Tag: dd

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The Hexen Temple

The Hexen Temple, the second adventure in the Amberblight Quintet, is now live on Amazon – for those of you who prefer paper over pixels (like myself). If you are just getting caught up, here is where we sit at the beginning of The Hexen Temple:

An ancient Elven artifact has been discovered beneath the long deserted Dwarven outpost known as Rockshield. The artifact, once buried at the base of a great magical tree, unleashed a horrific blight upon the region when activated, and it was only the actions of a brave adventuring company that stopped the blight from spreading across the realm.

Now, the artifact is seemingly deactivated, but it has a strange habit of drawing in anyone near it with whispered promises of power, wealth, and potential.

The Elves are coming to reclaim the artifact for themselves, while the local dwarves have other ideas. On the eve of the arrival of two elven envoys, a group of Rockshield dwarves steal the artifact, determined not to let it fall into elven hands.

Enspelled by its power, they attack and kidnap the residents of a hunting village before retreating into a Dwarven crypt nearby, determined to reactivate the artifact and gain the wealth, and power the artifact has promised.

The elves are determined not to let this happen. They alone know what the artifact is, and what it is capable of, but they are not telling anyone.

All that is known is the artifact is important enough for the elves to be willing to die in service of retrieving it. And they are also willing to kill…

So that is the story. But you may be asking yourself, what do you actually do?

In The Hexen Temple, your players will be part of the discussions between the envoys and get a chance to decide for themselves which of the two competing groups of elves they join to reclaim the object. They will race into the mountains, trying to beat the competing elves to the site of the Hexen Temple, and then face off against dwarves, Skarnid mutations, and the competing elves who are now determined to claim the artifact at any cost. The adventure culminates in a battle between the horrific secret at the heart of the Hexen Temple, the dwarves, the Skarnid mutations, the competing elves, and the players themselves.

And you know, since this is book 2 of 5, you know it’s only going to get more dangerous from here on out…

Check out The Hexen Temple in print on Amazon.ca:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0FH3Y57JC

or on Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FH3Y57JC

And for those of you who prefer pixels, it’s been available on the Dungeon Master’s Guild site for a few months now:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/519379/The-Hexen-Temple–Book-II-of-the-Amberblight-Quintet

Hope you enjoy it! And watch out for “The Hymn of the Hollow God” – Book III of the Amberblight Quintet – coming out on digital at the Dungeon Master’s Guild later this month!

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Cover Teaser for Starship Librarians

The amazing folks over at Tyche books have sent out a cover teaser for their upcoming anthology, “Starship Librarians” edited by Shannon Allen and JR Campbell. The cover art is by Lorna Antoniazzi, according to Tyche’s Facebook post with this exact image.

The full reveal will be on June 17, but until then… here is a little teaser.

In other news, I have stepped once more into the shadow realm that exists behind every Dungeon Master screen and will be running a heavily modified 3.5e version of Tyranny of Dragons for my new group. It’s a mix of experienced Grogs and new 5e players, so there should be lots of help at the table.

We held a session 0 earlier this week and laid out some ground rules. Then we have a couple weeks off before our first game. I’ll keep you posted on this and other stuff as it happens. In all honesty, probably like a week or two after it happens 😉

If you haven’t checked out my printed adventures over on Amazon, please feel free to do so at your convenience. I have another one coming soon. And copies of my newly rebirthed short story collection, A Quiet Place (cover by the amazing Erin MacCallum, who will be at When Words Collide in August if you want to bug her for commissions) is also available.

Later days!

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When Words Collide

In August, I’ll be heading down to When Words Collide in Calgary, and it’s been a while since I did that. I’m excited to see some friends I have missed, drink some beer, commiserate with fellow writers, drink some more, and possibly even learn a thing or two.

This year’s guest is Stephen Graham Jones, which is awesome because horror writers don’t often get a ton of love in the genre world – they are the creepy, deformed sisters that get locked in the basement and only come out when someone forgets to secure the lock after feeding them.

So that is going to be awesome! I’m also looking forward to possibly seeing some family while I’m down there, so if you are in the area the weekend of August 15, stop in and say hi!

In other news, I’m working on lining up some convention tables for my new releases this year – the re-release of my fiction collection A Quiet Place and a handful of D&D adventures that are slowly making their round. There is some little stuff up here. I’d love to get up to Yellowknife at some point, but to be honest, I don’t trust my car to drive for hours without a single gas station in sight.

In a short time, I am going to be running a Tyranny of Dragons campaign – my DM break is over! Since every single 5e campaign book is hot garbage (organizationally, the ideas are very good!) this means a ton of homebrewing on my part. It’s really one of my favourite things about D&D.

This campaign is going to be extra awesome because we’ve finally convinced our 5e players to try out 3.5 – the best version of D&D and if you disagree, well, in the words of Conan the Barbarian, “DEN TO HALL WITCHOO!”

I have a plan for this game that I think will really put it over the top for my players. More to come on that.

Did I mention it’s fuckin’ hot up here? Well, it is.

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The Crypt of the Four in print!

Just a quick note here announcing an adventure I wrote a few months ago – “The Crypt of the Four” is now available in print, for those of you – like myself – prefer the persistence of paper over the cold efficiency of pixels.

Also, and I may be a little biased here, but these little adventures look great on a bookshelf.

Here is the back cover for The Crypt of the Four:

They were heroes lost to time. But they bore a dark secret…
Beneath the earth, where history is buried and forgotten, something stirs. The
Crypt of the Four, once a monument to legendary heroes, has been defiled,
twisted by a presence long erased.

The Fifth has returned.

Shadows stretch unnaturally, whispers claw at the edges of thought, and the
past refuses to stay dead. A name, chiseled from stone, lingers. Waiting to be
spoken. Mockeries of the past writhe in stitched flesh, torches flicker with
spectral flame, and sorrow thickens the air.
Uncover the truth. Face what was lost.

But beware… some names were meant to be forgotten.

A 5e Compatible Horror Story for levels 7-10

You can find it in print on all the relevant Amazons, such as here:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0F89F2Q2R
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F89F2Q2R

And of course, the digital version is available up on the Dungeon Masters Guild:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/511792/The-Crypt-of-the-Four

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Winter Hearts on Dungeon Masters Guild

I’ve recently released a new first-tier adventure on Dungeon Masters Guild, and will be releasing it soon as a print release on Amazon (stay tuned for news on that!)

Winter Hearts takes place near Mourningbridge, the same community I built for The Crypt of the Four, for those of you keeping track. If you can’t tell by the name, this adventure takes place during the winter.

In winter hearts, your adventurers can investigate the disappearance of a family on their way to Mourningbridge who were seemingly attacked and taken. An ancient elven keep that sits in ruins nearby is the likely location.

Some say the keep is haunted; of late, there have been strange lights seen in the upper reaches of the keep, and even stranger things heard.

Here is the teaser for Winter Hearts:

In the dead of winter, an ancient elven keep lies in ruin, its walls besieged by gnolls driven mad by visions of a sacred child hidden within. Inside, an elven couple guards their newborn, while a desperate human family lies captive beneath their feet.
As hunger, bloodlust, and divine prophecy converge, the walls won’t hold for long… and what waits below hungers for more than just flesh.
Break the siege, save the innocent, and cleanse the desecrated magic of the Bleeding Watch –  before winter’s heart devours you…

Before you go any further, read this!!!

This story contains themes of imprisonment, childbirth under duress, starvation, siege warfare, religious zealotry, torture, and threats to families.

Readers may also encounter unsettling depictions of predatory violence, emotional manipulation, gnoll rituals, and moral dilemmas involving desperate survival. Please proceed with caution if you are sensitive to these themes.

For some of you, this is exactly why you have purchased this adventure. For others…

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Check it out at the DMs Guild!

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/521265/Winter-Hearts

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WrestleMania Weekend Update

Things are finally starting to warm up in the north, meaning the snow is just about gone and I’m able to sit on my back deck again. We’re in that sweet spot between winter and bugs, and I’m taking full advantage of it.

It’s awesome my job recognizes WrestleMania as the universal centre of the wrestling world, and I’ve gotten a few days off work disguised as something called “Easter”… I have no idea what that is, but I imagine it’s just a fancy non-English word for WRESTLEMANIA BAYYYYY BEEEEEE.

So anyway, with four days off, I’ve had a chance to really dig into some of my catch-up work in terms of my 5e adventures. I’m expecting some proof copies of “The Crypt of the Four” from Amazon early next week, and my second installment of The Amberblight Quintet is in the books. I’ll be putting it up on Dungeon Master’s Guild in the next few days, but if you are waiting for a paper copy, I’ll probably have that ready to go on Amazon next week sometime.

So that’s good news! It means I’ll be working on some new adventures soon. I’ve been paying my daughter to colour some of the many, many Dyson Logos maps I bought commercial licenses for, and she’s decided to use that money to get shots for her dog. As you can imagine, that means I have a pile of them just waiting for something to come and take them over.

My reprint of “A Quiet Place” is in the middle of a soft release; I’m trying to line up some conventions for this year to get out and meet people and hawk my wares. I DO have a ticket for When Words Collide in Calgary in August, so at the very least, if you are headed that way, stop by and say hi! If I’m not checking out a panel, I will likely be in the pub. Writers write, and when they aren’t writing, they are usually drinking.

Oh. And LET’S GO CENA!
(Cena sucks)

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The Amberblight Quintet

It’s finally here!

Well. The first installment, anyway.

The Amberblight Quintet, a five-part adventure path exploring the potential birth of a god, has officially kicked off. The first adventure, Amberblight, is available now on the Dungeon Master’s Guild.

My plan here is to have each of these adventures include their own capstone feature that will make them feel very different from the other adventures in the series, while retaining the storyline and driving toward the ultimate goal. This means these adventures will all be very different from one another and may include mechanics you have never seen before in D&D 5e. I’m a homebrew addict from way, way, WAY back, and I can’t resist a chance to twist and mutate the rules. If you’ve played some of my other adventures, you might have a bit of an idea what I mean.

In Amberblight, the players are introduced to a sleepy little town known as Riverrock. The Town is a place where dwarves and humans live together peacefully. Of course, that is about to change, because if it didn’t, well, we wouldn’t really have an adventure, would we?

Here is the teaser for Amberblight:

Riverrock’s peaceful days are over.

Villagers vanish, livestock roam strangely, and whispers of glowing veins in
the hills spread like wildfire. Deep within the abandoned dwarven outpost of
Rockshield, an ancient amber vein pulsates with life, harbouring grotesque
parasites and an artifact of elven origin. As the corruption spreads, twisted
creatures crawl from the depths.

Will your party face the hive’s horrors and unravel its secrets…

or fall to the amber’s insidious grasp?

Hang on to your butts, kids, it’s gonna be a ride.

You can find Amberblight at the Dungeon Master’s Guild here.

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Two more adventures headed to Amazon

My two shorter, earlier adventures, The Den and The Changelings, are about to be in print. The Den actually is in print on Amazon as we speak, laid out similar to the digital designs found on the Dungeon Masters Guild, but in that handy little 6X9 format. I’ve priced them lower than The Tower at the End of Time due to the size difference in the books – both are around 30 pages while Tower is 70.

Both The Den and The Changelings are rebuilds from my Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign and when I originally ran them, my players worked through in about 4 hours. I thought the same would be said for Tower, but they ended up doing that adventure over two nights and wrapping up one outstanding issue on the third night.

I have a couple more of these to do, The Crypt of The Four and The Temple of the Shrike, and then I should be all caught up in terms of digital adventures heading to print. In the future, I may launch print and digital adventures together.

Some news on that “Glimmering Plague” trilogy I was working on – It has expanded into a Quintet. Honestly, I get lost in these things sometimes. I was motoring along and suddenly hit 50 pages and realized I was only halfway through what I had planned. So after talking it over with a pal (and I seriously know two of the greatest D&D minds out there), He suggested a quintet might be in order. Yeah, why not? Maybe I’ll release it as five individual adventures as well as one big one. Could be around 200 pages of content by the time it is done. Hardcover? Maybe. I have to write the damn things first.

I have an interview coming up with the local paper – it was an easy pitch, since the reporter is a friend of mine. He’s always looking for good community news stories. And I mean, I do live in the community.

If you are interested in picking up The Den in print, you can check it out here:
The Den on Amazon.com
The Den on Amazon.ca

Also, here is the video trailer I made for it:


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Our most precious resource

I’ve taken a few days off work. I didn’t take much time off last year, and I’ve been slow to burn through it so far this year. With all the changes going on, there have just been too many things to catch up on, stay on top of, get going on. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t really do the whole work/life balance thing – I love my job, and want to be there. When I’m at home, I work on other things. There just never seems to be enough time for all the things I want to do, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

I find myself rushing between projects, juggling responsibilities, and moving things around. prioritizing. As a result, I usually end up being late for everything. I showed up 20 minutes late for a D&D game recently, apologizing for being late (as usual), and it was agreed around the table that if I ever showed up on time, everyone would know something is wrong. I mean, that’s probably true.

So, what am I doing with these few days off work? I tacked them onto the end of a long weekend, giving me some extra time. I have spent a bunch of that with my daughter and her German Shepard. But I really took this time off to catch up on the work I do at home. Writing fiction, submitting stories, and (as of 2025) designing and creating Dungeons and Dragons adventures. I’ve subbed a story to an anthology that looks promising, and I’ve mapped out a story I would like to write for another. Still waiting to hear back on a couple I currently have out.

I’ve also completed the second part of a trilogy of adventures I mentioned on here before. I’m itching to get them out in the world and off my plate, but I’m committed to releasing them all at once. And I’ve mapped out another adventure I pulled out of me D23 notebook from a couple years ago – I never finished because I ended up spending much of the spring, summer, and fall of 2023 assisting with more than 20,000 evacuees who came through our little town when the NWT and our surrounding communities were evacuated. There just wasn’t enough time.

I feel many artists might agree with this: The older you get, the more you wonder if there will be enough time to do all the things you want to do. The more you wonder if you will be able to look back and think, did I do enough? Have I contributed positively to the things I believed in? Did I spend enough time with the ones I most loved?

Of course not. There will never be enough time for all of that. Just ask Pink Floyd:

And you run, and you run, to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking.
And racing around, to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older.
Shorter of breath.
And one day closer to death.

If you’re not there yet, you soon will be.

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The Crypt of the Four is now live!

The other day I mentioned that I had a castoff map written up that I was putting together as its own adventure – a plot line that had started tangling up the trilogy I’m working on. I took a break from the trilogy to put this together, and as of a couple days ago, it’s now live on the DMs Guild.

Here’s the teaser from the front of the book:

They were heroes lost to time. But they bore a dark secret…

Beneath the earth, where history is buried and forgotten, something stirs. The Crypt of the Four, once a monument to legendary heroes, has been defiled, twisted by a presence long erased. The Fifth has returned.

Shadows stretch unnaturally, whispers claw at the edges of thought, and the
past refuses to stay dead. A name, chiseled from stone, lingers. Waiting to be
spoken. Mockeries of the past writhe in stitched flesh, torches flicker with
spectral flame, and sorrow thickens the air.

Uncover the truth. Face what was lost.

But beware… some names were meant to be forgotten.

So this is a mystery dungeon adventure, where the players can go through and explore rooms and collect clues to give them a better understanding of the story. My favourite kind of dungeon, really.

This is a longer adventure than the previous two, as the dungeon is much bigger. I’ve priced it the same as the others, however, because I’ve been a writer long enough to know that there is no money in writing. Just to be sure, I’m making these as affordable as possible.

I’m really have a lot of fun putting these together. And I’m thrilled that the prospect people are buying these stories to run at their own tables. Kinda makes me feel like I’m DMing a huge game all over the place.

I have been looking into nontraditional ways to make these into print copies, for conventions and stuff. My local museum stocks a bunch of my books because the Town of High Level staff are awesome and folks around here do one thing better than anyone else: lift each other up.

I’m including a copy of the cover of The Crypt of the Four, which you can find on the DMs Guild:

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/511792/The-Crypt-of-the-Four?src=newest_in_dmg&filters=45469