No-Art, Punk Contest: Baleful Bastion of the Beastly Boys

Broo - I wasn't able to identify the artist

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Baleful Bastion of the Beastly Boys

Princeofnothing, a fellow with large opinions, and a fondness for the Old Ways, is hosting a dungeon design contest, an undertaking which he dubs the "No-Artpunk Contest!"

The design brief: 20-30 rooms stocked with book items and book monsters for a 0e - 1e D&D (or clone) system. 5 -20 pages. "Presentation and layout should be whatever you want. Worddoc, Plain text or Paint. Homemade maps, terrible self-drawn paint art, is all welcome."

Now, to be sure, I tend to be a fan of much of what is labeled artpunk in the old-school-ish D&D scene. I backed the new Patrick kickstarter the day it became available (you should back it too!) and I ran a 20+ session Mork Borg campaign. However, I am a sucker for a contest and constraints inspire creativity. 

In preparing an entry, I decided to full embrace the Fundamentalist D&D ethos and produce an adventure that uses the most basic possible monsters, in the most basic possible set up and try to imbue it with fun solely through the clever arrangement of situations, traps and monster tactics. The adventure should work, swapping out all of the monsters for different ones. 

For the layout, I took my cues from the spare, functionality of DM prep notes rather than the verbose, blocky text of early modules. My hope is that the brevity and convenience of the layout would let most DMs run this without even reading it all the way through first (though reading it will take 10 mins max). 

Anyhow, whether or not the Nihilian Potentate appreciates my efforts, I like the little castle I have created and hope that folks enjoy it.