Update: Walking away... and a Free Map!
If any of you follow our handle on twitter, you’ll know that I was hoping to release a new one-shot adventure last week. As you can tell, it didn’t quite work out.
Before we get into all that though; Hi! Welcome to our first update post. This is something I’ve been considering adding to the site for a while as a means of giving a peek behind the scenes. Whether that’s upcoming plans for the site, side projects we’re also working on, or horrible disasters in writing, we’re hoping to get a bit more personal with how things are done here. That is, if you’re alright with things getting a bit more personal? Good.
Let’s start with the good things! I’m happy to announce here that I’ve been working on a collaborative project with some amazing creators to produce an asset for new and experience dungeon masters alike. We’re creating a book filled to the brim with helpful tables for all of your DMing needs. It’s still early stages but we’re planning to have NPCs, encounters, trade stalls, slang, weather by region, quirks, menus. You name it, we’re probably working on it. If you’re interested in staying up to date, definitely follow either DMs Forge or Domille’s Wondrous Works on twitter to see how things develop, and keep an eye out for Tahlia’s Tome of Tables.
Some of you may have also noticed that Matthew and I have been trying our hand at streaming on twitch! There’s now an icon in the top right corner where you can check out our channel as we begin to build it out in the lead-up to our new show; Rolling With It. For the most part I’ve been creating graphics and assets while streaming to get the hang of things and learn how twitch works while Matthew keeps me company. I also had a chance to stream some cartography, which seemed to be well received and I’m hoping to include more of that on the channel too. Honestly, that was mostly an experiment which I completely didn’t expect to enjoy so much. Unlike ‘normal’ cartography for me, it was immensely fun being able to interact real time with people while map making and asking for input or suggestions. We have a few more ideas for shows we’d like to include either on twitch or youtube, but for now we’re going to take it one step at a time - Scrounging up enough time for the site is hard enough with a full time job each!
While we’re on the good news train, I had a wonderful week celebrating my 4 year wedding anniversary. Both of us have been incredibly busy lately so now felt like a good time to focus on each other. Unfortunately that and making her present (video off to the side) cut out a lot of time to work on the site, but in the end it’s important to take time with those who really matter, and I can’t thank her enough for the wisdom she shared with me while I was struggling with the aforementioned adventure.
Welp, we’re back onto the cursed adventure, so there’s no more beating about the bush. For a couple of weeks I’d been working on an adventure called “Dead of Night”, which had the party investigating grave robberies within a specific city district, and by grave robberies I mean body snatching. Of course, you know me, it’s not quite as simple as that. Instead of somebody digging up the bodies and taking them, some poor treasure hunter dug up the body and got taken by the vampire bound within. It’s difficult, I can’t actually say I’m unhappy with the adventure. As it mostly stands I would definitely run it myself. The main problem is, I wouldn’t feel comfortable handing this adventure to anyone else to run. While I was writing it, the story grew and grew and grew, until it had so many variables that I felt there was no way to elegantly lay everything out on this site in a way that was clear and accessible. Since I wrote it I could keep everything in my head well enough, but by the end it had become a bit of a spaghetti monster to anyone else reading it.
I think I could tell early on this was going to be a difficult adventure to contend with, to cram what I had in mind into a short time span, and I was afraid that by going forward I was beating a dead horse. Spoiler alert; I’m stubborn and didn’t back down from the challenge. I reworked it and reworked it until… nothing. I was working right up until the day before this adventure was supposed to go live and even though I had close to 2000 words and a theoretically playable adventure I couldn’t bring myself to publish it. I backed down and honestly felt like a massive failure for not being able to get this thing right. Thankfully I have a smart wife who let me know that just because a project fails, you are not a failure - as long as you’re moving forward, you’re succeeding.
With that, I’ll be walking away from this adventure, maybe forever or maybe until I have a good idea on how to rebuild it from the ground up (and it will need to be rebuilt from the ground up). All is not lost though! We’re finally getting to the good bit: Below is one of the maps I’d intended to use in the adventure, along with a download link to a copy with and without a grid for you to use in your games. Halloween is coming up and what better for an appropriately themed game than a cemetery. This week’s tavern board posting will be related to grave robbing and body snatching so be sure to watch this space.
Click here to download the map with and without a grid
Enjoy the map, and I’ll catch you all in our next post, and hopefully in our next update, which we aim to do every 3 or months!
