Ordurak and Switzerland

When the Wilderness of Ordurak adventure and gazetteer were in development, I was looking for a real world cognate that would be a comparison that would help with understanding the size and scale of the area. Today, somewhat randomly, I took a map of Switzerland and dropped it under a 5-mile hex grid, and it fits pretty well into the 12×18 size map (one-quarter Alusia, if you will).

Wilderness of Ordurak and Switzerland at the same scale in the image below. The hex mapped area is about 190 miles by 125 miles in each.

This is, I suppose, all in conjunction with thinking about new DragonQuest adventures and material. I’m using the break over the next few days to work on some ideas for the Water Works sequel adventure I’ve been calling GasWorks (but that won’t be the final title for it, I promise). And some things are starting to come together with that. So stay tuned for more about that in 2024.

Wrapup for #dungeon23 Pamphlet Zines

Things got bogged down over the last couple months. Real Life intrudes in many ways. But, this past week, I finished out the series of all 12 zines for the #dungeon23 pamphlet series.

These are available from DriveThru and on itch.io. And, for a limited time, the complete set of all 12 zines is available in a discounted bundle from DriveThru:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/464125/dungeon23-Pamphlet-Zines-BUNDLE

https://rthorm.itch.io/dungeon23-pamphlet-zines-q4

If you want hardcopies, these are available from Exalted Funeral (for zines #1 through #5, for now; their site looks like #6 is sold out, and they don’t yet have the second half of the series).

Hardcopies of all 12 are also available directly from us, in bundles of three (for each quarter of the year) via the itch links.

The twelve issues are:
#1 Intersections
#2 Halls & tunnels
#3 Stone masonry
#4 Doors
#5 Water
#6 Stairs & shafts
#7 Air & gasses
#8 Network
#9 Mechanisms
#10 Geology
#11 Secrets
#12 Plants & vegetation

In addition to the maps, there are some further dungeon-inspired illustrations from artists including Jake Mix, Jan Krycinski, and HodagRPG

DragonQuest Adventure and other updates

Expanding from my dice.camp post :

I’ve been trying to pull together the pieces of a DragonQuest adventure idea for a while. I’ve had ideas for a couple interesting things earlier this spring – and in particular, a sequel to my first published DQadventure, The Water Works – but it wasn’t coming together completely. This weekend’s breakthrough was coming up with a framework for what is going on. I’m not sure if it’s going to work out yet, but I have something that I can start to work around. As a seasonal metaphor, I have a skeleton, and now I can see if I can put flesh onto those bones.

I often start with the architecture, and build up the narrative to inhabit that place. I have a couple locations I wanted to use, but had to figure out who was in them and why they were there. Now that I have some of the why, the next pieces will start to come together, hopefully.

I’m always leery of predicting that the path forward is now clear, because prior experience has taught that that is never the case. But, if you are a DQ GM who might be interested in this, I’d like to line up a couple of alpha reviewers for feedback about parts of this once it starts getting to that point.

The premise for this, in the broadest terms, is going to be another elemental magics laboratory to be explored; this time it’s a facility for the College of Air Magics. The final title will be something different, but for now, I’m referring to this as the Gasworks.

Other updates

There are now three sets of #dungeon23 Pamphlet Zines available. I’m still looking for one last piece of art for the last three issues; if you have a lead on someone who has a small piece of dungeon-related art that they would be interested in licensing for use in a small zine project.

If you want to pick up a copy of one or several of the PDFs for these, they are available at both DriveThruRPG and rthorm.itch.io. Each zine is a single-sheet, legal-size, double-sided, black-and-white zine with random tables, map fragments, and a thematic article. Hardcopies are available from Exalted Funeral or directly from us through the itch.io site. You can pick up single issues from Exalted Funeral; if you purchase through itch.io, they are available only as a set of 3 zines (sets divided in each quarter of the year).

On a more personal note, things have been a little more sparse around here the past few weeks because we had a house fire earlier this year, and all the complications from that are taking a lot of attention. But hopefully we can start to do a bit more on some other RPG things.

Looking for artists

There are 6 more issues of the #dungeon23 pamphlet zine to produce for the 2nd half of the year. I am looking for a number of small spot illustration pieces for these.

I’d like to find a half dozen artists for a small piece (~3.5″ x 2.5″), black+white, for each of those issues. Paying $10 for non-exclusive rights.

I’m hoping this can be an opportunity for some new artists, and a way to find some other artists for other projects. If you are interested and have a portfolio online, let me know. I’d also appreciate it if you pass word along to other artists you know who might be interested.

The planned topics for these so far include: Air & Glasses; Mechanisms; Geology; Plants & Vegetation

Anything related to dungeons or caves, doors, corridors, etc., would also be perfect for this.

You can see the previews of the earlier issues of these Zines on DriveThruRPG:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439199/Dungeon23-Pamphlet-Zine–n5

A New DragonQuest Adventure?

No promises, yet; but I’m thinking about a potential new DragonQuest adventure.

(Isn’t that game, like, a century old?)
Thank you for asking; what brings you to this site, anyhow?

The Water Works was the first DQ adventure that I published. Between the backstory in that scenario and the organization of magic in DQ, there is an implication that there could be other ‘Works’ adventures. But inspiration has been fickle and fleeting.

It’s been a nagging thing at the back of my mind ever since I created the first one. There have been occasional little bits of ideas through the years. The titles were there: Earth Works; Gas Works; Fire Works(!); even Clock Works (for Time Magics, which is an Elemental College). Some ideas have stuck around for a while, but never with any real sense they were going anywhere.

This time seems different, though.

A couple months ago, something put a couple pieces together, and it clicked as the latest inspiration. It feels like something I might have some traction with this time. For the first time, there are characters (NPCs) who might be there. There are a couple of set-piece elements that could be developed into something that might be cool. I even have a rough, drawn-on-lined-note-paper sketch map for a locale that starts to suggest some elements.

It’s too soon to say anything more than this about it, but at the same time, I want to see if anyone else is even interested. Many years back, I ran a crowdfunding campaign (with IndieGoGo) to produce a DragonQuest adventure. The ways these things were done was a lot less well understood, and it took a long time to bring it together. I won’t make that mistake again, but if it’s going to be something that I’m going to do, I want to open the process up and let people who are interested in it get to participate in it from the early stages. There aren’t a lot of DQ players out there, so if I’m going to do this, it should be something that those folks can participate in.

So, if you’d like to hear more about this, drop me a line on Mastodon (for those of you using Mastodon; I’m (at) rthorm (at) dice.camp) or good old email dragonquest (at) antherwyck.com. If this goes further, I’ll let you know.

Weekend deal

The first set of #dungeon23 pamphlet zines is now available from the usual sources (DriveThru and itch).

Because I really want to make at least a few of these real-world print copies, if you buy the set on itch this weekend (17-19 Mar 2023), I will mail you a copy within the US at no additional cost, or for an extra $2 for international post outside the US.

https://rthorm.itch.io/dungeon23-pamphlet-zines-q1​

Dungeon23 Pamphlet #2

The second issue of the #dungeon23 Pamphlet Zine is now available on DriveThruRPG and on itch.io Individual issues are on the DriveThru site here:

Issue #1
Issue #2

Ordering on itch gets you 3 issues (first 2 are available now; 3rd will be added soon)

Print copies are only available through itch, at least for now. If you pick them up on itch, you’ll get all 3 of the ones planned for the first set (issue 3 is still coming at this time, but will be added soon). Since the print copies are going to be bundled by quarter, it makes it easier to manage if all three for each mailing are included at one time.

https://rthorm.itch.io/dungeon23-pamphlet-zines-q1

Dungeon23 Pamphlet Zine

This is the start of a series of twelve pamphlet zines for #Dungeon23 and #ZiMo2023

The first issue is now available at DriveThruRPG. There will be an issue per month for 2023. The pamphlet is just a single legal-size (8-1/2″ x 14″) sheet folded in quarters, but packed with information. Each issue will contain at least three random tables for features or elements of a dungeon. There will also be at least three maps of dungeon intersections or fragments. And there will be an article on a topic related to dungeons and dungeon design.

The complete list of topics is still in process of development, but this is the plan at present:

• Q1 (Jan/Feb/Mar)
  • Intersections * Halls & tunnels * Stone masonry
• Q2 (Apr/May/Jun)
  • Doors * TBD 1 * Stairs & shafts
• Q3 (Jul/Aug/Sept)
  • Air & gasses * TBD 2 * Mechanisms
• Q4 (Oct/Nov/Dec)
  • Geology * TBD 3 * Plants & vegetation

Because it is just a single page zine, it should be relatively easy and affordable to mail these in a standard business envelope as first-class mail. Since the plan is to do 12 of these over the course of the year, each quarter, an envelope with three issues from the previous quarter can be sent off. And, by keeping it to simple first-class mailing, it should be possible to send copies outside the US without running up ruinous shipping charges. It’ll be more expensive than sending within the US, but maybe only $1-2 more than for domestic mailing.

The shipping is not set up yet, but if you are interested in more information about that once they are ready to go, drop a note to let us know. That will also help with working out the logistics of printing and mailing these once we are ready.

DriveThru link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/428330/Dungeon23-Pamphlet-Zine–n1

Twitter Disconnect(ed)

Twitter is no longer a place of honor, and, speaking for myself, I’ve found an active and vibrant community for short-post social media in Mastodon (https://dice.camp/@rthorm). I’m generally not using Twitter on a regular basis anymore, and now, word has come from WordPress that the API that I’ve been using that automatically posts to Twitter when I add a post here may be breaking with some of the new management’s new caprices…, err rules.

I’m not closing down that account. Yet.

But I think, even if WP and Twitter do work out something new, I won’t be auto-posting there further. So this is a place-holding reminder that the two may be severed soon after this (we’ll have to see if this one posts or not).

Tables for #dungeon23

This is a compilation of the random tables I’ve posted to my Mastodon account for prompts or elements to use for rooms for Dungeon23. These are meant as individual tables, not a sequential set. Some are d10, others are different.

Water

1 Dripping somewhere, coming from above
2 A small flow in a channel, crossing the floor
3 Puddle, or a deeper bowl, an armspan wide
4 Fast moving stream, more than a stride in width, dividing the room in two
5 Shower/waterfall from ceiling
6 Floor and walls are slick with water
7 Stack of water barrels in the corner
8 Umm.. that’s not actually /water/
9 Fountain spraying in the middle
0 There is no floor; this room is a pool

Ceiling:

1 Several heavy iron chains
2 A small flue or chimney
3 Crystalline minerals all over the surface
4 A glowing orb casting dull orange light throughout the room
5 Most of an old, but still legible fresco mural
6 Heavy timbers and broken rock
7 Narrow crevasse extending upwards
8 Something that looks like scales

One wall is:

1 fissured, with several cracks large & deep enough to reach into
2 stacked, rough-sawed logs with rope caulk and tar in the joints
3 actually a pair of large wooden doors
4 a very, very smooth, white stone
5 carved with a set of relief portraits
6 glassy and translucent, like amber
7 bricked up with properly finished masonry
8 a coarsely hewn rock surface with rubble at the foot
9 shot through with veins of gold
0 hidden behind curtains of stitched animal hides

Room is filled with:

1 Brilliant green leaves and vines
2 Decades’ worth of accumulated cobwebs
3 Swirling snow and ice covered surfaces
4 Some form of mist or fog
5 Incredibly foul odors
6 A glow, evenly illuminating everything, coming from an unknown source
7 Swarms of small flying insects
8 Stacks and stacks of bones

Details:

1 Wall covered with strips of old copper
2 Decorative gold inlay on wall near floor
3 Each corner of room is actually a full-height hinge
4 Floor is a bed of smooth, loose, fist-size stones
5 Crystalline projection about the size of a head
6 Floor to ceiling clear glass pipes in one corner
7 Perforated metal plate on wall away from the door
8 Hole shooting hot, moist air into room
9 Stalactites, but projecting from wall
0 Embedded, polished silver plates

This was originally inspired by insipidutopian on Mastodon, and they are compiling these from a number of contributors.

Planetary Display TITAN

I’ve been posting about the Planetary Display for the past few weeks for people interested in the #planet23 #dungeon23 challenge for 2023. Now here’s a filled-out example of it to demonstrate how a planet can be mapped out.

The Planetary Display TITAN project is an example completed Planetary Display using 6 images of Saturn’s moon Titan as imaged by the Cassini mission, and fitting that information into the faces of the Planetary Display. (Since the images are all from an equatorial orbit, the poles are mostly incomprehensible. But 30 faces is a pretty good map.)

You can get the Planetary Display TITAN from DriveThruRPG or on itch.io

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/421077/Planetary-Display-TITAN
https://rthorm.itch.io/planetary-display-titan

Wilderness of Ordurak print map

The Wilderness of Ordurak adventure has been out for a few years now. The original backers (who picked that level) got print versions with both the adventure book and a poster (12″ x 18″) copy of the map. But, since it was made available on DriveThruRPG, the print version of the map has not been available, until now.

There were a couple of typos in the original Ordurak map. After the crowdfunding campaign, when we first made the adventure available to the public, after making the corrections, the print version had a lot of bad, unexplained pixelation. I tried a couple times to re-send the file, but I couldn’t get a decent print version. So this got shifted to the back burner. Most people were okay with getting just the PDF version anyhow, it seemed.

However, one long-time DQ fan wanted a print copy, and helped keep this in my attention. I recently got Affinity Publisher, and decided to try using that to export the print file, now that DriveThru is explicitly recommending Affinity as software to produce print ready files. So I used that to export the image file for the map and sent that to DriveThru.

And, although it’s the busy season, I got the proofs back yesterday, and this time, they look fine.

I think what had happened was just a production glitch; but I could never understand why the problems that we had cropped up. The side-by-side image above shows the older, pixelated version (right) and the current, corrected version (left). The pixelation is not in the original image file, and anyone who got the PDF version of the map had a perfectly good copy. But something about the printer’s settings at DriveThru caused problems.

So here is the link for the Wilderness of Ordurak map, if you’re interested in picking up a copy of the map yourself.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/150356/The-Wilderness-of-Ordurak–Map-only

Unfortunately, if you want to get print versions of the whole package (the adventure, the gazetteer, and the map), you have to place two separate orders, and pay shipping twice, because the map is printed by their cards facility, rather than their book facility.

If there are a number of people who want to get the full print package, I could assemble sets myself, and send them out as a complete package. It probably won’t be until mid-2023 that we’d do this, but if you would be interested in a complete print package from us, shipped all together, let us know here: orders@antherwyck.com

If we get enough interest to justify it, we’ll put together some whole sets for you and send them out.

Planetary Display section

Here’s a first section using the Planetary Display, to show how it might be used for #dungeon23 #space23

This pass is just sketching in the major hydrographics (bodies of water and rivers), a couple of major cities, and some mountains. One option could be to do a couple more passes at the sections, and fill in more of the detail, once I’ve got the preliminary layout done. Or maybe this will be enough, and the next month I’ll do another planet.

It seems like a good idea to play around with things a bit before the beginning of the year, so that it goes more smoothly once things get underway.

There’s lots more to be worked out with this, potentially. Three cities/settlements could be a later source for development, or wait until there’s something specific to do with the planet to add more of those details.

Dungeon Fragment 12-10

Back to a simple hatching style for this one, but with a small set of chambers that have a decent amount of interconnection and choices in the pathways from one side to another.

I look at this as a set of rooms with connecting passages, but I also can see it as a couple of larger chamber with some blocky obstructions in the middle. Wonder if there are other reads folks have for this?

As usual, feel free to use for any non-commercial purpose, or contact me if you’d like to use this on a commercial project, or if you would like to commission a custom piece.

Planetary Display for #Dungeon23 and #space23

There is a dungeon-drawing project currently taking off on Twitter and on Mastodon. The original suggestion was made by Sean McCoy, and is spreading with the hashtag #dungeon23 (or, for space-themed variants, with hashtag #space23). The idea here in the dungeon iteration is to create a megadungeon. Beginning on January 1, participants will create one room each day, and move to the next level each new month, using a journal or daily planner for this to collect the notes for this. At this rate, by the end of the year, you will have accumulated 365 rooms and descriptions over 12 levels – a megadungeon!

There are different approaches one could take for extending this idea from a classic megadungeon and doing something more science fiction. A tower complex or a space station are ready options I’ve seen some people discussing. I’ve also seen suggestions of doing a Traveller sub-sector. And, if you want to do a dozen planets for this, I have some resources for you.

A few years ago, I made some resources for planet mapping that are based on a truncated icosahedron (which you may also know as a buckyball or a soccer ball). Since it has 32 faces, this makes it nearly ideal if you are doing one section a day. (And since there are north- and south-poles, if you let those go, then the remaining 30 sections are even easier to fit into monthly formatting.

Assuming that a few people might be interested in working with this, I’ve made discounts for these from DriveThru RPG:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=95b542e778 (PDF)

A set of Planetary Display Log Book pages, with one section per page designed for printing an 8-1/2″ x 11″ notebook for mapping a planet.

This Logbook is designed for mapping the surface of a single planet (or other spherical body). The surface is divided into 32 faces; 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons, all with equal edge length.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=95bf35c96c (softcover print)

A POD print version of the Planetary Display Log Book The print version has a blank globe on the cover (image right), but unfortunately, the glossy cover isn’t very easy to draw on.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=95cf9d2af3 (PDF)

Single page PDF poster with the latitude and longitude lines and the 32 sections.

I hadn’t done anything with the Planetary Display logbook for a few years. But I just re-opened it to check it out again. I found it works very well as a digest (zine) size 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″ booklet. I also did a re-ordering of pages and printed it in the order “1, 3-40, 2” which might also appeal to you as a better layout.

The discounts on these at DriveThru is good through the end of January.

Dungeon Fragment 12-03

A rough, jagged map seemed to be called for. Hatched poche seemed that it would be too much, so instead, you see the simple stipple for this. I wasn’t thinking about the last, swoopy map posted last week, but this is pretty much in contrast to that one.

I took a couple of pictures of the page as I was working on it, so I have a sequence of the various states of progress to get to this point. The whole thing isn’t all that involved, so it’s not all that dramatic or exciting, but I’m thinking about posting that as a way of showing the process and progression with this.

As usual, feel free to use for any non-commercial purpose, or contact me if you’d like to use this on a commercial project, or if you would like to commission a custom piece.

Chimney Map

Maybe the last map made me long for doing some brick greebling. Maybe I just needed something that wasn’t a plan for a change of pace. In any case, the idea for this struck, and I wanted to knock out a quick and dirty version of it.

The flues are big and open, so you can see all the pathways. I was experimenting with a fill in the flues to make it dark, rather than white. But it was reading a little oddly, so this is a clean and readable version.

(And, as discussed on Mastodon, this is very fictional (and functionally unsafe)*. A real mason would have an aneurysm looking at this.
(*See also every crawl through ducts in any movie)

It seemed to me that this could be used as the map for some kind of a caper or heist game, where the plan layout of the space matters less than the arrangement of the fireplaces and flues for a crew to scamper around a building going between rooms and levels. If you make this work for something like that, I would love to hear about how that goes.

As usual, feel free to use for any non-commercial purpose, or contact me if you’d like to use this on a commercial project, or if you would like to commission a custom piece.

Dungeon Fragment 11-26

Sometimes, the final version of the map goes in a different direction than what was expected with the initial concept. In this case, the first idea for the drawing was to have hooks and switchbacks; that the connectors would have sharp turns rather than being more direct A-to-B kinds of connections. But the version that came out of that, with these swoopy, Art Nouveau lines, was not necessarily what I was after. It’s not a bad thing at all; just different from the initial thought.

It also clearly didn’t call for a Dyson-hatch or for a block wall style to outline the edges. The denser stipple at the edges along with the overall poche also seems pretty successful with this one.

As usual, feel free to use for any non-commercial purpose, or contact me if you’d like to use this on a commercial project, or if you would like to commission a custom piece.

Dungeon Fragment 11-19

This is a different sort of map in that it has a sense of directionality to it. It starts with a larger trunk, and then breaks down to smaller passages as it moves away from that base. Or maybe it’s like the dispersal in the delta region of a river. In any case, there is a difference between sides.

As usual, feel free to use for any non-commercial purpose, or contact me if you’d like to use this on a commercial project, or if you would like to commission a custom piece.

Dungeon Fragment 11-12

More experimentation with borders and poche fill in this. The corridor with piers running down the middle is a bit goofy, perhaps, but maybe it was once a mine or some kind of created structure.

As usual, feel free to use for any non-commercial purpose, or contact me if you’d like to use this on a commercial project, or if you would like to commission a custom piece.