If you're a regular reader of this blog, you likely already know about Paizo's delve event at this year's GenCon, in which convention attendees will have the chance to run through part of a deadly, trap-filled dungeon, potentially winning fabulous prizes. You also probably know that the delve is closely related to the new GameMastery Module we'll be releasing, D2: Seven Swords of Sin. But what most people don't know is exactly how one became the other...
The Paizo delve was written as part of an informal internal contest to see who could write the deadliest, most creative dungeon rooms for a set map within a certain EL range. Each of the interested staff members (after deciding the pecking order by rolling initiative, of course) took turns choosing until all of the chambers were parceled out, then took their best shots. The resulting mishmash of horror was then edited, judged highly entertaining, and pronounced ready to be Paizo's first GenCon delve.
But somewhere in the early stages of the project, an idea began to form. Suppose someone had a really good time with the delve, and wanted to take it home to their own party? What if we could have an adventure module there at the show that incorporated most of the delve, plus a bunch of extra material? The decision was made, and I was tapped to give form and structure to our cruel meat grinder of a dungeon.
It wasn't always easy. A delve, for instance, needs only the barest plot—when each party's only playing for a few minutes, it's hard to get much roleplaying in. For a writer like me who is, admittedly, more of a story fan than an out-and-out brawler, it was an interesting challenge. Where in our world, for instance, could adventurers reasonably expect to find such a varied an eclectic collection of rooms? The answer, as it turns out, is the anarchic squatter's paradise of Kaer Maga, a cliff-top city housed inside the walls of an enormous Thassilonian artifact. Possibly the freest of Varisia's fiercely independent cities (if the most morally questionable), the background material on Kaer Maga remains my favorite part of this module—so much so that we return to it in the third installment of the Pathfinder's Journal. But more on that next week.
Even with a location, however, we still needed a story capable of tying fiendish dinosaur-riding goblins to eladrin warriors and vampire bladepriests. Once we figured out that Tirana was trying to combine the weapons of the Runelords' ancient champions for her own personal gain, it seemed to me that the natural setting for such a bold experiment would be in a secret, abandoned research facility. Armed with that knowledge, the next step was to trim off the rooms that just didn't fit and retool the ones to make them work together as a unit. Following that came the writing of the new rooms—because you didn't think we'd just repackage the delve, did you? No, if you get a chance to go to GenCon and see the massive tables covered with three-dimensional dungeon terrain, be sure to keep in mind that all of those rooms amount to about half of the actual adventure. For many of the extra chambers, I enjoyed playing up the research facility aspect, complete with incinerators, recycling units, turbines for proper air circulation, and laboratories with strange new monsters run amuck. And, of course, no module set in a city is complete without at least one gang turf war.
All told, writing D2 was a unique experience, and I hope that those of you who read through it have as much fun as I did. Next week I'll be back with a bit more information about Kaer Maga.
