New work in progress...

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Finished off the Melford Murder which is now at pre-production draft stage. Thought I'd get started on the next adventure in the series, which thanks to Jerry's kindness now has its own little subforum down there in the Special Projects bit.

Since the last one was quite roleplaying-intensive and generally lacking in gratuitous violence, I thought I'd write something with a bit more hack and slash this time.

Check it out, all feedback and comments gratefully received!

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Now improved with added dungeon-bashing goodness!

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Dungeon level 1's in, starting level 2 now...

[foster1941]

Hmm, those dungeon maps look a little familiar...

Cool stuff. Interesting to see how you took broadly the same ideas (and map, of course) and came up with an end result quite a bit different than what I was picturing. Too bad I never got any of my ideas down onto paper before abandoning the project -- it would've been an interesting experiment to see both of our versions side by side, how they were the same and how they differed in both style and content.

[PapersAndPaychecks]

*grins*

Well, I wasn't going to waste 'em!

It's interesting that you say you'd have done things differently... to me, that felt like "the only way" to achieve the result. (I don't mean that the individual room keys couldn't be different - I mean that I can't see an alternative to the broad strategy. Lots of creepy crawlers, heavy use of rosters, foreshadowing for the big nasty).

[dzubak]

PnP,
Is there a difference between Dungeon Levels 1&2 listed here at J's place and the Jermlaine Tunnels posted over on Yexx? Actually I guess this question could be extedd to the Shrine of the Oracle as well.

Awesome work by the way.
-D

P.S. Whatever happened to Myrkul's Zane (sp)?

[PapersAndPaychecks]

What happened was I wrote up a load of stuff for a Shrine of the Oracle-based adventure and worked it all out in detail.

Yesterday, I realised that most of what I had written was just utterly gay. Screaming, fairy, fruity gay and in need of immediate deletion. So I deleted it.

This left me committed to a project that I'd promised but with very little in the way of material that I could use, so in a fit of desperation I fused the old plan with my other ideas for the Jermlaine tunnels and put together a whole new, dungeon-based adventure.

And all of a sudden material arising from that fusion just started to write itself. It just came into my brain and out of my fingers at a steady 80wpm.

Now it so happens that I'm married to a wonderful lady. My wife is:

• A former glamour model
  
• A Star Trek fan
  
• An enthusiastic roleplayer and a mean DM
  
• Capable of fixing the sink and mending the front door by herself
  
• Able to judge whether my adventures suck
  
• Honest with me about it when they do.
  

So I went to my wife and said, "What do you think of this?" She said, "That works" and I knew I was onto a winner.

(She's off thinking of some tricks and traps for me to put in right now; she's just vanished into the front room with a pencil and squared paper and a thoughtful frown.)

So the short answer is, this is all the spare low-level stuff I had sort of squashed in together into the same scenario.

Oh yes, Morrikul Zane. That's going to be quite a largish project. I need to finish off this earlier job first, in such a way as to have a complete campaign that'll bring the player characters up to about level 3 or 4, then they can pass the doors of MZ.

The whole MZ project is just an excuse for me to write a huge, sprawling dungeon with seven levels that's packed with undead.

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Now I need something cool for the big boss of level 2. A customised monster that's better than that psionic piece of crap I drew up on Gene's board.

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Okay, it's roughed in, needs refining now. Any suggestions on how to improve it?

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Think I'm going to poach Foster's idea from Gene's boards, about putting an (optional) bit in where the PCs get captured by the caveman mooks.

[BonesMcCoy]

Yuck. Bad idea. How are you going to do that without railroading the PCs? They 'have' to get captured if the DM wants to include this other level or whatever? I don't like it. Let the DM capture them if he wants but don't encourage it by putting in another area just to celebrate the occasion. The Slavers mod already did that and I think it gets real old real fast. The adventure looks great already. If you want to expand things just add a fourth mini-adventure before you move onto Morrikul Zane. If you flesh these things out too much then it starts to feel 2e-ish and that's not good. For that matter, you don't even really need to stat out The Oracle or his worshippers' religious rites. Just leave it up in the air and let the DM do whatever he wants with it.

That's my feelings on the subject anyway.

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Hm. You're probably right Bones, you usually are.

Okay, I'm going to draw a line under it and call it "finished." Next step: Playtesting!

[northrundicandus]

Bones - K&K's own trusty Fruitmeter. :-)

"I declare this patient too fruity! We must remove the cancer..."

[PapersAndPaychecks]

That's what Bones is for, though. He's my gaydar. When I start writing gay stuff, he tells me so, and puts me back on the true path of red-blooded heterosexual adventure writing.

[foster1941]

The original conception wasn't that the party "had" to be captured by the cavemen (in A3/A4 railroad style) but that it be included as an option in case the party tried to befriend the cavemen instead of fighting them. Since the cavemen (at least in my original version) weren't obviously evil, it was quite likely that the party would try this -- especially since I'd intended to include an encounter earlier in the dungeon (with a group of gnomes) whom the party was supposed to befriend.

But anyway, if the party tried to befriend the cavemen they would 'play along' and ask for help killing a monster that was pestering them (a carrion crawler or something of the sort) and the party would think they were all cool until they found themselves ambushed and (if the ambush was successful) dumped down the sinkhole to level 2 as propritiation to the cavemen's "dark god" (originally there were to have been no cavemen living on level 2, just the "dark god" and assorted other nasties wandering through the dark, abandoned maze). But none of this would've been mandatory -- the 'default assumption' of the module would've been that there was no befriending or ambush -- that the party would just fight the cavemen as soon as they met them, then fight the carrion crawler (or whatever it would've been), then find the sinkhole to level 2 on their own -- but I would've included a paragraph or two of "what happens if the party tries to befriend the cavemen" as a suggestion.

It wouldn't have been at all gay, I swear, but nonetheless I agree that it doesn't really fit anymore with P&P's current conception of the dungeon...