I’m still making videos, so you should go watch them!
#8 Saving Saxham: I review my very first adventure and discuss what I did right and what I definitely did not do right.
#9 Factions: Let’s talk about how to design and use factions in your adventures.
#11 Layout: A super useful (if not super exciting) discussion of document design!
Hi, my name is Joe and my friends in the RPG community have tricked me into making a series of videos about how to write an adventure.
Yep, I’m back on YouTube.
Part 1: How to define your vision or goal, including: Example of style, Example of design, Player action, Setting, Types of creatures, and Story.
Part 2: Making lists, or how to do basic research for your adventure. Including: Adventure locations, People and professions, and Genre and mundane creatures.
Part 3: Making an outline for your adventure, including: Shuffling locations, Adding people, Adding creatures, and Saving the leftovers.
Part 4: Writing a location, including: Descriptions (read-aloud text), Bulleted items (details), and Writing NPCs.
Part 5: Creating additional content, including: Introductions, Random Encounter Tables, and Maps.
Part 6: Q&A, including: Laying out maps, Avoiding scope creep, One-page dungeons, Pros and cons of tables, Designing a small adventure, Organizing a document, PC motivations and goals, Elevating the first draft, and NPC goals.
If you have any questions or ideas for more videos, let me know!
Happy New Year to all!
I thought I would mark the changing of the calendars by giving you a peek behind the curtain here at Dungeon Age enterprises. I’m going to present some of my sales data, both to thank you all for your support over the years, and also in the hopes that it is helpful to other independent publishers.
As a note, I have never personally run a kickstarter or used any other sales or marketing tools. I just publish my PDFs on DriveThruRPG and make a few announcements on the blog or social media, and then move on to write the next thing. The numbers I am about to present are purely my own sales on DriveThruRPG, and don’t include other efforts (like my projects with the very excellent Merry Mushmen).
So let’s start with some Big Picture numbers:
DTRPG has a “metal” award system. Copper products have sold 50+ copies. Silver are 100+. Electrum are 250+. Gold products are 500+ . Platinum are 1,000+. Currently, Dungeon Age has:
We all like charts, rights? So I made a chart of some of the sales volumes of the more successful Dungeon Age adventures:
So here we can see a bunch of interesting things.
Well, my experiences have mostly confirmed things I already knew from back when I used to published novels.
*A small product costs less, so a new customer is taking a smaller risk by buying it. If they like it, they’ll probably come back for more. Also, having lots of different products makes it easier to offer people different things. I have fairy tale forests, and desert pyramids, and space vampires. With a wider selection, it becomes more likely that I’ll be able to catch everyone’s eye with something. Also, I can make more small products in a year than big ones, so it seems like a more efficient use of my time and energy.
Let me know if you have any specific questions that I might be able to answer about how this business works. I’m no expert, but I’ve been around for a good while now…
Well, it’s the “holiday season”. That weird time of year when we smash together Labor Day, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Talk Like a Pirate Day, Indigenous People’s Day, Halloween, Diwali, Election Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Eve into a relentless blur of decorations, music, feasts, movie marathons, parties, and intensely heightened emotions.
I often find this time of year a bit stressful. Perhaps you can relate.
I can’t do much about… well, anything out there. But I can do this:
I have dropped the prices of all of the Dungeon Age adventures and games. And who knows, I may just leave them like this indefinitely. Business stuff stresses me out. I just want you guys to have fun. And I really just use the money to hire artists to help make more stuff. So here we go:
System Note: I think every adventure comes in multiple versions, or with multiple appendices of stat blocks. Check the pages for details. There should be a 5e version, an OSR or OSE version, and for some a Cairn version.
As you may have noticed, my current OSR system darling is Cairn and the general Odd-like family of games. I really appreciate the general ethos of encouraging players to be creative problem-solvers instead of min-maxing character-sheet masters. I prefer exploration over combat. But I also love rules-light games that are easy to learn, fast to play, and genuinely fun.
So in that spirit, I have been going back through my catalog of adventures to see which might make good Cairn modules. And the first obvious candidate was my very first adventure, Saving Saxham.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
The original adventure presented players with a small village that has a big problem (everyone died 30 years ago, but none of the resurrected villagers know that). The forest is full of ghosts and zombies, pixies and plague rats, elves and goblins. And the big twist is that if the players do nothing, then everything will probably be ok(ish). But if the players start killing zombies and banishing ghosts, then they actually make life in the village worse.
END SPOILERS!!!
Anyway, I went back to Saxham and looked for ways to make it a solid Cairn adventure. So in addition to changing the creature stat blocks (into much sleeker forms), I also added new adventure locations and creatures, tied some of the factions together in clearer ways, and re-did all of the art.
Then I reformatted the whole thing into a two-column digest-sized layout, and made it a Print On Demand booklet. Which is fantastic. I wish I had been making all my adventures like this from the beginning (because I really like making things I can hold in my hands).
So if you head over to DriveThruRPG now, when you get the PDF of Saving Saxham, you are getting the new Cairn edition, AND the original 5e edition, AND the original OSR edition. And if you get the print version, then you are getting the physical Cairn edition, as well as ALL THREE digital versions. Hope you like it!
PS – There will be more!
My newest adventure / setting / game is now available on DriveThruRPG. Here’s the blurb:
In The Undying Sea, players take on the roles of sea-faring adventurers sailing the misty currents on their siltcutter. As they discover new islands, they will encounter the conquering Tortuvan Empire, the mutant crab Brakken Hegemony, the undead Kadav Pirates, the mysterious Undine Coven, and a few stray Vampire Sybarites as well.
The farther they sail from home, the stranger and more perilous the islands become. Players can negotiate with foreign powers, become fearsome pirates, grow wealthy as traders, or pursue any other agenda they wish. They could even seek out the legendary White Vault to undo the necrotic curse that lays upon the sea, and restore it to a paradise!
In short, it’s Into the Odd / Cairn on a boat, and its pretty fun. I’ve been playing it every week for months now, and it only takes about 3 minutes to generate a whole complex new island with NPCs, monsters, treasures, and other details that make for hours of gaming.
Player spend about half their time trying to survive their encounters at sea just to reach the islands where they can find allies and trade partners, or ancient necropolises full of traps and treasure, or lands mutated by the crab-folk, or undead pirates, or whatever.
Shout out to Vault Crawler for the amazing cover and full-page interiors:
And shout out to Hodag RPG for the amazing bestiary illustrations:
A print-on-demand option will be available in a few weeks, too. But for right now you can check out the digital version.
Hey, I wrote another tiny tomb, and it’s Pay What You Want (PWYW)!
Here is the third of my Tiny Tomb series: Tomb of the Primate Priest. It’s just a few bizarre wooden rooms full of living tunnels, root trolls, monkey monks, and a dryad. Because every campaign should have a bunch of random little tombs scattered all over the wilderness to discover!
I wrote it with Cairn in mind, but then I added in all the stats for 5E and for OSE, so you can run it in whatever system you like. Plus it was an excuse to practice drawing some new monsters!
It is Pay What You Want, so you can go grab it for free right now. Enjoy!
A puzzle dragon is a powerful monster, but it does not have a traditional stat block. It can only be killed in one specific way. The challenge for the players is to learn how to kill the puzzle dragon, and then to perform the actions needed to do so. If they can perform the correct actions, then the dragon is defeated.
(I’m sure other people have written about this idea, but it’s in my head right now, so I’m writing about it right now.)
In the animated film The Hobbit, the monstrous Smaug is a perfect example of a puzzle dragon. You do not kill Smaug by hitting him with swords or fireballs until he runs out of hit points. No. You sneak into his lair, and trick him into revealing his belly, which is missing a single scale. Then you send this information to the archer Bard, who possesses an uncanny Black Arrow. Then you enrage Smaug into leaving the safety of his lair to fly over Laketown, where Bard can shoot the Black Arrow into the exposed belly.
In the film Dragonslayer, the monsterous Vermithrax Pejorative is another very different puzzle. The old wizard must allow himself to be captured and carried off by the dragon, and then the young apprentice must smash a powerful amulet, which causes the old wizard to explode in the dragon’s talons, killing the beast.
I think this is much better than a hit-point dragon. So let’s make more puzzle dragons!
There are three components to killing a puzzle dragon:
Roll 1d6 three times to generate a puzzle dragon. The Target is the part of the dragon’s body that must be attacked. The Timing is what that body part must be doing to be vulnerable. The Tool is the only thing that can harm the Target (select one). If you do not like one of the results… change it!
| ROLL | TARGET | TIMING | TOOL |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eye | Open | Special Weapon: sword, spear, axe, arrow, bullet, knife… |
| 2 | Mouth | Raised | Powerful Relic: saint bone, rare scroll, wizard skull… |
| 3 | Throat | Still | Unique Liquid: potion, acid, poison, holy water, salt water, alcohol… |
| 4 | Heart | Swollen | Heat: fire, lightning, lava, steam… |
| 5 | Belly | Noisy | Force: falling, crushing, burying, vibration, thunder… |
| 6 | Back | Glowing | Light: sunlight, starlight, moonlight, bioluminescence… |
Defeating a puzzle dragon requires a quest of investigation, exploration, problem-solving, and action.
The Referee (or DM or GM) must combine the Target, Timing, and Tool results into a sensible narrative, or Explanation. They must create NPCs (witnesses and experts) to provide relevant information to the players. They may require a quest to obtain the Tool, including clues, locations, and foes. And then they must play out the dragon battle as a series of logical challenges.
Puzzle Dragon: Infernix Imbroglio
Explanation. Just before the dragon breathes fire, its throat glows with the build-up of combustible bile. At this moment, a lightning strike can make the dragon’s throat explode, killing the dragon.
In Play. The party learns of the existence of the dragon Aggravix Imbroglio and decides to slay the monster. They quickly learn that past attempts to kill the dragon have failed, so they investigate.
Puzzle Dragon: Carcassax Orgoglio
Explanation. The dragon is undead and slithers on the ground. Her black heart can be destroyed by holy water, but only when she rises off the ground to reveal the hole in her rotting chest.
In Play. The party learns of the existence of the dragon Irritrix Orgoglio and decides to slay the monster. They quickly learn that past attempts to kill the dragon have failed, so they investigate.
That’s all I have for this idea right now. So go forth and create puzzle dragons!
Hey, I wrote another tiny tomb, and it’s Pay What You Want (PWYW)!
Here is the second of my Tiny Tomb series: Tomb of the Tin Templar. It’s just a few bizarre rooms full of mechanical traps, tinker gnomes, electric jellyfish, and windup toys. Because every campaign should have a bunch of random little tombs scattered all over the wilderness to discover!
I wrote it with Cairn in mind, but then I added in all the stats for 5E and for OSE, so you can run it in whatever system you like. Plus it was an excuse to practice drawing some new monsters!
It is Pay What You Want, so you can go grab it for free right now. Enjoy!
June 12 is my birthday, so let’s celebrate. I’m turning 45 (apparently), so on June 12 all Dungeon Age games and adventures will be $0.45.
Yes, forty-five cents.
Yes, all of them.
But only on June 12.
You know why.
