Starting October 1, Ben Gibson at Coldlight Press is taking submissions for his second annual Adventure Sites Contest, with a January 1 deadline for entries. You can read all about the contest guidelines here.
Last year's contest was a lot of fun and my submission, Etta Capp's Cottage, found a spot among the winning entries. These were published in a handy compilation available to all for FREE! It was even reviewed by the esteemed Prince of Nothing over at the Age of Dusk blog.
I've been asked to be a judge for this year's contest, so I'll be posting my reviews of the submissions as they come in. My own submission for the second contest is already in the preliminary stages, and I plan to post some of the developmental work here as well. I also have about a dozen unfinished drafts in my posting queue that I need to finish up. Looking forward to all of that, as I have let this blog languish due to other projects/real-life demands.
Ben's contest is part of an effort to foster a return to the "Classic Adventure Gaming" mode of play that is distinct from the OSR community, which has become fragmented and beset by opportunistic content creators shilling for a fast buck. The creators in this contest are old-school veterans and dedicated students of the original versions of the game (OD&D/BX/AD&D), who actually understand good design and know what they're doing.
These adventures can actually be played at the table right out of the can, without having to parse through AI-generated walls of text, artsy-fartsy nonsense, and a designer's incomplete knowledge of what the game is about.
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| Image by the incomparable Erol Otus. |
It's been a thrill finding like-minded fans of the early game, and after converting my own tabletop campaign from 5e to an LL/OSRIC hybrid, I even began playing in an honest-to-goodness AD&D campaign recently, my first since (roughly) 1988-ish.
