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.

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Chambers of Woe (Level 6)

The Level 6 map is actually the last of the series, the ninth map I drew post-hurricane (and, mercifully, our final night without power, which came on the next afternoon). This is also the last of the "finished" levels in which there is stonework, excavated rooms and corridors, and features like doors and such. The remaining three levels are caves and caverns (with the exception of a finished temple area on Level 9).

I recall designing this map specifically as a maze with chambers, rather than a functional "place." With a few exceptions, the rooms are 30x30 with doors at one or more cardinal points, and most corridors are 50' or less in length. It's a tight, circuitous space without obvious purpose. It reminds me of an architectural circuit board, which perhaps has some sacred geometric significance for the empress's arcane machinations.

 

Compared to other levels, there are fewer secret doors, but all the larger rooms are hidden behind them. I don't recall making that deliberate creative choice, but it's an interesting one from a design point of view. It will also create these tantalizing blank spaces on the party's map, obvious secret locations with difficult to locate entrances far removed from the actual area. I see this level as a place where the empress hid important things inside a baffling maze. (She's insane, so who knows what she's thinking?)

There are also four staircases to other levels, one ascending and three descending. I was able to incorporate the ascending stair into the map for Level 5, and I had two additional staircases down from Level 5 that I needed to add to this map. Finally, I rolled four access routes on the stocking rolls for this level: A chute down one level, a stair down 2 levels, a stair down 3 levels,  and a chimney down 2 levels. Finally-finally, the original map has two teleporting hallways which could be interconnected, or they could lead to other areas/levels.

In the end, trying to add more multi-level stairs into the cavern levels below proved too tricky to resolve in a way that was satisfying, so I kept the chute and the chimney routes, and counted the two teleporting hallways as the stocked stairs, one of which goes to Level 8 and the other to Level 9 (as a backdoor into the evil temple). Doing so also provided me with a rationale for the fire giant who lives on this level. With shading, titles, and all the incidental features added, the map ended up like this:

 My content stocking rolls (for a 44-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 16 (36% / 35%)
–Monster: 8 (18% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 10 (23% / 25%)
–Stairs: 4 (9% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 3 (7% / 5%)
–Treasure: 3 (7% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).

The Hurricane Dungeon – The Chambers of Woe (Level 5)

Continuing my series on creating this megadungeon, this is the seventh map I drew during the power outage, which became Level 5. Again, this is because I wanted to keep the "finished" levels and the cavern levels together (with the caves being the lowest levels). The original map feels a little uninspired compared to the others, though it is probably a more "classic" dungeon layout.

There are a few interesting features on closer look. Large rooms and long corridors, lots of loopey-doopiness, many secret doors and passageways, false doors marked with a 'T' for "traps," and hey, look at that...stairs to the levels above and below! It's not too bad, actually. The central, cross-shaped feature, includes directional arrows and four movement options. That's cool. (I was certain I cribbed this idea from somewhere, and sure enough, a similar feature is in the OD&D Sample Dungeon.) So, I felt pretty good about what I had to work with as I started fleshing out this level, even if it's a little Plain Jane.

I had already connected the staircase up to Level 4, and I lined up the stairs down to an area on the map I was using for Level 6. That map for Level 6 also contained a staircase up in a different location, so I had to figure out that connection as well. The stocking rolls for Level 4 had also indicated two stairs, a pit shaft, and a trap door and ladder leading to this level, but I had already placed those by the time I began work on Level 5. Finally, my stocking rolls for Level 5 included an additional two staircases and a chimney exiting down from here. Once I added those access routes, along with the room key numbers, a title, and shading, the level looks like this:

 My content stocking rolls (for a 35-room dungeon level) came up with the following results:

–Empty: 11 (31% / 35%)
–Monster: 4 (11.5% / 20%)
–Monster + Treasure: 11 (31% / 25%)
–Stairs: 3 (9% / 5%)
–Trick/Trap: 5 (14% / 5%)
–Treasure: 1 (3% / 5%)

The first % number is the percentage of the actual content rolls; the second % number is the typical expected percentage spread (per OSRIC guidelines).

Owlbear Hill — Adventure Site Contest 2 Post-Mortem

My reviews of submissions for the Adventure Site Contest 2 are complete, my scores are turned in, and I've spent some time reflecting on what I learned from the experience, both as judge and adventure site designer.

Thanks to the other judges: Ben Gibson, BX Blackrazor, Owen Edwards, and Grützi for their kind and fair words about this adventure, and for all the hard work they put in to conduct their contest reviews. I was honored to be asked to judge, and I hope I brought something helpful to the table. 

Also, congratulations to all the contest entrants. I've said before that it takes a lot of guts to write something and put it out there for other randos to critique. I have respect for every author and encourage everyone to keep writing, as all the entries had good, creative stuff in them.

Yes, my reviews were nit-picky, far more than I am in "real life," and yes, they were long-winded, but I believe it's more important for the author to hear what doesn't work than it is to hear what does. Criticism, not praise, is the entire point of the editorial (judging) process. And to make sure the criticism is sound, you have to dig into the details and tear things apart to get at them. 

I went through each submission with a fine-toothed comb and double-checked the rulebooks (where I could) to form my critical questions. Often, I found the answers; sometimes, I found new questions. I put everything out there in terms of what I noticed, even if it was nit-picky, off-base, or purely personal opinion. Everyone's tastes are different and I'm just some guy on the internet, so the stakes of my criticism are low. My only goal was to give an honest and thorough evaluation of each site, from the perspective of a DM preparing to run it in a few hours.

The most valuable lessons about professional writing I ever learned were from the experienced editors who were hardest on my work. Their lessons stay with you, help you recognize the same mistakes next time before you make them. I certainly carry them over into my own editorial duties, contest or otherwise, and I hope all the authors take my reviews in that spirit. 

In the spirit of accountability, on the other hand, I thought it would be fun to apply some of the same critical standards I used for the contest submissions to my own work. I won't be scoring the categories numerically, of course, because I already think my adventure is GREAT! 5 out of 5!! 

Kidding, of course. There are actually lots of flaws and things that bothered me about my entry, regrets big and small, and could-have-beens that I forced myself to live with to meet the contest guidelines. Instead of giving it a score, I'll discuss my personal satisfaction with the results. I'm also including some design notes and elaborating on the original writeup. Stuff that might help someone trying to run it better understand my intentions. 

Since the methods I use for judging are subjective, I'm going to apply some of the questions/criticisms from other judges to test my creative premises. This is for no other reason than to have something to bounce off as a discussion point, because it represents something in my writeup that probably needs clarification. I accept their critique as 100% valid and agree with most of it—and much of it was positive—but where I can provide an explanation for my creative choices, I will.

 Onward!

Rotting Effects in D&D

As I re-acquaint myself with the rules of Basic/Advanced D&D, I'm remembering some of the odd bits and pieces of the game that we had to figure out for ourselves back in the day. One of these bits is the effect of "rotting" as a result of a select few monsters found in the game, most notably the mummy and the violet fungus.

5e uses a system of damage types to reconcile many of these incongruities from earlier editions, so for these monsters (and others like them), the game applies a set amount of damage and classifies it as "necrotic." In the case of mummies, the victim continues losing hit points from necrotic damage over time and can't heal until a Remove Curse spell is applied, whereas violet fungi get 1d4 attacks that do straight necrotic damage (up to 4d8 in a single round, which is nasty but not that dangerous to mid-level and higher characters), with no other lingering effect. It's a simple system that makes clear exactly what happens to the victim (one of the things 5e tends to do pretty well), but doesn't carry the same degree of threat as their AD&D counterparts.

For the AD&D versions, both creatures' rotting effects are extremely deadly at any level, but the actual physical results are not entirely clear. I started running a campaign for my tabletop group using a hybrid of the "Advanced" versions of Old School Essentials and Labyrinth Lord rulesets, but I lean heavily on AD&D to help with some of the behind-the-scenes granularity, and to adapt some of the monsters and magic items that aren't in OSE or LL.

"Why not just run AD&D?" you may ask. Ease of entry, mostly. The girls have only ever played 5e and were getting overwhelmed by the increasing complexity of the game as they leveled up, so I wanted to give them an easier set of rules to manage that still provides a fair range of flavor to play with. I also need to re-acclimate myself to the "old ways" of running the game, so it seemed like a good way to go. My plan is to ease them into AD&D as they get more familiar with how the older system works.

In any case, I dropped a single violet fungus into the dungeon I'm running, but as I read the Monster Manual entry, I found it to be fairly vague on what happens when the fungus touches someone. They get 4 attacks as a 3HD monster, and if one of their branches makes contact with a target: 

The excretion from these branches rots flesh in but one melee round unless a saving throw versus poison is made or a cure disease is used.

This immediately brings up several questions in my mind:

1. No damage is listed, so what effect does "...rots flesh..." have?

2. Does it matter where you are hit? AD&D doesn't have a hit location rule, so do we make one up or does the rot simply kill you outright?

3. Obviously, if you fail the saving throw vs. Poison (also categorized as a save vs. Death), you have one round to apply a Cure Disease or the rot takes effect, but why is it not Neutralize Poison instead to match the save category (as far as I know, avoiding disease does not involve a saving throw)?

4. It's not an issue in OSE/LL, but in AD&D, Cure Disease has a casting time of 1 turn (10 rounds). Does this mean you need to start applying it within one round (minute), but you then need 9 more rounds of uninterrupted casting to avoid the rotting effect? Neutralize Poison has a casting time of 7 segments, which seems more usable under these circumstances, but you would still need to cast it within 3 segments of the victim being touched or, presumably, the rot would kill the victim before the spell was complete (unless, again, you simply need to start casting it within 1 round to prevent the effect).
   

The online consensus seems to be that if a violet fungus hits you, then you will die in one round if you fail the save and have no Cure Disease spell available. That's pretty rough, especially since the text does not say explicitly that the victim dies.