Thursday, July 30, 2020

My new book is out - Dungeon Fantasy 21: Megadungeons

Here it is:




What's in it?

- basic guidelines for megadungeon campaigns, and for mapping megadungeons

- the dungeon stocking rules I came up with for, and use for, Felltower

- the loot stocking rules I use for the same

- spells to watch for in a Megadungeon Campaign

- alternate rules for magic in megadungeons

- loot-based XP

It's only 10 pages. It was actually more like 13-14, but Chris and Matt helped me make it clearer, and then Doug stepped in and made it 10 pages without losing any content. Boo-yeah for editing! They say, "You have to kill your babies." No, you don't. Your editor can just make them smaller and make them fit.

I hope this lives up to expectations.

24 comments:

  1. Already read it, and it is very good and clear. The tables will help a lot in my games.

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  2. Always happy to lend a hand. :-) It did come out very well.

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    1. You're always generous with your time, Chris. I'm glad you are, as you have a different perspective than my own gamers do and make my books more broadly useful.

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  4. It was fun to read, and fun to edit. I can't wait until I can re-read the final version (my PDFs aren't in the mail yet)

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    1. (And they're in my folder now! Reading! Again!)

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    2. Hurrah! And thanks again. It's really worth noting that I was looking at cutting whole sections, and you made it possible to get them all in without losing any of what I'm saying.

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  6. Needs more pages. You should write a sequel.

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    1. Now I picture you hefting the book like Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School."

      "It feels like a "C." Bulk it up and add a few multicolored graphs."

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    2. Ah, Back to School. One of the very, very, very few movies to feature springboard diving as a thing. Since I was a springboard diver as a young person, I appreciated it even more.

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    3. Back to School is Rodney Dangerfield's finest moment, and it's pound for pound one of America's finest cinematic achievements.

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    4. Congratulations. I agree that you should write a sequel. I remain unconvinced on the humour Rodney Dangerfield however.

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    1. Congratulations from a lich is congratulations, indeed! :)

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  8. I wonder where I've seen the first table on page 6. Something tells me I've stocked a dungeon with it before. Or maybe twenty dungeons.

    Nah, couldn't be.

    But a sequel would be cool, maybe with an emphasis on dungeon-crawling procedures, details for things like hidden doors, as well as adding weirdness. That Special entry can lead to such weirdness.

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    1. It's certainly inspired by what came before, and it's hard to come up with a different number sequence and to end up with a similar results distribution. I'd toyed around with a 2d6 system, actually, but I didn't really like the extra die and calculation to just shift the percentages of each broad "type" around a little bit.

      I have some material for a potential sequel around those lines. And yeah, the Special entry practically begs for a bunch of pre-written entries as much as the trap section has Christopher Rice's excellent work for DF and for the DFRPG.

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    2. The person who comes up with a good Special table doesn't only have a good GURPS product, but a good OSR dungeon product. I use the Tome of Adventure Design (or sometimes the Dungeon Alphabet) for it, but it isn't a fast set of rolls, and I have to come up with the game mechanics. Which isn't necessarily bad, but something of a hassle.

      Same story for hidden door details. It's secret; how is it hidden? What is the secret mechanism? That just gets glossed over, and there's only so many tapestries and Scooby Doo bookcases that anyone can take.

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    3. I use Kent David Kelly's Castle Oldskull
      It has a huge amount of tables for almost everything. It helps generate a lot of my dungeons when I'm out of ideas. It's OSR so sometimes I need to come up with GURPS mechanics for it. That is why DF21 Megadungeons' tables will help me a lot.

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  9. I enjoyed the treasure rating, just have to see if it works with Chris' It's a Threat treasue system. It is certainly easier to use!

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    1. If it does, I've love to see you post it or publish it somewhere. I don't use "It's a Threat," but it's a good system.

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  10. Don't forget to replace your DFT3 in the blog margin :-)
    http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy/dungeonfantasy21/ page is live, even if it's not in the W23 store yet...

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  11. I certainly hope you do a follow up book. Mega Dungeons are my favourite theme. It just takes me back to being nine years old playing D&D for the first time back in 82

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