Tag: #DMLife

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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

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Win some, lose some

So this week was a good news, bad news kinda week. I’ve sold a story to an anthology I was really excited about and am now just waiting for permission to formally announce it. I was really happy with the story when I finished it, and am glad I was able to land a spot where I had intended it to go.

On the bad news front, a story I felt was a potential contender for another anthology didn’t make it through the second round of cuts. I wrote something I hoped would be far enough outside what they were likely seeing lots of, but perhaps it was a little too far out. It’s always letdown when you experience the initial “We love it!” and then a followup of “…just not IN love with it.” This is the reality of things though, and we move on. I’m pretty confident I’ll find a home for it eventually, as the theme was pretty broad.

On the TTRPG side of things, I am just about ready to publish another adventure. This one, called “The Crypt of the Four”, was the result of me overthinking something else I was working on, stripping out an entire subplot, and make it an adventure on its own. I’ll leave the details for when I post it to the Dungeon Master’s Guild (it’ll be soon!).

I’m also coming to the end of the second adventure in the trilogy I was working on, and think I have a doozy of an adventure planned for the third and final story. It’s really going to put a cap on things, and I hope folks will give it a shot.

One thing I love doing is selling books personally at conventions, and I’ve been trying to think of ways to make these adventures into physical projects that could be sold. I’m currently exploring a number of different formats for this. I know the easy one would be to bind a bunch of them up in a book, but I’m also looking at smaller ways of doing this. I’ll keep you posted.

The art I’ve included is from my forthcoming adventure, “The Crypt of the Four”. Hope you like it!

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From silence to stories.

So I have spent the past couple years very quietly. This year is looking to be the opposite of that. I currently have four short stories out for consideration, written since the beginning of December, and two of whom have made second round consideration. Another one is out for some feedback. That’s not much, but it is something. What it IS is this idea in my head that short story theorycraft is finally starting to make sense to me. Almost 50 years old, better late than never.

I love Dungeons and Dragons and I’ve been playing it since I was a kid. The first time I played was with my mother and her friends, I was all of eight years old. I played through 1st and 2nd editions in Jr. High and High School. And then 3rd edition came out and I was all in on that. I still think 3.5e is the best version of this game. Problem is trying to find players who want to go back to an old edition.

I recently wrapped up a 2-year Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign I was running, and my party is on a break. Wanting to capture some of the adventures I wrote to thicken the plot soup of Rime, I’ve been rebuilding them as generic adventures. I own a ton of Dyson Logos commercial maps, and between that and my friend Erin (The talented E.M. MacCallum, check out her books!) I have started building them into something serviceable. I know AI art is not a popular thing right now, but I’ve been using MidJourney to create images for the adventures.

I don’t expect to sell more than a handful of copies of these things (if any), so dishing out a grand or more for a handful of pieces and waiting months on them being completed is outside the scope of this experiment. I’ll post about them when I stick ’em up on DMs Guild.

I plan on writing a lot more this year. I wrote almost nothing last year, but I was neck deep in some personal drama. Not an excuse. Well, actually, that’s exactly what it is. It was an excuse to focus on nothing and do even less.

That’s all over with. Bring it, 2025. I’m ready for you.