Posts

30 Minute Dungeon Guide: Room Prompts

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Hey so you know how I made the 30 Minute Dungeon thing that blew up for a while? Well I've been working a little on refining it. For those of you who may be new to the blog, the 30 Minute Dungeon method is something I came up with where you set a timer for 30 minutes and make a 10 room dungeon, using the following checklist for what must be included: 3 Empty Rooms 3 Combat Encounters 2 Traps 1 NPC 1 Special/Weird Thing It took off and I compiled a collection of the dungeons I made, selling them in a pdf which got a justifiably mixed review by Skerples of Coins and Scrolls fame. A big problem I had with the formula is I kept being repetitive with how I designed the dungeons and how I would sometimes waste time getting stuck not knowing what to do for rooms. So I decided to come up with some prompts that help me come up with ideas for rooms without being too specific, ultimately coming up with 6 prompts for each room type, therefore allowing me to roll a d6 to randomly de...

Miracle Workers

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Hey, sorry for not posting in so long, things have been busy with college and work. Anyway, I have been working on revising JABOM (my house rules), ad came up with this potential new version of the priest/cleric class. It isn't playtested, but I thought I'd let y'all know how its turning out. Also featuring bad MSpaint art, because why not!! Miracle Worker You are a holy person, following strict rules of your faith to the letter. Through this piety and reverence of the divine, you are able to create miracles. Level HP Attack Bonus Special Abilities 1 6+CON mod +0 Piety, Miracles 2 Add 1d6+CON mod +1 +1 Magic Point, New Spell 3 Add 1d6+CON mod +1 +1 Magic Point, New Spell 4 Add 1d6+CON mod +2 +1 Magic Point, New Spell 5 ...

A Blogging Challenge: MSpaint Monster Manual

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I'm not an artist, at least not a visual one, though I often wish I was. I enjoy doodling in MSpaint a lot, it helps pass the time and makes me happy, but nothing I make in there is really truly "art". So the other day I thought, "Screw it, just doodle 5 monsters from the AD&D monster manual in MSpaint and put it on your blog. It isn't an art gallery, its a place for me to express myself and goof off", and so I did. And I realized that I bet a lot of the rest of the blogosphere is similar, not having too much art experience and wanting to create something, but not really feeling competent in their abilities and expressing themselves. So here's a blogging challenge or whatever; crack open a monster manual or bestiary and just doodle a couple of the monsters there in MSpaint. This is just for funsies, you can spend as little or as much time as you want, go hogwild! To kick things off, here are 5 of my MSpaint monsters! I might do more of this, I mig...

The Volkov Institute

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The History of the Institute The Volkov Institute is a top secret international organization founded in the early 20th century to investigate, contain, and eliminate supernatural phenomena. It is named after the little known scientist, Dr. Ivan Volkov, a Russian immigrant to England, who first conclusively proved the existence of other planes of existence in 1887, through a device later called the Volkov Resonator. The first test run went fine, with Volkov and his machine disappearing and reappearing a few minutes later with a violet glow. Volkov claimed to have been in a supernaturally beautiful meadow, full of flowers with "alien colors" and wonderful scents. A few months later, Volkov presented his invention to the Royal Society, and had prepared a demonstration. He did not survive. (From 1986's From Beyond ) Dr. Volkov, upon describing what his invention did, was met with disbelief and mockery. He had anticipated this, and so asked for a volunteer from the audi...

Word Vomit: Dungeon City

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Hi I haven't posted in well over a month, anyway here is a city that is perfect for casual dungeon crawl games. This is part of a series of posts called Word Vomit, where I basically throw something together and only lightly edit it, to try and combat my writer's block. Dungeon City This place doesn't seem so much like it was built as it was grown, with chaotic and twisted spires extending up high into the sky, held up by makeshift supports and bridges connecting various buildings.  Those who are rich live in the upper levels of the city, high above the ground, above the filth and squalor below. The city makes its income thanks to the Ultradungeon, a huge network of millions of tunnels and rooms that extends for miles underneath the city. Strangely, it seems to constantly shifting and evolving, growing just as the city seems to have, and within its depths are countless treasures, both monetary and enchanted. Through this, the city stays afloat, and many cargo ships l...

Realms Of Gibbitude: A Mini Setting/Hack

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What if D&D was a ridiculously over-the-top action movie/video game? This hack/setting is basically a dumb experiment with that concept. Don't take this setting seriously, its not meant to be genuinely interesting or deep or anything, play up the ridiculousness and absurdity. Everything should be as over-the-top and gonzo as possible. The action genre is silly. The world as we knew it ended a couple decades ago. Nobody knows for sure what happened, everything was so fast. Now blood-soaked demons, cannibalistic mutants, berserk robots, and merciless aliens prowl the landscape, haunting the ruins of humanity's own hubris. This is Hell on Earth, and you're damned. But there is a glimmer of hope. There are rumors of a machine that can end you back to the past, to stop the apocalypse before it happened, but the road to this device is long and dangerous. To reach the time machine and save humanity, you must cross the REALMS OF GIBBITUDE!!! (From Pinterest, let me know ...

Dragons on Erath

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I don't really like how traditional D&D dragons work. They don't seem to give off a coherent feeling to me, they don't seem to have a proper soul if you will. This could just be me, but they just feel so boring. Maybe its the huge number of kinds of dragons that exist that makes them so boring to me, or maybe its the fact that they have a high level of intelligence and then do basically nothing but lie around in caves all day or eat a few peasants. It just doesn't sit quite well with me. When I think of my idealized dragon, these are kind of what they look like; (From Dragonslayer) (These two are unknown sources, please let me know if you know who the artists are so I can credit them) I don't like the more mystical side of dragons, with spell-casting and shape shifting and magic and stuff like that. When a dragon is around things should be messed up. Its not natural at all, it destroys entire ecosystems and razes villages to the ground, and it doe...