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.

Recent Reviews and Coming Content

Sorry for the ham-handed alliteration. I've had lots of coffee this morning and feeling cheeky. I've been hard at work on a few things so I haven't had a chance to post much recently, particularly after the marathon blogging run for the Hurricane Dungeon. A few things to mention, though...

Judging is wrapping up for Coldlight Press's third-annual Adventure Site Contest and the winner(s) should be announced soon. Reviews for my Ophidian Temple submission were mostly positive, though JB applied his well-honed perspective and brought up several points I didn't consider while writing. I (politely) disagreed with some of his points in the review comments, and after some additional discussion, he graciously improved my score a skooch. There are no real stakes in this contest, but the goal is to improve as a designer. If one can meet and exceed JB's demanding criteria (which I 100% appreciate), then you know you've accomplished something.

UPDATE: I somehow missed Owen_E's review of my contest submission.

Speaking of demanding criteria, Bryce over at tenfootpole.org reviewed my recent published adventure, Bergummo's Tower and awarded it a prestigious "The Best" ranking. I was pleasantly surprised that he had even reviewed the adventure, much less put it among some really heavyweight awesome adventures in that short list. I won't lie, it feels good. I don't crave validation, but it's always nice to receive.

What's coming up? I have a second adventure nearly ready for publication called "Aethelberd's Tomb," a fairly straightforward exploration of a crypt below the ruined keep of an ancient warlord. It's a nice little expansion of a dungeon I've run several times now, and was even a One-Page Dungeon submission some years ago. I think it's a solid delve. All that's left is to finish the cover illustration, which I am currently blue-lining. Here's a sneak preview...

After that, I have about a dozen adventures in the queue to format and publish over the next months and couple years: Some are old dungeons I'm pulling out of mothballs to refresh and retool; others are fairly new in my repertoire, designed with my rediscovered love of the classic methods and principles of adventure gaming.

Upcoming titles include:

• "The Haunted Chapel" (a dark secret beneath the ruins of a holy place).
• "Bugspittle's Hive" (a spiritual sequel to my ASC 1 entry, "Etta Capp's Cottage").
• "Fire Forge" (a high-level mission to assault a fire giant's caldera lair).
• "Oleg's Problem" (classic dwarven-miners-digging-too-deep dilemma).
• "The Drowned Gates" (a cavernous kilo-dungeon).
• "The High Ice" (a travail to the glacial lair of an ancient white dragon).
• "Owlbear Hill" (a full(er) version of my ASC 2 submission that didn't make the cut).
• "Isle of the Dead" (my too-long-delayed Mythic Greece-inspired adventure, which is 95% done). 

After "Aethelberd's Tomb" is released, "The Haunted Chapel" will be next, as I'm nearly done formatting, but still working on pieces of the content and redrawing the map to my house style. I'll feel good if I can get half the bullet list finished and uploaded.

I also intend to keep posting here as frequently as possible. Cheers until next time!