Primal/Within Chronicles: The Crypt of the Thief-Prince, Part 3
See part Fast-talking the Cursed Prince!
The Royal Crypt featured 2 levels of mezzanine overlooking a central ‘court’. The Court had a Huge stone throne sporting a sculpted effigy of the Dwarven Exiled prince. Support columns dotted the whole chamber. On the throne stood a dark, spectral form screaming ‘Lies, all LIES! Traitors! Undone by Traitors!” over and over again.
Kneeling in front of the throne were 5 dwarves wearing antique rusted armour, eyes pitch black and crackling with necrotic energy…
Yup, I made me some Wight Dwarf guards (-1 to Speed, Forced movement 1 square less)! He he he!
In this encounter, the dungeon’s involvement was based around the Nexus point represented by the throne. Necrotic energies from deeper in the dungeon was shunted to the throne and spread out throughout the room. That energy powered the wights, allowing them to jump 2 squares as a free action once per round ( riding the necrotic ‘currents’). [Read the rest of this article]
Primal/Within Chronicles: The Crypt of the Thief-Prince, Part 2
See part 1 here.
Mines of Shadows.
The PCs took the Teleportal and found themselves on a Magic Circle in what was obviously a Mine (I used D&D’s Fantastic Location Mithril Mines map).
As soon as they arrived, they knew something wasn’t right. Broken bodies of workers and guards were lying everywhere. The magical light globes lighting the mine were flickering and some dimmed noticeably every few seconds or so.
After investigating what seemed to be the foreman’s office (and finding a report indicating that humanoid raids were sharply rising in the vicinity) some sort of dog, apparently made of shadowy stuff, popped right beside Korg and bit him! Howls and barks were heard throughout the mine and the PCs heard the war cry of something very very large lumber toward them. [Read the rest of this article]
Primal/Within Chronicles: The Crypt of the Thief-Prince, Part 1
This is a recounting of my new homebrewed D&D 4e campaign called Primal/Within. I describe what my players did and I pepper it with some DM/Designer insights. The PCs are level 7. They are usually multi-parters as I try to keep each post under 1500 words. Enjoy!
Yesterday, three of my friends from my usual play group: Yan, Franky and Mike came over during the afternoon to play a special D&D game. Last week, Franky had missed the game and he was really disappointed about that. In order to make it up for him, I offered to host a special game with whomever was available.
As I mentioned two days ago, I wrote an adventure set in our new campaign setting: The Primal Dungeon and the City Within. The adventure was to be both a prequel to the campaign and a model for adventures to come.
As the players arrived at my place, we sat down and discussed PC back stories.
I was amazed to see how motivated the players were to create rich backgrounds, which was a testimonial to how interested they were about the new game. Here’s a summary of each. [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Bits for the week ending 2009-04-11
- Dual classing is back (DDI sub required). More like Gestalt characters than anything else
- You must read Order of the Stick’s tribute to Dave Arneson
- ENWorld’s interview with WotC President Greg Leeds
Dungeon Week at Musings!
I love me a dungeon! I really do!
Starting with the gaming reports of the first session of my Primal/Within campaign, all posts of this week will relate to Dungeons and the goodness that comes from them!
Regardless of the version of D&D we favour, most of us share a love for this archetypal adventure locale (even you 2e fans, I’m sure you had some guilty dungeon crawling pleasures).
Be it the recent recrudescence of Megadungeons or the more succinct 5-room dungeon, there’s so much to love about dungeons.
I feel its time we set aside Edition Wars and stop all this raging against the questionable buisness policies from some clueless corporate giants for a few days. We should start sharing common love for the Dungeon instead.
That’s why I’m telling you to get ready for this week’s big announcement! On April 14, Chgowiz and I will launch what I think is the biggest contest ever on the RPG blogsphere. I’m sure you’ll love it and the number of prizes for it is absolutely phenomenal!
So get you torches, 10-feet poles and iron spikes ready, because we’re going to Dungeon Crawl like it was 1975!
Chatty's Review: Monte Cook's Dungeon a Day
The Capsule Review
Monte Cook’s Dungeon-a-Day subscription-based website presents a fully playable OGL 3.5 Megadungeon being progressively built by publishing a new encounter area each day.
The concept of the adventure module is brought to a whole new level through the power of Hyper-linking, high quality art and pictures of gorgeous 3D models of dungeon rooms.
The website also features a hyperlinked glossary, full color maps, blog posts about the dungeons’ design and a vibrant Forum where subscribers are hard at work converting the dungeon to other versions of d20 RPGs such as Pathfinder and D&D 4e.
If you are a fan of Megadungeons and the 3.5 ruleset, this is a high quality product that you will appreciate. The subscription model may be a barrier to entry, especially for those who don’t play d20 3.5, but Monte delivers something well worth the expense.
You can subscribe here or see a free sample here (Area 1 to 6 are available as a preview).
Chatty’s more detailed review
I have a confession to make. I’ve long been a fan of Monte Cook’s work. From the moment I read the D&D 3.0 Dungeon Master Guide, I was sold to the man’s style and vision about D&D.
I bought many of his 3.x adventures and DMed most of them. When he started Malhavoc Press I bought his Book of Eldritch Might (and other) source books. I was an active participant on his forum and bought (with my friend Math) a copy of the 700 pages+ Ptolus campaign Setting. Through Malhavoc Press I discovered new ways of playing d20 including Mike Mealrs’ Iron Heroes (since then sold to Fiery Dragon)
Heck, I have been enough of a fan to have exchanged a few emails with him and found that he’s a great guy.
When Monte ‘tried’ to retire from RPGs and decided that Malhavoc Press would not support D&D 4e, I was sad but wished him best of luck in his new projects.
Of course, he didn’t retire for long and managed to publish two more source books for 3.5 (The books of Experimental Might Tome 1 and 2) before unveiling his latest project: Dungeon-a-Day.
What it is…
Dungeon-a-Day is a subscription-based website that progressively publishes a Megadungeon adventure for use with the d20 3.5 rules (or as we non-publishers are allowed to call it: D&D 3.5). Every day, a new area of the current dungeon level is published.
I must say that I was very curious about this project. First because I too have Megadungeons on the mind. Secondly because Monte is trying out a completely new business model. He’s basically asking people to give him money on a regular basis to have access to an adventure that’s not even completely available.
So I decided to give the site a whirl and I subscribed to a Quarterly membership cost. There are various levels of membership, going from 10$ monthly to about 8$ a month for yearly subscriptions.
First Impressions
When you first log on as a subscriber, you get the introductory page that presents you the website and walks you through the site’s features so you can orient yourself. DMs are invited to read about the design assumptions behind the Megadungeon (called Dragon’s Delve) and to dive right into the background of the dungeon, the rumors about it and some info on the surrounding regions of the dungeon.
At the bottom of each page of the website is a box with links to the most recent entries related to the page you are on.
The first thing that struck me as I was clicking here and there was how everything seemed to have been designed to make surfing the site a pleasant experience. The art is great and on par with similar Malhavoc publication. The Maps, by Ed Bourelle, are both simple and aesthetically pleasing.
Most of all, I was struck at how easy it was to navigate everywhere and get lost (in the good sense) in the very rich content of the site. As of the first week of April 2009 , 34 of the 38 areas of the first level of the dungeons were completed and posted and going through them all requires a significant time investment.
I know that Monte has long wanted to find a way of breaking out of the limitations of a printed adventure. I felt that every major project he attempted pushed forward the ‘tech’ behind adventure writing. Ptolus was, in my opinion, one of the best printed RPG products not only for the quality of it’s content, but mainly because of it’s extensive cross-referencing in the sidebars of everypage and extensive index.
I feel that Dungeon-a-Day pushes those boundaries once again by making great use of hyperlinks to bring everything together in a cohesive whole. For instance, if you look at the map of level one (which I think is available to non-subs) and you want to jump to area 1, you just need to click it and you’re there.
All in all, a great navigating experience. If only I had a Kindle to surf it, I could read it in my backyard!
The website also houses a fully-featured forum for subscribers. In it you find various areas focusing on specific levels of the dungeons, the surrounding regions as well as discussion boards for DM tips, member-created material and fan-driven conversions to other systems like D&D 4e and the Pathfinder roleplaying game.
The Actual Dungeon
Each encounter area is fully fleshed out with summary of the encounter, a description of the Sight and Sounds of the area, the actual read-aloud room description, and full description of all elements needed to run the encounter. Traps are detailed, skill checks DC and results are spelled out and monsters are described with either full stats or with links to the appropriate entries of the hypertext d20 SRD website.
An interesting feature is that many rooms have a ‘revisit’ section where DMs have additional elements to play with when his PCs return to the room later in the adventure. The ones I’ve seen were often descriptions of other adventurers passing through and leaving behind clues (or corpses) of their passage.
Finally, each area has a color photograph of it built using Dwarven Forge 3D dungeon models, adding an extra visualization tool to the DM regardless if he/she plans to use the 3D tiles.
Navigating Issue
The only little annoying issue I found with the website is that it sometimes ‘kicks you out’ when you surf from one page to the next, forcing you to re-log to the website. Nothing major but enough to break the otherwise seamless experience of exploring such a rich dungeon environment.
Final Verdict
Even though I subscribed to the site with the expectation that I would see quality 3.5 material that would nevertheless fail to interest me, I must say that I was proven wrong. While reading each entry, I couldn’t stop myself from trying to convert encounter areas to D&D 4e on the fly.
Dungeon-a-Day is the perfect kind of subscriptions for would-be dungeon designers that love to have a daily fix of megadungeon goodness. I’m sure to enjoy the next three months and I just may pursue my subscription afterwards.
Want to learn more about Dungeon A Day? Read on…
- Atomic Array: Episode 020: Dungeon A Day
- Game Cryer: Dungeon A Day Review
- Musing of the Chatty DM: Chatty’s Review
- Emerson’s Bookshelf: Monte Cook Groks Right
- RPG Bomb: IRC Chat on April 14th
Drop by Dungeon A Day today!
Image Credit: Copyright Monte J. Cook 2009
Krod Mandoon: Comedy Central caters to the RPG crowd?
What better to occupy my 10-11pm hour on the Thursday before a Friday off from work then the potentially horrible but still quite intriguing Comedy Central premiere of a fantasy-comedy series? Not much! The full title for the show is Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, and it will be showing for at least a few half-hour episodes on Thursday nights at 10pm. I have to say from the hour long premiere, I actually hope this show keeps going for at least a full first season to see what they can do with the concept.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a brilliant piece of television such as Lost or The Office, but it pretty much accomplishes everything that it sets out to do. It’s reasonably funny, and seems to avoid the first blunder that many fantasy-comedies fall to which is incredibly predictable humor, but the first hour also didn’t have any fall-out-of-your-seat hilarious moments. What I found more surprising was that there weren’t many moments where it painfully ripped you out of the fantasy setting either, so I think it pretty successfully dances the razor thin line that the fantasy-comedy genre lives on. It also didn’t have any of the huge red flags that usually show up, none of the costuming, make up, and special effects were atrocious or intentionally bad.
The biggest problem with Krod Mandoon is that nothing was stellar, I’m not really comfortable telling you that the show was fantastic, or that the acting was great because it wasn’t. However, the acting also wasn’t bad, and while nothing was super funny there were some more subtle hints to the writing and less obvious jokes that I find myself wanting to watch more of the show. Many of you probably hadn’t even heard of the show, or if you did see previews for it you may have written it off right away, so hopefully you give it a shot and you might even be surprised!
Plus, you can help me bet on how high the percentage of popularity increase will get on India de Beaufort‘s IMDB page! It’s up 279% this week, any guesses on how high that will go?
My Tribute to Mr.Arneson
I didn’t know much about Dave Arneson, only that he was the co-creator of D&D and that there was some big issue about giving him the credit he was due. I’m not much of an history buff about D&D so I never got the full story.
Most of what I do know about Mr. Arneson I got from reading Wizards post about the Temple of the Frog and from Ars Ludi’s Braunstein post (thankfully included in the Open Game Table Anthology).
Having started playing D&D with AD&D, I was mostly aware of Gygax and his work in the pre-internet days.
That does not prevent me now from extending my heartfelt condolences to the Arneson family and pay him an homage that only a tabletop RPGer can do.
Today I wrote a D&D adventure for my friends. I could have linked a few unrelated combat encounters and called it a day. But I went a bit beyond that. I gave it a old-school name (Crypt of the Thief-Prince), I made a story around it all , placed the adventure in a cool locale and created unusual encounters that I think my players will enjoy.
Tomorrow, I’ll play D&D and dedicate the game to Dave Arneson, may he rest in peace.
RIP Dave Arneson
Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away on April 7th at the age of 61.
While Gygax was eventually given much of the credit for the initial creation of D&D, Arneson’s campaign setting Blackmoor would shape the paradigm of D&D worlds, forming the basis of the D&D campaign settings, which have incalculable influence on video game worlds and fantasy novels.
I, and all of us here at Critical Hits, are deeply saddened by his passing. I never met him directly, and in fact the first time I saw him was when he gave a speech at last year’s GenCon during the ENnies. I was particularly struck when he talked about the game he had run at GenCon every year: literally, at every GenCon since the beginning. While not always with the same players, he had been running the same RPG campaign since before the term existed as we know it. This next GenCon (like the one before it) is going to seem all the emptier, especially without the next installment.
Additionally, two of our writers attended Full Sail University where Arneson taught for many years. I heard two stories from them about him. On the very first day of class, he always issued a challenge: if you can beat him in Age of Empires II, you got an automatic “A” for the class. At the time when they were there, he had only been beaten once. Secondly, he ran a campaign at a local game store with anyone who wanted to sign up. (Of course, that waiting list was always long!)
Goodbye, Mr. Arneson. May you continue to inspire all of us to build our own worlds to adventure in.
Chatty on the Net
It seems I see people talking about my alter ego a lot lately. Not that I mind at all, I mean who doesn’t like to see his name or alias turn up stuff on Google?
Well this week, I’ve made an appearance on two websites.
First, last Tuesday night I was invited to participate in a round table to discuss the new races and classes of the Players Handbook 2 at Jeff Greiner’s The Tome Show.
It was a great experience and while I was a bit daunted by the whole ‘we are recording here’ I had a lot of fun. This is definitively something that I could get used to. So if you are a Podcaster and would like to have me talk about my stories with my son or have me blabber about Player motivations and Tropes, feel free to drop me an invite.
As a bonus, I throw in a French Accent!
Secondly, I was interviewed a few weeks ago by a blogger colleague named Viri Cordova who writes the Bard of Valiant blog. She posted the interview today and you can learn some new things about how I go about preparing a new RPG campaign. It’s a great read… well of course I would say that, it’s about me!
Have a great Easter weekend all, I’m currently putting the finishing touches on a huge contest that will go live next week! Stay tuned!
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