Below Gwarnath – Level 1 Map Progress

The manuscript and maps for my next published adventure are complete, and I'm in the process of drawing the cover illustration. I don't quite know if I'll make my self-imposed, end-of-April deadline, but I'm happy with where I am. I'm confident I'll have it up on Drive-thru in the next two weeks.

In the meantime, I needed a creative palate cleanser, so I resumed work on my Below Gwarnath megadungeon map. I'm drawing this using the random dungeon generation tables in OSRIC, and I'm developing some custom stocking tables to incorporate specific monsters and magic items (and tech items from Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha), plus a ton of homebrew material from old, unused campaign ideas. I still haven't decided if I'm unleashing this on my tabletop group or my Roll20 guys.

As I said in my introductory post, I started this map to give me a little test-bed dungeon to show one of my 5e guys what AD&D/OSRIC is like. We have yet to play that session, but I enjoyed the dungeon generation process so much that I kept going. Before long, I had four interconnected maps, each on a 24x24 grid, with branches leading off-map in all directions. I placed those four maps at the center of a larger canvas of sixteen, 24x24 grid "zones" (the whole image is 24" x 24", or 7200 x 7200 px). The following maps are all lo-res, as I had to shrink them quite a bit to upload to the blog, but I'll post a link to the full-size map at the bottom.

I've posted this version previously but want to show the progression, so this is the map I had after the initial burst of generation. The original zone I drew for the playtest was F, followed by G, J, and K (I'd already strayed into zones A and B by this point, as well).

My intention for the next bit of mapping was to finish filling out zones A and B, then move methodically to C, D, E, etc. But the randomness of the dice carried me down into zones E and I, before bringing me back up to A. This is roughly 2 or 3 sessions of casual mapping from the tables (a few hours' work, tops) at the beginning of April..

I shelved the map for a bit while I worked on my new adventure, but we had some relief over the weekend from the drought in our area with a nice steady rain, so I spent the day indoors and got some more mapping done by finishing out zone B. I decided to make the outside borders of this map the outer limit of the dungeon area, so any results that carried me off the larger map were either ignored or diverted. I had to tweak a few results to get certain areas to fit what had already been drawn, but I remain amazed at how the tables just WORK to create these spaces. Quite ingenious.

 

The only zone I've actually stocked and keyed so far is the original one, zone F, that I did for the OSRIC playtest. It was also rolled out using purely the OSRIC tables, but it wasn't written with the full blown concept I've since designed for this future campaign in mind. It's more similar to the approach I took with the Hurricane Dungeon, which was to populate the level with little, independent vignettes connected only by the shared environment. There's no big theme running, here, just day-to-day survival for the dungeon inhabitants. I may revisit the key once I get my stocking tables where I want them, but this is my interpretation of the results as rolled from the OSRIC tables.

>> Download Level 1/Zone F key.

>>Download the full-size map (so far).

Winners Announced for the Adventure Site Contest III

Ben Gibson over at Coldlight Press announced the winners of this year's Adventure Site Contest, and while my submission, Ophidian Temple, wasn't the top-prize winner, it did make it into the winners' bracket for inclusion in the anthology publication of the same name (due out sometime later this year).

I'm happy to have made the cut. OT was one of my first adventures written solely for a 1e/OSRIC campaign, rather than an adaptation of one of my earlier adventures for either D&D 5e or my homebrew version of Arcanum.

The winner of this year's contest is John Nash, who entered a cat-themed adventure, the Temple of Bast for BECMI/RC. He wrote one of my favorite adventures for last year's contest, Sausages of the Devil Swine, which made it into my top 5 picks during judges' scoring. John's a highly creative author, so I look forward to reading his submission.

While I'm obviously disappointed I didn't nab the top nod, I'm pretty proud of this one. It's deadly and has a fairly brutal time clock running that ramps the finale up to '11' if the party dicks around too long. Here's a link to download the adventure for yourself. Ben ran the temple recently for his table and said they had a fun time with it. Let me know how it runs for you.

Works in Progress

I'm currently working on a couple of projects. I'm in the final review/fine-tuning phase of my next adventure for publication. It's an adventure I wrote probably 20 years ago. It was before I returned to D&D with the 5e playtest because the original manuscript was designed for my homebrew ruleset (built upon Bard Games' super-fun Arcanum series).

The adventure is set in the burnt-out ruins of a holy chapel in which the past fire hid a terrible secret about the goings-on there. The location was in my long-running King's Realm campaign, which was a Northern European/Arthurian setting, so the site's layout is very much based on a Christian chapel. This campaign wasn't explicitly "real-world" so the religion wasn't a Christian one, but it was monotheistic and similar to the CoE's organization, the king asserted Divine Right, etc. The "modern" religion of the Realm was also predated by a pagan religion that worshiped nature (and regarded the fey and elvenkind as holy). I poured two decades of creative energy into this world, so it had a lot of flavor and internal logic.

That was the first difficulty of converting this adventure into a publishable form. The events surrounding the chapel adventure were part of an ongoing thread that made total sense in the context of the whole campaign, but was meaningless padding without the context. I want my published adventures to be as modular as possible to give the DM maximum flexibility in inserting it into their campaign, so I had to strip out a lot of the adventure's background material and boil the "story" down to its core elements (the latter part wasn't actually that difficult). With the details toned down, I think many of the semi-Christian analogues to the adventure's flavor can be adapted easily to the DM's world.

In adapting the adventure to OSRIC, I've had to convert some of the mechanical elements to fit the system, but also expanded the material slightly. It's now a tight little adventure site with a pretty simple "plot" and a tidy resolution. It's a perfect side-quest or "on-the-road" adventure for cleric and paladins, but I did have to create some new hooks to make it palatable for more mercenary-type parties.

The manuscript is done but being edited, I'm finishing the fine details of the updated maps, and I still need to do a cover illustration, but my goal is to have the adventure done and published by the end of April. It's currently titled "The Haunted Chapel" which was all I needed for my own campaign purposes, but I'm thinking it might need a more evocative title to draw some attention. Then again, the simplicity lends itself to the modular design and I don't want to step on the DM's ability to adapt the adventure. It is after all, in fact, a haunted chapel.

My second project is partly for fun, partly for a future potential campaign. I discussed a bit of inspiration in a previous post, surrounding an idea to consolidate lots of my old kilo- and mega-dungeon material into a single creative concept. I'm calling it "Below Gwarnath" and its shaping up to be fun project.

Initially intended as an OSRIC demo for one of my legacy 5e players, I used the random dungeon generation tables in OSRIC to develop a sample dungeon map for my friend to bang around in and test drive the system. I first drew the map in Roll20 and was surprisingly pleased with the results so I then converted it into my house style in Photoshop (and added a few routes off the map, with the intention of expanding it). And expand it I have.

Aethelberd's Tomb for OSRIC Is Now Available at DriveThruRPG

My latest adventure is now live on DriveThru RPG. This started out as an adventure for my first 5e campaign, but the players failed to bite down on the hook. They rescued the goodwife being held captive by the brigands, but noped out when she told them about the "whispers from down in the well." (Cowards.)

I ended up using the dungeon in another 5e campaign, but re-imagined for a Viking-themed setting. Several of the same players were in this party, and this time they bit. It played pretty well and they recovered the magic hammer, Angbolt, but never encountered the otyugh.

This is my second adventure for publication, and I have several more in development. It's gratifying to put my work out there, and hopefully others will enjoy running (and playing) it.

 

Aethelberd's Tomb – Final Cover

I've completed the illustration for the cover of my next adventure. I'm happy with it, though I could keep tweaking it forever. Better to call it "done" and move on to the next project. I'm giving the adventure a final review and edit, and hope to launch it on DriveThru this weekend.

Aethelberd's Tomb – Cover Progress

I've been drawing the cover illustration for my next adventure for publication, which I teased in a previous post. I used to draw a bunch as a kid, and I drew a lot of character tokens and maps for my Roll20 campaigns, but it's been awhile since I composed a "dungeon scene." I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out.

I sketched the original in pencil, then scanned it into Photoshop and created a blueline version. I moved some of the figures in closer to compress the space. I've done the preliminary characters and the room background, and now I'm working on the little details to finish it up. The style is inspired by Erol Otus' and Peter Mullen's works (with a nod to Tramp), and depicts a potential scene down in the dungeon if the party attracts the attention of a monster down the well.

Once I get the detail work done, I'll color the image. I'm already building a palette (seen to the left in the image), and I based the otyugh's coloration on Otus' illustration in the AD&D Monster Cards set (at right). I gave the otyugh three eyes, because that's how it looked to me in Dave Sutherland's original Monster Manual illustration, but it's pretty clear from Otus' illustration that it's some sort of gross orifice (a "nose," perhaps). I added the orifice, but decided to keep the three eyes, as I like how they're looking at different party members.

I'd like to have the new adventure up on DriveThru by the end of March, so I need to keep chugging. I'll post the finished version of the cover piece once it's complete.

Below Gwarnath

It's funny how inspiration works. A few years ago, I was running two different 5e campaigns. One campaign, for my tabletop group of noob players, was a forest hexcrawl in a pretty classic, vanilla-fantasy setting. The other, for my online group of long-time players (35 years or so), was another hexcrawl, a re-imagining of B2 through the prism of the American Southwest. Both campaigns occurred in the same world, at the same time, but in different regions.

The former campaign ended successfully, and we moved on to playing Labyrinth Lord, then transitioned into AD&D/OSRIC where we are now. The latter campaign ended poorly, and I dissolved it with a bad taste in my mouth that sort of soured me on that campaign world. 

When I shifted my tabletop group to LL, I developed a kilodungeon based on a mashup of U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and the Sample Dungeon from Holmes Basic. We used the Advanced LL rules, which was a good bridge from 5e. When they got to 3rd level or so, I began using OSRIC and they didn't really notice most of the rule changes. Technically, this kilodungeon exists in my 5e campaign world, and the girls are still gaming in it. I haven't returned to online play (as a DM).

Since rediscovering the simpler joys of the legacy rules, however, I've been considering a new campaign setting that better embodies classic adventure gaming. I want something less vanilla with more pulp elements. I want to inject some sci-fi and weirdness (but not gonzo-weird). And I want the players' activity to be mostly centered around a single megadungeon.

I've flirted with this concept over the years, and have accumulated multiple folders filled with various notes and ideas about what I could do. From my old King's Realm campaign from the 90s and 00s, I had the Lost City of Cwm Cannadr, a never-visited megadungeon within an ancient city that was swallowed by the mountains. From my 5e world, I had the Catacombs of Remedios, a magical, ever-changing labyrinth beneath the capital city, and Cragmoor, the multilevel, mountainside lair of an ancient red dragon. I have my abandoned Dungeon23 attempt: Tunnels Beneath the Earth, and its spiritual cousin in the unfinished Deep Vaults material. Most recently, I completed the 10-level Hurricane Dungeon, which I'll return to below. This is a lot of solid design work just sitting there, unused.

Though these dungeons are all different in background and scope, they share the same author (obviously), and certain stylistic and creative threads are all there as connective tissue. I just haven't hit on the right idea to tie everything together. The things I've come up with just haven't inspired or energized me to dive in to the work and start sewing the pieces into shape. I certainly don't mind tropes (in fact, I love them), but I just want the unifying creative idea to be a solid one.

So, last week, one of my long-time players from my 5e Badlands campaign expressed interest in learning about 1e. I agreed to walk him through the character creation process, and then run him through a little scenario (sometime in the near future; this hasn't happened yet). I'm finalizing two adventures to publish in the next few weeks or so, and I am at the stage of editing and layout that is boring and convenient to procrastinate on.

Needing a creative palate cleanser, I decided to work on the scenario for the playtest session. I had a blast developing the Hurricane Dungeon using the stocking tables, but I never used the random dungeon generation part for the map layout. This seemed like a fun excuse to try out those tools. Using the OSRIC tables, I drew the map in Roll20 as I rolled it out, with the default R20 grid size of 25x25 squares. At a 10' scale, this amounts to 62,500 sq. ft. of dungeon... a nice, contained little area to bang around in that wouldn't require a ton of work on my part. This is how the map ended up in Roll20...

Its a pretty low-res screenshot, but the basics are all there. I drew Room 1 and the stairs up as the entrance, then everything else was rolled out straight on the tables, including the stairs down. Unfortunately, there were no "Trick/Trap" results (bummer). I had to modify a few of the room dimensions and passage directions to fit the space, but that's to be expected. I also did the initial stocking rolls to determine the room contents, which you can see in small print (e.g., 'E' = Empty, "M+T" = Monster and Treasure, etc.) 

I rolled contents as soon as I completed drawing each room, which is different from how I handled the Hurricane Dungeon stocking. For that, I rolled a list of contents and then decided which rooms to place each piece of content in on the pre-existing maps. Here, once I knew the base contents of each room, I went back and rolled out the individual monsters and treasures. One thing I kept forgetting to do was roll passage width, which is why most hallways are only 10' wide, but in a limited space like this, I was fine with it.

I then took my monster and treasure lists and began outlining the dungeon key. That's when inspiration struck. At the top of my outline, I wrote the following stream-of-consciousness elevator pitch for the dungeon:

"The ancient city of Gwarnath lies in ruins atop the Plateau of Jjin. Hidden among the wreckage, numerous darkened portals, shafts, and broken stairs descend into its subterranean vaults. Tales of great riches and fabulous treasures abound, but the ruins are infested with monsters from the old world."

Not particularly original or groundbreaking, but something in those dashed-off lines sparked my imagination. Suddenly, I had a campaign concept that ties together all of my unused material in an unusual yet still-familiar setting. This "throw-away" adventure for a one-shot playtest will now form the cornerstone of the development of a megadungeon campaign that uses the previously-created material, stitched together by dungeon sections generated using the random tables and some of the custom methodology I used for the Hurricane Dungeon (a process which I've come to really enjoy... making creative sense out of random die rolling is a fun challenge).

I took the Roll20 map and applied my house style to come up with a new map, now with some branches leading off this 25x25 section into adjoining sections, to create a bigger level (eventually).

New ideas are flying, thoughts are being collected, and plans are developing, but this is the energy and motivation I've been missing for my home game. And its a setting I can use for both my tabletop group and online. I'll discuss the development of the outline and key in a near-future post.