specific stats or mechanics for
the hazards, which I found kind of odd because on just the previous page, they give you
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stats and additional information for traps, right?
31
00:02:28,028 --> 00:02:33,331
They talk about damage and special effects for traps, but then hazards, it's just like,
yeah, they're tough.
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Do mean things to your characters, right?
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Yeah.
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And I can, I mean, I can kind of see why, cause like, how do you define a bunch of these
things easily?
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Uh, you know, succinctly, I should say, um, you know, when it's as wild and varied as
like, you're having to jump from solid stone to solid stone in the caldera of volcano of a
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volcano for your movement side of things.
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00:02:56,528 --> 00:02:57,039
And,
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The sulfurous smell coming off is sapping your physical abilities.
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Having the categories makes sense to me.
40
00:03:02,783 --> 00:03:15,148
But yeah, initially I wasn't quite sure how to put them together but the more that you and
I have talked the more I've I've thought about things like Predator not Predator.
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What was the the?
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00:03:16,636 --> 00:03:20,077
The newest Predator movie where the Predator was the main character
43
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Predator: Badlands.
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they had those those pineapple like things on stalks Which I found there are plants that
look very much like that, but that's an aside.
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Those are also a hazard.
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But you know, would it would inflate and then shoot spines out at you.
47
00:03:36,501 --> 00:03:41,663
That was one where you and I kind of went back and forth is like is that a hazard or a
trap?
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Yeah, that entire planet, if you haven't seen Predator: Badlands, I enjoyed it.
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I mean, it's a PG-13 Predator movie, so it's violent, but it's not gory.
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And I thought it was fun.
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I mean, I really enjoyed Prey by the same director.
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But yes, the entire planet is trying to kill you.
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So it's a great example of hazards.
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And I will say, I'm coming from Dungeons & Dragons.
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I still have a 5e campaign.
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And so, you know, the Dungeon Master's Guide has a number of different examples in both
the current version and the previous version and really scattered throughout the game
57
00:04:07,146 --> 00:04:10,386
since pretty much Third Edition, where they did stat out hazards.
58
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I mean, I can remember, I have a whole book of hazards for Star Wars Saga Edition, which
had all kinds of crunchy mechanicalness.
59
00:04:16,507 --> 00:04:17,472
so with that,
60
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background coming to Shadowdark with no mechanical stats for hazards was a bit
challenging, but they did give us examples of hazards in adventures.
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For example, in the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, Room 2, Blinding Cave, is a
cruel cave that blinds people when they enter with their torches.
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Walls, dazzling reflective, DC 12 checks when entering with a bright light, or blinded for
1d4 rounds, and by the way, spoilers, there's monsters off to the side that are not
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affected by this that will come and eat you as you are suffering from this attack.
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00:04:51,154 --> 00:04:52,609
Yeah, belated spoiler warning.
65
00:04:52,609 --> 00:04:55,383
We are going to be talking about ShadowDark published modules.
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So if you haven't played them and you want to play them.
67
00:04:57,338 --> 00:05:01,816
we'll mark it, skip ahead um and forget what you just heard.
68
00:05:01,816 --> 00:05:06,266
You don't know what is room two on the map anyway, so.
69
00:05:06,266 --> 00:05:07,288
Yes, this is true.
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This is true.
71
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So anyway, but this is a pretty good example.
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It's something that's messing with a party from a, you know, mechanical perspective,
because you could be blinded.
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And it's also turning what is normally an
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00:05:17,542 --> 00:05:20,784
advantageous thing having a light source into a detriment.
75
00:05:20,784 --> 00:05:23,125
pretty nefarious.
76
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There's also a webbed choked cave filled with, well, webs.
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Left by what?
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00:05:27,556 --> 00:05:28,557
Well, you'll find out.
79
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Webs are sticky, DC 12 strength to break free and move each turn.
80
00:05:32,890 --> 00:05:44,288
Highly flammable, so a d6 damage to stuck creatures and it burns for 1d4 rounds, which
I've, my characters in D&D 2nd edition burned down a quarter of a
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city using the web spell.
82
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So this warmed my heart.
83
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It's also one of the cruel things that you can do as a GM is you can put things that are
burnable in the webs that are treasure
84
00:05:56,994 --> 00:06:04,395
Yes, but again, you're turning an advantageous thing, your torch, into a possible
detriment if you're trying to make your way through the choked webs, or you're just gonna
85
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burn the webs, and then yes, a mean DM who put like, ha ha, the valuable treasure just
went up in flames, but we're not mean DMs.
86
00:06:12,048 --> 00:06:19,592
uh Thus triggering the fireball as the magic leaves the page.
87
00:06:19,592 --> 00:06:21,286
I'm not that kind of DM.
88
00:06:21,303 --> 00:06:30,453
in the Hoard of the Sea Wolf King, which is a zero-level gauntlet set in the ruins of a
Viking-inspired tomb from Cursed Scrolls...
89
00:06:30,453 --> 00:06:38,836
3, which is the great Norse one that I've used a lot for my campaign, there is a Stingbat
Cave, which has tarry Black Mud, which is mud, cop...
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00:06:39,838 --> 00:06:40,718
Tarry Black Mud.
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oh
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Well, if there are also sting bats in it, that is really mean, making people move slow
while they're trying to avoid death mosquitoes.
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Yeah.
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00:06:53,184 --> 00:07:04,702
Mud, coppery smelling stingbat guano, PCs moving at more than half speed must pass a DC 12
Dex check or slip and fall, which then, you you have the aforementioned stingbats, which
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must be out there somewhere, right?
96
00:07:06,605 --> 00:07:09,398
arriving just in time to attack you as you fall into the ground.
97
00:07:09,398 --> 00:07:12,762
And then there's the Flotsam Cave, which has towering piles of driftwood.
98
00:07:12,762 --> 00:07:18,408
Piles, precariously stacked piles, precariously stacked debris.
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Each time a PC touches it, it's a DC 12 Dex check, or you take 2d6 points of damage as
you're crushed under a collapse.
100
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like walking through a hoarder's house with precariously balanced piles places.
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00:07:33,235 --> 00:07:39,895
Having been in situations where I've had to clean out houses like this, I can attest to
the fact that sometimes it's a little dangerous folks.
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00:07:39,895 --> 00:07:44,935
So yeah, so I think those are those are cool examples of the hazards.
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And so what I did, and I'll include this in the in the blog post is built a hazard chart.
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And so what I tried to do is kind of borrow from what we saw in the traps chart.
105
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and kind of assign a hazard level.
106
00:08:00,265 --> 00:08:08,822
There's another chart further on in the random encounters section, like when you're
building a dungeon that goes into more detail as to like, uh basically lightweight hazards
107
00:08:08,822 --> 00:08:10,054
versus heavyweight hazards.
108
00:08:10,054 --> 00:08:18,251
And so using that, I basically said, okay, hazard level zero through three, well, that's
gonna be like a short fall or dense rubble.
109
00:08:18,251 --> 00:08:19,969
It could potentially do a D6.
110
00:08:19,969 --> 00:08:26,943
damage and it's going to be a DC 12 check because again this is going off of the DCs that
we see in the zero level and first level dungeon.
111
00:08:26,943 --> 00:08:34,189
Then hazard level four through six well that's going to be like collapsing walls,
enfeebling magic, so potential for 2d6 points of damage.
112
00:08:34,189 --> 00:08:42,775
A harder DC so hard that would be 15 and again these are the DCs from the Shadowdark book
so I didn't pull these completely out of thin air.
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00:08:42,775 --> 00:08:47,960
And then at hazard level seven to nine you're talking drowning hazards, uh
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Falls, Toxic Gas, Crushing Terrain, 3d6 points of damage.
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00:08:52,133 --> 00:08:55,054
The DC check goes to Extreme, which is an 18.
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00:08:55,054 --> 00:09:00,407
And the last one I just have 10, which is just kind of catastrophic, like complete cave
collapse.
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00:09:00,407 --> 00:09:02,929
You're not getting out 4d6 points of damage.
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Here there'd be dragons, right?
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Just I don't know what the DC is of the piece as the Dungeon Master, you figure it out on
the fly.
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And I think you could
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for that.
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Rocks fall, everybody dies.
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Rocks fall, everybody dies, yes.
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00:09:15,421 --> 00:09:24,909
So I think you can also, going back to the previous page, which talks about traps and does
have things like triggers and damage or effect indicators, you can just steal the damage
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from there.
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00:09:25,245 --> 00:09:26,911
So the damage there is a little bit more severe.
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00:09:26,911 --> 00:09:32,675
You've got like a rolling boulder will do two to eight points of damage, or it's 2d8
points of damage.
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00:09:32,675 --> 00:09:36,919
A slicing blade could do 2d8 points of damage and sleep.
129
00:09:36,919 --> 00:09:42,518
So it gives you some more options to kind of mix and match if you're looking for
additional inspiration.
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Yeah, I'm still working on hazards as well.
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00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:53,836
I can also understand why they didn't put it in a chart because not all traps like do
actual damage.
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Like the sting bat guana one is making people fall down or they're moving at half speed.
133
00:09:58,924 --> 00:10:08,746
So doesn't always, the hazard doesn't always have to do something dangerous, but because
the hazard is there, something else that is dangerous can be more effective.
134
00:10:08,827 --> 00:10:17,197
my take on it was as a chart you're picking and choosing right so if there's you know if
there's a weakness hazard well here's the DC it's a 12 and there is no damage and so
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00:10:17,197 --> 00:10:27,427
that's I think the the falling down and getting stuck is more of a weakness thing maybe or
a movement thing so it's not like oh short fall, well it must do a d6 so damage well it
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00:10:27,427 --> 00:10:30,549
might be a shortfall into water but what's in the water
137
00:10:30,817 --> 00:10:31,699
Right, right.
138
00:10:31,699 --> 00:10:43,190
And maybe the water is deep enough that as you're moving through it, know, walk walking at
five deep in, you know, in a lake, you're not moving nearly as fast as you would on land.
139
00:10:43,190 --> 00:10:46,973
That's a hazard if if there is something in the water coming after you.
140
00:10:47,058 --> 00:10:57,618
And it might have been in the Sea King's tomb where they have a lake that's filled with
jellyfish.
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00:10:59,616 --> 00:11:03,170
I have not run it for my players, but it sounds fiendish.
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00:11:03,170 --> 00:11:16,723
it at Origins and it was funny we went in and the way it was described to us, was like a
trial by combat to become full members of the tribe that we were with.
143
00:11:16,723 --> 00:11:21,048
And we had to get some treasure out of there.
144
00:11:21,048 --> 00:11:27,223
it's huge and expansive, but we got a little piece of treasure for everybody and we're
like,
145
00:11:27,223 --> 00:11:27,966
Yeah, I think we're done.
146
00:11:27,966 --> 00:11:29,730
We don't need to explore this whole thing.
147
00:11:29,730 --> 00:11:33,039
There's no reason to explore this whole thing.
148
00:11:33,039 --> 00:11:34,032
We're just gonna leave.
149
00:11:34,032 --> 00:11:36,492
Yes, right, because why stay and die?
150
00:11:38,892 --> 00:11:45,513
So kind of pulling it all together, could see a geothermal vent is kind of a minor hazard.
151
00:11:45,513 --> 00:11:55,413
You're venturing underground and maybe you give the huddle, the huddle, you're venturing
underground and you give some subtle hints like there's a little bit of smell of sulfur in
152
00:11:55,413 --> 00:11:56,233
the air, right?
153
00:11:56,233 --> 00:12:00,441
Or a rumbling in the ground beneath you and then the vent erupts.
154
00:12:00,516 --> 00:12:07,156
Dex DC 12 check to avoid otherwise you take a D8, D6 of points of damage if you fail.
155
00:12:07,436 --> 00:12:08,540
So it's kind of basic.
156
00:12:08,540 --> 00:12:15,808
You could also foreshadow it the way they do in movies where, you know, they see event
erupting, you know, 30 feet ahead.
157
00:12:15,808 --> 00:12:24,698
And now they're realizing, oh, all those weird mound things with a hole in the middle that
we should avoid those.
158
00:12:24,819 --> 00:12:26,741
Some of them are pretty close together.
159
00:12:26,851 --> 00:12:31,016
Why are all these corpses next to all of these holes, and why are they all so scorched?
160
00:12:32,143 --> 00:12:38,203
If you go combined, so you could have the geothermal vent, which is going to do damage to
you, plus noxious gas, which could weaken you,
161
00:12:38,203 --> 00:12:41,015
So we'll take geothermal vent, which is damage.
162
00:12:41,015 --> 00:12:43,847
So again, it's going to do some physical damage to you.
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So DC...
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DC12 checks check to avoid and then but wait if you manage to avoid that we've got the
noxious gas which erupts from the vent as well you didn't see it but what's that smell uh
165
00:12:55,888 --> 00:13:05,495
Con DC 12 to avoid passing out for 1d4 rounds and because you're on the ground maybe
you're taking damage from the geothermal vent you just fell into until somebody wakes you
166
00:13:05,495 --> 00:13:08,448
up or you're dragged to safety I think uh
167
00:13:08,448 --> 00:13:19,151
ah that if you avoid the gas, if you avoid the noxious gas for the damage, you would still
possibly get the Con to avoid passing out.
168
00:13:19,832 --> 00:13:28,655
But if you fail the noxious gas and take the damage, you still have to make the DC 12 and
avoid passing out.
169
00:13:28,655 --> 00:13:30,604
yeah, it's just bad all around.
170
00:13:30,604 --> 00:13:32,174
yeah, it's bad all around.
171
00:13:32,184 --> 00:13:32,637
but I think it's fun.
172
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So to me, this helped me kind of get my head around how I might use hazards in my game.
173
00:13:36,939 --> 00:13:46,514
I have two scenarios right now for my lunchtime Shadowdark campaign, and we're gonna use
some of those to inspire our next episode where we're gonna talk about d12 Hazards for
174
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Shadowdark.
175
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There's two possibilities.
176
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They adventure into the Deep Crawl, which is basically like an underdarkish kind of
adventure where they're going to find the Rat King, or try and find the Rat King.
177
00:13:56,286 --> 00:14:02,079
They go on an overland journey to Varden, which is the city to the south, to sell all
their loot.
178
00:14:02,079 --> 00:14:10,843
They are presently planning to go to Varden because Nattham, the town they're currently
in, refuses to buy their stuff for reasonable prices.
179
00:14:11,163 --> 00:14:13,724
And they don't want to deal with the Rat King right now.
180
00:14:13,724 --> 00:14:15,105
And they just leveled up.
181
00:14:15,105 --> 00:14:19,117
And, you know, Varden's a bigger city, more opportunities for carousing.
182
00:14:19,117 --> 00:14:26,330
And wait, I have this lovely new Cursed Scroll book, number six, which has expanded
carousing charts.
183
00:14:26,575 --> 00:14:28,030
Yes, yeah, I saw that.
184
00:14:28,030 --> 00:14:29,214
That was pretty cool.
185
00:14:29,214 --> 00:14:33,647
um And it's carousing per class as well.
186
00:14:33,647 --> 00:14:43,068
Yes, yes, which the the fan created GM book I have also did something similar to that, so
I'm going to need to decide which one I want to use, but I really like the idea that
187
00:14:43,068 --> 00:14:43,979
there's now
188
00:14:44,161 --> 00:14:49,259
class-specific carousing options, and I think it's gonna be really fun with them being
invited, but they have to get there.
189
00:14:49,259 --> 00:14:53,921
And so my campaign is set in sort of an alternative Scandinavian north.
190
00:14:53,921 --> 00:14:55,252
It is deepest winter.
191
00:14:55,252 --> 00:14:59,764
almost the solstice, so there are going to be all kinds of monstrous threats out in the
dark.
192
00:14:59,764 --> 00:15:02,893
But at the same time, there's other hazards they might encounter.
193
00:15:02,893 --> 00:15:06,663
It's cold, blizzards come, you get run over by reindeer,
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We will see next time exactly what we come up with to threaten my characters with.
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Sounds good.
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Thanks for attending our latest minion and future overlord training, everyone.
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Coming up in the near future, as Ken mentioned, we've got d12 Shadowdark Hazards that
we've created.
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And remember, please like, subscribe to the show on YouTube.
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We have nearly 1,000 subscribers.
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So thanks, everyone who is a subscriber.
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If you're not, hit the Subscribe button, please.
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And the like and comment and do all the engagement stuff.
