Ashenvale's page

Yikes! I submitted and then noticed a typo. In the item name, no less. I don't think I've submitted anything meaningful anywhere, ever, with a typo in it before. Too late to amend?

If so, there's always next year.

I bought the 34.5 x 48 Chessex vinyl battlemat from Paizo. It came rolled and squashed. When I lay it out on a table, the surface of the mat forms hills and valleys that cause miniatures to tip over and stop dice from rolling. These aren't creases; they're rolling folds.

I tried gently folding back along the folds. No good. I tried ironing the battlement under a towel. I produced a unique odor that my wife didn't love but failed to flatten the rolls even a smidge. I've now got the battlemat stretched flat on the floor with each corner held down by a six-inch stack of gaming books. No progress yet. Maybe by the year 2050.

Any advice on how to flatten this thing down? And what's the best way to roll it for transport to gaming sessions?

Hi all, Ted Reed here, the author of SAW #7. If you're looking for a full-color map for the adventure, here's my version, which I just posted on my website:

SAW #7 Map!

Here's the link to the map detail:

SAW #7 Map Close-Up!

If you like the map, you gotta check out the adventure! And if the adventure grabs you, you must download them all!

Obey the Slaw!

Would you like to hear from new people? How do we submit proposals or samples? What would you like to see?

I love my Item Cards, and I'll surely grab some Critical Hit Cards (unbalancing and anti-PC as they may be), but what I'd really like to see are Spell Cards. It would be so handy to have all of each spell's information on a single card for the player or me to hold. No more disputes about duration, effect, or the consequences of a partial save. No more book-flipping delays.

So how about a new line of products sure to sell like wildfire? Don't make me start a company, go into competition with you, and drive you clean out of the market. Spell Cards please!

I’m wrestling with how to fit the demon princes and the Abyss into Eberron’s cosmology.

This isn't premature. It may be many moons before we see Eberron conversion notes on the STAP adventures Into the Maw, The Wells of Darkness, Enemies of my Enemy, and Prince of Demons. But I need to start foreshadowing soon. I want to lace the earlier adventures with fragments of prophesies, hints, clues, and whispers that create background themes and atmosphere as harbingers for what’s to come. I want to begin generating fear now about the places the PCs will ultimately have to visit and horrific entities they’ll have to face.

So, what thoughts do you have on how best to integrate these classic abyssal elements into Eberron? Should Demogorgon, Orcas, Malcanthet and the rest be in different parts of Khyber? How does one “sail” to Khyber? Should Demogorgon be in Khyber, but Orcas in Dolurrh and Malcanthet in Mabar? Are there meaningful, powerful ways to give these Greyhawk/FR elements a distinctly Eberron feel?

The Lucky Monkey from Flood Season is too big (although its West status makes it damn appealing!). The World Serpent Inn is just a one-room map. There was one in that adventure about the red slaadi going all Alien Ten Little Indians on a bunch of isolated inn visitors, but I can't think of the name of the adventure so I can't check the map. And I can't think of another good one on the fly. Please help!

I'm tired of brewing my homebrew. I've talked my players, who are smart, experienced gamers, into beginning a new campaign not wholly penned by me. I want to start them out with a rip-roaring, brilliant adventure. I'm going to set it in Eberron (but have read none of the Eberron materials other than the Campaign Setting).

So, what's the best 1st-level adventure there is?

Does anyone have d20 stats on WWII fighters? I'm specifically looking for stats for a F6F Hellcat, a Zero (preferably the A6M5 "Zeke"), a Spitfire (preferably the Mark I), and a Bf109 Messerschmitt (preferably the Bf 109 E). But I'll take anything I can use for comparisons.

Do you prefer digital maps, paradigmatically exemplified by Christopher West's Maps of Mystery, or hand-rendered maps that look like they could have been created in medieval times?

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft uses both styles, alternating from page to page. Kyle Hunter, who created the beautiful maps with a old-world feel in that book, says in another thread that there's something of a preference at WotC for the hand-drawn look and against the obviously digital look (my words, not his). I've also noticed that WotC's published maps are dominated by browns, grays, and de-saturated colors that enhance a gritty feel for ruins and such, rather than more vibrant, color-saturated works.

As a cartographer, I'd love to know: what to DUNGEON readers want, digital or hand-drawn? A mixture? Colorful ones or neutral ones with only occasional splashes of color for emphasis? Put aside that the most important criteria is a clear, ledgible, practically useful product (that can and must be achieved with any style) and please tell me what styles appeal the most.

More specifically, for a Grayhawk-world adventure, which forest is the most ancient, deep, and likely to have no denizens other than woodland and sylvan creatures? I'm looking for the forest where humanoids simply don't go, but fey and woodland creatures are common. Any suggestions? I'm also looking, if possible, for a forest without an extensive history explored in other adventures.

I just popped open issue 349 to see that the Demonicon of Iggwilv's entry this month is Dagon, Prince of the Darkened Depths. My sanity points are jumping up and down and doing back-flips! The plush Cthulhu on my monitor is swinging his plush little footies with excitment! (After all, in the original Call of Cthulhu game, deep ones drove my first investigator around the bend and ultimately sacrificed him -- such fond memories!)

I strongly favor importing elements of Lovecraft's mythology, beasties and all, into D&D's vibrant worlds. Matthew Hope's adventure "And Madness Followed" (Dungeon 134) showed how sweetly the two can mesh.

At the same time, however, the Cthulhu purist in me hesitates, putting only one wary toe into the D&D Dagon's Darkened Depths. I've great faith in James Jacobs, but I don't want Dagon or any of the Cthulhu brood to morph into pedestrian monsters (pedestrian demon princes?) devoid of the eldrich horror they held in the stories of my misguided youth. The original Call of Cthulhu game, of course, successfully invoked their horror by keeping investigators weak and using sanity-loss, mechanisms not available in D&D. My hope is that, despite this, D&D embraces these paragons of horror with the full fear and reverence they deserve!

I may have just received a funky issue. The illustrations in my copy for the Savage Tide adventure are so dark much of their content is, I fear, obscured. If everyone else's are better, I'll scoot down to the local gaming shop and grab another copy!