The Mountainside Delves

     The better part of a year has passed since I produced anything for this blog. For most of that time, I have been working on a dungeon of my own design. I moved steadily from a hand-drawn sketch, to a fully realized map, to a fully keyed dungeon. My efforts languished mere steps from something publishable, and between work-life balance, illness, and full-time DM duties, I found plenty of excuses to procrastinate the finishing touches.

    I am proud to say that I have finally brought the project to completion, or at least this version of it. I expect with playtesting and feedback, this dungeon will have several iterations as improvements are made to polish the rough spots. In the meantime, please enjoy the Mountainside Delves. It's free, it's old-school, and it's system-neutral.

Dungeon Map

Dungeon Key

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Case for OSR: Part 1

Image
  Back when a beholder was a force to be reckoned with, and not just a damage sink for your party of demigods - art by Todd Lockwood -     I'll be clear right from the start, this post is directed at players of 5th Edition D&D. If you're like me, you may have wondered to yourself at some point, "What was this game like in the beginning? If this is the fifth iteration of Dungeons & Dragons , why don't I ever hear much about the previous four?" Perhaps you have dabbled in more recent editions preceding 5E, like 4E, 3.5, or Pathfinder (which is a hack of 3.5, but we'll circle back to that). Maybe you've come to the conclusion that D&D, much like a videogame franchise, has generally improved over time and going back to previous editions, while fun, would be counterproductive, like playing The Elder Scrolls: Arena  when you could be playing Skyrim . In some ways you would be right. However, the progression of D&D isn't quite as linear as y
Read more

Balance: Character Classes

Image
     Balance. What all great multiplayer games strive for. Whatever your tastes, odds are there is at least one game in your catalogue that is constantly being patched and updated by the dev team (looking at you Destiny 2 ) in pursuit of a "fair" experience for all players. Funnily enough, there always seems to be a vocal part of such a game's community that gripes about every update. There also seems to be no end to the updates, as they usually continue until the next game in the franchise is released and support ceases for the previous entry. All this in the name of balance, yet balance seems to always be just out of reach. What does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons you ask? Perfectly balanced. As all things should be. Unless?     The current generation of TTRPGs also has this obsession with balance. WotC's periodical releases of Unearthed Arcana  not only provide new content for 5E, but tweak existing classes and features of the game to be more "bal
Read more