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 2

Image
  Mom says it's our turn to roll death saves  - art by  Jussi Alarauhio -     My introduction to the OSR happened at the bookstore. Browsing the TTRPG aisle, a heavy tome caught my eye with its name and artwork alone: Zweihander . Touting itself as both grim and  perilous, the idea of a more dangerous system than D&D thrilled me. I bought it, and spent the next week or so reading it cover to cover. Zweihander is a d100 system, meaning everything is in percentiles, from core stats to the resulting skill checks. It also abandons traditional hit points in favor of Peril; basically the more you fail at fending off threats to your life, the closer you draw to death, in steps, until it is inevitable. What struck me as interesting was how mundane things like a rat bite or a crossbow bolt wound could kill a character. Nobody playing Zweihander is going out in a blaze of glory like Matthew McConaughey in Reign of Fire. It's much more likely they will suffer an i...
Read more

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