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Unfortunately I have no head for titles...the curse of the rotten memory! But there was one, right before 3rd edition came out, styled in a southwest-Mexican-bandito sort of setting...there was a wizardess who set a wand of paralyzation in a crossbow stock. Extremely cool. I also liked a Ravenloft adventure about a Dr. Frankenstein trapped on a small island surrounded by darkness, trying to recreate his daughter. I ran that and it went great. I also liked Natural Selection.
So the villagers of the Isle of Dread tell our heroes the following about the cave they're seeking. They say it was built long ago, so long ago that no-one knows who built it or why, or even what is in it. It was inhabited hundreds of years ago by a tribe of villagers who worshipped dinosaurs. The rear of the cave was a set of carved stairs going down, but the dinosaur tribesmen bricked it up. Two hundred years ago a Khorvarian ship, dreadfully lost or possibly looking for something, came to the island and - whether maliciously or out of a misunderstanding - killed all the dinosaur tribesmen. They threw the bodies into the sea and made camp around the cave. The next day, the soldiers broke down the cave wall and descended below, leaving two behind to watch. The two last watchmen were standing guard when, perhaps thirty minutes later, they heard shouts of panic and cries for help from the stairs leading down. The soldiers rushed down the stairs to help their friends and found themselves in a huge, emtpy cave with many passages leading off in different directions. There was no sign of their fellow soldiers. Confused, they started to call - then they heard the rumbling from behind them. They ran frantically back up the stairs but it was too late. The spirits of the slaughtered dinosaur tribesmen, angered and restless, had rebuilt the wall in some way that made it impenetrable. The soldiers were bricked in, doomed to madness and starvation. No-one has gone to the cave since. But first, the necromancer elf had to be dealt with. Cait and Raccoon snuck down to the beach and saw a large, round raft with a wooden railing and full of boxes and barrels floating a few feet into the lagoon. On the beach was one Emerald Claw guard. Figuring they could easily take him, Raccoon charged and Cait began firing. And they were right; they did easily take him. But then the "raft" revealed itself to be a horrid elder tojanida which promptly took some rather large bites out of the PCs. Bleeding and terrified, Cait and Raccoon retreated. The tojanida was too slow to follow them so it picked up the dead soldier, flipped the body onto its back, and swam a few hundred yards out into the lagoon to await Demise's return. The PCs decided to leave it there. They began hacking their way through the jungle, following the tracks of Demise, her four soldiers, and some large creature that had ogre-sized footprints but weighed too little to be an ogre. They hadn't gone more than an hour or so when they heard the sounds of something huge crashing through the jungle. They hid, but not well enough to escape the notice of a bizarre two-headed tyrannosaurus rex! (used the multiheaded template from Savage Species). What followed was a brief and bloody fight wherein Raccoon got swallowed, but rather ingeniously escaped by retrieving a gaseous form potion and pouring it into the t-rex's stomach. When the t-rex unwillingly went gaseous, Raccoon plummeted to the ground. The t-rex thrashed around, trying to figure out what had happened to it, and our heroes soon finished it off. They went another hour in the jungle before hearing the tinkle of windchimes. Following it, they found a clearing containing a hut and numerous painted dinosaur skulls, skeletons, and strange bone carvings. A woman greeted them. She noticed the t-rex teeth they were wearing as trophies and thanked them for killing "the perversion". She said her name was Marta, and that she was the last of the dinosaur tribe. She said she had had visions of the PCs, that they would destroy the unnatural t-rex that had been terrorizing the jungle, and in return she would tell them how to enter the sealed cave. She gave them a block of special incense to burn over the offerings of a dozen slain animals to appease her ancestors' spirits. She also gave them refreshments and bug repellent, and Raccoon and Cait rested a while and talked to her, finding her both intelligent and witty. When they were rested they bid Marta farewell and continued on. It was dusk when they arrived at the cave and found Demise had set up camp. She was nowhere to be seen, presumably in the one tent by the cliff wall. Four Emerald Claw soldiers sat around the fire and a tall figure robed entirely in black, including billowy black sleeves that went all the way to the ground, stood by the tent. Raccoon crept up silently and brought out the dorje of psionic dominate they'd taken of the Inspired last adventure. With his high Use Magic Device ability and a ring of telepathy he'd taken from the other Inspired, he successfully dominated all the Emerald Claw soldiers while remaining unnoticed (I'm glad I didn't give that dorje a lot of remaining charges!). Then he ordered all four soldiers to attack the black figure while he and Cait fought from concealment. The robed figure turned out to be Demise's personal bodyguard, a Boneclaw (from the new MMIII). Demise made good use of her spells (came out of the tent with greater invisibility going, vampiric touched Raccoon and almost turned him blind, too). The Boneclaw took out two soldiers before it went down, and Demise almost escaped but Raccoon and Cait killed her first with good tactics. They searched the bodies, cleared out the camp, pressed the two remaining Emerald Claw soldiers into service, and settled down for the night. All of this was my own invention. I was hoping I could steal something from 115 for the actual mysterious caves but my mail forwarding service is being slow and not sending it to me. Jerks. Oh, well, I'll figure something out!
So Cait and Raccoon left Pylas Talaer behind and sailed on to the mysterious continent of Xen'drik. Some weeks later they saw the jungle-shrouded coastline dimly through a steady fall of misty rain. Bidding farewell to Captain Bargaz and the Crawdad crew, they went ashore and found the villagers all mourning and frightened. Their matriarch had been killed and their Zombie Master was missing! What followed was an almost straight-up Torrents of Dread from issue #114. I had to strengthen a few encounters, but for the most part it played out really well. Since Cait and Raccoon were a fairly decent level I added the optional giant squid. Well, it just about tore them apart. They took severe hits and were forced to retreat. Fortunately Raccoon has an item that lets him charm undead, so they had lots of zombie followers that the squid ripped to pieces while our heroes ran. They came back more adequately prepared and took the squid out fairly quickly. I replaced the koprus with a pair of 5th-level psion Inspired, who were on a dastardly secret mission. One was controlling the bullywugs through her use of psionic dominate dorje. Cait got dominated and pumped Raccoon full of arrows, but in the end they both triumphed! After restoring order to the village and earning the respect and friendship of the villagers, Cait and Raccoon took a few days to recover on the tropical island. Then a small village boy came up from the beach one morning to report that a large raftlike ship had beached a mile away, and off of it had come a withered elven woman wearing a mask and a host of guards. This, of course, was Demise and her Emerald Claw soldiers, looking for the hidden treasure that Cait and Raccoon are after. So our intrepid heroes...did something I'll type up in a bit, because it's long! But Torrents of Dread was a really cool adventure and I enjoyed running it (and my husband enjoyed playing in it).
My husband and I move a lot and so we play a lot of two PC games where we each run a character and switch off DMing. Right now we're playing in Eberron. The PCs are me: Cait Phiarlan, elven rogue archer with a religious bent. Him: Raccoon, warforged artificer who was one of the last off the assembly line (the forgers were getting a little tired of making up names). Anyway, Cait and Raccoon just finished doing a lot of quests in Sharn and the Mournlands (Queen With Burning Eyes followed by Shadows of the Last War. Both awesome modules). They are following the map on the amulet they found during the QWBE module to Xen'drik to see where it leads. (My husband is a very "outside the box" thinker. After "The Forgotten Forge" module he used a number of mending/repair spells to fix the forge down there. When we recovered the amulet in QWBE, we went down to the forge right afterwards, made a copy, and then when Demise confronted us we handed over the fake and made our escape. So now it will be a race to the treasure!) Anyway, we needed something to break up the "red dots moving across the ocean down to Xen'drik" cut scene so I had the ship stop in Pylas Talaer on Aerenal during a storm. That became the setting for "Strike on the Rabid Dawn". It was surprisingly easy to reset the adventure for 7th level characters. I just dropped most monsters down to their "basic" forms. eg. the nessian warhounds became hellhounds, the hamatula became a barbazu, the harpy archer became a regular harpy, etc. The PCs did well in the Lighthouse. A few insane Intimidate checks (nat 20!) and Diplomacy checks allowed Raccoon to convince the Hellwasp Swarm to leave Hiram and inhabit one of the dead bodies before leaving the Lighthouse. Another super Diplomacy check (nat 19!) plus all the hard work we'd done on the ship on the voyage up let us convince the captain of our Lyranean galleon to sail us to the Rabid Dawn. The sahuagin attack halfway over was cool. After it was over the lighthouse got struck repeatedly by lightning and fell into the sea. Kaboom! Raccoon: "I knew we should have looted it when we had the chance!" The two ships almost collided since the Lyranean galleon sailed right into the cloud. Fortunatly Racoon specified to hit it at an angle and so some good Profession (Sailor) checks prevented an all-out collision (to the DM's (i.e. my) disappointment). A watered down Captain Mange, a few wimpy pirates and the Chuul gave the PCs a run for their money. The chuul grappled Raccoon and they fought desperately while Cait went toe-to-toe with Mange. She kept missing and he kept slamming her. Finally she broke off to shoot the chuul, since she got her Sneak Attack against the grappling monster, and the chuul (realizing it couldn't paralyze warforged) made an awesome grapple check, moved with Raccoon still in his claws, and jumped overboard! Fortunately warforged don't need to breathe either. There was a climactic underwater battle between Raccoon and the wounded chuul, but eventually Raccoon was victorious! After a lot of trouble he managed to get back on deck, only to find Cait was gone! A series of abysmal rolls had dropped her to -9 and then she miraculously stabilized. Both she and Cpt. Mange were gone. Raccoon bullied some pirates who were busy trying to keep the ship afloat to tell him where Mange had taken the girl. They pointed down. He ran downstairs and found Mange just coming upstairs, whistling. They had another titanic battle and Raccoon managed to kick Mange's butt with a series of excellent rolls (and a crit with his Talenta Tangat).
He found it was the (single) erinyes' boudoir. A pale but now-conscious Cait, removed of most of her clothing, was being tied to some stakes pounded around the fiendess' bed. The erinyes was cooing, "It will hurt less if you don't struggle. And I promise, after awhile, you'll start to like it." Raccoon sprang to the attack, of course, but the erinyes teleported to the other side of the oar galley. While Raccoon freed Cait, the erinyes used her charm monster power and Raccoon failed by one! He immediately realized how silly he'd been to attack without learning all the facts first. The erinyes (while telepathically warning Markosian) chatted with Raccoon and Cait for a bit, explained she couldn't help them betray her master, and wished them well. Raccoon and a fully-healed Cait ran downstairs and interrupted the ceremony. I replaced Markosian with one of the sorc10 apprentices, took the others out, took most of the cultists out except for 2 pirates, and added a barbazu (and of course they interrupted the ceremony before the big devil could be summoned). A titanic battle ensued where good tactics by the PCs (and another friggin' crit from Raccoon) won the day. The erinyes disappeared as soon as Markosian fell, but she'll be back. Oh yes, she will be back. In summary: rockin' adventure! Frank Brunner made my night.
Well, I suppose I have written for them "for awhile", but not exactly regularly. I am hoping to change that in the future! My first article appeared in Issue #299, "Sacred Spells". I sent Dragon a proposal about paladin prestige classes, and they said to send it in. I did, two prestige classes each with a little backstory and some unique spells and feats inspired by the story. They contacted me after a few weeks and asked if I wouldn't mind cutting out the prestige classes and feats, leaving the spells, and writing a half-dozen more. So I did, and I think there was maybe one more revision before they bought it. It was published a few months later. I queried them about the Ecology of the Duergar...um...last November/December? They liked it, and gave me a month to send it in and I got it to them in about two weeks. They reviewed it and after a few more weeks asked me to revise it, giving me another six weeks or so to do so. I finished the revision in under a month and they took another few weeks to look at it. Then they asked for a third revision since I'd made it a Forgotten Realms article and they wanted a more generic one, and gave me another six weeks or so to get it done. I took almost all that time to revise as I was in the process of moving from Texas to Ohio. Then they took a few weeks to look it over and finally they told me the deleriously good news that they were buying it. :-) So the first one took about four or five months from query to print, I think, and this one almost a year. That's about the pattern. Nothing is perfect the first go-round. I have found the editors of Dragon to be really responsive, polite, and extremely helpful. They are nice people to work for. I am sure the Dungeon staff is just the same. They don't smother you with unneeded help but they are there for advice when you need them. They are really fun and enthusiastic! I don't think it would be easy to make a living this way, but I enjoy the magazines so much I want to contribute. So I'm going to try querying more stuff to them this year and hope they like it. I went to the GenCon seminars and found the staff to be just as nice, fun and cool in person as they seemed via email. I totally think you should send in a query; they like to get them, lots of them. They told us at the seminars to just send in your queries and don't be scared! Also you get paid 30 days after publication. :-)
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[center]center[/center] [action]runs to the store[/action] [img]http://www.verylargehats.com/love.gif[/img] Awesome! Awesome!
I believe they are going to have one "Campaign Components" article every issue. It is going to be the main feature of the new Dungeon. (P.S. The boards are pretty barren, but you can quote if you do it the old-fashioned way. {quote="name"}text{/quote}. Just replace the {} with [] ). My point precisely.
Hm, well I'd hardly call them "afterthoughts". There is going to be so much more in Dungeon besides the 3 adventures every month. -one meaty feature every month, either an environment setting (like the Isle of Dread), a complete city setting, or a creature catalogue. -A critical threat -Dungeoncraft -The Campaign Workbook containing up to 4 campaign elements to inspire/use in your campaigns (one each for NPCs, cities, dungeons and wilderness encounters). That sure seems like "the DM's magazine" to me. Of course I'm biased; I just loved the latest Dungeon!
Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but you're the only one of you and me who thinks there are too many adventures. ;-) I love being able to have 3 or more adventures come in my mailbox every month, and even when I can't use them 'as is' they often inspire adventures of my own, or I can take elements from them. As someone who DMs 3 games a week (4 if you count my pbp), I need all the adventure help I can get! -Amber
*blush* Someone knows me! Awesome! Additional praise is always welcome. :-D "Ecology of the Duergar" by moi is coming out in #325. "Ecology of the Kobold" should see the light of day sometime next year. I'm not sure what I'm going to pitch next. I think I'm going to stick around here, so you don't need to worry about losing me. ;-) -Amber
Ecology—Chokers. I love the idea of the Ecology articles, but more often than not it leaves me thinking “Someone got paid to write this.” Too often the ecologies are just so generic. One of the few actually inspiring things in this article was the mention that Choker numbers are increasing and no one knows why. But that was it. How about a For Your Campaign sidebar with some campaign/adventure ideas pulling on these tidbits in these articles? I mean I see these Ecology articles as ‘This monster is cool and here are the reasons why and ways to use it.’ At least that is how I wish it would be. As someone who has some ecology articles coming out (and hopes to write more in the future), I found this really interesting. I'd like to add more of this type thing to any future articles the editors are kind and benevolent enough to let me write. Are there any more opinions on Ecology articles and what they should contain? Keep in mind the new Dragon slant is to make the Ecology articles more for players than DMs (e.g. how to kill them and stuff), which is why adventure ideas will likely be vetoed (but I could maybe sneak stuff in for crafty DMs to use). -Amber E. Scott *hopes no-one saw her misspell "write"* Gah!
That's really good advice from Dagda. I would also say that you're just going to have to build their trust a bit. Roll dice in the open, tell them straight-up what's going on if they ask. I know it will ruin some of the "mystery" at first, but after a few sessions when they see you're not screwing them over, they'll relax and you can be more mysterious. In my experience players like that have been screwed by DMs in the past who arbitrarily have them lose or have them robbed of their powers for the "sake of the story". They may be afraid you'll do the same. So build up some trust, and then don't abuse it. -Amber Scott
One thing I'd really like to see is on the main messageboards page, where it shows in what thread the last message was posted (and the date/time), it would be really great if it also showed who posted (or at least if there are any new posts). This would save me from trying to remember how long ago I posted and in what thread when skimming the forums for new posts. :) Also if that sentence did not make any sense, blame the NyQuil. 0:-) -Amber E. Scott
I forgot to mention the best part of the weekend was the "Writing for Dungeon" seminar. At the end, Erik Mona asked if there were any last questions, and I put my hand up and said, "Is it true your home computer is an Aptiva?" He thought I was a mind-reader. :-D (really I'd just read it in his interview on Silven Crossroads). It was pretty funny. -A.E.S.
James Jacobs did sit in on the seminar, as did Erik Mona. It would have been more hilarity-filled I think had we all not been so extraordinarily sleep deprived. I did go to the Paizo booth, to grab a subscription to Amazing Stories. I now have a Dungeon t-shirt to go with my Dragon t-shirt that I work out in. ;-) The funny thing is, the guy manning the Paizo booth was the same guy who was manning it when I visited it at Origins - and we recognized each other! Small world, eh? -Amber E. Scott
I managed to hit both the "Writing for Dragon" and "Writing for Dungeon" seminars, and they were very interesting and super helpful! I got to meet Matt Sernett, Erik Mona, Wes Schneider and James Jacobs. They told me how sweet my upcoming "Ecology of the Duergar" was going to look, and were really nice guys. I think that was probably the highlight of the con for me. The only downside was that Mike McArtor wasn't there. :-( Next year!!! The 30th anniversary Party in the Plaza got moved indoors due to inclement weather, and was very hot, noisy and crowded as a result. We scored some free swag (t-shirts, cups and canvas bags!) and then regrouped at Hooters. Celebrities...I got to meet Rich Burlew finally, and he introduced me to Keith and Ellen Baker. That was a party and a half (wonderful guys!). I also got to meet Chris Perkins, Sean K. Reynolds, and Ed Greenwood. Not enough time to do everything I wanted. I didn't hit the dealer's room more than once or twice for about a half-hour total, so I didn't see many new products. But the whole weekend was a blast. I will definitely go next year!
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