Bergummo's Tower for OSRIC Is Now Available at DriveThruRPG

A couple years ago I entered Prince of Nothing's "No Artpunk Contest" by converting a 5e adventure I'd designed for my home table to OSRIC. I was already committed to shifting back to Basic/Advanced D&D, as my disenchantment with 5e had reached a critical point. The 5e version was written with classic-style adventuring principles, however, so I found it converted pretty easily to the older ruleset. I also needed to abide by the contest limitations, so a few other other changes applied to the OSRIC version of the adventure. I was actually still play-testing the 5e version (for the second time) when I entered the contest.

Prince's review came back pretty positive, but I didn't quite make the cut for the finalists. At the time, I intended to publish the 5e version on DM's Guild/DriveThruRPG, but after being reprimanded for defending Oriental Adventures in the product comments, and then having an email fight with the site's CSRs for calling out a blatant double-standard on a different product, I pulled my adventures off the site and stopped doing business with them.

Unfortunately, if you want to publish game materials, they're pretty much the only game in town. I'm looking into Lulu, but itch.io seems like a nightmare and I have no large following to draw attention to a product for direct sales. I'm not really looking to make money (based on past efforts, I won't), but I have a good deal of experience (40+ years) designing adventures, I have a ton of existing material in my campaign folders, I know a lot about writing and layout, and it's a creative exercise that gives me a lot of personal satisfaction and joy. I wouldn't mind earning a few bucks for the trouble, either, so what the hell...

I took my OSRIC version of Bergummo's Tower, rewrote the copy (reducing word count by about 15%) and redrew the maps to clean up a few things I didn't like. The final result is now up for sale at DriveThruRPG.

Here's the cover...

...and the annotated dungeon map as a preview.

It's a challenging gauntlet of puzzles, tricks, and monsters that will test even the most experienced players, but stays simple enough to avoid getting bogged down over impossible riddles and inscrutable clues. Check it out and let me know how it plays at your table. 

I'm currently working on two other adventures for publication, with a list of six more I plan to release over the next year or so. Hopefully, I can contribute to the effort of bringing this ruleset and style of gaming to new players.

#Dungeon23 — Tunnels Beneath the Earth

I've never been much of a "joiner," but I like a collective mental exercise now and then. It's what motivated me recently to enter my adventure, Bergummo's Tower, in Prince of Nothing's back-to-basics "No Artpunk 2" contest. With both my current campaigns running along on content I've already baked, I need a new outlet for some non-work-related creative energy (which has accumulated as a result of being cooped up inside with no yard projects to do and caring for a very sick dog).

Like a lot of DMs, I came across Sean McCoy's recent tweet about Dungeon 23, announcing a personal goal of writing one room a day over the course of a year in order to create a 12-level, 365-room megadungeon. The spark for doing this sort of thing had already been fired by Zenopus Archive's superlative expansion of the sample dungeon from the Holmes Basic rulebook, and I've been mulling doing a similar thing with several of my longtime dungeons-in-progress that I can never seem to complete.

My campaign world already contains a megadungeon environment—a series of ever-changing catacombs beneath the capital city of the land of Remedios. I've only fleshed out the top two levels, however, and my players have only visited the first level. I've considered developing a campaign around the catacombs, but on the players' few excursions there, they never seemed to bite down on the concept and I never did much else with it. I love the idea, though.

A formal effort like this—and one that seems to be attracting a lot of participants—is the perfect thing I need to roll into the long winter months until spring. I'm curious if I have the stamina to do it. I write for a living, but do I have the juice to take a massive concept and flesh it out in a way that is cogent and feels satisfying? A little bit each day sounds easy, until you hit Day-160 and realize you're out of ideas and aren't even at the halfway point yet. I have a feeling this is going to be way harder than I think, and I'm already a pessimist.

I will say that I completely disagree with this guideline from Sean on his Dungeon23 substack: "If you can’t think of what to write that day just write “Empty Room,” see how easy that is?"

I'm of the opinion that if you're going to write a room, then write a room. My dungeon levels will have plenty of empty rooms, but the rooms I'm writing will have something interesting in them to see/do/fight/take. That definitely ramps up the difficulty level of this project, so it will be interesting to see what techniques I can develop to stick to this commitment.

I'm also wondering if I can make something interesting to other DMs out there. I ended up in the middle of the pack in Prince's contest, but I like to believe that was more a function of scope than content (some of the winning entries were just really cool concept pieces, whereas mine was a starter dungeon for newbie players and sort of vanilla). I know what flavors I like, and everything I make is some combination of those flavors, but how strong is my palate?

I'm not on Twitter or any other social media, so I'll post everything to my blog. I'm abiding by the guideline to write the rooms in a physical journal, which I think is a neat limitation. Committing ink to paper takes a leap of faith that your hand can keep up with your brain. It's a skill that has atrophied for me in favor of keyboards and typing. I'm not sure I can post every day, though, so I'm shooting for a once-per-week post of the previous week's work. I'll see how it goes.

I feel like I'm off to a good start. I've cracked what I want to do thematically, and I have an initial bubble sketch of the first month's work. I've also outlined the rest of the dungeon levels all the way to the bottom. Now I just need to start writing the rooms on Sunday. My goal is to pay homage to the foundational works of the game, but I intend to get weird as we go down. 

I'll be following the OSRIC system as the overall ruleset for this dungeon, and I'm limiting myself to monsters from the AD&D trilogy (MM, MMII, FF), Chasoium's All the World's Monsters I-III, and some home-brewed but thematic creatures. As much as possible, I want to pick monsters I've rarely/never used before, but I definitely want some classic creatures in there as well. Also a dragon. In 40 years of gaming, I've only had ONE dragon fight with my players.

I've named my megadungeon "Tunnels Beneath the Earth" (TuBE for short). The first level (January) I am calling "The Upper Works" as a shout-out to Castle Greyhawk. 

Level 1 consists of the surface ruins (which will be detailed in Week 1). The ruins lead to three sub-surface "mini-dungeons" (Weeks 2-4). Each of those areas will have seven detailed areas (one per day). From the surface level and the mini-dungeons, various tunnels lead down to the first proper megadungeon level (February)—and some tunnels descend even deeper.

I've purchased a simple graph-ruled composition notebook to record everything, so here's to a new year of D&D and, hopefully, this time next year I'll have filled this bad boy up with lots of good stuff. Fingers crossed...

No-Artpunk Contest: Bergummo's Tower

Happy to report that I received a positive review for my adventure, Bergummo's Tower, in Prince of Nothing's "No-Artpunk 2" contest. The competition looks pretty stiff, so I'm not sure of my chances for being selected, but I'm grateful to have received a passing grade and moved on to the final round.

Here's Prince's review, as well as a list of the other entries.

Here are my playtest reports from the first time I ran it (sessions which led to a few changes in order to make things work that weren't). I wrote the adventure as an intro to 5e but in an OSR-style. The contest rules stipulated, however, that the adventure must be written in an old-school system, so I converted it to OSRIC.

Here is the OSRIC version if anyone would like to download it for themselves. I don't have the 5e version ready yet, but I'll format it and post it here soon.

Bergummo's Tower Playtest - Session 6

 As they put their heads together about what to do next, the party members realize they never fully searched the plinth room, so they return through the green mist to do so. They already know there are two secret doors in this room, one of which was opened by turning the dials on the plinth. They opened the second secret door from the other side, after descending the pit in the red mist, melting the grate with green slime, and ascending a subtly-sloping corridor. 

Bergummo's Tower Playtest - Session 5

Vic pokes his head into the 15x20 room and shines his candle around. Rotting velvet curtains line all four walls, save for the north corner of the west wall where a brightly-colored tapestry hangs. With his hand crossbow, Vic fires arrows at the sapphire floating slowly around the tip of a 6-ft. iron pole set into the middle of the floor. He hits the grape-sized gemstone several times, but fails to dislodge it from its orbit. Undeterred, he finally hits it with enough force to knock the sapphire loose. Its glow subsides as the jewel falls to the stone floor. Luckily, it is not damaged.

Bergummo's Tower Playtest - Session 4

With the party still working out the enigma of the bronze buttons emblazoned with sigils of the four seasons, Cane suggests correlating the mist colors to the seasons (red = Summer; blue = Winter; yellow = Fall; green = Spring). Vic presses this combination of buttons, but it only summons a pair of cockatrices to the south platform. After a brief fight, the party kills the horrid creatures.

Bergummo's Tower - Playtest Session 3

The spiral staircase descends 30 ft. below the cellar to a large, unlit room (the dwarves estimate the party is now 40-50 ft. beneath the surface). As Saynard’s bullseye lantern scans across the walls, the light reveals an octagonal-shaped chamber of finely-laid, dressed stone, with a 15-ft. high vaulted ceiling. A thick layer of dust covers the floor. In the center of the room, from floor to ceiling, stands a wide stone “column” within which the spiral staircase winds back up to the cellar.

Bergummo's Tower - Playtest Session 2

After hearing some movement downstairs (soft shuffling noises), Cane repositions himself, hiding behind some debris and taking a bead on the staircase doorway with his bow. Steeljaw drags Aerion’s and Saynard’s paralyzed forms over to the far wall, then hugs the wall next to the staircase doorway with his axe raised. Vic slides into the darkened bedchamber to the south and sets up an ambush. All three active party members now hear a gentle creaking as some creature carefully makes its way up the rickety stairs.

Bergummo's Tower - Playtest Session 1

I finally started my playtest sessions for an upcoming publishing attempt. I'm mostly checking the adventure for balance issues, but I'm also test-driving a few house rules and ideas I have for improving my regular game. 

We're playing 5e on Roll20 every Wednesday night, and I estimate the adventure will take 4-5 sessions to complete. I like 5e's core mechanic, for the most part, but I prefer OSR adventure design principles. Hopefully, this is a decent blend of those factors.

Five of my Tuesday-night players rolled up (2) characters -- one primary and one replacement in case the primary dies, although I am letting them swap out characters (if they desire to) whenever the party returns to base camp. 

I gave them this brief adventure synopsis and then started them right at the dungeon... 

Your party came into possession of a map with directions to the abandoned tower of a long dead-wizard. The tower stands deep in a nearby forest, and whispered rumors tell of fantastic treasures kept within, waiting for those brave or foolish enough to enter.

You and your comrades decided to form an expedition to investigate the rumors, and your party followed the map to the area. It was a long, arduous journey to reach the site, so returning to town for rest and resupply would not be an easy undertaking. Your party establishes a base camp several miles from the tower site, and half your expedition prepares to make the first foray: Aerion, dwarf paladin; Cane, wood elf monk; Saynard, human bard; Steeljaw, dwarf barbarian; and Vic, halfling rogue.

After a restful night, your party sets off shortly after dawn. After traveling through thick woods for two hours, you arrive at the spot marked on the map at 9:00 AM. There, you find a modest structure—a crumbling, three-story stone tower with a conical, shingled roof—standing in the middle of a forest clearing.

Thick, leafy vines shroud parts of the exterior wall. Brickwork has fallen away in places, leaving gaps in the tower wall. Part of the tower roof sags and patches of shingles are missing. Narrow, darkened windows stare into the surrounding forest. The front door is gone and the doorway stands wide open.

The entire area has a strange atmosphere about it, almost “humming” with unseen energy that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. As you approach the tower, the forest becomes noticeably quieter.

 Here is the session report...

Bergummo's Tower

I've loaded the adventure into Roll20 for my playtest sessions, which I hope to begin soon. This is the illustration of the tower's exterior I made for the landing page.

Bergummo's Tower -- The Vaults Below

I finished the second map for the next adventure I intend to publish called Bergummo's Tower. Below the ruined tower is an arcane vault holding some of the wizard Bergummo's greatest treasures. The entire complex is a series of puzzles to open the various vaults, and has a good mix of problem-solving, ability checks, and combat.

I've recruited four of my veteran players to playtest it, which I hope to do in the next couple weeks. Here is the map.

Bergummo's Tower

I'm preparing my second adventure for sale on DM's Guild (my first being Elf-bane), and this is the first part of the dungeon map -- the crumbling tower of a long-dead wizard. 

When I first started tinkering with Roll20 in 2015, my friend John, whom I've played D&D with since my freshman year in college and who lives in a different state, popped on and rolled up a character. I built an adventure on the spot and ran his new wizard character plus an NPC fighter through "Bergummo's* Tower." It's what hooked both of us on the potential for online gaming to allow us to play together again after many years.

Despite being created pretty much on-the-fly, the adventure really worked. It laid the initial groundwork for what would become a 5-1/2-year long campaign that, at one point, had 8 players. The campaign concluded in epic fashion after 118 sessions back in August of 2020.

I always regarded the initial adventure as a great success, so I've gone back and retooled it, expanded it quite a bit, and created new maps. I'm pretty proud of how it's turned out, so here's a sneak-peek. I'm going to run my Tuesday night Roll20 group through it as a playtest, then I'll make any necessary tweaks and publish it.

*Bergummo is an obscure name I pulled from something. If anyone knows the reference, I'll send you a free pdf of the adventure.