Tunnels Beneath the Earth — Week 3 (#Dungeon23)

"The Storerooms"
Level 1 (JAN) – The Upper Works
Section 3 (1/15 – 1/21)

Elf-bane

With all this OGL controversy, I took down my one and only stab at self-publishing: a 5e adventure for DM's Guild called "Elf-bane"—just in case. Some are claiming WotC can potentially "seize" content created under previous versions of the OGL, and I wouldn't want that to happen to anything I made. It's nothing special—I only sold 22 units for a net of $72.38 and a paid (50%) royalty of $36.89—but it's mine. 

Ironically, this adventure spun out of a submission to become a writer for Adventurer's League back in the early-early days of 5e. I was just dipping my toes back into D&D and wasn't aware how much the game had changed, sociologically, since I left it in the late 80s. Naive might be a better word for it, but I was excited by the prospects of 5th edition.

The submission instructions were...

Send back to your point-of-contact two different scenes or encounters each designed for five 3rd-level characters using all of the following design elements between both of them. You do not need to use all of the elements listed for each scene or encounter, but you may reuse elements for either one.

Each scene or encounter should be a maximum of one page. You do not have to include stat blocks for the monsters. One scene should emphasize exploration or social interaction (your choice) and the other should emphasize combat.

• Setting/environment: ruined temple
• Feature: secret door
• Feature: hidden spiked pit
• NPC: elf noble
• Monster: manticore
• Monster: orc(s)
• Monster: skeleton(s)

WotC rejected the adventure I wrote from these guidelines. My point of contact asked if I would like a critique of the adventure, but he never responded to my request for one. I have a feeling I know why: The "elf noble" in my adventure was a female ranger being tortured by "orc(s)" who intend to sacrifice her in the "ruined temple."

Yikes! I had no idea that sort of thing was frowned upon these days. I thought I was leaning too heavily into the D&D trope. I also gave them a mini-dungeon adventure with the ruined temple setting, which might have been more content than they wanted (although the original version met the one-page scene guideline).

At some point, I expanded the dungeon slightly and put the adventure up for sale on DM's Guild, but I don't really want to associate with that site anymore. I've decided to rewrite the adventure to be compatible with AD&D and post it here for anyone who wants it. (Thank you to everyone who bought the PDF.)

Here is a link to a free PDF of the new version.

Tunnels Beneath the Earth — Week 2 (#Dungeon23)

"The Sewers"

Level 1 (JAN) – The Upper Works

Section 2 (1/8 – 1/14)

Tunnels Beneath the Earth — Week 1 (#Dungeon23)

First week's work is complete, and I'm relatively satisfied with what I have so far. Section 1 is the environs immediately over the dungeon. Multiple entrances lead to different levels, and some areas are deadly for low-level characters. Experienced adventurers who overcome these tougher areas can access deeper dungeon levels by skipping the upper sections.

I experienced an unusual amount of anxiety about writing in pen on paper, rather than from the safety of a keyboard. I made a few errors which I mostly managed to cover (i.e., I incorporated the mistakes into the dungeon's reality) and I dripped coffee on it—but by Day 5 I finally came to terms that I'm writing this for myself first, so mistakes don't matter...just scratch it out or make a side-note and move on.

I also need to break my habit of continuing to develop ideas once they're on paper, which is sometimes complicating the writeup if I don't have the extra space to squeeze extra material in legibly. I want these surface pieces to have a lot of expansion potential, though, because they carry so much weight in setting up the rest of the dungeon. Some of them (the Necropolis or the Colossal Head, for example) could be fleshed out into mini-adventure areas of their own if gameplay develops in that direction. I anticipate my dungeon keys being much briefer for most rooms, however.

Here is the (slightly-edited) key if my chicken scratch is too hard to read. To save valuable page space, I only statted monsters that are unique to a location; monsters without stats are written up elsewhere.

__________

 

"The Surface"

Level 1 (JAN) – The Upper Works

Section 1 (1/1 – 1/7)

Law and Chaos in the Badlands — Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

This final part is somewhat superfluous as the religion of Lahr plays no direct role in the central conflict of the Badlands campaign. If a PC decides to be a Lahrist, however, they would find plenty here to motivate them to join the fight. I'm only including the information in this series to be a completist on the topic of the major human religions in my Remedios campaign.

The following section details the Order of Lahr—once the predominant human faith, now a shadow of its former glory.

#Dungeon23 — Tunnels Beneath the Earth (Day 1)

Below is the first day's work for my Dungeon23 project: Tunnels Beneath the Earth. I don't intend to post every day, but I wanted to get the initial progress posted. Day 1 consists of an unscaled map of the surface ruins and seven numerically keyed locations (which will be my daily pieces). The first piece is the city ruins, which is mostly an open area for the party to encounter wandering monsters on their way to one of the many entrances to the dungeon proper. I cheated a little and added six alphabetically-keyed locations to define the important areas of the main site. 

The remaining six numeric locations comprise the first weekly section (one-quarter of the 1st level). The other three sections for January will detail several areas just below the surface, each accessed via one of the keyed locations in section 1. All together, these four sections will comprise level 1, titled: The Upper Works. The numbered locations are...

1. The Ruined City
2. The Pile
3. The Culvert
4. The Necropolis
5. The Colossal Head
6. The Quarry
7. The Metal Cave
   

My numbering scheme is based on level/section/room (area), so The Ruined City is keyed at 1.1.1, The Pile is 1.1.2, The Culvert is 1.1.3, etc. Other that that, I don't exactly have a strategy for how I will format the sections (which I think is kind of the point...to not have one), but my initial thought was to have a section map on the left page, with the key on the right page. 

I knew the initial descriptions for the ruins were a little beefy, since this is a lot of establishing material, but it's pretty clear I won't get all seven surface locations on these two pages. I'm not too worried about that...I believe I can accomplish that for later levels, but I definitely need to work on my editing and keep the dungeon room descriptions as brief as possible.

It's also been challenging not to think too far ahead. The organizer in me wants to get everything mapped out and tidied up, but I think that's where a lot of my projects fail to launch. I'm trying to keep this process organic and free-form, without a lot of preconceived ideas about where it will all go. That said, I laid down quite a few threads for future dungeon development in the first set of keyed areas.

I feel good about the start of this project, so far. I'm even lining up a group to start playtesting it in a few months once I get a couple of levels complete. I will likely post the first completed section this coming weekend, but I may have another post or two about the process if I have any interesting insights.