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The Alder King game has been moving along slowly. We played a session in October; in November we were on holidays; in December we played a single session with our high level characters (they are around level 7) trying to retrieve the soul drinking scythe from Tavasmok, lord of the bone men living in the top levels of the *Caverns of Thracia* (I’m using a scythe instead of a sword because I think it is more appropriate for the death theme, and because I have a cleric of Thanatos who wants it very badly). It is January now and time to return to the low level henchmen in the *Great Roaring Jungle* of the Lenap map in the *Wilderlands of High Fantasy*.
In October they had just fought a giant snail in the ruins of Zamboanga (There Are No Tails in Zamboanga by Buzz Burgess, an entry in the One Page Dungeon Contest 2009). My players solved the Onyx vs. Obsidian riddle and were intrigued. It’s a super simple riddle but it fit into my setting. The party had met many lizard men in an early part of the campaign, all armed with macahuitls (an aztec sword looking like a cricket bat set with obsidian chips), and thus seeing an old human ruin with images showing men wielding the kind of weapons the grass smoking lizard men are still using these days gave the site a sense of history. Nobody knows why the Onyx faction dominated the Obsidian faction, but maybe that is some interesting detail to explore in another local mini dungeon.
There Are No Tails in Zamboanga by Buzz Burgess
I liked this about the dungeon: There is an in-game riddle. Not solving it is no show-stopper: Players could always decide to bash down locked doors using brute force and a lot of time. The reward for solving the riddle is a non-combat victory and an interesting glimpse of the setting’s past.
The party is also interested in learning how to activate a *portal*. A mysterious sage (possibly no sage at all) pointed them to a wise man, but double checking facts with a local elven mage resulted in them learning that this wise man was lost and revealed that he was in fact nothing but an apprentice to the earth mage Ken-Kuni. So after having found the dwarven hammer in the ruins of Zamboanga, they continued to the earth temple. There, I had designed a series of tests that should prepare the party for the Halls of the Mad Mage by Justin Alexander (another {1PDC One Page Dungeon Contest} 2009 entry). The party climbed down a well were gravity worked in a 90° angle, found a cube asking the party to “jump twenty feet in the direction of the earth” and a peek at a lava chamber. I’ll use the halls to deposit some useful information and a way to follow Ken-Kuni, if the party is so inclined. We’ll see how it will play out.
Halls of the Mad Mage by Justin Alexander
Right now the party decided they needed to memorize some *fire resistance* spells and was attacked by two trolls during the night before we ended the session.
Truly, I love this campaign, and I love using *One Page Dungeons*.
I recently got an email of somebody interesting in sponsoring the *contest in 2011*. I should start thinking about it. Is anybody interested in running the contest in 2011? If you’re interested in doing it, or in helping out, let me know. I’ll probably start looking for sponsors and judges in spring, run the contest in May, read the entries and judge stuff in June and July, and announce winners at the beginning of August.
#RPG #1PDC
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1PDC is like a 100-deep nesting doll, where each time you open one hot ladies and fabulous prizes spring forth. And next year there’s a new one.
Please PLEASE keep this going. I look forward to this with glee like a child days before Christmas.
“Just five sleeps until 1PD comes out!”
– 1d30 2011-01-10 19:51 UTC
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Yes, oh yes.... I love gleaning the 1PDs... I may even participate this year.
– Boric Glanduum 2011-01-11 00:55 UTC
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Thank you both. 😄
– Alex Schroeder 2011-01-11 09:54 UTC
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I will most definitely contribute this year. I discovered it last year with one month left before deadline and no time to finish mine. So now, of course, I have five possible entries waiting in the wings to be polished off, finished up, and sent in.
Reading past entries (and my future ones) fills me with glee.
– Roland Volz 2011-02-14 19:46 UTC
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Also note the German One Page Dungeon Contest by Moritz Mehlem! 😄
German One Page Dungeon Contest by Moritz Mehlem
– Alex Schroeder 2011-02-15 00:25 UTC
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I’m happy to help out with the publishing again.
– Harald Wagener 2011-02-15 07:05 UTC
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Yeah, I ran across that yesterday for the first time. I speak German rather fluently, but I’m not sure I’d be able to translate my concepts correctly to German! There’s a lot of archaic words that I know in English for which I never bothered to learn the German equivalents. Otherwise, my submissions would already have been translated!
– Roland Volz 2011-02-15 13:58 UTC
