Tyrannosaurus Jungle

Stafford

Polymer Woods

This is for Chris Bennet, who long ago requested more dungeons based on classic TSR games. Here's a taste of Gamme World old school for you.

City of the Ancients

The Ancients were pretty damn clever, they way. Not sure how clever they were. They built a really big city that would take care of every need they could imagine. I guess that was nice. You can still see the city. Most see it from the sea. And it looks mighty grand shining in the sunset. But get up close and it's a different story: great gaping rents, wings and towers taken by rust or decay. There are light still, in some parts. But I guess there aren't as many ancients living in there as there used to be. Wonder what is?

Civvv

It's been hard lately to get my blog posts out. I've stated that this is because I'm busy with work and getting ready for the Year of the Dungeon art show. But the real truth is that I'm playing CivV. Naturally, video games have a way of eating your spare time, and CivV is no exception. This is a worthy addition to the Civ family, Even on a short game, I find the modern age is a lot of clicking, nevertheless, they've cut a lot of the tedium, kept the essenence, and made worthy editions. Also, Siam rules.

Good Fishing

Fish Caught:

TABLE 1
1. Mackerel
2. Cod (small)
3. Cod (large)
4. Brass Cod: scales word 1d6x10 gp
5. Boot
6. Special (roll on table 2)

1. Selkie
2. Razor Cod
3. Gigantic Cod
4. Intelligent squid, 50% can grant minor wish, 50% just claims to be able to
5. Catch 1d10 of random roll on table 1
6. Catch random roll on table 1, but attacked by a Peryton

Grinding Dunes

Crackwood

Crackwood's a no-nonsense town perched on the edge of a howling wilderness. The locals are used to putting up with adversity: wolfbears prowling the town at night, wendigo attacks on the stagecoach, the hooting of apes in mating season, and the disturbing unearthly lights that hover around Star Rock.

Danger Peak

Stafford: a Town in Need of Heroes

When you're in Stafford, and you let it be known that you're looking for something valuable, magical, or unique, roll 1d8

1. The witch has it. You'd better have something equally valuable to offer in return.
2. You see that glint of light off the top of Orlock at dawn? That's where it is.
3. You hear lots of rumors about it, but they're contradictory and obscure.
4. The herd people can provide that, but you'll have to undertake the shaman's challenge to get it.
4. It's right here in town, hanging on the wall in the Mad Baron's tower. The Baron hasn't been seen in public for years, by the way, and some think he's a devil in disguise.
5. The goblins in the vents, they know!
6. Vance had it, but he went hunting up near the slime woods, and hasn't been seen in days. A local Ranger is willing to lead you to the spot, though.
7. That ghost that hantus the owlpines when the moon is new, she often whispers about that. No one's stupid enough to stick around to hear the details thought.
8. That? Oh you can't get that here. Try the next town up the road.

Don't go back to Rockston

Sometimes the people of the swamp region and surrounding environs need you to do things for them. They send you on missions to retrieve lost items, seek out dangerous bandits, and slay insidious monsters. But they never send you to Rockston. There are no adventure hooks leading that way, no tomes of lore about its origin, and no wild-eyed survivors telling tales of what they saw there. This silence and mystery only makes the place more compelling until you set out to find out once and for all what hides behind the eerie silence of Rockston.

Stovington Church

The curious religious politics of the Duchy is illustrated by the small community of Stovington Church. Despite the Duke's official censure of the Old observances in favor of the new, every equinox, the people of Stovington gather before the Church and process to the ancient stone circle in the woods, then return for evening worship at the Church. The clergy politely arrange to be absent during the procession, pretending with all solemnity that it does not exist. In this way, the spirits of both traditions are satisfied.

The Wilderness of Bones

We played another session of Apocalypse D&D the other night and it went great! I'll have an AP for it soon, I hope.

I plan for this to be a year where I really develop an approach to game mastering that works for me. The next step in this process is going to be to come up with the kind of campaign that gives me the kind of play I want. The campaign I'm looking for has a specific scope (say 5-10 levels), lots of freedom of movement, but with plenty of places for me to prepare stuff for the players to encounter. I'm thinking of it as a sort of hybrid sandbox campaign style.

The new campaign will start with a map (The Wilderness of Bones, which I'm almost done creating already). I'll drop a half-dozen or so as-yet unpublished microdungeons into the map in specific locations. Then I'll seed the environment with a few hooks, rumors, and connections for the players to discover. Then I'll cut them loose and see what they do.

Microdungeons work well for this because they're small enough that I can sketch them out, then fill in the prep when the players get close. Knowing basically what dungeons are out there makes it easy for me to spin rumors and make connections between what the characters are doing and what's already out there. A few of the dungeons also have some consequences for the world if the players don't go there, like (minor spoiler) a trade route to the main campaign town that gets disrupted as the monster infestation increases.

There's also a dungeon that wanders around, and one whose location is likely to greatly surprise the adventurers. I'm very excited! When I'm done, I hope to have the bare bones of a publishable campaign setting as well. We'll see where the journey takes us.