The Anti-Aboleth Calendar Game

28 Sep, 2024

I want to share with you some rules I developed for my main campaign, which abstract a month's worth of sabotage and counterintelligence into a few sessions. These rules were made for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, though I suspect it can be adapted to any system that doesn't already have something to handle this.

Before I show you the rules, though, I should give a little background to make it easier to understand. The party was preparing to face an antagonist that had been in the background of the campaign since the opening adventure: an aboleth known as Old Silverteeth who laired deep beneath the province of North Frithland. They had finally found enough evidence to estimate its location and completed a trek through the Underdark to a kuo-toa village nearly on its doorstep, with whom they allied. Before the party had descended into the Underdark, though, they had commissioned some magic items to help them resist the aboleth's psychic influence, and the last of those items would not be complete for a little over a month. Moreover, a month would be enough time for their sponsor, Queen Jovanna, to negotiate passage for some of her troops through the drow's territory. The party didn't want to attack the aboleth without the magic items and without backup, so the players said they would wait out the month. In the meantime, they planned to sabotage the aboleth's infrastructure by disrupting supply lines and feeding it misinformation, using the kuo-toa village as a base of operations.¹

I was looking forward to the fight against the aboleth and did not want to drag out the preparation unnecessarily, so in the intervening week I sketched out a little game in order to abstract their activity for the month. Fortunately, the players responded very well to it, so much so that in the next annual survey one player requested similar games in the future.

How the Game Works

Here is the image I used in the VTT for the calendar game:

(See footnote² for image description.)

If you want to replicate it yourself, you could make something a little tidier. This I just threw together in Paint and uploaded to Foundry.

Here are the rules I gave to the players, lightly edited to remove typos:

Rules

Overview

The game has this basic flow:

1. Players decide on a task (ie. pick off enemy patrols, recruit drow, build equipment) and indicate roughly what kind of benefit they are hoping to achieve for the fight against the aboleth (ie. the aboleth has fewer allies, the aboleth has weaker lair actions, the PCs' allies have better equipment). DM decides how much time the task will take if normally done, hastily done (granting disadvantage to rolls on the task), or carefully done (granting advantage to rolls on the task), as well as any appropriate cost. The DM might also clarify or adjust the benefit of a success if necessary.
2. Players decide whether they want to go ahead with the task and, if so, how much time to spend on the task. (If they decide not to go ahead with the task, then they will need to go back to #1.)
3. Players and DM play the task as a skill challenge.
4. DM narrates results of the skill challenge and adjusts the calendar accordingly.
5. Repeat until the calendar is full.

Skill Challenges

Skill challenges are a 4th edition D&D mechanic, which we will replicate as follows: each player will have an opportunity to roll one skill or tool check to contribute to the success of the action. However, each player must use a different skill or tool in the skill challenge. For example, if the first player uses Stealth to stage an ambush for enemy patrols, the other players may not use Stealth during that skill challenge, though they might use Stealth on subsequent skill challenges. The skill challenge will use a single DC against which all rolls will be made. Although the Help action is not available in a skill challenge, each player may use one spell, feat, or class feature to improve their own or another player's odds (ie. with the guidance spell, the Bardic Inspiration feature, or the Lucky feat). At the beginning of the challenge, one NPC can join if appropriate; the DM will roll for the NPC if the players do not achieve success on their own. The rolls are interpreted as follows:

• 2+ successes: the players succeed at their aim, resulting in a benefit during the fight with the aboleth.
• 1 success: the players must choose between two options: gain the benefit but mark off two boxes on the counter, or do not gain the benefit, but mark off only one box on the counter.
• no successes: the players do not gain a benefit and the DM marks off one box on the counter.

Some actions (meeting with the queen, picking up ordered items) are simple enough, and have a marginal enough benefit, that success is presumed. The DM will narrate the action and mark off the relevant time on the calendar if appropriate, without using a skill challenge.

Aboleth Awareness Track

The aboleth has various spies in the Underdark, and in time will learn that the PCs are near. However, if players are too noisy in their attempts to prepare for the fight, the aboleth may learn even sooner. This is abstracted in the track on the bottom left of the screen. Every seventh day, one square will be marked; failure or less than perfect success on a skill challenge can also add marks. (Some actions are overt enough that they will add a mark to the track regardless of success, but the DM will tell the players this before they attempt the action.) When all four boxes are marked, the aboleth is aware that the PCs are near and will begin attempting its own skill challenges to prepare, hidden to the players. (Note that the aboleth will be making preparations regardless, as it has been doing all this time; however, it will change the kind of preparations it makes if it knows a fight is imminent.)

As a matter of citational ethics, I should say that my understanding of skill challenges comes from Matt Colville, whose love of skill challenges my brother put me on to.

To give an example of actions my players actually tried, here's a cleaned-up version of my notes on the session:

Action 1: Research

• Goal: learn more details about aboleth combat, such as vulnerabilities, saving throw Proficiencies, Legendary Actions
• Method: return to Chantowl library, talk to Professor Fodel, look in on librarian
• Hasty: 1 day
• Normal: 2 days
• Careful: 4 days
• Skills chosen: Persuasion, Insight, Investigation

Because I can see I marked two days off on the calendar for research, the players must have chosen the normal duration. Although I did not record this, they probably used Bardic Inspiration and guidance in the course of this research. I'll give another example:

Action 5: Help drow in Thyfesari

• Goal: an advantage on diplomacy with the drow OR recruting drow volunteers in fight against aboleth
• Method: cleaning sewage blockages, dealing with pest slimes etc. for the Thyfesari guard
• DC 20
• Result: failure

I failed to record whether the three-day duration was hasty, normal, or careful, and I also failed to record what skills they chose, though my guess is that it was Athletics and something Charisma-based. Regardless, it didn't work: I said that, while the guards were grateful for the assistance, the gratitude of a few guards will not make command more amenable, nor are the guards willing to go AWOL when they are expected on patrol.

Finally, consider this example, noting that Oda was a deep gnome guide who was contracted to help them find their way in the Underdark:

Action 8: Scouting

• Goal: Advantage on future sabotage actions
• DC 20
• Careful (5 days)
• Oda assisting
• Success

They wanted this action to let them roll with advantage on future actions, provided those actions were some form of sabotage. Since they succeeded, they could still roll with advantage while completing actions in a normal duration, or roll normally in a hasty duration.

This is how the calendar looked at the end:

(As before, see the footnote for an image description.³)

Discussion

My rationale for the number of successes needed is that I have three players; treating this as a kind of group check, that's a success from half of the players, rounded up. I did want to give the possibility of a partial success, though, so if one player succeeded at their roll, I wanted to give them the choice to still succeed at their goal at the cost of going loud. If you have five or more players, I would of course recommend setting these thresholds differently: full success if half of all players (rounded up) meet or beat the DC, and partial success if a quarter of all players (rounded up) meet or beat the DC.

Something I did not account for was the players' desire to remove marks from the Aboleth Awareness Track. They spent a number of actions trying to prevent the Aboleth from learning they were nearby, such as by arranging for impersonators to appear on the surface and by spreading rumours that they were temporarily giving up because they had been unable to muster enough allies to assist them. Not all of these attempts were successful, but some were. That meant the aboleth learned they were nearby much later than I had planned; however, the nature of GMing is that your plans must often change. If you want to use these mechanics, I suggest you prepare for this possibility, or at least not bank on the Awareness Track filling up by a certain time.

These mechanics also require you to think about your honesty as a GM. When I started it, I was only halfway through designing the final encounter with the aboleth. It was not therefore clear how an action that reduced the final number of enemies in the chamber would really affect that encounter, since I hadn't decided on a number yet. I was tempted to just ignore that action and design the encounter however I saw fit; the players would never know the difference. I'm not comfortable with that style of GMing, however, so I did dutifully create an encounter that I thought would have suited the fiction, and then removed what felt like an appropriate number of enemies based on their sabotage and misdirection. This did likely make the encounter a little easier, but there were still plenty of creatures on the board. Even against the PCs' concerted efforts to divert and pick off its minions, the aboleth would never allow itself to be completely alone.

Altogether the game was successful at abstracting and condensing a month of complicated strategy and logistics. If you are facing a similar situation, feel free to adapt it to your own game.

#for GMs #formats