OPD Entry 2019

It's the season for the 11th edition of the One Page Dungeon contest (https://www.dungeoncontest.com/) where brevity is the soul of wit - and adventure.

And it's time for Max and I to drop one more annual entry...

Dude, get out of my dice box.

A bit of timey-wimey funny business, this go-around....

Before?

Download "Now & When..."

After?

Much thanks to Matt Jackson for lending me his "two" towers.

Loading up MJ's Barrowmound 9 with ... THOULS!

So I guess I'd never noticed the 'thoul' listing in the B/X monsters. Chalk that up to incomplete reading comprehension, or something. And, I don't think I've seen them employed in the adventures I've perused.  So, time to drop them as backup dancers in another B/X song and dance, this one taking place in caverns accessed via a tidal marsh, where someone is up to nefarious deeds.

Again, thanks to Matt Jackson for his mapping, and to Gavin Norman for the B/X Essentials booklets, where I finally took the time to read the monsters from A to Z....

Click it, you know you want to...

And another guest appearance by my wife's artistry)

EDIT: Download link updated to PWYW on DrivethruRPG

Vobleavira Complex, a B1-Inspired Crawl...

So, when Matt Jackson posted up 'Barrowmound #11'  on his Patreon, I commented, "Cool, looks like a mini Quesquaton. Now, where to put the room of pools...."

And that's how I committed myself (at least in my mind) to statting up this maze... The occupants of Quesquaton were Rogahn and Zelligar, a fighter and mage, respectively.  Considering this, the occupants of this maze must be the other two base B/X human classes - a cleric and thief...

With that meager concept, I was off...

So we have a cleric and thief who found themselves allied in adventures, found their own subterranean outpost, and created a space that reflects their two characters' personalities. While it isn't as extensive as B1, I hope that it has a similar flavor. The challenges and exploration, like B1, are put together with low-level mooks in mind. I even included a handful of B1-styled pregens in the back, complete with appropriately wacky names.

No room of pools though. Sorry about that...

GET IT HERE

Many thanks to Matt for the original map, converting me to the zine format, and several days of editing back and forth in Google Docs. And to my wife for drawing up a few creepy goblins :) Thanks also to Gavin Norman, for his B/X Essentials and general blessing of this crapshoot.

More to come...

EDIT: Download link updated to DrivethruRPG as PWYW
EDIT2: Adventure revised with additional encounters, language consistency fixes, and shuffling stuff around.

Inspiration: Snow

Tonight's scene, art provided by: Mad Map March 15 - Snow, inspired by "The Little Ice Age"

There has been another hard freeze, with the river gone solid. The residents look at the ice and quietly discuss the likelihood of having to replace one or both of the town's bridges after the spring thaw. Again.

It is far into the winter, the third rough winter in four years. It is to the point in the season where concerned eyes look at the near-empty larders, and the wives are counting out the remaining potatoes and roots.

There is nothing to spare for rough adventurers traveling through. They had better have their own meager rations, as few will take up an offer to share their stores. After all, one can not eat gold.  Unless they can perhaps take care of some nuisance or raider: the frozen walking dead, a werewolf stalking the woods, or equally desperate bandits raiding the stores.

People stay in but for necessary forage for thin livestock, breaking the ice for the well, occasionally carrying out an individual not hearty enough to last the winter...

The snow hasn't fallen for weeks, it is too cold, with a bone-breaking ache.

"Are you going somewhere warmer, guv'ner?" As the party leaves from their hard lodgings, they find themselves tailed by a sallow youth, with rag-wrapped feet, and a few precious potatoes and crusts of acorn-flour bread in a sack.

Inspiration: Castle

Mad March Map the 14th - Castle

The ruins of Quent Keep reside among the slowly encroaching forest. Abandoned a generation gone by its human inhabitants, they had cleared the forest attempting to expand their influence into the sylvan lands.  But the greenlands had their own methods for resisting this insolent incursion. It was a siege, but one not of armies. Weeds grew riotously in the kitchen gardens, lightning struck the walls with regularity, the well went dry, and domesticated animals fled or became unproductive.  There is no more need for such fortifications now the caretakers reached an agreement with the fey, retreating back to their own territory and allowing the wilds to regain the area...

The only occupants now are elven children with their centuries-old eyes, who play among the towers and scramble the ivy-covered walls...