Sometimes it's fun to see the maps that turn up in actual play rather than the ones that were drawn with careful premeditation during prep.
We play with just a whiteboard rather than a virtual tabletop and I draw as we go.
I ran the Ruined Fort over our last couple sessions. It's been a lot of fun.
It's been much too long since I've done a shout-out post. The last time I did, people still thought that the "novel corona virus" was basically just a bad flu.
Map Crow is fantastic. I know that Ben Milton just gave him a highlight in the latest issue of the Glatisant, but for real... check this out. Most of his vids have < 500 views and that seems totally wrong.
This week, The Lizard Man Diaries has released a Part 2 to the incredibly useful Generic Room Stocker (now available in PDF). I'm looking forward to filling up a few levels of my City of the Ancients with "generic" content like:
A room that is "Ethereal and vaporous - twisting, flowing and floating." Ornamented with "decorative weapons" that are "far to flat" and "vaguely incorporeal". An "inhabitant, puzzling over the way in which a device is used", reacts "mockingly and "derisively" but is "open to discussion." The devise "informs" but "requires a sacrifice to operate.
Labytinths of Illrith Varn from Swamp of Monsters! In May 2020 Nate L. described "how i did my megadungeon." Earlier this week, he posted a campaign summary and map overview. I really enjoyed reading the original post laying out how the dungeon was created, followed by the look-back on how it worked.
72 Encounters from the City of Spires from Against the Wicked City. Joseph Manola has packed years of his campaign into a giant table of awesome mini-adventures, plot hooks and city encounters. Back in September, he did a series of posts (1, 2, 3) on how he runs the campaign. Reminds me a bit of the map he posted in 2019 for his previous Team Tsathogga campaign (which I found very inspiring) but at a zoomed in level.
In Classic Vs. The Past, All Dead Generations considers how modern games differ from the games of the 70s and 80s. Gus L. points out four major departures in how the games are played and gives some suggestions on how to address these in campaigns.
Chris Tamm of Elfmaids and Octopi continues to be awe-inspiringly prolific. It's hard to pick what to link but I enjoyed this post about Dungeon Ants and this one about Omnisaur + Dungeon Design in which he describes "I might try some alternate configurations when done and have them as bits a GM could cut out and reassemble or ad to some other map. A strange new kink in my process." I'm thinking about some cut-up dungeons too so it was nice to hear someone else on that track.
PrinceofNothing is Introducing a No-Artpunk Contest. Despite the fact that I like most of what I've seen described as "artpunk" and have run 20+ sessions of Mork Borg, I think making an old-fashioned, "back to the Moathouse" sort of dungeon could be fun.
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I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of deserving people. Hopefully, I'll catch them the next time I do this (hopefully sooner than 16 months this time...)
In our most recent session, my players explored the first level of the Barrow of the Twisted Wyrm. They retrieved, the major artifacts and saw the clear evidence that the barrow had been previously looted by Gothic knights. They have deduced (correctly) that the corpses they found (as armored zombies) were likely from the abandoned fortress on the hill above the town. They're planning to explore the fort in our next game.
Getting back to the fort will be challenging. The only way the players know to reach the fort takes them through both the Old Forest and the upper portions of the Smuggler Caves.The druids in the forest are furious that someone has desecrated the barrow, and the Smugglers (the "Willing Few") are beginning to rebuild their operations after the player characters wrecked their hideout.
