Dungeon23

I love a big project. I rarely finish a big project, but I try not to let that stop me from trying again. Love Sean’s idea for Dungeon23, so I’m gonna give it a go. Got my stuff (love an excuse to by a slightly too fancy notebook) and there is a certain accountability in dropping 25 bucks on something that makes me wanna follow through.

DISCOVERY! At least half of those pens don’t work, I hadn’t tested them yet.

I think leading up to the first of January I’ll flesh out a bit of the castle that sits on top of the the dungeon, but I don’t want to jump the gun too much. I spent some time while I was out of the studio last week doing some hectic chart and table making. (in a different notebook, the new one hadn’t come yet) It all looks like the scribblings of a madman, but that’s kind of what this whole project is.

Here’s what those scribblings look like. I like showing off really ugly sketchbook pages sometimes. It reminds people that sketchbooks aren’t pretty places that are supposed to be curated for instagram. They are for the people that use them and everything else is bonus content, whether or not you use it for anything else is irrelevant. Anyways.

literally just the od&d dungeon creation but worse, near a slightly alphabetical list I copied from an excel document of “types of rooms” probably stolen but it said I made the excel doc so-

I’m leaning into a certain amount of random generation stuff for “biomes” and treating it a bit like the random seeds at the start of a new game of Valheim or Terraria. I like putting video games in my tabletop games, because its fun and it makes people mad.

I also like the idea of a dungeon having a few different biomes, a la depthcrawl/hexcrawl style. It’s fun.

I’m not gonna follow any of the rules I’m setting up for myself, this is gonna be a disaster.

working through wandering monster tables, fixing the things that are stupid, like how there are no severed demon hands.

I am currently writing something that probably will be thought of as a “fantasy heartbreaker” but the main focus of this game is going to be making monsters, spells and dungeon generation interesting and easy to do on the fly. It also is only going to be about dungeon crawling so this is a good project to do in tandem.

deciding what kobolds look like is really the only important thing. also, goblins are fairies.

we were honing on something here for sure. for the days I cant decide if I want spinning blades or acid jets.

part of this is just workshopping new monsters for a game system I’m making, so no one has to fight a spider in a dungeon ever again. Also, altars

Elementals are underserved in TTRPGs. THERE I SAID IT. I think there are cooler ways of doing things than just walking around piles of rocks okay.

I’m thinking that the rooms should be like, really hard to describe, shape wise. I like just giving players the map and uncovering as they go. I’ve never liked the specifics of describing a map.

monsters have pubes.

Fire Giants

The true secrets of fire are only known to those willing to spend a thousand years looking into the flames. 

The Giant Saint (who was only half giant himself) took the severed head of the Rainbow Queen to the Fire Giants when he knocked it off her body, many, many years ago. The Silver King was born not an idol to worship, but a test of process. The Saint left The Cinderbleak Mountains with a new way of life for the people of his city, but did not know he sparked an idea that would someday lead to his own demise.

And so it went, the knowledge of the Fire Giants skills were known far and wide. And so too was the knowledge that they dealt in no currency, as the only thing they desired was the craft. They ate only the scraps of their forge and they were never seen to sleep.

The Fire Giants did not care about the cities in the clouds, nor did they wish to commune with the wilderness. They wished only to worship at the forge. They built many things, intricate and beautiful- terrible and sad.

To forge an Ego Blade is to turn a hero into steel. Only one who has known the adoration of the people, who has felt the swell of pride in their chest from their great deeds will suffice. Some were lured to the Cinderbleak Mountains with the promise of power, others told stories of the people there that needed their help.

All of them were tricked. All of them are swords now.

The process in which a Fire Giant turns a person into a sword is not known to any mortal. If one were to find a Fire Giant though, they would doubtlessly comply with the task. 

The function of a Fire Giant in game is that of the all knowing blacksmith. They hold dominion over fire in ways that no one else does. They probably made dwarves, and they definitely are the reason magic swords that talk and have machinations exist. 

“Ego Blade” is a term I’ve been using to distinguish a regular magic sword from the old school magic sword, which is a much more involved thing. Also the idea of a “regular” magic sword is kind of silly, but my reasoning here is that I believe the mechanical/gameplay reason Clerics can’t use edged weapons is to keep them from getting their hands on a PROPER magic sword, and while I think that works in the microcosm of OD&D I love building lore around mechanics like that. So in my games there are the kind of magic sword that gives you your +1 to hit and then there are EGO BLADES, the literal body and soul of a hero that has been turned into a sword. 

My goal with all of the Giants and their redesigns is to push them all in really extreme directions. Hill Giants are literally hills (mostly because it's funny and it made somebody on reddit really mad) Frost Giants went hard on leaving civilization and communing with nature, Fire Giants ONLY care about the act of crafting and smithing, and Cloud Giants built cities, bigger and better until they all came crashing down. 

More to come, I have sketches (and some finished pieces) of Hill,Cloud & Storm Giants. I also want a sort of proto Giant, which I guess would be like a Stone Giant if we’re going directly from the source material. But I thought it would be cool if Giants all ended up so differently because they physically evolved really quickly, like within their own lifetimes based on the things that they spent their time doing. I think it ties everything together with a big messy knot and you know that’s what I like best in life.

This post was made possible by my lovely PATRONS. If you’d like to give your support, it’s always appreciated.

Level 1 Spell book of The Glass Academy

A spell book in the shape of a delicate kaleidoscope. reading and memorizing its spells takes time and a well lit room. Turns are understood to be 10 minutes long.

image courtesy of this cool site

The Lackey in the Looking Glass - Convinces a single individual that they are in fact, your reflection. They will mimic any action of yours that you wish until the spell is broken. They will never do something you do not attempt yourself. The spell will be tested any time they are harmed.

Arcane Lens - turns any piece of glass into a magic lens that allows whoever looks through it to see the magical auras that surround magical items, spell craft and creatures. The glass is enchanted for 2d6 rounds before it shatters.

Magic Arrow - take a normal arrow and enchant it to never miss. The enchantment is lost when the arrow strikes its target. While the arrow is enchanted it deals damage to creatures that can only be harmed by magic weapons.

Glass Lock - A weak magical lock (that can be cast upon anything lockable) that lasts for 2d6 turns before shattering.

Magic Torch - a floating orb of light in the color you choose, cannot go more than 5ft from the caster. Lasts 6 + caster level turns & illuminates as a torch would.

Shield of Erimus - a magical barrier that absorbs 2d6 damage before it shatters. While the shield is active you may take no offensive action.

Summon Drog- The Drog is a being of infinite linguistic skill that can help you translate a small piece of text or a few spoken sentences for the duration of its summoning. 

Arcane Cipher - Decode and read a single magic spell's worth of text (like that found on a spell scroll) as if it were a language you know and understand. 

The Infectious Yawn- Causes the target to yawn and drift off to sleep, 2d6 HD worth of creatures that view the yawn are also subject to the spell's effects. Any who view the yawn are possibly subject to its effects. Does not affect creatures who cannot discernibly yawn.

Equivalent Exchange- Take two non magical objects, place them in separate magic circles and trade their material conditions. For example, if you have a broken pot and an undamaged statue, casting this spell fixes the pot and breaks the statue. If there is a great disparity in the size and complexity of the objects you will need to balance the exchange lest the spell seek its energy from beyond the magic circle.

On the Translation of Reality into Fiction

The other day I made a post of my recent play session in Orm. After we had played the session I emailed my room mate from college that worked for a long time as an Art Mover to ask him how he (with infinite time and resources) would have moved this large piece of art out of a cave deep down in a dungeon. Here’s the piece and what he said about it.

It’s interesting to me the problems you encounter and how you solve them at the table. How much handwaving is good? How much realism is bad? What FEELS right as apposed to what IS realistic. It’s a game at the end of the day and I don’t need hyper realism in it to have fun, but anytime I get the chance to ask someone with expertise about how they tackle things that might come up at the table, I do. So much of the joy in a thinking adventure game is spent just talking through how something COULD or MIGHT work in a scenario like this and that will always be my favorite kind of game to play.

Art Heist in Orm

My dwarf Bludoon just took part in a very high risk, high reward heist in the underground jungle layer of the famed megadungeon “The Complex” of Orm. It looked something like this- the only missing component is a team of 12 stone masons that were there doing most of the work and heavy lifting. I didnt draw them because I dont hate myself and instead focused on our party that was guarding/escorting them. Enjoy. Thanks again to Nick at Underworld Adventurer for running a great game!

Undermine Kickstarter is now LIVE

Heya folks, for a while now I’ve been working with the team at Kinsoul Games on their newest boardgame: Undermine. It’s real cool and I sure would appreciate if you checked out the Kickstarter! In the meantime, here’s some art that I’ve made for it-

a gameplay scene, showing off all the interior of an asteroid mining that you’ll be getting up to.

So far a lot of the work I’ve done has been character related. The players choose between these different Trifflings that work as independent space-mining contractors. They all have different abilities and play a little differently. When I playtested I was Otto, with the big drill and the turtle hat.

Here’s a picture from playtesting a while back, this is just the prototype board, but it was really well put together even at this stage. I really, really, really like hex tiles like this. very fun to play with generally.

They just don't make good book covers anymore

Spent a few hours poking around a thrift shop with my mom last week, I don’t usually buy things but I love to take pictures of things that catch my eye. Like this treasure, which assures us that drawing the female figure is not only easy, it can be done for fun, or profit.

This was the one thing that I allllmost bought. The illustrations inside were pretty good.

Anybody ever have a cat that just can’t stop eating all the nooses that you have lying around your apartment? and then it poops but the nooses are all attached to its butt and it runs around like crazy trying to get all the nooses out of its butt and all the people in the city have to run for their lives?

Anybody have a cat like that?

Those that have never lived in upstate NY might not realize exactly how many cowboys live around here. As you can see the horse was just as surprised as you were.

Adventure Game In Need of Review

Got a nice review of Adventure Game recently! If you haven’t seen any of Dieku’s videos before I HIGHLY recommend this amazing interview with Lee Gold.

And if you don’t have a copy of Adventure Game yet you can download it HERE or get a hard copy HERE