This week I focused on creating the resting place for Lord Ashmore, the (maybe) final goal of the players.

It took me a bit longer than I anticipated. There was some real world stuff that prevented me from getting it done earlier. I also decided to downsize the fortress to a garrison. I imagined that a fortress would be way bigger than I can do in such a short amount of time. Don't know if the garrison really fits in the whole backstory but it has to do.

Dungeon Design

As mentioned last time I wanted to create a two layer dungeon. The upper layer should basically be kind of a challenge for the players to get to the lower levels. So it acts like the entrance/guardian room of the 5 room dungeon, even though it ends up having 3 different rooms.

I struggled a bit to make an interesting lower level. I knew of two-ish rooms that should be here. For one, I needed a connecting piece from the Tower in the swamps to here. The other was a room, where I could put some diaries - and with it, some lore. Of course there also needs to be some room, where the Big Bad waits. At first I was not so sure, if I should put him into the same room as the diaries.

Another challenge was to make the dungeon not that boring, but have some interesting rooms to actually explore. The 5 room dungeon helps here a bit, but I didn't want to have a "puzzle" room, because that does not translate well into an old-school adventure.

I also wanted to link some of the dungeon to the "overworld", so induce that feeling of recognition of certain aspects. Part of that I put into the random encounter table. So the world becomes more interconnected and consistent in itself.

In the end I imagined the whole thing as some sort of bunker of the Lord. So there is a bedchamber, a pantry, a treasure room and his throne room - now, don't ask me why he has his own throne room. I sprinkled in some surprises for the players, so nothing should be all to boring and every room has something interesting in it, and uses up some of the resources.

Some more challenges

In this week I also went over the whole document and tried to come up with a more or less consistent way of describing things. I took some inspiration on how The hole in the Oak formatted its text. Which is also what was described in the analysis of adventure design.

The advantage of it, it is short. This allows me to write all the neccessary text quite quickly - just a few bullet points and descriptors. And it saves a lot of space, so I have to layout less text in the end. However it is a style I'm not all to familiar with. I think I managed to do it, but it is far from perfect.

On a first analysis I don't think I will be able to put everything onto two pages and layout it into a pamphlet as initially planned. It is going to be more of a zine probably - just a few A5 pages, that can form a booklet. Maybe I can relayout it a bit after the jam.

First Submissions

There are already first submissions coming in on the page. I'm astonished how some of them were done rather quickly (I think the first one, was published 10 days after the jam start) and look already quite polished.

I guess the authors have way more experience than me in creating such adventures. Even still, they were able to layout everything and draw their maps. Which is impressive.

It's a bit disheartening; not going to lie. Not that I counted on winning anyway. It is probably very advantageous to have something ready early. People can already see it and so it generates more traction. I think I also already saw some ratings already. So they have a head start.

Plans

Now that I have finished writing everything and I think that there will not be any major changes anymore, I can start drawing my maps. I need the hexcrawl and the dungeon map. It is definitely wise in finishing up all the description, so that you know how many rooms etc. you need.

After that is finished, I need to put everything into a layout. That is also some amount of work, especially since it's the first time I want to use some DTP software in doing so. Learning on the job so to speak. What could possibly go wrong.

Fingers crossed I manage to do everything this week. Since I also have to figure out on submitting my project.