More Reviews and a Discount

It's probably redundant to mention it since most of this blog's readers are no doubt aware of Jeff's Gameblog, but, on the off-chance you missed it there, Jeff Rients offers up a review of The Dungeon Alphabet. Meanwhile, over at Tower of the Archmage, David has posted his opinion of Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls.

Speaking of Stonehell Dungeon, Lulu is offering a 20% "cabin fever" discount this weekend. The offer is good until January 18th at 11:59 PM GMT. Enter the code CABIN during checkout to receive 20% off your purchase. The offer does not "stack" with the READMORE2010 discount.

Save 10% on Stonehell Dungeon During January

Lulu.com is having their regular author popularity contest and I've entered my own name amongst the contestents. I did so not with any hope or desire to win, but to give my readers the chance to save 10% off the cover price of Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls. The discount appears to apply to both the hard copy and the .PDF version of the book. Just enter the code READMORE2010 when you checkout for the savings. The contest (and discount) ends January 31st.

More Shilling from Yours Truly

There was a small bump of posts in the blogosphere today regarding books with my name on them. One of these days, I won’t have anything to plug, I promise you. In the meanwhile, you can read A Paladin in Citadel’s review of Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls here and then wander over to Spell Card! for a peek inside and some words about The Dungeon Alphabet.

More Stonehell Coverage

Two more reviews of Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls have appeared online. Jerry Stratton of The Bibylon Broadsheet talks about his impressions of the book here, and the Circle of Dar Janix provides a midway report on the book over here. Good things are said all around.

Remember that Lulu is still having its 20% discount offer. Use the code “HOHOHO” on checkout to save through December 31st. Even if you don’t pick up my book, there are many fine old school RPG products available, all of which could use your business.

New Stonehell Dungeon Review

Flynn has a review of Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls up on his blog. Check it out here.

Save 20% on Stonehell Dungeon

Lulu has announced a site-wide discount of 20% off any purchase between now and Dec. 31st. Just enter the code "HOHOHO" during the check-out process to receive the discount. I've confirmed that this code applies to my own book, so if you were looking for an excuse to pick up a copy (or yet another copy), consider this your green light to proceed.

Stonehell Purchasing Opportunity for Long Island Area Gamers

Yesterday, I dropped the two remaining copies of Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls from my personal stash off at Brothers Grim Games and Hobbies in Selden, NY. They are autographed and I believe are marked at the same price as their Lulu brethren. If you’re in the Long Island area and have been meaning to pick up a copy of the book, this is a perhaps never-to-be-repeated opportunity to grab a printed version without the need to pay (and wait) for shipping. There’s only two available on the shelf (or at least there were yesterday), so it’s first come, first served.

Stonehell Dungeon Review en Español with Pictures

Today, the Spanish gaming group, La Marca del Este (The East Mark), has a photo review of Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls on the blog, Aventuras en la Marca del Este. I received a very nice email from them yesterday letting me know about the review beforehand. You can read the review and check out the photos here. Here's the Babelfish translation for Anglophones.

I often forget that I’m not lodged in a garret somewhere, spewing these obscure thoughts out via parchment and a big, feathery quill. People actually do read some of them, and those people are located throughout the world. It’s only at times like this that I remember how plugged in I am to a larger audience. It’s perhaps for the best that way, too. My illusions of obscurity and locality prohibit me from overanalyzing what I write and they keep my thoughts honest.

New Stonehell Dungeon Review

James of the Underdark Gazette took the time to deliver a pretty comprehensive review of Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls. Check it out here.

Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls is now available

For sale on Lulu: http://stores.lulu.com/poleandrope

134 pp. perfect-bound book: $13.00
PDF download: $6.50
Six page preview PDF: Free
Supplement One: The Brigand Caves: Free

Review available at: Grognardia

Stonehell Dungeon is a classic-style megadungeon, filled with enough monsters, traps, weirdness, and treasure to keep you gaming for a long, long time. Explore over 700 rooms, encounter more than 40 new monsters, and discover 18 mysterious magical items – and that’s just in the dungeon’s upper half!

Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls details the first six levels of a megadungeon intended for use with the Labyrinth Lord™ role-playing game, but is easily adaptable to most early versions of the original fantasy role-playing game and its retro-clones. Featuring the art of J.A. D’Andrea, Lee Barber, Marcelo Paschoalin, and Ralph Pasucci, Stonehell Dungeon gives the game master all the necessary information to run his players through the dungeon, while offering enormous opportunities to customize and expand on the site.

The monsters of Stonehell Dungeon are waiting to meet you. Won’t you come in?

"At my signal, unleash hell."

Soon.

Whew!

The proof of the Stonehell compilation has been ordered and the contributors have been sent their PDF copies. If the proof comes back as intended, I'll be offering the book for sale within the next 7-14 days.

I'm going to go take a walk out in the cool, Autumn air now. Have a great weekend, everybody.

New THM Games Release: Swords & Wizardry Reference Sheets

Michael “Chgowiz” Shorten announced yesterday that he has completed the Swords & Wizardry Reference Sheets, his second release under the Three-Headed Monster Games imprint. The PDF is available from RPGNow.com and DriveThruRPG.com for $1.99 US. Here’s what Chgowiz has to say about them:

It is a 28 pg PDF digest sized booklet of the charts and tables from the 3rd printing, as well as a couple of new monsters, a whole slew of Wilderness Encounter tables (not in Core Rules printing) and an updated/revamped Treasure Generation system (enhanced from Core Rules). It will be priced at 1.99$US.

Why should you buy this? Quite simply, if you know the rules of S&W/OD&D and you merely need tables/charts and some random encounter/treasure generation - then this is for you. I ran a game on Saturday with just this booklet and didn't have to open any other reference. If you are learning the game, this organizes all the tables/charts into a small reference so you can quickly look up what you need to look up.

Pick up your copy today!

Stonehell Dungeon Art Update

I’m posting this both on the Three-Headed Monster Games blog and on the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope blog. Please forgive the cross-posting.

Let me begin by thanking everyone who has contacted me with offers of contributing art to the Stonehell Dungeon book. I had hoped to find one or two people willing to contribute their time and talent, but I’ve had a steady stream of offers pouring through my inbox in the last twenty-four hours. I’d like to take everyone up on their offer to help, but that would result in a 200+ page book!

I’m still working my way through the offers and reviewing the samples people have submitted. I suspect it may be a day or two before I get back to everyone, so please excuse the delay if you’ve contacted me and are currently awaiting a reply. I hope to have finished sifting through them all by this weekend.

I’m not closing the door on submissions, as I may have certain pieces that match better with certain artistic styles, but I unfortunately won’t be able to take everyone up on their offer. That being said, if you’d still like to contribute something to the book, please don’t hesitate to drop me an email at poleandrope [AT] gmail [dot] com. I’m continuing the review process and I’ll make a formal announcement to close the submission period once I’ve matched artists to projects.

My sincere thanks to all of you.

Looking for Stonehell Dungeon Art

I’m posting this both on the Three-Headed Monster Games blog and on the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope blog. Please forgive the cross-posting.

With the draft of Stonehell Dungeon rapidly approaching completion, it’s become time for me to start considering the elements of the book beyond my ability to produce. I decided early on that I’d resign myself to relying on stock art and public domain images if that was all I could acquire, but that any contributed artwork would be both desired and appreciated. The Stonehell book is not going to be an art-heavy supplement, but a few choice pieces would certainly be nice.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am hoping to turn a small profit of the book. Whether this comes to be or not remains to be seen. Until that time, I’m paying for all the preliminary costs on the book out-of-pocket, and my pockets are very shallow at the moment. In particularly, my art budget is non-existent. I’m hoping that the book accrues a small sum of money which I’ll be able to fund the sequel with or that my financial situation will improve by the time the second book is being prepared.

With that being said, I’m looking for a few pieces of interior art. For the first book, I can only offer the common coin of the realm for start-up releases – your name in the credits and a free .pdf copy of the supplement. I really wish I could offer even a token payment for original art, but that will have to wait for the next book, if at all. All contributed art will be on a one-time-use basis and ownership of the work remains with the artist.

If you’re a starting artist looking for some exposure or have an existing piece of art you’d like to see find a temporary home, please drop me an email at poleandrope[AT]gmail[dot]com. I have one concept piece I wouldn’t mind seeing a better rendition of, but I’m mostly looking for art that captures the megadungeon crawl experience. You’re free to explore your own ideas.

I offer my sincerest thanks to anyone contemplating contributing art to Stonehell Dungeon and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sigh of Relief

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."

An Open Apology to the Faithful

This has been weighing on me a little bit as of late, so I’d just like to offer my apologies whether anyone feels they’re required or not. I feel like I’ve been phoning in posts for the last two weeks and this is undoubtedly true to some extent. A wise man (Maimonides? Jeremy Bentham?) once wrote that it is hard to blog and write a book simultaneously. This is true. For the past two weeks, I’ve been pounding away at the Stonehell compilation, trying to get it to resemble something akin to a finished draft. My thoughts have been on the blog in a tertiary manner at best.

This aforementioned half-assery of the most recent of posts should not be misconstrued as a loss of interest in the blog or a deficit of creativity. We’re rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of this little endeavor of mine and, although my plate is much more overloaded than it was at the start of this venture, I’ve not lost any interest in continuing to chronicle my weird design projects and the half-baked philosophy that accompanies such efforts. I’m just simply trying to husband my energies and direct them to the most pressing of matters for the time being. The blog suffers the most for that rationing.

I’ve been remiss in making my rounds of my contemporaries’ blogs this past week. From the few that I’ve seen, it seems I’ve blissfully missed some recent cannonade across the Old School bow, but I can’t say I’m much inclined to find out what exactly that was. I don’t seem to have taken any damage in the latest exchange so I’ll assume nobody was aiming specifically in my direction.

The good news is that I’m very close to completing the lion’s share of the work needed on the Stonehell compilation. Fear is playing a few towns over from me on Monday and I’ve made a gentleman’s agreement with myself that I don’t get to see them perform unless the draft is completed to my satisfaction. This has been a most persuasive of arguments to keep me on track and to get things finished. I’m hoping to share the completed draft with my Three-Headed compadres in the next day or two to start the feedback machine running. A post regarding the state of Stonehell should be appearing on the THM Games blog in the near future.

I just wanted to keep my regular readers informed as to why things have been a bit subpar these past two weeks and why I’ve been woefully neglect in responding to comments about what has appeared. There will be a new post tomorrow as scheduled, but whether it’s more of the same or actually has something of value, I’ll let you be the judge of.

One Word Hint: “octopus.”

The Stonehell Report

As some of you have no doubt guessed by now, the Stonehell compilation will be my first (and hopefully not last) book issued under the Three-Headed Monster Games imprint. Although the primary purpose of compiling the first half of the dungeon into one document was to provide a sense of continuity and to expand on some things I had glossed over in the .pdfs, the collaboration with Dave and Michael certainly help influence that decision. In light of the official THM Games announcement yesterday, this will be the last progress report regarding the Stonehell project to appear on this site. Further updates will be posted on the THM Games’ blog.

It has been a productive few weeks for the book. I was entering the dreaded mid-project doldrums – that time when the initial enthusiasm of starting a project has worn off and there remains too much more to do to get excited about finally completing it. I did what most writers do in this situation: lowered my head and plowed forward. Because of this single-minded determination, I’m mid-way through the revamp of the final quadrant. Twenty-two dungeon sections have been reformatted, reworked, and rewritten; only half of one remains.

Over the next two weeks I intend to go over all twenty-three sections to fill in any material I may have missed, make sure all the maps are completed and properly keyed, and ensure that the various tables and charts reflect the changes I’ve made. Once I’m satisfied that everything is jake, the dungeon itself will start the editing and proofreading phase.

While this is going on, I’ll be hashing out the introductory chapter to the dungeon that covers Stonehell’s history, nuts and bolts, general monster overview, and the obligatory “how to use this book.” Once completed, I can start doing a rough layout of the final manuscript.

I’m shooting to make the book available at the end of August, beginning of September. I’m fairly confident that the actual writing and layout of the book will be completed by then, but there are some miscellaneous factors that could take a bit longer to sort out. In any case, there will be an official Stonehell dungeon book available in the coming months, barring any meteor strikes, tsunamis, or the landing of little green men on the White House lawn. Unless they’re gamers, which could accelerate the process.

Birth of a Three-Headed Monster

Back in December of last year, I had the pleasure of beginning to collaborate with Dave “AKA Sham” Bowman and Michael “Chgowiz” Shorten on the idea of the One Page Dungeon. Although none of us knew it at the time, that creative partnership was destined to bear delicious fruit. As the success of the One Page Dungeon Contest has proved, this simple idea provides gamers with a rich, yet uncomplicated method to build their adventuring locales.

Our partnership on the One Page Dungeon idea turned out to be so successful that the three of us began bouncing ideas off of one another for other, individual projects. We found that each other’s suggestions, insights, and revisions helped improve our work, leaving us with a much better final result than we could have accomplished individually. In the wake of this, it wasn’t long before we began discussing the idea of creating a more formal venture between us.

From that idea came Three-Headed Monster Games. The concept behind THM Games was to form a fellowship of writers, designers, and artists that would assist one another in honing their craft, improving their work, and pooling their resources in order to produce the best materials possible with the tools and talent at hand. Each of us would maintain individual control of our ideas and retain any monies generated by their ultimate release, but each produced game product would bear the Three-Headed Monster Games logo as an acknowledgement of the communal effort that helped create it. Over time, we hope that this network of collaboration will expand to include additional members, and that it will help beginning writers, designers, and artists find a safe haven in which to trade ideas, improve their work, and increase their knowledge of the various processes that go into turning an idea into a complete project.

Today marks the official unveiling of Three-Headed Monster Games. We’re learning as we go and have chosen to start with a small web presence and a flagship offering. Over time, with the participation of other creative individuals, we plan to slowly expand this presence and release more gaming materials under the Three-Headed Monster Games imprint.

The first offering under the Three-Headed Monster Games banner is Chgowiz’s Swords & Wizardry Quick Start. Designed to give newcomers an easy-to-learn introduction to Swords & Wizardry, the Quick Start is an amazing book. I can think of no better praise to give than to say that, after reading the Quick Start, I immediately wanted to grab some people who’ve never played a role-playing game in their life and sit them down to show them what they’ve been missing. I can easily picture a new generation of gamers who, ten years from now, will reminisce fondly about the Dungeon of Akban the way other generations look back upon Zenopus’ dungeon, the Haunted Keep, or the Mentzer edition intro featuring Bargle and that damned rust monster. I have no doubt you’ll agree once you see the Quick Start for yourself.

There are more game materials planned for the future, but for now we’d like to invite you take a look at the Three-Headed Monster Games blog to get an idea of who we are and what we hope to do. Future posts detailing our progress and planned products will be added as we grow and as books get closer to their completion. In the meanwhile, please visit Chgowiz’s Lulu storefront and check out the Swords & Wizardry Quick Start for yourself.