Tag: writing

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The Tower at the End of Time (SPOILERS AHEAD!)

My latest adventure up at Dungeon Masters Guild is a level 20 horror adventure called The Tower at the End if Time. I originally wrote it in 2024 for my annual Halloween Horror one shot.

At the time, we were coming to the end of our two-year Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign, and this sidetrek was a Ravenloft story with a few small changes. Most of the original story remains intact.

This adventure actually took two sessions to complete, as I didn’t anticipate my players getting lost in the labyrinth for as long as they did. I’ve changed some of the mechanics in this version with that in mind.

Adventuring at level 20

It’s pretty common wisdom among DMs that high level play is difficult to run. The players are basically demigods at this point, they never miss, nobody saves, and the amount of damage they can put out in a round is pretty staggering.

For my players, an illusionist wizard, an elven archer (fighter), paladin, rogue, and light cleric, they could put out anywhere from 75-200 points of damage each. Every round. EVERY. ROUND. Think about that range. an enemy with 400 hp could last 5-6 rounds or two rounds, depending on the luck of the dice. This makes combat very swingy in late stage play.

I noticed pretty quickly that adding HP was not the right answer here. The rounds can be agonizingly slow at this stage. Players with multiple effects, abilities, and turns. You have to account for a little bit of time for the players to still be weighing their strategies by the time it gets around to their turn.

And I know there is a lot of discussion out there about using minions, attacking player weaknesses, complicating combat – and yeah, those all have a place in your toolbox. They are just not the right tool every time. A lich will definitely be strategic about their attacks, but a giant purple worm? Nawwwwww.

My answer was to beef up the damage. Make combat even MORE lethal. Sure, they were going to paste my monsters in 1-2 rounds, but man, were they going to pay for letting me have a turn! And this seemed to add a level of panic to player actions. Drop 120 points of damage onto a paladin from a single arrow in the first round, and watch your players scurry for cover. It’s great fun. And the irony here is that this amount of damage was not far off from what my players were able to do themselves. Sauce for the goose.

Who Watches the Watchers? (Hint… it’s the players)

Circling back to The Tower at the Edge of Time, the adventure added a fun little bonus in the form of phantasmal creatures known as The Watchers. The Watchers do exactly as their name implies. They watch. Their only purpose in the adventure is to be there to witness the undoing of Creation with the release of Zar’Vul – an ancient god of unknown and forgotten things. Like I said, the stakes at level 20 are just that much higher, right?

I had a note in my original story about how The Watchers only watch The Obsidian Tower, unless a player commits an evil act in their presence or casts a necromantic or far-realm based spell (something I was using as “forgotten lore”). So of course, my Illusionist cast one of these spells, and was horrified to find one of The Watchers turn and look at him. That Watcher followed him through the adventure right up until the very end, when they returned back to the ruined Netherese city of Ythryn in Icewind Dale.

At this point, my Illusionist immediately asked, “Did that Watcher follow me home?”

I didn’t have any notes on this. I hadn’t really thought about it. But, generally being a “Yes, and!” DM, I immediately said, “Yes, and…” The “and” part was that The Watcher stayed with him for the rest of the campaign and into retirement. And my Illusionist tried EVERYTHING he could to rid himself of this creature. It never interacted, but anytime he looked out across the land, he would see a lone, robed figure standing off, watching him. Sometimes The Watcher was just a spec on the horizon. Sometimes it stood beside the table while my player sat in an inn trying to eat soup in peace.

After our campaign wound down, I asked the players where they saw their character a year after their adventure. It was part of an end of campaign session I learned about from Mike Shea of Sly Flourish fame. It’s a great idea, and if you don’t do this, you really should consider it!

The Watchers appear in this version of the adventure in the form they evolved into in that original Halloween game. Anytime they witness an act or spell that leaves a “taint” on a player’s soul, they will gain a new Watcher.

Forever.

Promo stuff

Here is the product teaser and promo video for The Tower at the End of Time. It’s about 42 pages long, so I’ve priced it a bit higher than my usual $2.99 USD for these. adventures – it’s priced at $4.99 USD. This just reflects the extra work that went into it. I hope this doesn’t dissuade you from dropping a couple bucks on it.

Available at DMs Guild here: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/515505/The-Tower-at-the-End-of-Time?src=newest_in_dmg&filters=45469

There is a name no one speaks.


Not because it is forbidden, but because it was never known. The Tower stands at the edge of memory, waiting for those who were never meant to find it. Beyond its threshold lies a presence that should not exist, a being neither alive nor dead—only absent.


Step forward, and the world may change around you. Turn back, and you will always wonder what was waiting beyond the door.


Some things are meant to be forgotten.


But something is calling you to remember.


Before you go any further, read this!!!


This adventure contains themes of existential horror, reality manipulation, memory loss, and the unraveling of time. Players may also encounter themes of identity erasure, non-linear causality, and the consequences of altering fundamental truths.
Readers and players should be aware that this is a story of inevitability and consequence, where choices shape the world in ways that cannot be undone.
For some of you, this is exactly why you have purchased this adventure. For others…


YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

A 5e Horror Story for Level 20.

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A hero in the making

I play in a couple D&D games; one weekly and one bi-weekly.

In one of my games, I’ve been playing a dwarf paladin destined to be a paladin of Moradin from the awesome Faiths of the Forgotten Realms book. And everything was progressing along nicely.

At level 2, I’ve been roleplaying little events in the game that are pointing towards his intended path. Intended, that is, until we visited a small town overrun with squid creatures from the Far Realm. Kade (Orcsplitter, in the finest Dwarven tradition) managed to get himself a parasitic squid parasite living in his head and spinal column. In a moment, he was turned from the hammer and anvil.

Later, when the party wizards and a handful of scraggily bandits managed to free everyone, Kade traded in his hammer for a battle axe. Filled with rage, he is now in the process of walking down and dismantling every infested squid-slave he can get his paws on. To the shock and dismay of some of my party members, of course.

The axe, the rage, the uncompromising judgement – they are all part of a plan that suddenly occurred to me while I was wandering around happily being a parasitic host and worshipping some old farming god. I was no longer going to be a paladin of Moradin. Instead, my experience has turned me toward a path of Vengeance. No longer would I be the hammer of justice for my god. I would be the clenched fist that wields it.

Now the real story begins. because as he is adventuring in these early levels, he is forming as a character. I’m getting a better sense of who he is and what he wants to accomplish. I’m getting to know what he likes and what he hates. And I’ve discovered that prior to level 3, “I haven’t taken my oath yet!” is a great way to shut down any criticism about Kade’s methods.

Sure, D&D is a game about rolling dice and collecting treasure. But where it truly shines, and will always shine, is as a group storytelling exercise. In my mind, the best way to do this is to live the world as your character.

Think about how your character might respond to things that are happening to them and around them. THAT is your real back story. Your background is just the bones. The meat, blood, skin, and organs grow out of those early levels.

Work stuff:

I recently heard back from the editors of a story I subbed back in October, and it turns out they liked it enough that they want to add it to their anthology. Great news! It’s always exciting to get that kind of information in your inbox. It helps that these editors are great people and very talented, and they live in my neck of the woods (internationally speaking).

I also heard back from a second place I had subbed to, and they let me know they would not be taking the story I sent them. I still have hope for this one. This is the second market it’s been turned down from, so we are still in single digits. I’m still optimistic, in other words.

I haven’t released a new adventure in a couple weeks, but I have a handful of them sitting at the moment waiting for a couple final pieces. I’m working on a process to get my maps coloured, because that would be more cool. Good work takes time (and money).

I’ll post an image from my latest WiP, a near perfect reconstruction of a Halloween adventure I ran for my 2-year Rime group. Perfect, as in it is almost exactly how I ran it back then. You’ll have to decide for yourself if it’s any good 😉

You can find my published adventures here.

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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

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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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A new project or three

First, a couple updates on the fiction front.
I recently heard back from an editor I respect and admire greatly that a story I had submitted has made it to the final round of consideration for an upcoming anthology. Great news! The last anthology this editing team put together landed them an Aurora award – I was lucky enough to have made it into that one as well.

I have another story that has made it past the first round of cuts for another anthology, and am waiting patiently to hear back from several others. I’ll keep you posted.

Following the successful launch of my first two short D&D adventures on the DMs Guild, I sat back and watched the money roll in.

Ok, that’s a lie, because a) I immediately got sucked into a much larger project, and b) everyone knows there is no money in writing these days.

I finished another adventure, but the story just didn’t seem to be over. So in the grand old tradition of Dungeons and Dragons, I just… kept going. The adventure is now going to be a trilogy, and my plan is to release them all together because waiting for things is annoying.

I am very lucky to know one of the smartest D&D minds out there, one of my best pals, who is able to very clearly tell me when my ideas are getting off the rails. Usually, it’s things like “Resist overcomplicating this at all costs.” Every creative person out there knows the value of having people around you can bounce ideas off who won’t immediately go to “You should do this!” And I happen to have a few of them.

So about this new trilogy? My working title for it has been “The Glimmering Plague” and involves a group of dwarves uncovering an ancient elven artifact that’s been corrupted. after wreaking havoc on the nearby village, the story gets bigger from there, putting the players, the elves, and the dwarves all in conflict, while dealing with a growing horror that threatens the entire region. Since I need to have a photo to go with this post, I’ll give you a little teaser of something that happens in the first act of the trilogy. Hope you enjoy it!

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A new me

Welcome to my redesigned website! I’ll be tinkering with this constantly.

Check back soon!