That's it. About an hour ago, I put the final touches on the preliminary draft of the dungeon notes for Stonehell and sent it off to my Three-Headed collaborators for review. The book is not complete by any stretch of the imagination, but getting the meat of the book written and assembled before the weekend had been my goal and it has been met.
As I mentioned to Sham and Chgowiz, I can't call Stonehell a One Page Dungeon anymore, not even with a wink, a nudge, and the gratuitous use of air quotes. I think I've discovered a new format called "The Abbreviated Dungeon." Despite this, I believe it remains true to the One Page Dungeon ideal and I hope you fine folks will too should you deign to peruse the final product.
To give you an idea of what I mean by abbreviated, here's an apples to oranges comparison. The Temple of Elemental Evil supermodule (T1-4) runs 128 pp. and has 483 keyed encounters/rooms if you add up Hommlet, Nulb, the Moathouse, and the Temple itself. The first half of Stonehell has 717 keyed rooms and I'm dedicated to bringing the book in at 120 pp. or less. It also has 42 new monsters (some familiar, some not so), 14 new magical items, and 3 new spells. It retains its brevity yet still presents a central framework to support the overall dungeon. I'm pleased with the result at the moment.
I've referred to the project in private as my D&D Master's thesis and only half-jokingly. It must be the largest single piece of writing I've ever done. The Dungeon Alphabet was a cakewalk compared to this. My primary concern with the manuscript is going to be seeing if I can draft someone to edit the beast. Art is a secondary concern at the moment, but I think I'm going to let everything be a secondary concern for a couple days as I reassemble my mind for the next phase - writing the intro chapters and starting review of the draft. But that can wait.
In the meantime, for no other reason than it was one of the many songs that served as the soundtrack for the writing process, here's The Quick performing "Pretty Please."
As I mentioned to Sham and Chgowiz, I can't call Stonehell a One Page Dungeon anymore, not even with a wink, a nudge, and the gratuitous use of air quotes. I think I've discovered a new format called "The Abbreviated Dungeon." Despite this, I believe it remains true to the One Page Dungeon ideal and I hope you fine folks will too should you deign to peruse the final product.
To give you an idea of what I mean by abbreviated, here's an apples to oranges comparison. The Temple of Elemental Evil supermodule (T1-4) runs 128 pp. and has 483 keyed encounters/rooms if you add up Hommlet, Nulb, the Moathouse, and the Temple itself. The first half of Stonehell has 717 keyed rooms and I'm dedicated to bringing the book in at 120 pp. or less. It also has 42 new monsters (some familiar, some not so), 14 new magical items, and 3 new spells. It retains its brevity yet still presents a central framework to support the overall dungeon. I'm pleased with the result at the moment.
I've referred to the project in private as my D&D Master's thesis and only half-jokingly. It must be the largest single piece of writing I've ever done. The Dungeon Alphabet was a cakewalk compared to this. My primary concern with the manuscript is going to be seeing if I can draft someone to edit the beast. Art is a secondary concern at the moment, but I think I'm going to let everything be a secondary concern for a couple days as I reassemble my mind for the next phase - writing the intro chapters and starting review of the draft. But that can wait.
In the meantime, for no other reason than it was one of the many songs that served as the soundtrack for the writing process, here's The Quick performing "Pretty Please."
1 comment:
Congrats on meeting your deadline. I can't wait to see the finished project.
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