I know. This ain’t Tarot in D&D.

I don’t know why the f$&% everyone’s expecting Tarot in D&D today. My content calendar clearly shows that I’m supposed to do an Angry Table Tale after Let’s Start a Simple Homebrew Campaign: Building a Next Adventure. Look? I’ve got a screenshot even…

So, it’s time for a table tale. And since I’m two days from an out-of-state trip, I don’t have time to ramble longly. So, this is it for the Long, Rambling Introduction™. Sorry.

The Tale of the Dancing Halfling Dungeon

Storytime!

Last month, I threatened to regale you with occasional stories from my home games. And now, I’m making good on that threat. Because lots of you are interested in how I do s$&% at my table. Especially my open-world, D&D 3.5 table.

Especially when it comes to wilderness travel and Complications and s$&% like that.

So, today, I’m sharing a story about a distraction that distracted my PCs a few weeks ago while they were on their way between the Town and the Adventure. Then, I’ll give you a peek behind my screen and into my brain. Tell you how and why I did what I did. Cool?

But first…

Spoiler Non-Warning

Be warned: there are no spoilers ahead.

You heard me.

I ain’t sharing anything about my game that my players don’t know as of the day I write the draft for this article. At least, I ain’t sharing anything they don’t know about the plot, mysteries, and Angryverse lore. I can’t. Because my players like to read my s$&% and I don’t trust them to stop reading just because I ask them to.

So, you’ll know only as much about in-game events as my players do.

But I will be telling you s$&% my players don’t know about how I actually run my game. Like, why I included certain game elements or how I handled certain die rolls or what I had planned and what I pulled out of my a$&. And I know that might ruin the magic for some of my players. So, if you game at my table and you don’t want to see how I make your sausage, stop reading when I start ‘splaining.

Out of what I’m going to call respect for my players — as if I actually respect my players — and for those of you who are just here for storytime, I’ve broken this article into two parts. The first part’s the war story. It’s a recap of game events with backstory and context so it’ll make some kind of sense. The second part’s where I try to make this s$&% useful and instructive. Where I explain what I did behind the scenes and why I did it.

Constructive Criticism Only Pl0x

This Angry Table Tale s$&%’s still new. Last time, I shared a bunch of worldlore and I didn’t think much about the format. It was just a long-a$%, rambling essay. This time, I’m telling an actual story about my actual game. And I’m trying to make it useful and instructive.

If I do manage to provide something entertaining and instructive and useful, let me know. And if I don’t, also let me know. Politely. I’ll probably ignore the feedback — good, bad, and indifferent — or maybe make fun of it. But, who knows, you might catch me on a good day when I decide I give a s$&% about your opinions.

Enough intro, though. On with the story.

Part I. A Batty Distraction

On their way downriver to recover some lost goods from a wrecked ship for a legitimate businessman and pissed off with their halfling campmates, the party blundered into a swarm of vampire bats and a random dungeon.

Dramatis Personae

A heroic party of player-characters:

• Evendur, human cleric of the Vasaar, follower of the King and the Wanderer, and motivated by a desire to protect others
• Hewan, human paladin, sworn Crusader of the Argent Mantle, and motivated to fight evil
• Kamen, human illusionist with a shady past and motivated to earn respect
• Pel, human rogue with a shadier past and motivated to amass wealth

A less than heroic group of non-player-characters:

• Caradog, the River Devil of Graybridge, a major player in Graybridge’s criminal underground
• Morv, an oarsman in Caradog’s employ tasked with rowing the party downriver
• Wydd, an oarsman in Caradog’s employ tasked with rowing the party downriver

A clan of wandering halflings poling downriver on a barge:

• Bydar Fairbairn
• Minda Fairbairn
• Whilla Fairbairn
• Lallia Redreed
• Clymen Greensprout
• Almen Greensprout
• Nanda Underpot

Background and Hook

Newly arrived in Graybridge, the party sought useful contacts. Pel tried to connect with the criminal underground. Partly for access to training, supplies, and equipment. And partly to show respect for the local criminals’ turf. Basically, “hey, I’m just visiting and not looking to horn in on anyone’s territory, but I’ve got money to spend and I might even be available for work, but I’ll just lay low and move on if you’d prefer.”

So Pel met Caradog, the River Devil of Graybridge, a crime boss. And Caradog, it turns out, was pretty happy to see a bona fide adventurer in his town. Especially a respectful, polite one. Because he just happened to have an adventure hook. Caradog had sold some goods to a buyer and shipped them on a river cog called the Cowslip. But the Cowslip never made port. So, the buyer was demanding replacements or refunds. And Caradog was not ready to provide either. Not until he’d launched an investigation.

Caradog asked Pel to bring his buddies around and then hired the whole lot of them to head downriver and locate the Cowslip. Which he figured had run into trouble. Specifically, he suspected river sahuagin might have attacked the ship and slaughtered the crew. Like they do. The river sahuagin mostly live upriver, well away from the trade route, but in the past, they’ve set up camps to attack river traffic.

Caradog supplied the party with two rowboats and a pair of hired oarsmen to row them. Wydd and Morv. He gave the party two weeks to either recover the goods or to report them totally lost.

Now, there’s a few little mystery elements I’m not discussing here. And some optional objectives. I’ll discuss some of that s$&% below. The rest ain’t important for today’s story. The adventure itself is pretty straightforward: find the Cowslip, search the hold, recover the goods if possible, and come back.

The party also decided that if sahuagin had set up shop in the river, they’d drive them off or destroy them. But Caradog ain’t paying them for that nonsense.

And that’s the setup.

A Three-Hour Tour…

So, early one morning, the party sets out on their river adventure. They load themselves and their gear into two big rowboats. Evendur and Hewan were even smart enough to swap out their heavy metal armor for summer-weight gear in case they fell into the water. But they did bring their heavy armor with their other gear in the boats.

A few hours out of Graybridge, the party spies a distant barge downriver. The oarsmen are easily outrowing the barge and they’ll catch up in a few hours. But they offer to speed up and catch up faster or check their rowing for a bit to let the barge drift out of sight and then let it stay well ahead.

The party decides to stay the course. Catch up when they catch up and see what’s what.

Turns out, the vessel’s a lashed-together barge made of barrels and planks with a plank and pole shelter to protect a pile of simple supplies. There’s a half-dozen brightly-dressed halflings onboard. An extended halfling family on a road trip.

A river trip. Whatever.

Worried the halflings are heading straight for river sahuagin territory — and knowing they’ll attack any vessels in their territory at night and slaughter their crews in tribute to their blood goddess — the party warns the halflings of the danger ahead. The party debates rowing well ahead of the halflings to clear the way or traveling and camping together for the rest of the day. As it’s almost evening at this point, the party chooses to share a camp with the halflings.

When evening falls, the halflings and heroes alike beach their vessels and make camp. There’s a lot of friendly chatting. The little halfling girl’s playing loudly with the party’s guard dog — who is happy to be on dry land again — while the rest of the halflings are singing and dancing to the tune of a reed fipple. A bright fire’s burning. The halflings share their brandy around. A fun time’s being had by all.

In the wilderness. At dusk. Near sahuagin territory.

Hewan and Evendur excuse themselves from the festivities to talk over what to do with the halflings the next day. Should they keep traveling with the halflings? Can they protect them? Should they ask the halflings to stay put for a few days? Give the party a chance to investigate and deal with the possible sahuagin raiders?

Hewan and Evendur are walking on the outskirts of the camp, well away from the halflings and the oarsmen. They don’t want to be overheard. And finally, they note the halflings are awfully loud and that’s probably not great.

Suddenly, Hewan and Evendur are plunged into screeching, biting, leathery darkness. A swarm of predatory vampire bats has emerged from an underground den for their nightly hunt. And sacks of fresh blood just happen to be wandering past their front door.

The party disperses the swarm, Pel and Kamen drawn by the sound. Looking around to see where the bats came from, the party discovers a flagstone stairway and a brick tunnel, partially buried underground. A few tumbled stones suggest a long-collapsed and buried foundation. Worried other critters might emerge and disturb the camp, the party decides to explore underground. Several halflings are excited to go along. But, for some crazy reason, the party refuses their company.

The party finds an old cellar at the bottom of the stairs. The first chamber’s the bat’s nest. At least, it was. And at the back of that chamber is a hallway. Arched, gated storage alcove line the hall. The party easily busts open the rusted gates and search the alcoves. Pel discovers an engraved silver stopper — badly tarnished — amidst some broken crockery.

As the party explores along the hall, the flagstone floor suddenly gives way. The floor’s been undermined. A sinkhole-like space has eroded away beneath it. Ever courageous, Hewan jumps the pit to explore the other end of the hall.

At the end of the hall, Hewan finds a large room, partially collapsed and choked with tree and plant roots from above. He turns to call back to the party and suddenly he can’t breathe. A stealthy choker, hidden amongst the vegetation, has ambushed him. As Hewan struggles to free himself from the choker’s choking tentacled grasp, the party struggles to cross the pit.

In the end, though, the choker’s dead, and the party’s victorious. With nothing further to explore, they head back to the surface, return to camp, and tell the halflings to shut the hell up for the rest of the night.

The next day, Evendur tells the halflings to camp for at least a day before heading downriver. The party wants a head start to deal with the sahuagin before the halflings show up. But as the oarsmen are pulling the boats from shore, they hear the halflings arguing about whether to listen or set out immediately after the party.

And so, the adventure continues…

Part II. Angry Annotations

So, that s$&% all looks really simple doesn’t it? Straightforward adventure, bat encounter, simple three-room dungeon. Kill a monster, navigate a trap, get a treasure. Simple.

And yeah, it’s simple. That’s the f$&%ing point I’ve been trying to make for months. Simple minute-to-minute gameplay cobbled together from existing game materials. What makes it fun is the play dynamics. The interactions. The random happenings. It’s all just putting moving parts on the board and playing to see what happens.

But a bit of thoughtful planning can really help that s$%& along…

A Not So Simple Plan

This adventure illustrates something I do a lot. I provide a simple-seeming adventure with a clear, concise goal and then throw in a bunch of optional crap the players can decide to give a s$&% about. Basically, let the players decide how deeply they want to engage with the adventure.

The goal’s simple: find the Cowslip, search the hold, bring back the stuff, or report it missing. Basic missing package investigation. FedEx the game. And the players know the party’s getting paid whether they get the goods or not.

Of course, I know it’s not that simple. And, as of last week, the players know too. Because they found the ship. It’s there. The crew’s been slaughtered. Bloodily. As expected if piranha-people really did the deed. The ships run aground in the shallows. The hold’s partially flooded, but intact. All the goods are there. The crate with Caradog’s mark is there. But it’s open and empty.

The party doesn’t have to give a s$&% though. They don’t have to care. They did the job.

Neither do they have to care about the interplay between Morv and Wydd. They’re obviously both criminals in Caradog’s employ. At first, Wydd seemed friendly, patient, and deferential. But now, he’s revealing himself to be kind of a dick. And he knows a lot more than any oarsman has a right to know. Meanwhile, Morv seemed ill-tempered and angry. But now it seems like he’s trying desperately to leave his crappy life behind and Wydd won’t let him.

The party can give a s$&% though. If they want to. And if they do, I can run that game. I know where the goods are and what’s going on. In broad strokes, at least. It’s that big prep and little prep thing. I know enough that I can handle it if they decided to hunt for the lost goods or get wrapped up in the Life and Times of Morv and Wydd. Run what I have to, then prep the rest as I can.

Same with the sahuagin. The PCs don’t need to deal with them. But they can. They already know — based on some research — they’re probably dealing with a small camp or village in a branch of the river near the scuttled Cowslip. And they know the camp poses a threat to anyone on the river. Not that river traffic’s that common. But it’s common enough. Anyone caught on the water at night — because the sahuagin can’t stand sunlight — is likely to get slaughtered so the sahuagin can feed their thirsty blood goddess.

In point of fact, while I’m drafting this s$&%, the party’s arguing over what to do next in our Discord group chat. They found the goods missing and they’re suspicious of Caradog and Wydd and sympathetic to Morv. And they’re worried about the sahuagin. And especially, they’re worried what’s gonna happen when the halflings come blithely poling down the river if the sahuagin ain’t been dealt with.

At the heart of all this s$%&? The characters’ motives. If Pel can recover the goods — even though he wasn’t asked to — he might score a better payday and improve his connections with the Graybridge crime family. Meanwhile, Evendur feels bad for Morv. Especially because Morv seems so desperate to escape and Wydd’s got a tight leash on him. Evendur’s even more concerned about the bloodthirsty slaughterfish murdering passers-by and feeding their blood to some evil, false god. Or the real devil in the skin of a false god. And thanks to the encounter with the halflings, those passers-by ain’t faceless nobodies. They’ve got smiling, apple-cheeked faces and curly hair and bad country accents. And Hewan’s a Crusader and pledged to confront and destroy evil. You know, like evil barracudafolk barbarians.

Point is that I like to build my adventures around simple premises with extra goals that expand — or outright change — the adventure. And I like to add a good mystery to most of my adventures. They add a sense of agency of exploration to the macro-game.

Enter the Halflings

What’s the deal with the halflings? They’re totally ancillary. Not related to the plot at all. Running seven NPCs is a pain in the a$&. And they waste a lot of table time. Isn’t running games hard enough? Why am I making it harder?

First, let me establish that the halfling family was a planned encounter. It wasn’t a random Complication. And I didn’t pull it out of my a$&. I decided during prep that the party would spot the halfling barge in the distance when they reached a certain spot on the river. And I named all the halflings too. Because of relative travel speeds and visibility, I knew the party could choose to speed up and intercept the halflings, stay the course and catch up by evening, or slow down and keep the halflings well ahead and unawares indefinitely. That said, I didn’t know any of that s$&% for sure. If the random weather engine had decided to throw rain or fog into the game, the party might not have seen the halflings until they were on top of them.

Point is, the whole halfling thing was done on purpose. Why?

First, because NPC encounters are fun. I like them. And I got enamored of the whole halfling river clan thing when D&D 4E introduced it.

Second, when the heroes run into NPCs who are totally unaware there’s adventure afoot — like halflings who have no clue they’re rafting into a nest of sahuagin — the players see the world as a real place full of people living their own lives. The halflings didn’t have any useful information to offer. They didn’t have goods to trade or magical items to sell. They were just people. Just going about their business.

All that s$&% about how every encounter should advance the plot? That’s crap advice. Don’t follow it.

Third, the halflings made the sahuagin threat more tangible. See, this whole sahuagin village thing’s pretty scary. A 4th-level party of land-dwelling primates trying to clear an underwater village of two-dozen aquatic barbarians? Those ain’t great odds. And the party can’t just raid it like a dungeon. I knew the players would want to clear it. Because motivations. But I also knew they’d be prone to blow it off once they got a look at it. “We can deal with this s$&% when we’re higher level,” they might say. Or, “let’s report this to the baroness and see if she’ll send us back down here with a bunch of soldiers.”

But now there’s this friendly bunch of foolhardy halflings poling their way downriver singing halfling traveling songs like, Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Us and We Like Being Alive and Brandy and Blood Belong Inside You. That makes it a lot harder to walk away from the slaughterfish without giving it the ole college try. And the time pressure will hopefully keep them from overplanning their raid. Because nothing wrecks a plan like overplanning.

I know my players can handle this s$&%. It won’t be easy. They’re going to take some losses. Someone might die. But they’ve got the intel they need and they’re smart and they can put together a good plan. I just have to motivate them. And keep them from talking themselves out of every workable plan they come up with.

Fourth, the halflings gave me a great opportunity to quickly establish Wydd’s and Morv’s personalities. See, the halflings are sympathetic characters. Likable. When other NPCs treat them well, it makes those NPCs likable as well. Call it the Associative Property of Character Sympathy. We like puppies. So, we like people who are nice to puppies.

See, at the start of the adventure, Wydd and Morv were just props. Basically, just boat engines. And that’s all the players would see. That was a problem because I obviously had this Wydd and Morv side story thing going. And they connect to the optional side mystery. So, I had to establish them as people. This means they needed a chance to speak up. Offer opinions.

Wydd was friendly and patient about the halflings. He was cool with the party protecting them. He was nice to them. Morv was impatient and grumpy. He made dark jokes about the halflings getting killed. With just a few quick opinions — “if you think protecting the halflings is the right thing to do, I’ll support you” and “f$&% the halflings; they can get themselves killed without our help so cut them loose and let’s get this job done” — the boat engines suddenly have personalities.

Of course, this time around, it was totally misdirection. Because it turned out Wydd’s an a$&hole and most definitely up to something and Morv’s just a down-on-his-luck loser trying to escape a crappy life. Which the party knows now because they kept interacting with them.

And that’s the key. I had no idea how any of this s$&% would go down. I didn’t know if the party would even meet the halflings, let alone share a camp with them. I didn’t know if the party would escort the halflings through sahuagin territory or leave them behind. I didn’t know if they’d dig into Morv and Wydd and see the characters beneath the masks. I just wrote a bunch of characters and threw them into the world.

Now, you might wonder how the hell I managed this s$&%. I mean, in the camp scene, I had nine NPCs on camera. That’s a lot to keep track of.

Well, first, I rely heavily on keywords and lists for this s$&%. Here’s what I knew of the halflings when this s$&% started:

• Bydar Fairbairn the Patriarch
• Minda Fairbairn the Matriarch
• Whilla Fairbairn the Child
• Lallia Redreed the Musician
• Clymen Greensprout the Suspicious Twin
• Almen Greensprout the God-Fearing Twin
• Nanda Underpot the Layabout

Apart from knowing their roles in their little clan, I also knew they were a wandering clan of halflings. Curious, fearless, superstitious. All that s$%& was more than enough for me to handle the light interactions the party had with them. The halflings were mostly just scenery. A swirl of extras in the background. The players couldn’t keep track, really, of who was who. And honestly, that was perfect. I mean, if you met a half-dozen halflings on a family vacation, could you keep them all straight after just a few hours?

Oh, sure, I tried to instigate a few relationships. Lallia, for example, was curious about Kamen’s magic. And she was the most adventurous of the halflings. But Kamen gave her the brush off, so the interaction petered out quickly. Beyond that, Evendur dealt mostly with Bydar. The Patriarch became the family spokesperson. Which just makes sense. And he occasionally yelled at Nanda to stop being lazy or yelled at the Twins to stop bickering. Standard stuff. Easy to improvise. And basically just fluff.

Well, That Got Complicated

Now, let’s talk Complications.

I had neither the surprise bat swarm nor the random cellar dungeon planned before the game. Which was fine. Because the party blundered onto them. So they shouldn’t have been planned. Instead, they were the result of my Tension Pool and a simple Complication List.

I can’t share that Complication List, by the way. The party’s still on the river. So I might need it.

Generally, if the party’s traveling normally, I roll a full Tension Pool of six dice once per game day at midnight. If a Complication arises, it’ll f$&% up the next day of travel. I usually pick a Complication from my list rather than rolling it and just decide for myself what time it arises. But that’s because I have a good sense of how best to screw the party with what and when.

My Complication List included this entry:

A swarm of bats emerge from an underground den

Literally just that sentence. My plan was that the party would see that s$&% from a distance — when they were looking for a campsite in the evening — and investigate, thereby discovering some underground something. In other words, it was just another way of writing “the party spots the entrance to a random minidungeon.”

I’ll talk more about random minidungeons in a minute.

Thing is, though, that the bat Complication didn’t arise because of a daily Tension Pool roll at midnight. Nope, the Tension Pool roll at midnight resulted in:

An angry, nesting alligator tries to capsize one of the boats

I used that the next morning. And because I’m a nasty sonofab%$&, I sprung it just as the party was passing through a region I’d flagged as centaur territory. I figured hilarity would ensue if the party decided to go ashore — or camp — there.

As it happened, hilarity did ensue. The alligator’s attack knocked Evendur and Wydd from their boat before the party drove it off. Then, the party tried to row ashore with Evendur and Wydd clinging to the boats so they could get back in. But a party of angry centaurs did not want human feet sullying their land. The negotiations didn’t go well. But that’s another story.

But the bat thing? That Complication arose because I’m an a$&hole. At least, partly because I’m an a$&hole.

So, the party decided they’d camp out with the halflings, right? And knowing halflings — as I do — I figured they don’t make camp quiet. So as I was narrating the camp scene, I established the halflings were playing music, chatting, dancing, and yelling to each other. And I decided that, if the party didn’t do something about it, I’d consider that Reckless behavior and would make an extra Tension Pool roll.

Well, the party let the halflings go on for some time. Then, Evendur and Hewan broke off from camp to chat about the next day’s plans. And I decided they’d let the halflings be too noisy for too long. I rolled the Tension Pool, got a Complication, and decided to use that bat thing. Since it was just perfect for an evening at camp.

Just as I was about to interrupt Evendur’s and Hewan’s planning session with a harmless disgorge of bats into the air over the next rise, one of them said something like, “they’re kind of loud; should we go shut everyone up before they attract some trouble.”

And because I’ve got a flair for the dramatic, a wicked sense of humor, and a mean streak, that’s when I decided not to show a flock of bats emerging into the night nearby, but instead to disgorge a disturbed flock of predatory, vampire bats directly under their feet.

I opened the D&D 3.5 Monster Manual to page 237 — Swarm, Bat — and a good time was had by all.

And I almost decided that was enough fun for the night. I almost blew off the random minidungeon. But we still had plenty of time in the session and who doesn’t like a random minidungeon?

So…

I Didn’t Know I Was Playing a Roguelike

Now, let’s talk about that random minidungeon.

I’d set myself to pull a random minidungeon out of my a$&. And I do that a lot. I like to sprinkle my world with little caves and ruins and crypts and forgotten shrines and wrecks and monster lairs and s$&% like that. That’s another reason why I like simple adventures when I know there’s travel involved. I did the same when I sent the party into Skirlin Wood to hunt a ghoul. The ghoul was easy to find. Her lair was just a hollow under an old tree. But along the way, the party fell into this weird and obviously magical sacred spirit cave.

Which they totally decided not to f$&%ing explore.

And which they will never, ever find again.

Anyway, I trust myself to pull minidungeons from my a$& at the table. But I rely on three tools to help me.

The first is my ability to come up with quick, keyword-themes and adapt s$&% to that theme.

The second is my ability to scribble a three-to-five node flowchart to represent the dungeon’s layout.

The third is my Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Dungeon Master’s Guide which is chock full of awesome tables for making random dungeons.

So, I had this half-buried staircase. Obviously, there’d been a building where the party was camping once. But it had long since collapsed and the ruins had been washed into the river during floods and the rest had been overgrown and buried. So, basically, all that was left was a basement. And to make s$&% simple, that’s all it was. A cellar. For storage. Nothing fancy. Flagstone floors, masonry walls, hewn ceilings. Easy.

I didn’t want to waste too much table time on this s$&%, so I went with a three-room setup. And there ain’t a lot of layouts you can pull off with three rooms. So, I did the gauntlet thing. Entrance, middle room, final room. And I drew that super quick while the party was debating whether to explore or not.

Then, I flipped to DMG 78 and Table 3-18: Random Room Contents and I got my dice hand ready. I wasn’t going to build the whole dungeon then and there. I’d generate rooms pretty much as the party hit them. Because I don’t like to stop play for anything. And dice rolls and table consultations are pretty quick when you’re already ready to make them.

I knew the first room was empty. No roll needed. It used to be a bat lair. But the bats were gone. So it was just a stinking old cellar. Partially collapsed, reeking, and covered with guano.

Table 3-18 told me the second room contained hidden treasure and a trap. I didn’t roll to find out what the treasure was, though. I decided a single, valuable object was hidden amongst the debris. Meanwhile, Table 3-19: Random Traps CR 1-3 handed me a camouflaged pit trap.

Knowing I was dealing with a collapsed storage cellar, I put the elements together in my head. The middle room was a hallway. Rusted iron gates enclosed small storage alcoves. One was filled with broken pots, jugs, and bottles. That suggested a silver stopper might be hidden in the debris.

The pit trap gave me trouble. It seemed weird to have a concealed pit trap in a cellar. And because the cellar was in an advanced state of ruin, it seemed weirder that a functional trap might survive the ages. But erosion, flooding, and mass wasting suggested the cellar might have been undermined. The flagstones were still in place, held together by natural cementing, but underneath the floor was a small crevasse where the earth had eroded away. Any heavy weight would plunge through the flagstones into the space below.

One more roll on Table 3-18 told me the third room contained a monster only. I figured a 2nd-level dungeon encounter was fine for a random Complication for 4th-level PCs. Rolling on the 2nd-Level Dungeon Encounters table yielded a choker and my Monster Manual provided the stats. Because the party had blundered into the pit and was debating how best to cross it while I was rolling, I decided they’d lost the element of surprise and rolled a Hide check as the choker concealed itself for an ambush.

Honestly, the choker worked particularly well. Chokers are small, light, lithe rubbery little climbers. So it made sense it’d never collapsed the floor. The little fella probably settled here one night and then woke up surprised to find bats roosting in his foyer. But they didn’t bother him. So he’d sneak out after they went out for the night to strangle rabbits or squirrels or fish for his dinner. Or, if he was feeling lazy, creep into the bat’s lair while they were sleeping and seize one with his long, grabby tentacles.

Anyway, that’s it. That’s how one line of text about bats and a list of halfling names built a dungeon.