Progress - Cracking the Whip on The Hounds of Halthrag Keep

It may seem, with all the games I take part in (flash forward to tomorrow's post maybe) and the fatherhood I am doing, like I must never get anything else done.  This is mostly true. I've given up on Spelunky, for example.  However, keen readers, worry not!  For I am creeping incrementally toward the goals I've set, not nearly as fast as I'd like but nevertheless the words and ideas are falling out apace.

Don't believe me?  Well, hurr hurr hurr, I am making arrangements for cover art and interior illustrations!  I have written (as I said before) all the Random Encounters and the modified DCC rules to use in the course of solo play.

Here is the node-web of fighty events that attach themselves to the somewhat more baroque and tangled one that is the main plot of the game book:

The tangled web I've weaved.

I've left the resolution low so that you can't see any clever solutions.  Purple nodes in this diagram mean "questionable ends" in which the player survives but it's not an ideal ending (to me).  Red boxes IIRC lead to other entries in the main quest line.  Black is, naturally, an ignominious death - like when the cruel gods of the Choose Your Own Adventures squashed you into oblivion and made you feel foolish.  I think the dark blue ones are clues or items, but I'm not telling.

The two bigger branches represent "night encounters" vs. "day encounters" and rely upon a pretty crude time-keeping device that affects the states of some entries.  The whole of Halthrag Keep is going to be littered with junk, space rocks, rusty weapons, singed Black Grimoires, dead bodies, the occasional silver coin, and (of course) titanic struggles for the souls of men and women in the cosmic battle of Law versus Chaos.

If you're keen to see it, maybe I can drop the text of the first couple entries to wet your whistle, Adventurer!

I assure you, if you don't despise Diptherio from the very start of the chase, you will by the time you climb out of the river, fleeing for your life!