One Page Dungeon 2021: The Paper Nest of Gabbro Grove

Last week was the OPD deadline again, and Paolo convinced me to do some kind of riff on the "giant beehive" adventure I am currently running my fifth editioneers through. Next door to bees are wasps, so paper nest -> paper treasures -> paper wizard suggested itself, with the giant petrified tree as gratuitous weirdness.

I really do suggest that adventure runners and writers do some research on any real animals, plants, or minerals they are using or adapting via monsters. In the current campaign this has led to such gems as the armadillo-folk being able to swim, but only after spending some time gulping air to increase their buoyancy, creating, um, gassy problems down the road. For this adventure I drew on traits of a number of species for such things as the wasp brewery, fig connection, and help from mites.

Freely licensed fonts used: Wood Stamp (titles), Bahnschrift (main text), Merienda (scroll text).

One-Page Dungeon Entry: Yesterday's Dungeon ... Tomorrow

After rejecting a number of time travel gimmicks for this year's One-Page Dungeon Contest entry, I stuck with the best kind of time travel ... the kind we are all doing, all the time. So, this dungeon has notes for a first play at beginner level, then for a second play at later levels when things have changed. It's also interactive, so that decisions players make -- to smash down a door, open sealed tombs, kill or leave an NPC -- have an impact on the higher-level profile of the dungeon.

I mainly wanted to make this adventure useful in a campaign, the kind that gets up to fifth level or so. Or, you can play it in a convention session, devoting 2-3 hours to each "half" and switching to higher level pre-generated characters midway through.

Click to enlarge.

Finally, here are some rough, old-school generic stats for the monsters I have jankily doodled herein.

"NOW"
Grimalkins: HD 1-1, AC 11 [8] +2 against 1 attack/round, MV 12, AT spear d6+1
Grimalkin Shaman: HD 2-1, AC 11 [8] +2 against 1 attack/round, MV 12, AT holy stick d6, spells: cure/cause light wounds, command, spiritual hammer
Beak Dog: HD 2, AC 12 [7]. MV 15, AT beak d6
Satyr: HD 4, AC 12 [7], MV 12, AT weapon
Psqualladir: HD 8+8, AC 18 [1], MV 15, AT bite d8+poison, DF +1 weapon to hit, immune to fire and lightning, half damage from cold and acid, 50% magic resistance, powers as described

"LATER"
Ogre: HD 4+1, AC 14 [5], MV 12, AT weapon +3
Half-Demon Ogre Fire Wizard: HD 6+3, AC 16 [3], MV 12, AT weapon +3, spells: burning hands (x2), magic missile, affect normal fires, flaming sphere (x3), fireball, protection from fire, DF half damage from fire and non-magic weapons, magic resistance 20%
Leucrotta: HD 6+1, AC 15 [4], MV 18, AT bite 3d6, back kick d6, voice imitation
Cray-leeches: HD 1+2, AC 14 [5], MV 12, AT 2 pincers (d4, fall on a 4) and mouth (d4, stays attached doing d4 blood drain/round, open wound still bleeds for 1 hp/round)
Wraith: HD 5+3, AC 15 [4], MV 24, AT hug d6 and 1 level energy drain (permanent or not), DF undead immunities, immune to cold, +1 weapon to hit
Evil Satyr Priest: HD 6, AC 12 [7], MV 12, AT spear d6+ d6 fire + 1, spells: cause light wounds (x2) (fingers become centipede pincers), sanctuary, cause fear, hold person, know alignment, feign death, cause blindness.
Flaming Skeleton: HD 3, AC 13 [6], MV 12, AT 2x flaming punches d6 +1, wrestle for d6 fire damage/round, DF mindless, immune to fire and piercing weapons, half damage from slashing weapons and lightning

One Page Dungeon 2018: Beneath the Nameless Towers of the Kremlin

This year I thought I would do something gonzo and topical about all the rumors, disinformation, and horrible truths surrounding the Russia of the Czars, the Soviets, and Putin. There is a wealth of material, some of it verified, some of it shadowy, some of it obvious bullshit, and some of it (like Mushroom Lenin) a purposeful hoax. Any adventurers from any world using time or dimensional travel might find themselves summoned to the mad science labs under Moscow, embroiled in a Kremlinological intrigue.

 

The pdf version.

Linked pdf version with sources for all the history and mythology.

 

One Page Dungeon 2017: Worm Scramblers of the Deep Dire Door

No matter how inactive my blog, I have been trying to come up with something for the One Page contest every year since 2013. This year I was going to post another suite of rooms from my megadungeon but inspiration struck at the last moment - "what if you had a dungeon that was inside a door? A giant door?" The rest practically wrote itself thanks to a very detailed engraving of a crunchy old-time castle door, some pun-generated monsters, and a meta-puzzle about opening the Door from within and who might want you to do that.

"Shrunken adventurers" is a trope verging on cliche so I gave the GM the chance to make the door an actual, 300' high door in some unfathomable dungeon, which I think is the clutch choice for sure. Anyway, it feels good to be able to throw something into the ring on fairly short notice!

One Page Contest Entry: Gripped in the Hands of Time

I had doubts, this year. Didn't think I was going to do the One Page Dungeon Contest. I had some vague idea about a dungeon with a time travel gimmick, but nothing definite. Besides, all my game design time was going to writing rooms in volume II of my megadungeon. Getting nigh on 50 of them.

Then I came to the part in my map where I had a little suite of 4 rooms, earmarked for something secluded and weird. I cast some randomness on it and one feature - a clock - came up. And I started getting ideas. And pretty soon I realized those ideas would fit on one page, too...

The title describes each of the four rooms in a different way, but it was only an afterthought.My initial impulse was to fill in the blanks in the classic roleplaying madlib: _____ of the ______ ______. Then I saw an adventure that broke that trend and the title came to me.

It's conceived as a module, an abandoned hideout that can be dropped into any setting. The fight is probably going to need high levels and the puzzles are definitely going to need sharp minds. What I like is the way the different elements can interact in an emergent way without having to write it all out with "if-then" prolixity. The diary tells of the time sacrifices which gives you a clue what to do at the bas-relief. Bari-ritu's gifts can help you with the clock lock if you are stuck in there.

The Latin, as translated: "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT."

Bari-Ritu is played by the Burney Relief.

Enjoy! (link to pdf)

Running and Hacking the Lantern of Wyv

At London's one-day convention Dragonmeet last weekend I ran one of the One Page Dungeon Contest winners from this year, "The Lantern of Wyv" by Michael Prescott. As usual, I find one-page adventures near perfect time-wise for four-hour convention slots (though this slot was more like 3 1/2), but can't resist tinkering with the adventure as written.

The pregenerated characters were all based on rock stars from the 60's, mostly associated with the Rolling Stones, in homage to the song "Lantern." Each one had a secret goal - to use the Lantern to get back home; to gather white "moon pebbles" or wyvern venom for, um, alchemical purposes; to experience new sensations; to rid the Bay of the wyverns that had taken over since the owner of the Lantern died; to scrounge spells; to make sure the wizard buried there is resting easily. Some changes were:

1. The adventurers start from a village a half day's walk away from the bay,populated by refugees from the wyvern plague. They had 1/6 chances of encountering a wyvern and a human hunting party from the survivors in the bay, and got the latter. These gave useful information that the wyverns are attracted to shiny and colorful things, and traded a dose of anti-venom for some food and equipment.

2. More detail about the tower where the flying barge "docks" (25 feet above the top). The wizard Radomenus has only been dead 20 years and the tower was the site of her funeral and wake. It's a three-floor octagonal construction some 20' wide and rises 25' with its top levels blasted away (the stone appears melted, which wizards may know is the signature effect of a high-level white fireball). All around the tower in the long grass are melted chunks of stone and the pieces of a dismantled spiral stair.

Also in the grass and leaves by the tilting wooden door is a small iron figurine of a cricket-bodied man in the act of playing the fiddle and bow. If brought within 5' of a place where Radomenus has lain (the biers in the tower and the barge, the black table in the Lantern) the residual radiation will inspire the figure to chirp out a slow rhythm, which gets more hectic with proximity to the white sand or to Radomenus herself.

Inside on the ground floor are scattered, decaying folding chairs (the wizards at the wake quarreled on leaving and the place was never properly cleaned up) surrounding a bare wooden bier with few surprises. A few balled-up scraps of paper when put together reveal a neatly scribed program for the funeral. In the game I prepared this prop on the train up and threw wadded-up pieces of the puzzle at the players as they scoured the floor. This gave such clues as "shrouding and shielding of the body", the hymn "that is not dead which doth eternal lie,"and the conclusion of the wake with an "abolition of the tower."

Using rope to go up past the middle level, with some uninteresting long-spoiled food and drink left over from the wake, the adventurers found themselves on the melted stump-roof of the tower and waited until the flying barge came to stop there, 25' up. A levitate spell from the gnome and some ropework had everyone up there quickly, although the healer fell and broke her ribs.

Using the information from the hunters, everyone lay low and covered up their armor for the ride and survived without a wyvern attack (1/6 chance, up to a certainty if showing bright or shiny objects).

3. There had been a lot of ropework getting up the stairless tower and onto the barge, and rather than go through all that again I decided to make the central shaft of the Lantern different. The levitating magics that allowed people to move between levels are still in place, but have become unstable. For each level in space, each 5' area around the rim of the shaft and each minute in time roll a d6, where 6 = "going up quickly" and 1 ="going down quickly." Various ways to navigate were tried, including trial and error, rope, and throwing flour into the air to see which way the currents go (adventuring use #2,407 for flour). The slight chaos thus caused had the gnome on the third level and the rest of the party on the first.

4. The first level, along with the radioactive "new flesh" healing slab, had the addition of some formless lumps of flesh that used to be servants. I was ready to use them in a fight (as lemures) but seeing no need to kill time I instead had them just be features in an empty room, that protested and asked to be returned to oblivion when put on the resurrection slab.

5. The second level was mostly unexplored, although the shaft room was the venue for the final fight. I had prepared a map of my campaign world with crossing ley lines for the players to find, as well as a kind of a game where a wizard could piece together torn up and incomplete spell names and descriptions to create unreliable new magics.

6. The third level was pretty much as described. The gnome tiptoed past the bulk of the transformed Radomenus (sleeping, by my dice) and messed around a bit with steering crystals and the pit of radioactive sand before filling a wineskin with the stuff and, casting it into the flux currents, found one to gently go back down.

At that time, looking at the less than 30 minutes remaining, I decided that Radomenus would wake up and crawl down for the final boss fight. Well, 8 hit dice of blob don't last long against eight level 4 characters, and the one lightning bolt she licked off before Hideous Mirth and a hail of arrows got to her only critically injured a henchman. I didn't even think to have her summon wyverns before descending, so the party got cheated out of that experience as well. Next time she will be better prepared...

Resolution 1: Prep without mercy. These are one-shot characters and there's no need to be gentle.

Resolution 2: The one-page format lends itself to four hours pretty easily, so any padding added at the front will detract from the meaty, cool stuff at the end.

One Page Dungeon: Antonius Abducted

The richest place in my formative years was the lending library in my well-funded, open-minded suburban hometown. It was there I laid hands on the Arkham House Lovecraft volumes, everything Tolkien and post-Tolkien, science fiction novels I wasn't even close to understanding but enjoyed anyway, the Holmes edition of D&D, the Monster Manual.

Of these weird materials, some promised a regulation or explanation of the fantastic world - D&D, of course, laying down the rules of fantasy in a way that the heroes of Pratt and DeCamp's Compleat Enchanter series did, with arcane mathematics. The world of Shannara proved nothing more than a post-apocalypse, and Larry Niven's fantasy world was physics by another name.

But I also read Lovecraft, Borges' book of imaginary beings, Dunsany, Brian Froud -- fantasists who made no excuses or explanations. Tying them all together with a visual language of strangeness were the great coffee-table volumes of art where I became acquainted with Hieronymus Bosch. His devils drew from Church iconography, but there was the fantastic and even science-fictional in his ceramic-like architectures, his mutant creatures, flying farragos and garish colors. In my imagination he was as much an illustrator of weird tales as Sidney Sime or Lee Brown Coye. What matter that those tales were not written -- not yet?

Which brings me to my undying fascination with the central panel of Bosch's Temptation of Saint Anthony. Here it is (it gets really big when you click it, and click again).

It hasn't got the symmetries and tapestry-like coverage of the Garden of Earthly Delights, or either of his Last Judgments. There is dynamism, scene, progression, the varied freaks converging on a parody of a Mass laid on a dicing table. Others join the haphazard choir underfoot, or flit overhead. There is that bizarre ruin with its mess of perspective; the disasters in the background -- fire, war, demons -- while nonchalant or dazed washerwomen go down to the filthy water.

Weird symbolism abounds and, as with Bosch's other works, has prompted all sorts of theories about his hidden message: alchemical is it? more broadly esoteric? or politico-religious? nationalist? If his figures illustrate proverbs and expressions that have faded with time, perhaps this is just another form of random generation to create compelling monsters, like the tree-archer with his gauntlets and brace of armored hounds.

Me, I see an adventure here. The first stirrings of this in my gamemastering career happened a couple of years ago when I populated one level of my custom upper works for Castle of the Mad Archmage with a collection of Bosch's creatures, mostly from the Temptation, and somewhat differently imagined than presented here. The Muleteers have had several run-ins with them, all terrifying but none decisive.

As this year's One Page Dungeon Contest approached its Walpurgisnacht deadline, I started to consider adapting this level, which uses a standard maze of rooms and passages. But after thinking I ended up favoring the original outdoors setting with its bulbous ruin, its convergence of monsters, its holy man looking serenely if a little desperately out of the frame, as if to say "Look! These are no figments of my fast, no color trails from ergot-laced crusts! You see them too!"

I set the action a few minutes before the scene in the painting. A tactical problem, asking for the various approaching demon-groups to be defeated in detail or confronted as they appear in the main action. Antony needs his crucifix to be of any use, so that's an action task to retrieve it on the scene. There wasn't really space on the page for a random table with all the skulking lizards, birds, demonlings and flying menaces you see in the art, but the water holds a few such perils.

Well, there you have it, with a little help from my long-dead friend. It'snot strictly one page but I am toying with the idea of taking the other panels of the triptych and expanding them into a GM's screen idea ...

One Page Dungeon Contest Entries!

Once again ... wow.

Some evaluations from a superficial run-through.

Joe Bloch gives us the Black Reservoir, I mean Black Lake, from Castle Greyhawk, I mean, Castle of the Mad Archmage. Yes!

Some great presentation/mechanics combinations. Outlaw Shrine in the Prehistoric Camp of the Mermen Maiden (whew); Amid the Reaper's Scattered Bones; The Shattered Temple; Bloodberries; The War of the Wolf; Island of the Lizard God; Ballad of the Bonny Bard's Booty; Castile Zela; Dire Briars; A Deadly Catch.

Some great gimmick ideas: The Crucible; The Great Stag; Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Tower of the Fox, Devil's Teapot; The Astral Prison of Urash Myrr; Bioprospecting Report 976 (not a new idea per se but a very good implementation); Follow the Gold.

Some great artistic presentations: Tower of Nicanor; Well of Souls; Stellarium of the Vinteralf; The Long Fall.

And many, many that are solid and good. I don't think I'll be wanting for one-shot adventures in the coming year.

(oh yes, there's my entry, and my article about it in case you were wondering about some of the oddly specific references)

One Page Dungeon Entry: Forbidden Steam Tunnels of Emesh Yuu

Hey, I got my One Page Dungeon Contest entry out of the way early this year.

When Random Wizard made public a map of the infamous Michigan State steam tunnels -- implicated in the sad case of James Dallas Egbert, later fictionalized in the novel and TV movie Mazes and Monsters -- I had my raw material, and my inspiration. The dungeon map reconstructs them circa 1980.

Click to enlarge; edited from first post.

Mazes and Monsters provided the adventure hook (inverted in the fantasy world), a couple of the encounters, and the name of the dread Ack Oga. Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons, of course, makes its appearance, and I fit in a few very quick and obscure references to other works of the 1980's moral panic. The colorful mascots of the Big Ten athletic conference fit right in. Telecanter, as usual, provided a couple of bases for the silhouettes.

Remember, it's not satanic if they're not called demons and devils! (I always liked Knights of the Dinner Table's take-off on that - "we'll call them ne'er-do-wells.")

Convention Game Sharkpocalypse

The Dragonmeet session was a lot of fun. I've found that a good formula for a one-shot game is to make sure that you have some sort of ticking bomb, relentless final guardian, or monsterpocalypse at the end of a fairly short adventure. Without the slow build that a campaign gives, you do well to build fun off the cheap heat, with CLIMAX written in broad strokes and bright colors.

With that in mind, I framed the original one-page adventure by Daniel O' Donnell thus: the Crown Prince of Crime in the town of Ushralec hired the party to sack the Fane of Drowned Men, sacred to the demon-gods Dagon and Charybdis, ostensibly because of a grudge he had long held before recently coming to power. There were some very subtle clues to his ultimate intent - through a crack in the door, Alinor the sea elf saw some minions of crime pouring barrels of salt water into a big vat, tapping the floor below in some sort of code and receiving taps from below in turn. The Crown Prince's audience room, also, had been stripped of all furniture and valuables.

Anyway, heedless of this, the party -- a rogue, a brawling sailor, a prophet of hoary Nodens, the sea elf, a somewhat out-of-place dwarf, and of course Gnaro the multidimensional gnome -- set off in a longboat at high tide to make a beeline for the back end of the shrine. Through incredible luck and bad rolls by the defenders they were not spotted by any of the people doing business at the front of the shrine or on the causeway.  Floating right over the deep-submerged tethered zombies, they were soon on the roof, interrupting a treasure donation ritual with arrows, spears and a Sleep spell cast through a grating.

After the high priest fought back with a successful hold person, the fight soon moved to the front of the shrine, where the sea elf cast a net to trap some of the defenders. The high priest, escaping the net, backed into the rogue's waiting stab around the corner, and having been the target of much of the previous damage, soon expired, cursing his fate to die on land.

Meanwhile, some of the surviving acolytes inside the shrine had wakened their sleeping companions and were ready to defend the doorway. But the resourceful sea elf had meantime clad himself in the high priest's sharkskin robe and triple-shark-mouth tiara, and using a Disguise spell, convinced the acolytes that he had sent these invaders to test them and that they had all better surrender. The one acolyte who had saved and disbelieved the disguise was bludgeoned to death by the others at the orders of the fake high-priest.

That out of the way, the explorers noticed a dark line on the horizon and an ominous rushing sound. The sailor recognized it as a tsunami and estimated that they had little more than an hour before it hit. Looting the fane, which consisted of a few cabins of a shipwreck atop a rocky islet pierced by a well, they came away with the jewelry of a nobleman preserved in a cask of sherry and some valuable books. But the same high tide that had eased their passage over the drowned zombies now filled up the well and access to the passages below, filled with the donations of the faithful. Gnaro threw some gnomish sausage into the water and quickly attracted one of the guardian seawolves, who provided enough deterrent for the party to gather up their spoils and head for the hills. A wise move, for when the tidal wave hit it was ridden by a giant sharktopus, unholy spawn of Dagon and Charybdis.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the party heard some strange stories circulating. Merchants and jewelers who had rushed back to their strongholds in the city, ahead of anyone else, had found emptied cellars and strongrooms they thought secure, their broken doors not wholly convincing as tsunami damage. Could the party have been set up to trigger the wrath of Dagon, God of Tides, King of Watery Death, as part of some larger, astoundingly callous caper? Best not to think about it, or the treasures you left behind in the passages underneath the Fane ...

In the afternoon we played a fun, short scenario in Paolo's Cthonic Codex world, with themes of goats, moss, and a ghost dragon whose fossilized ribcage was a bridge in a canyon. The AFG system is about as simple as it gets and I recommend it for anyone who wants to prioritize ideas and creativity over rules and process, plus it has one of the coolest magic systems out there. Paolo and I then played in a demo of Lords of War, a card-battling game with simple rules but very deep strategic play.

Dragonmeet lives up to the second part of its compound. It is a great place to meet people with all kinds of ad-hoc gaming going on, and you tend to run into a lot of people you know from the gaming scene if you have lived in Southeast England for a while. This time it continued till 11 with open gaming, which was a great improvement, even though I had to get dinner with some old L5R cronies and run off to catch the last train.

One Page Dungeon Contest Reviews

I wanted to tour the highlights - to me - of the other entries in the 2013 One Page Dungeon contest. (Apologies for leaving out the link in my original post.)

This year, entrants are stretching the boundaries further, with many dungeons actually being complete mini-games, and gimmicks a-plenty. I'm even skipping over the couple dozen dungeons I wouldn't mind dropping into my campaign on the fly, and focusing on the ones that get a special piece of my attention and appreciation.

Aaron Frost and Mundi King, Old Guard Tower

The scenario is pretty simple - more a tactical challenge than anything else - but it's the toy factor that sells it. This one lets you cut out and assemble the adventure site as a handsome 3D cutaway model, complete with stand-up monsters.

Alex Cirsova, The Revelry at Pickett Castle

I have a soft spot for this one because it answers the pressing question posed years ago by Mr. Show ... Monster Parties: Fact or Fiction?

C. Martins, Kibhur's Dungeon

Oh my god ... PUZZLES. To progress in the dungeon your players must solve a real Rubik's Cube. Gloriously over-the-top in its genre.

Caelum Roberts, Iron Cloud

Bringing 1980 back with a delirious Metal Hurlant science-fantasy setting, and a zine-press look.

Daniel O'Donnell, Down Among the Dead Men

Wonderfully illustrated map and some great architectural concepts - sea plunder against the ticking clock of the tide.

Eero Tuovinen, Miscegenation of the Ancients

One of the best premises ever. A certain Ark got stranded on the top of a mountain and, trapped behind an angelic seal, the animals bred with each other and created a bizarre mutant menagerie. This one will either get Pat Robertson to convert to D&D, or make his head explode.

Eric Harshbarger, Games People Play

Plain-looking but notable for its twist, which is the kind of thing you are allowed to pull only once in your career as a Game Master. Ever.

Jobe Bittman, Into The Demon Idol

An eye-catching cutaway illustration of an iconic piece of scenery with a small isometric dungeon below; it turns out the all-too-familiar idol has a preposterawesome secret.

Jason Morningstar, La Bassee
Jim McGarva, Dinner at the In-Laws

When the fantastic is commonplace, the mundane is exotic - but very different tones can flavor it. Jim McGarva offers a comical modern-day social adventure complete with its own system. Jason Morningstar gives an enigmatic art-adventure in which Great War veterans revisiting their old battlefield find tangible and intangible memories of the past, leaving unsaid what is real and what the nature of the challenge is.

Jens Thuresson, The Giant's Dollhouse

Just plain weird but strangely compelling. A giant with a magic staff can petrify and un-petrify people at will, and keeps them in cutaway rooms in the side of a mountain. Has the feel of a lost Cugel the Clever episode.

Joe Pruitt, Echoes of Empire

The graphics are pretty basic but Joe Pruitt has hit one of my weaknesses - this one-page adventure is actually an epic fantasy wargame wherein the party must run around a hexmap, gathering allies to resist an invading army.

Kaylee Thumann, Girly Girl Dungeon

Lo, a satire and/or celebration of gender roles. Graphically great and there's also some meat to the jokey encounters.

Leslie J. Furlong, Surface

An interesting, artistic presentation of a solo exploration adventure conducted mostly in the dark, with an abstract map and evocative sensory descriptions.

Ramsey Hong, Something Happened At The Temple Near Glourm

What happened is the fairly usual scenario of evil critters up in the temple, but the graphic design is great, with an almost-isometric perspective and a use of silhouettes that doesn't feel schematic. Also with the nice graphics: LSF, A Stolen Spring; Nick Wedig, Kingfisher.

Roland Volz, The Blackacre Heist

Lots to chew on in this elegantly presented modern scenario, packing multiple plots and possibilities.

Scott Slomiany, Assault on the Goblin Hold

Just wow. A choose your own adventure folding 8-page book that has you interacting with it by cutting off pieces, poking holes in the book, turning and flipping ... Probably the best outside-the box format of the contest.

One Page Dungeon Entry: The Devil's Acre

Remember the scenario I was going to write up on One Page for the contest this year? Well, here it is; click to enlarge. It fits pretty nicely.

Knowledge is a crucial resource in surviving this challenge, as is having the right anti-devil equipment (silver weapons, holy water.) Defending the penitent is job number one; there should be enough party members to surround him/her and any party members who do not fancy being in the front line. I was relatively merciful to the 4th level party that tried this, and gave them a nearby order of holy knights to get supplies and clues from.

A high level penitent is a mixed blessing; they can resist attack and saving throws better, but let more devils through the barrier.

Let me know your thoughts and comments before I submit this!

The Final Four Sins

Continuing the account of diabolic temptation ...

4. Gluttony.

The concept: Six imp chefs, cooks and butlers throw dangerous and tasty food at the party and the penitent, trying to get everyone to succumb to gluttony, using their powers of suggestion (once per day).
The execution: Three "courses" were served.

• The first was stew, siphoned through a hose from the imp's cauldron to the party's convenient defensive ditch. If you gave in and ate the stew, you were incapacitated for a round, then make a Body save in order to vomit or be further incapacitated while the stew was in you. 
• This was followed by the imps hurling animated cuts of meat - serpentine sausages, geese and fowl, legs and hams, racks and roasts and livers and a nasty haggis. The meat tried to get in your mouth and choke you, or make its way past you to tempt the by now two-days-fasting penitent. 
• The dessert was brought over the party on a huge tray by invisible imps. Breaking the fourth wall, I described just about every sweet and piece of junk food the Band of Iron's players had consumed over the past year. There was nothing sinister about the dish; the imps were just trying to upend it over the penitent for more gluttony temptation.

The verdict: This was a funny episode but I didn't feel that the party was that threatened by it. In hindsight this should have been mostly about throwing suggestions on the hungry penitent and trying to get the food past the wall of bodyguards. The imps went down quickly in combat.

5. Lust. 
The concept: This was a lone succubus. Hell didn't throw their all into this one because the penitent had pretty much had it with women.

We got gonzo here.

The execution: I worked the epicene incubus/ succubus for camp, having it deliver cruel Freudian analyses of the player characters - who had mostly been lustless in the campaign, turning down opportunities for romance - before settling on the henchwoman Lintilla, who, shall we say, had not been without lust in the campaign. The party quickly shielded her from the succubus' charm ability and engaged it with missiles and melee before it could use its suggestion spell. A mighty lightning bolt from the cleric's magic amulet sent it reeling, and swords and silver arrows did the rest. On being sent hellwards, the creature briefly showed its true form: rather than a fabulous Aubrey Beardsley androgynous fashion model, the succubus was just an ordinary, plump, bright red Coop hot rod devil girl.
The verdict: Probably, getting hit shouldn't forestall monsters' spell-like abilities. Could have been tougher.

6. Sloth.
The concept: Three wraiths attack. Instead of draining levels, they drain movement points equal to the damage caused (d6). At less than 3 move, you cannot attack and at 0 move, you fall asleep.
The execution: Pretty straightforward, slug-em-out.
The verdict: This one created some tension, with party members dropping out in rough proportion to the wraiths dispatched. I put it last - a move the players anticipated - following the setting logic that people would be more tired at the end of the last night, rather than doing what was strategically right, and putting them in the lineup at a position where they could take out party members in preparation for other sins.

7. Pride.

As drawn by Crumb.

The concept: The temptation is not over with the cock's crow. The morning comes and the Son of the Morning sends his last best hope from another dimension - a certain blues musician who sold his soul to the Devil, at the crossroads, at midnight, so he could play guitar and sing like nobody else.
The execution: A strangely dressed, dark-skinned man with an odd musical instrument comes down the road from the west, singing this song (which I actually put on in the session). He is not unholy, or magical, or a devil; just a mortal trying to pay off the mortgage on his soul, and there will surely be trouble if he is struck or killed. The musician humbly approaches and congratulates the party on their victory, asking them what kinds of rewards they expect. He is really aiming at the NPC penitent, suggesting that some kind of acclaim and sainthood are in the offing for having resisted the three nights. This is entirely a psychological challenge, and the party must show humility and encourage the penitent to do the same, or all is lost at the last moment.
The verdict: One of my players fell for it, mainly out of wanting the blues singer to be the good guy. Another nailed the challenge, and all it took was one. This wise fellow denied all credit, offering praise instead to the saints and Creator. Everyone else followed suit, and Mr. Johnson graciously took his leave, marking the true end of the ordeal.

Anyway ... wait until May and you'll hopefully see if I can pack all of this into one page.

One Page Dungeon Results Out!

Here.

And my Old Bastard's Barrens is a winner, in the most perfectly appropriate category: Best New Presentation.

It's great when a long-brewing idea makes it. The "hexcrawl with lair ranges" was something I first thought up in high school, but it took the Internet and the Blogosphere to make things happen with it. Nothing like an appreciative audience.

So I'd like to thank Crom, the academy, and everyone out there who thought it was a cool idea, helped refine it, and egged me on to the finish line. Paolo, for tipping me off on google chat. And congrats to all the other winners! Really amazing ideas and art this year. Maybe I'll round up some of my favorites soon.

Final OPD Entry

Well, here is my final entry to this year's One Page Dungeon contest. I really want to thank all the commenters on the previous post who gave me useful tips to make it look and work a lot better.

More than just an entry, this represents an encounter system for wilderness adventures that goes somewhat beyond the traditional hexcrawl. In my pro copy of Hexographer I've been custom-installing all the special silhouette icons as I go along. It might be useful to release a copy of the customization file with all the silhouettes in it, but I'll have to work around some issues with the pathname references first, and make sure it includes a wider selection of Telecanter's and my silhouettes.

One Page Dungeon Entry: Old Bastard's Barrens

Click to read it.

Yep, that ol' dirty bastard. He carved his face on a mountain.

If your comments don't get me to change anything I'm submitting this to the One Page Dungeon Competition this weekend. Big field this year, it looks like. Hopefully this'll stand out.

One Page Dungeon (?) Entry Preview

I'm not really entering a "dungeon" in the OPD contest this year ... it's more of a hexcrawl, with an easier-to-understand version of the original hexcrawl rules, keys for each letter and icon, and a hexmap. Part of which currently looks like this:

 Between this effort and almost finishing the Weird encounter table page I've added 30+ icons to the Menagerie download, including several Fiend Folio, MM2, and Varlets & Vermin creations. Here they are on parade:

Click to enlarge.

One Page Dungeon Winners

The 1PD contest winners are up, and I congratulate them all. The field keeps getting bigger and the bar raised higher year to year. Particularly jaw-dropping was the Best Map Graphics winner, not just for its graphics but the way its teasing room descriptions invite completion. I'm also impressed by the compact map mystery in Hanging in Wolverine City.

Some of my overlooked favorites that didn't make the winner's circle:
Jeff R.'s mind-bending house - a little Time Tripper anyone?
Jens Thuresson's text dungeon, shades of Saul Steinberg...
Fr. Dave's elegant spiraling design

Your non-winner picks?

The Egg is Laid (Nonviolently)

Instead of serializing the Egg of the Gazolba "nonviolent" adventure, I decided to do it all at one go and make it my entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest. The current draft can be seen here. Comments are welcome; I haven't officially submitted it yet, so still some room to tweak.

A few notes:

1. All the challenges were made using my tables (Bag of Problems and Bag of Tricks, see links to the right).

2. It's not that the players are sworn to nonviolence - of course if they are high enough level they can chop through the troll and ranger - but rather the looser definition of nonviolence, with nonviolent solutions predominant, and available for each problem.

3. I hear kids are a big part of why some people are interested in nonviolent adventures. For the youth run, give lots of hints, maybe a talking squirrel good for one solution. And of course you may want to replace the mildly adult, noir-ish twist ending with something more straight-up. For example:

Dividing this area from 10 is a vast canvas painted with cartoons of the very first Sultan... Exploring overseas, taking a living Gazolba bird as symbol of his reign, sailing away ... The Manalishi speaking with emissaries of the King of Birds ... Inspecting the canvas too long gives headaches and minor damage.

On the south side is a shrine to Truth, incense holder and blue flame. Light incense from area 7, and the Manalishi’s voice tells how keeping the Gazolba as the captive symbol of the kingdom is not right; the Sultan can very well wear a crown in the shape of a Gazolba. She can teleport them anywhere from here, back to the Sultan or to return the egg to the King of Birds .... What will they do?