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The judges have read all the submissions, have made all their notes, have nominated all their favorites, have reviewed all the candidates, and have determined the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013 Winners! :D

The One Page Dungeon Contest 2013 deadline is approaching fast: April 30, 0:00 GMT (Tuesday evening). If you live West of Greenwich, you will have to send in your submission a few hours before the end of the month! You have a few hours left! :)

I'm running the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013. Follow the link for submission guidlines and the list of prizes. Submission deadline is April 30, 0:00 GMT (Tuesday evening). If you live West of Greenwich, you will have to send in your submission a few hours before the end of the month! Winners will be announced June 1.

If you're interested in sponsoring a prize, let me know: kensanata@gmail.com.

The judges have read all the submissions, have made all their notes, have nominated all their favorites, have reviewed all the candidates, and have determined the One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 Winners! :D

Download the archive with All One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 Submissions, or visit the One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 page and download individual submissions. Don't forget to check out the authors' blog posts, if available. Let me know if you discover items that I should be linking from that page.

Yes, absolutely. What I like to do is draw a map and then fill in all the empty space on the paper with notes. This way, once I'm running out of space, the thing is done. If you start with a great concept, however, things turn out to be harder.

There are still two week-ends left to write up a one page dungeon and submit it to the contest if you haven't already. Submission deadline is April 30, 0:00 GMT (Monday evening). If you live West of Greenwich, you will have to send in your submission a few hours before the end of the month!

For the curious, several of the submissions on the contest page come with link to blog posts. Thus, a limited preview is available. :)

One Page Dungeon Contest 2012!

Dates: Submission deadline is April 30, 0:00 GMT (Monday evening). If you live West of Greenwich, you will have to send in your submission a few hours before the end of the month! Winners will be announced June 1.

Help spread the word!

Prizes & Sponsors: Do you have prizes to donate? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!

Submissions: Here's how to submit your entry.

• Create a One Page Dungeon.
  
• Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license with credit to the contest participant.
  
• The submission must have a name, an author, and a link to the license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
  
• The judges and readers play a variety of systems. Don't waste valuable space with a lot of system-specific stats.
  
• A link to extra material on your blog such as wandering monsters, random events, adventure background, introduction, descriptions of tricks or traps are welcome for readers but will not be considered part of your submission.
  
• One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry.
  
• If your font size is too small to read, you will most probably not win.
  
• Many people will print your submission as a black and white document. Adding colors is no problem as long as the black and white printed copy is still good enough.
  
• Help us keep file size in check. A single page should not take more than an image with 3000x2000 pixels (1-2MB is cool, 5MB still works, 10MB is too much).
  
• Submission must be mailed in PDF format to Alex Schröder → kensanata@gmail.com. Usually we can help you convert your Open Office and Microsoft Word documents to PDF.
  
• If you have a blog article talking about your submission, send us the link. We'd love to link to it from the One Page Dungeon Contest page.
  

Process: Here's how we'll determine the winners.

• Every judge nominates their favorite entries and proposes a category for each.
  
• We try to make sure that every judge has at least three of their nominations in the final list. The idea is to not only reflect popular opinion but to also capture some of the more eclectic entries out there. We'll make sure that every judge is well represented with three entries each.
  
• Based on the categories proposed in the first step, we try to assign a category to each entry on the list.
  
• Judges gets to check whether their favorites are still on the list.
  
• We fix omissions and rename categories until we're happy.
  
• We publish our list of winners!
  
• We will ask each winner for three items they'd prefer to win and any items they prefer not to win. Then we try to do a best match, giving precedence to those winners that got more nominations in the first step.
  
• All the entries and a special PDF with all the winners will be available for download at no cost.
  

The judges have read all the submissions, have made all their notes, have nominated all their favorites, have reviewed all the candidates, and have determined the One Page Dungeon Contest 2011 Winners! :D

The submissions are all available for download! In the mean time judges will spend their evenings reading them all and taking notes. :)

Five more days!

I have integrated countless One Page Dungeon Contest submissions into my campaigns. It didn't matter whether they won or not. These One Page Dungeon Contest entries are a treasure trove of material. I absolutely love them. Everything you need, available at a glance.

There are close to fifty prizes available for the winners of the One Page Dungeon Contest 2011. How hard can it be? Take the events of your last session and write them up on a single page, digitize it and send it in. It's better to be safe than sorry – don't send it in a mere hours before the deadline. Send it in now and send any last minute corrections a mere hours before the deadline.

There is no easier way to loose than not participating. I hope you will participate! :)

Submission must be mailed in to Alex Schröder → kensanata@gmail.com.

Best of luck!

I hope you do find the time, because…

Two more weeks to go! :)

A map, an intrigue, monsters, treasure, enemies, allies – what does an adventure for your game night require? Whatever it is, if you wrote it up, you should send it in! The due date for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2011 is the first second of April 1, 2011, UTC. If you live in the United States, that means you may have to send in your entry many hours before the last day of March ends. What better way to make sure you don't miss the deadline than sending your entry as soon as possible? Don't worry, you can send in revisions up to the very end.

Submission must be mailed in PDF, Open Office, or Microsoft Word format to Alex Schröder --> kensanata@gmail.com.

Check out the sweet loot awaiting the winners of this year's contest in the sponsor section of the One Page Dungeon Contest 2011 page.

Best of luck!

New thread! :)

Remember last year? :D

Dates: Submission deadline is April 1, 0:00 GMT. Based on last year's experience, judges will have one month to read all the submissions and another two weeks to discuss the result. Winners will be announced May 16, 0:00 GMT.

Judges: I'm still looking judges! Interested? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!

Prizes & Sponsors: Do you have prizes to donate? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!

Submissions: Here's how to submit your entry.

• Participants create a One Page Dungeon.
  
• Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license with credit to the contest participant.
  
• The submission must have a name, an author, a map, a key, a link to the license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) and no game stats.
  
• A link to your blog, wandering monsters, random events, adventure background or introduction, and descriptions of tricks or traps are all optional.
  
• One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry.
  
• Submission must be mailed in PDF, Open Office, or Microsoft Word format to Alex Schröder → kensanata@gmail.com.
  
• If you have a blog article talking about your submission, I'd love to link to it from the One Page Dungeon Contest page.
  

Process: Here's how we'll determine the winners.

• Every judge nominates their favorite entries and proposes a category for each.
  
• We try to make sure that every judge has at least three of their nominations in the final list. The idea is to not only reflect popular opinion but to also capture some of the more eclectic entries out there. We'll make sure that every judge is well represented with three entries each.
  
• Based on the categories proposed in the first step, we try to assign a category to each entry on the list.
  
• The result is our release candidate 1. Judges gets to check whether their favorites are still on the list.
  
• We fix omissions and rename categories until we're happy. This is our release candidate 2.
  
• We revise everything until we're happy. We have our list of winners! :)
  
• If we have prizes (we currently don't) each judge gets to nominate their favorite entry for a prize.
  
• We publish our list of winners!
  
• Harald puts together a PDF of all the entries and a PDF of all the winners. We'll make these PDFs available for download at no cost.
  

I think there are two ways of saving space: limit the levels (because you need less spells), or limit the rules (because you need no skills and feats and less combat rules). Here's how I'm comparing the two:

Limiting levels gives the product with a limited lifespan. It suggests a throwaway product to me. We don't have an Expert system to transition to where the spells in the Basic edition remain valid. Instead, people will replace the starter set. Dump it. Throw it away. A one-use product. That's not cool.

Limiting levels also suggests that kids aged 10-14 will have to read the Core Rules after ten or fifteen sessions once they hit the level limit. If find it hard to believe in a success transition to the Core Rules at that age. I barely grasped the AD&D 1st ed DMG when I was 15 and kept on ignoring many of the optional rules. At least they were optional!

Limiting the rules, on the other hand, will allow people to add to their existing characters. It will appeal to power-gamers. It will make their existing characters more awesome. They will love the Core Rules. They will want to introduce Power Attack, and Trip, and more spells – once they're ready for it! Once they're old enough, once they've played many sessions and gained many levels.

Assuming we want to introduce young teenagers to the game, I think that limiting levels is a bad choice. Don't do it. Instead, consider less rules. Limiting the rules is not a problem.

A forty years old friend I introduced to the game thought the glacial speed of combat was ridiculous. Thus, it's not only kids that don't like getting bogged down by the rules. They, too, would appreciate a simpler introduction to the hobby.

Assuming we want a Starter Set to be for people new to the game (not OSR, not White Wolf, not Indie), and we want to keep the current Core Rulebook (thus we cannot have a BECMI style sequence of products), and based on what I see when I introduce new players to my games, I suggest the following:

1. No skills. Keep five typical rogue skills like Search, Open Lock, Disable Device, Stealth and provide a table with skill rank per level.
2. No feats and class abilities. Keep sneak attack.
3. Four classes. Fighter, cleric, sorcerer, rogue. Sorcerers are easier to play than wizards.
4. Keep all the levels. We're not doing a BECMI sequence so no need to limit them.
5. Keep all the races. Everybody understands racial ability bonus, language, and speed.
6. Add a tiny winged humanoid race. I've had two people joining my groups wanting to play a faery. Make them sorcerers.
7. No combat maneuvers.
8. No attacks of opportunity.
9. No 5ft step.
10. Ganging up on single enemies grants automatic +2 for flanking and sneak attack for rogues.
11. Start with four sorcerer blood lines and provide a suggested sorcerer spell selection based on the theme. Make a nice table so people can look up which spells they know based on their level. Picking spells is hard for people who haven't read the book.

Essentially, all the things we left out can be added later, piece by piece, from the Core Rules.

The One Page Dungeon Contest Winners have been announced! :)

Submission deadline coming up in less than twelve hours…

There are still a few days left to submit an entry to the contest!

The contest page now lists some pretty cool loot! err… prizes! :)

And we have seven judges, now. I'm no longer looking for more judges. :)

the cartographer's guild is a wealth of willing talent.

You can get help at the Cartographer's Guild? I've looked at a gazillion of their tutorials these past years, but I've never asked anybody for help on my dungeon. Next time I should just ask…

I remember one of last year's contestants – The Dwarven Hall by Bret Smith – had a dungeon created in Excel! That was surprising.

Remember the One Page Dungeon Contest 2009? Good times! :)

Dates: Submission deadline is March 1, 0:00 GMT. Based on last year's experience, judges will have one month to read all the submissions and another two weeks to discuss the result. Winners will be announced April 18, 0:00 GMT. A pitty this will be too late for International Traditional Gaming Week 2010!

Judges: I'm still looking for judges! Five to seven would be a good number, I think. Last year we got a bit under 120 submissions. If you read four submissions every day, you will still need thirty days to read them all. Or looking at it another way, if you need ten minutes for each submission, you will spend a total of twenty hours reading. Last year we had less time, so I'm not worried. Interested? Let me know: kensanata@gmail.com!

Prizes: Do you have prizes to donate? Let me know: kensanata@gmail.com!

Submissions: Here's how to submit your entry.

• Participants create a One Page Dungeon.
  
• Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license with credit to the contest participant.
  
• The submission must have a name, an author, a map, a key, a link to the license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) and no game stats.
  
• A link to your blog, wandering monsters, random events, adventure background or introduction, and descriptions of tricks or traps are all optional.
  
• One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry.
  
• Submission must be mailed in PDF, Open Office, or Microsoft Word format to Alex Schröder: kensanata@gmail.com.
  
• If you're also hosting your submission elsewhere, you're welcome to link to it from the One Page Dungeon Contest page.
  
• If you're not hosting your submission elsewhere, your entry may be hosted on the contest site.
  

Process: Here's how we'll determine the winners.

• Every judge nominates twenty entries and proposes a category for each.
  
• We prepare a list of the entries that get three or more nominations. These are the nominations.
  
• Every judge again nominates five entries from this smaller list.
  
• All entries getting three nominations or more are the judge's picks.
  
• We try to make sure that every judge has at least three of his picks in the final list. Judge with an eclectic taste may find that not many of their nominations made it into this list. As the idea is to not only reflect popular opinion but to also capture some of the more eclectic entries out there, judges may add additional submission to the judge's picks until we feel that every judge is well represented. We'll try to aim for three entries per judge.
  
• Based on the categories proposed in the first step, we try to assign a category to each entry on the list.
  
• The result is our release candidate 1. Judges gets to check whether their favorites are still on the list.
  
• We fix omissions and rename categories until we're happy. This is our release candidate 2.
  
• We revise everything until we're happy. We have our list of winners! :)
  
• If we have prizes (we currently don't) each judge gets to nominate their favorite entry for a prize.
  
• We publish our list of winners!
  
• Somebody puts together a PDF of all the entries and a PDF of all the winners. We'll make these PDFs available for download at no cost.
  

I would love to see a product "real soon now", but I'm afraid that pushing for it will just result in less editing. And I love good editing jobs. :)

What can you do...continue to show an interest in this.

Show! Show!

I'm still playing 3.5 and as far as I'm concerned, just make it available as fast as possible. No conversion necessary, as far as I'm concerned. I'm buying it anyway.

I just ordered the first two issues of Fight On! They describe themselves as "The premier fanzine for the old-school renaissance." And I found it via Grognardia, so I guess it will have an old-school vibe. If the print quality is ok I switch my KQ subscription from PDF only to Print.

why would anyone who has the old 3.5 books buy the Pathfinder stuff?

I thought the answer was "people who have the old 3.5 books don't need to buy Pathfinder RPG because that's the point of it being backwards compatible." I thought that Pathfinder RPG is for people who start playing next year and find that they can't get the old 3.5 books anymore, or for people who need replacements for their old core books because they're falling appart.

The player of the grappling barbarian in my game also commented on my website where I have my review (as Paizo only allows 2000 characters I had to shorten it a bit).

Here are some points he made:

I really liked the atmosphere of the adventure. Not something I would necessarily want to run over a campaign, but for a one-shot it was perfect. The somewhat bitter ending (we did pretty well, only allowing ~250 deaths) left me a bit crestfallen, especially moments after I grappled the [final foe], killed him with one last twist of the armor spikes, and ripped off his helm! But clearly that was an important theme of the adventure, and like I said, I really liked the overall flavor.

The war of attrition was a bit tough, I think. [...] As the grappling barbarian, I ended up being healed for 170 points of damage over the course of the adventure (3.5 times my hit points, hehe). Wands were not helpful, they were necessary.

Spoiler:

The possibility of permanent blindness and the persistent ability damage of the poison magnifies the fatigue the party must endure over the course of the adventure.

I think if we had found more clever and non-combat ways of solving problems, we would not have been in nearly as bad a shape. It was unclear to me how many options were specifically called out in the text, or how much of it would have relied on us convincing the DM to let us try something. In any case, we solved most situations by violence (which suited my barbarian fine).

[...]

Rating: 70% (recommended)

Oh, and nice title, Nicolas! :)

I've posted a review now that we finished the module. My players liked it. The fights were quite tough, but the surprising problem was this:

We are half way through the module, and we're liking it. We started it on Easter and will finish next week (a "two shot", I guess). The powergamer in the party decided to try a spiked armor wearing grappling half-orc, and it worked very nicely. After the fireworks went off, I started playing Tom Waits' The Black Rider and Frank's Wild Years in the background. My players liked it.

I'm a bit concerned about the last fight, though. As all of this takes place on the same day, the party is already scared of tackling more fights for fear of wasting all their healing and all their remaining spells... Having it all happen on the same day really puts spellcasters on their toes!

I have a few friends who are in town for the holidays and I wanted to run a gamemastery module for them.

I recently ran Gallery of Evil as a one shot. Took us about ten hours.

It depends on your jurisdiction. In the US, you'll have to trust in Fair Use if Paizo grants no exception.

Here in Switzerland, there's an limit to copyright for personal use, and personal use is described as being within your personal sphere and within a circle of people close to each other "such as relatives or friends". Thus, if you're in Switzerland, sharing the PDFs with your close friends should not be a problem.

The only explicit exception to this article are computer programs.

the way the current women iconics are portrayed in the artwork so far is great!!

The other day my best friend's kids were looking at Gallery of Evil and the eight year old girl remarked twice on how the sorceress was half naked. So I had to try and explain that people do this because they think it will sell more... That was a bit weird. Specially since she made her first comment after about ten seconds of looking at the product. Makes me wonder how conditioned we all are.

But that CR 6 typo is responsible for you getting TWO of those CR 9 (not CR 6) constructs at the begging of the adventure and their overall difficulty due to reach and damage reduction should have resulted in an EL 9.

Ah, that explains it! :)

I strongly recommend using only one tentacle monster, or provide strong warnings for your players. Crunshing slurping noises as if giants were being butchered, a mass of tentacles visible through the windows whether they plan on looking through them or not, that kind of thing. The monsters can be beaten using magic and by drawing them into the corridorm, allowing you to fight them one after another. But running into the room = certain death. :)

One of my players also commented on the session on my blog. He notes that the rogue should not have been able to backstab the high-level barbarian and concludes by saying he would "strongly discourage anyone from taking a rogue." If you're planning to backstabbing a lot, he's probably right.

So, we played through it all in about ten hours. Nice!

I liked how each fight was easy to run because they were all essentially one-trick ponies. Players feel good about this, because once they find a way to beat them at it, it's an obvious success.

I loved the fight against the

I loved it once the captured one of the villains

The first fight ended with the sudden death of our fighter. That was a shock for the gaming table. We rebooted the game and the second time around, they were a lot more cautious.

Of Appendix I we only used Zharep Apul. It truly was but a one-shot.

The big social encounter in area 2 didn't really work for our group. Nobody had strong diplomacy skills (the pregens come with a single Cha +4), and going in turns went against the sense of urgency the players felt. Thus I basically let one player handle all encounters until he was delayed and had another player take over. That worked ok.

Thanks for a nice Sunday one-shot!

I will be starting a GameMaster module right now and wanted to print out the "Meet the Iconics" pages for each of the pregen characters. It turns out they're not easy to find on the site. Can we have them all together somewhere, easy to find and print? These blog posts add a paragraph or two of fluff which is always nice.

So my regular games are on hold for the holiday season. I asked around to see if anybody was interested in a game for Dec 23 and maybe another day before New Year, and found four volunteers. I then showed them DCC Sunless Garden and all the GameMastery modules and asked them to pick one.

And they picked Gallery of Evil!

So I started doing some serious reading. Hopefully I'll be able to post a play review in two weeks. :)

I'd like to be able to have Google Reader check it for me like it checks messageboard posts here. […] I may just be missing something, seeing as Kensanata says that you can use bloglines to check it. Anyway, the normal way I've been trying hasn't worked.

I just checked my Google Reader and found that it handles http://paizo.com/paizo/blog&xml=atom just fine. Perhaps you just missed the RSS buttons all over the Paizo site? They have them for all sorts of things…

And the internal links work. I guess Google Reader is smarter about guessing the base URL. :)

I read the blog via Bloglines. I like it! I read every post.

My only real gripe is that you use relative URLs in your posts, therefore I cannot follow any links when I read the article in my feed reader. The result? "…head on over to the Blog Feedback thread on our messageboards…" will point to http://www.bloglines.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo/websiteFeedback/blogFeed back

Grrr. And it happens with all internal links: Previews, screenshots, forums, products: So everytime I want to click a Paizo link, there is a little aggravating moment. So if there's one thing you'll change, make internal links work in the HTML used in your RSS feed. Use absolute URLs.

Yep, worked for me. I was thinking Easter Islands and Frankenstein... :)

Too bad Amazon Germany is telling me that the book is being delayed. New estimated shipping date: 05.11.2007 - 07.11.2007. I hope for you that it means its really selling well elsewhere. ;)

The authors of the Lost City of Barakus mini campaign from Necromancer Games suggest just that: Let the players gain only half XP.

Thanks, delvesdeep. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants – it was just a paste and copy job. Since I haven't read the AP from beginning to end, my problem is that I don't know what to foreshadow. You're input is appreciated. I will look for more things to add.

Got my email today! :D

The physical copy must not be far behind.

(Switzerland)

Plus I got my Dungeon #150 today. :)

Oops, fixed it.

For anybody else who's interested in the photoshopping part: I've found some threads on EN World about map drawing... In case you want to check them out: Cartography Workshop, or Making Campaign Maps. (My own maps usually remain on the "scan sketches" stage.)

I, too, will start the AP in September. This is what I sent my players:
Shackled City Player’s Guide.
It's a remix of my house rules, stuff from therpgenius, who in turn got it from the book itself, and some formatting. It was mostly paste & copy. :)

That honestly sounds more like a setting/backdrop product than an adventure.

Well, here's what I like about Sebastian's idea. The delve format is interesting for a few cinematic fights. At high level, there don't need to be many. But consider these two examples I liked: The fight at Skull Gorge bridge in Red Hand of Doom, and the encounter in the dead beholder room in Barrow of the Forgotten King. Damage taken when falling, climb, tumble, search DCs, suggested ways of destroying the bridge (including a list of the various stone related spells and the damage they did)... Excellent stuff that saves me a lot of time. I think that goes beyond setting/backdrop.

To take that to a new level: The wizard X lives in his tower at X, managed to steal item X from ruler of demiplane X, framing cult X in city X, etc. -- plain plot exposition. Maybe three pages.

A map of his tower, the setup for a fight, his magical defenses, why teleport won't work, what scrying will discover, knowledge checks, spot checks, handle many of the things high-level players will do with ready-made answers. Use this for three combat encounters (the band of high-powered assassin demons sent after the party, the falsely accused cult headquarter), each four pages including stats for unusual terrain, monsters, spells, or tactics.

This is the part that most resembles the delve format.

Total pages used: 15 pages. Add four maps, gives us 17 pages.

That leaves another 15 pages for intrigue and diplomacy. Use twelve pages for major NPC, and how they react to the situation. Noble hears of the stolen X from his seer, discovers clues leading him to the framed cult, sends militia, they will be defeated by cultists, cultists slay merchant prince in revenge to stir up a rebellion, noble calls mercenary witch hunters, rebellion supported by neighboring city state X, etc. Don't provide stats for all of these. In terms of the high-level party, these are all non-combat encounters. If the party wants to kill them all, they can. All we care about is the politics of X.

This is the part where this format diverges from regular adventure material, because we're not statting this out as combat encounters, and we're not really developing a flow-chart of events based on party actions. Instead, this is the raw material needing some improvisation by the DM if the players interfere. I think we can pull it off because this is a high level adventure. Combat is easy, but will result in non-optimal outcomes. The only important fights are handled in the delve section.

That leaves us three pages for resolution: Describe various endings. Cult got erradicated, wizard X gets to keep item X. Party defended cult and got blamed for stealing item X. Either they discover and defeat the wizard taking item X, or they defeat the original owners, fighting on wizard X's side. Provide some inspiration for the DM preparing the session as to how many ways of ending the adventure there are.

I mean, if they start things off at a "10", then how long can they keep producing content that can still be classified as a "10"?

Around here we call that a "positive problem". :)

Meh! I wanted this issue as part of my Dungeon to Pathfinder transition deal -- and it is no longer available! :'(

Will there be a PDF version eventually?