Memoria Meatgrinder
Table of Contents
Overview
My previous (and first!) blog post discussed His Majesty the Worm’s Travel Events; in it, I attempted to catalogue the different levers they use to pressure the adventurers and the configurations in which they are presented. Unfortunately, I still have a lot of ideas about the Meatgrinder.
What I have in mind today are a few methods used to provide the Meatgrinder with lingering memory; hopefully, a sense of memory that enriches dungeons and makes them feel like a dangerous space that is alive and wants you out.
All of the following ideas are going to make use of similar mechanics for relatively similar ends. A rare few of them have been tested by yours truly, so they exist more in a state of fun theory than fully tested mechanics. Nonetheless! Every excellent idea starts as a theory!
Credit Where Credit Is (Very) Due
I’d be remiss to leave out the major inspirations for this post:
- ICastLight’s excellent post, RANDOM ENCOUNTER TABLES AS ADVENTURE RAM.
- ToBeResolved’s Oafish Pratfalls and Brainwaves, which uses blackjack as a travel procedure.
Repeated Results
The most basic method for adding memory to your Meatgrinder is the Repeated Result. This is exactly the system described in ICastLight’s blog post; a particular value on the table has a linked series of events, and each time that value is drawn, the series progresses. As the concept is best explained there, I will provide examples instead:
- A rival guild of adventurers has stumbled upon a cursed artifact. While they first appear friendly, they become increasingly more corrupt and maddened each time their result is drawn; upon the 4th, they attack the guild viciously.
- The dungeon rumbles ominously; if the guild has deactivated the Heart of Stability in the dungeon’s core, one room is destroyed every time this result is drawn.
- Eventually, the dungeon crumbles to nothing, forever inaccessible.
- Grasshoppers buzz around the room, causing all of the adventurers to become Stressed.
- Each time this result is drawn, they have grown progressively bigger and more vicious; by the 5th time, the now-locusts have swarmed and devoured all plant-life on this floor. They replace the “Talking Plant” faction.
- A dark sigil is spreading across the floor here, though it’s still small. It hungers. 1 Wound can be spent to close it (or the sacrifice of a rat).
- Each time this result is drawn, it grows larger and takes an additional Wound to seal it (or the sacrifice of a living, innocent person). If it hits “size 5,” a great and terrible demon forces its way into our world and floods the City with its evil.
Interactions with Tarot
His Majesty the Worm already practices a form of memory with its Meatgrinder table: the major arcana deck and its associated discard pile. When a card is drawn, it is adjudicated, placed into the discard pile, and remains out of play until the deck is shuffled once more. What this means is that until the shuffle occurs, it becomes impossible to draw a result a 2nd time.
This affects the pacing of the developing memory; not only does it depend on RNG to flourish, it also requires frequent shuffling to occur at all. A dynamic is created where long gaps can occur in between draws, breaking the “narrative flow” that creates pressure and intrigue.
With that in mind, I believe the Repeated Result method works best for something designed to be a slow change or a series of thematically linked vignettes. An example of the latter would be a series of individually unrelated encounters with undead, culminating in a dungeon state change where undead become much more common. The system fits a large dungeon floor, or a floor that will frequently be revisited and traveled to.
Ideas for Repeated Results
- Linear: One event leads to the next, telling a particular mini-story (while adjusting for player input as each encounter occurs).
- In writing this, I’m reminded of the story structure used by Dark Souls NPC questlines; they reappear in seemingly random locations, with a little more dialogue, ultimately culminating in an (often unpleasant) result, should you manage to find them each time.
- Growth: The event grows progressively worse, on or off screen; a stacking value, a clock ticks. This system works well for a lingering threat, especially one in the background.
- For a campaign-defining threat, what if the result was shared between all floors of the dungeon?
- Suit Series: Instead of a linear flow of events, there is a pool of events, each attached to a particular minor arcana suit. If the top of the discard pile is Cups, then the Cups event happens. This system works best for thematically linked events, where the individual order doesn’t matter. That’s vibes, baby.
- If a repeat suit is called for, what then? Perhaps you just select the next value on the tracker, or perhaps the blessed little adventurers get a reprieve.
- Swords: A lost knight, unaging, waylaid by the curse of the Lich. Pentacles: An undead thief, punished for having tried to steal the Lich’s souljar. Cups: The ghost of a friar, tortured eternally for attempting to exorcise the Lich. Wands: The statue of the Lich’s former rival; its eyes look at you, pleadingly.
- And when you’ve seen it all, what's left to encounter? The Lich!
Empty Add-Up
A second method for Meatgrinder memory is the wonderfully, not-at-all awkwardly named (by me) Empty Add-Up. I first saw this method used in the excellent The Sunless Estate, by squidneysavior AKA Sydney Manno. This system is fairly usable across systems (be you rolling dice or drawing cards), but works best if using the procedures in Worm (as expected).
When an event on the Meatgrinder occurs, it is crossed out and is no longer in play (as is the card, temporarily in the discard pile). Upon reshuffling, future draws of the same card result in… nothing happening! Nothing at all. The guild drains the Meatgrinder as they explore. Luckily for the GM, they must always return to the City - they do not get to reap the benefits of an empty Meatgrinder for very long.
A commonly discussed method to adjust this is to make each empty result a “Torches gutter” result, causing the dungeon to become infinitely more resource-intensive and dangerous. The Empty Add-Up method works on a similar system: when an empty result is drawn, a total is added to. Or a clock is ticked. Or a specific event occurs that builds into another event. Etc.
Two details about this method stand out in relation to pacing:
- As the guild spends more time exploring the dungeon, they become more likely to experience the negative consequence associated with a fully-ticked clock.
- The consequence is nigh-inevitable, though it can’t occur immediately. The deck must be shuffled at least once, and a specific number of events must always occur first.
- When you select however many empty draws must occur before The Event happens, you determine the pace (and must remember that for each 1 total needed, a single card must be pulled twice).
With this in mind, I believe the Empty Add-Up works best for an event you intend to have occur relatively early into the floor (but not one you rely on having occur on schedule). The guild explores the dungeon for a short time and settles in, feeling safe, all while the rumbles of a greater threat grow louder. And once the dungeon is awake, it is awake. It can never go back.
Ideas for Empty Add-Up
- Dungeon State Change: When the clock is full, the state of the dungeon changes. The Dungeon Lord becomes active, the automatons and forges wake from their long slumber, etc. This is best used for raising the danger level, naturally increasing threat to keep the stakes high just when the guild begins to feel safe.
- Vast Change: It’s possible to set a very high number of empty draws required, and have the change result in a significantly altered dungeon. A sorcerer’s laboratory has all the experiments break out, the seals holding back the demons break, space warps and reshuffles the space, etc. If done right, you could theoretically have two different dungeons occur in the same physical location.
- Reset: Best used with a very low number of empty draws required. When the guild returns to the City, whatever change occurred resets. I recommend using this when you want the state change to be an expected part of exploration, rather than a massive consequence to avoid.
- Perhaps they even want the state to change! Perhaps more treasure is available when the dungeon is in a more dangerous state, and they must extend their forays and push their resources in order to spend the extra time?
- Dungeon Cycles: When the clock is full, the state of the dungeon changes… and then a new clock is started. While the first clock will fill slowly, future clocks will fill faster and faster (when the Meatgrinder is nigh-empty, it will be very fast indeed). If tied to a negative consequence, this causes a serious time limit to exist on exploration. If the guild wastes too much time, they will find themselves in a scenario where they’re constantly in danger. Examples include the appearance of a powerful foe or a recurring hazard tied to the dungeon floor (like undead or toxic gases).
- Stacking Consequences: Each time a cycle is finished (and a clock is filled), a new consequence occurs. This can be in a particular order or randomly decided. The primary trait of this type is just that new things happen, or a particular problem grows worse each time, as opposed to repetition.
- Slow Cycles: Once the state has changed, there is no new clock; it remains full with no additional progress. However, once the guild has returned to the City and the Meatgrinder is restocked, a new clock begins that leads to yet another change. Best used for a floor that the GM expects a lot of play in, the Slow Cycle works well for tracking things like seasons or shifts in factional power or swapping between day and night. To encourage enough play to see all the phases, the dungeon must change significantly between phases.
- Alternatively, with a higher number of required draws, you simply treat a full clock as a sign to restock your dungeon floor. Enough time has been spent in and out that the state change is just… a normal restock!
- Resetting Totals: When the guild returns to the City, the total of empty draws is reset. If the clock didn’t fill, the event doesn’t happen; this provides a safety net should the threat be too large. The guild is encouraged to leave the dungeon floor, lest the consequence occur (if they know it’s coming).
- With this concept, I think a lower number of required draws is preferable. You want the risk to actually be a risk, after all! A high number used here fills the role that resource pressure from torches and rations already fills.
- One usage of this method could be Dungeon Alert. As the totals tick up, the dungeon grows closer to a dangerous change; security systems turn on, undead wake up, factions become aware of intruders, etc. When the guild leaves for the City, they lie low, and the heat dies down.
- Tug-of-War: While the march towards pain occurs ever onwards, the guild has a chance to stave off fate. By performing certain actions in the dungeon (perhaps at certain keys), they are able to negate empty draws already ticked. When the guild puts in the effort to learn the dungeon and take the proper measures and precautions, they can prevent the threat from growing. Perhaps they soothe the stirring undead by performing proper rituals, or they charm some goblins (who keep the goblin village from declaring war on the guild).
- Not So Empty: When an empty draw occurs, you tick the clock once as normal. However, each tick is associated with a particular event, which immediately occurs. This is essentially a wide-scale Repeated Result.
Foreshadowing Total
A system I have tinkered with for my own dungeon designs is what I like to call the Foreshadowing Total method. Another term for it is something like Stacking Odds.
In this system, certain events will be determined to serve as foreshadowing for the ultimate consequence. A value is tied to each event, with a higher value serving as greater, more obvious foreshadowing. In this method, a variety of events, found anywhere on the table, can all lead in one direction. Essentially, it’s like a granular and more wide-scale Repeated Results.
Example
The Dungeon Lord is a massive centipede, intelligent and cold and vicious. Its only thought may be hunger, but it has knowledge of many kinds of hunger, many kinds of eating. The GM draws: VII (Curiosity): “A skittering is heard in the dark, many legs moving fast (+4).”
The GM marks +4 Foreshadowing wherever they like, and discards that card as normal. They continue pulling from the Meatgrinder, with some events foreshadowing the centipede and others unrelated. When they’ve marked a total of 10+ Foreshadowing, the centipede automatically attempts to snatch an adventurer during the next watch.
Interaction With Tarot
Because this method doesn’t use repeated results, that means that the consequence can theoretically occur before the deck is even shuffled. Ideally spread between Curiosities, Travel Events, and Encounters, the final consequence should feel like an ever-present threat that manifests in the smallest things (and largest). For this reason, it is best used with something that defines the dungeon.
Notably, because drawn encounters are struck through, this is significantly less amenable to cycles. You can’t do any foreshadowing if no events are occurring! Because of this, you can only really build to a single consequence per Crawl Phase.
Methods to slow the rate of progress are to require a high Foreshadowing Total, or to make individual events each give a low number. My suggestion (of course) is that more dangerous events offer higher Foreshadowing values, while milder ones offer lower values.
Ideas for Foreshadowing Totals
- Linear: When the appropriate foreshadowing total is reached, the next event in a series occurs. For example, one event on 5, another on 10, then on 15. These are major events that may define the experience of the dungeon as a whole, or the experience of the current Crawl. In a sense, these events serve themselves as foreshadowing. This system is best used for a large dungeon floor (where you will get to restock the Meatgrinder several times), or when the individual totals required are low (so it will surely all occur across one Crawl).
- The Dungeon Lord: I tinkered with this system for the purpose of foreshadowing the Mother Centipede Dungeon Lord. In essence, each event would grow more and more dangerous, the apex predator becoming more overt and aggressive in her hunt of the guild. By the final event, she would be an active stalker, regularly appearing on the Encounter Table.
- Skipping Events: If you want the experience to be less linear and more devoted to RNG, allow events to be freely skipped. If one event is on 7 and another on 10, and your total 6 just received a +4… then it appears event 10 is occurring! If paced correctly, the sudden surprise can shock and scare your players (which is always fun).
- Repeated Results: By the addition of Repeated Results to the Meatgrinder, recurring cycles can easily be introduced to the Foreshadowing system. For example, perhaps a simple Travel Event grows more dangerous each time it is drawn - complete with a higher Foreshadowing value! By combining the two methods, the smaller-scale and oft only thematically-linked events can be tied to a larger, much more horrible whole.
Blackjack: Increasing Risk
The final memory method involves playing Blackjack, and has its roots in ToBeResolved’s very elegant system shared at the top of this blog post. I’ll say clearly: this idea is the most loose and theoretical, and I’ll actively be spitballing ideas as I write it.
The core concept is thus: when X occurs (often a watch), the GM draws a minor arcana card and marks the value. When that total reaches 22, the guild busts (/sfw), and something bad happens. The guild can choose to reset the total at any point, but there is (usually) a cost associated with doing so.
Face cards can be treated as a 10, and the Fool can be allowed to work as an Ace, be treated as a 0, or even reset the total for free.
Ultimately, this system is more dungeon defining than any of the previous ones; it actively impacts the moment-to-moment of exploration, with the players constantly aware of the stacking value of their cards. I would never use it unless I wanted it to be a major setpiece of the dungeon I was designing.
Example
The dungeon is full of a toxic miasma, and the guild has had to equip itself with a very limited supply of potpourri to ward off the miasma’s negative effects. Each time a watch passes, the GM draws a minor arcana card and marks the value. When the guild busts, every adventurer advances a deadly affliction that will take significant effort to recover from.
By cracking open their potpourri and huffing the strong, pleasant scents, the guild can free themselves from the horrible miasma, resetting their total. However, this spends one use of their limited supply.
Or maybe they’re in water, and this is oxygen.
Ideas for Blackjack
- VS The House: It seems like a very nice coincidence that the Major Arcana (minus the Fool) range from 1-21, right? Seems, y’know, Blackjack-y. In this version, the GM draws a Major Arcana card and plays it as their value for the current round of Blackjack. The guild attempts to beat the GM’s card, while avoiding a bust.
- Outcomes: In theory, losing to the GM should impose a penalty, while beating the GM should impose a reward. Busting should be the worst outcome (or simply equal to losing to the GM). As it would be pretty lame to give players an unwinnable round, it may best to instead treat losing or winning to the GM as incurring the standard cost only, with winning providing an extra reward.
- In Use: I can see this system being useful for tracking the attention of the dungeon; as the guild moves, they build up Alert and must spend a watch (or flickers) to lay low and reset the total. By beating the GM, they may earn an extra opportunity (such as a chance to ambush enemies or discover hidden treasure).
- Progressive Reward: The closer the guild comes to 21, the greater the reward. This could be as simple as gold, an opportunity to heal from Stressed, or even charging a magic item. At 21, the guild should feel quite accomplished with themselves.
- Always On: As the guild approaches 21, they have some sort of minor reward that becomes increasingly powerful. When they reset, they lose this reward or the reward is reset. The guild is encouraged to push forward in order to maximize their uptime. One possible concept for this is doors that can only be opened when the guild's value is high enough, or maybe even being able to see certain areas when the value is high enough. With a concept so core to exploration, then the penalty on bust is probably just a Wound level.
- Progressive Penalty: The lower the value before the guild chooses to end the round, the worse the penalty (alternatively, the larger the bust, the greater the penalty).
- Suits: When the reward, cost, or bust occurs, the GM references the suit at the top of the minor arcana discard pile. This allows each outcome to have 2-4 different options, making for a more dynamic and varied experience. Perhaps players can risk a Cups bust but not a Spades bust?
- As Gear: Certain gear can be treated with this particular method. Perhaps the guild must carry a fragile object from one side of the dungeon to the other, and if they don't set it down every now and then, it breaks? What if they have a reusable battery that charges up and explodes if it's allowed to charge too much? Treasure that will lose value every time the guild busts? This is much less dungeon-defining, but still an incredibly fun mini-game to include.
- In Challenges: Challenges are a VERY fun and relatively easy way to make use of this mechanic. Each round, draw a minor arcana card and mark the value. Bust on 22.
- Reset by: All players discard 1 card, all players take the same action on the same turn, a player interacts with a particular object.
- Busts: The enemy performs a very deadly attack, the dungeon state changes for the worse, the enemy summons a powerful minion to their aid.
- Rewards: Players have favor to attack the enemy, players have disfavor to be attacked, the enemy’s weak spot becomes visible, the enemy is Stunned or takes a negative Effect, the enemy loses access to a powerful ability, the players gain a powerful ability, etc.
Summary
The dungeon is a living thing, even if the form it takes is so often a nasty awful kind of undeath. By making use of memory on your Meatgrinder (or encounter table in general), you can make that life even more vivid for your players. And that can be a very valuable thing!
So, hopefully these concepts find some use. I’d be happy to hear if you did! I hope to return to the Blackjack system once I’ve nailed down more concrete ideas on how to make use of it.