Downward! into Barrowmaze Again... ?

Coming up on the anniversary of the Scourge of the Barrowmaze campaign - a thing that lasted 6 or 7 months last year and brought me a good deal of fun times.  At that time, I was inspired by +Dave Younce 's IRON CANYONS campaign (soon to be rebooted?) - I was struck by the simple return into a relatively easy format of a game I loved.  You may say that the "Dungeon Crawl Hack and Slash" is a bit crusty - well, you oughtn't to say it but I guess you could.

But there is unlife in those bones, yet.

Witness the nextest iteration of BARROWMAZE

I hope this becomes funded - I am unable to fund it at the "Little Guys" level, and I probably can't even do it at the lowest level until maybe early next month, but it's a great setting and always ratcheted up the tension.  As much as I want a box of all those little plastic (or metal? some alien alloy?) figs, almost the entirety of my RPG'ing these days comes over the G+ pipes and the figs would be frowned upon by my wife (she still doesn't like the box of Space Marines taking up square footage in the back bedroom).  Also, my latest favoritest all-consumingest game lately is "DADDY" in which my levels are fairly low but quest opportunities abound.

If you've come here looking for DCC character classes, know full well that Barrowmaze is the ideal vehicle to slaughter a funnel full of sub-heroes, and also it's great fun to laugh as the survivors flee in terror back to Helix across the moors!  If you feel particularly cruel, you can have ghouls or bandits chase them almost the whole way, having eaten/stolen their horses and the digging crew they left to watch them.

Muwahahaha!

I released these to the G+ DCC community last year in the late spring, but 'ere you go, in the interests of making more flubaloo around Greg's awesome project.  You will find a "better than doing it on the fly" conversion of the monsters from Barrowmaze I to DCC stats.  There's also a combined Random Monster Encounters for my campaign which includes some monstrosities hell-bent on vengeance against the party, and a secretive clan of reptilian ghoul worshippers.  The entries include all kinds of opportunity to Hell to bust out in the middle of the tomb-quiet hallways, which of course degenerates into a "eat your brains" free for all.

1.  Barrowmaze I common critters with DCC stats
2.  Turbocharged BMI+BM2 random encounter tables

I had a plan to DCC statify all the Barrowmaze monsters in all the encounters throughout the text (something that +Paul Wolfe inspired me to do) but, there's an awful lot of variety and it comes to like 150 different monsters and then the baby came in August.

I also have a "mildly improved" list of awful random properties to add onto Undead Encounters, but I will hold off on that since I'm enchanting it a little stronger.

I might reboot the campaign - if you're interested, then drop me a line - or even better, just join the community on G+ and say so.  You can find the funnel generator for it at the Purple Sorcerer here (this is my opportunity to connect +Greg Gillespie and +Jon Marr who have done a bunch to get me excited in RPGs again). If you are interested in a paper version of the d200-something funnel occupations chart for the thing, to see what classes I was hoping to include into it, then that can be found here. Warning: madness abounds, there - I was inspired by Discworld, Gamma World, Ravenloft, Lovecraft, and Realms of Crawling Chaos.

The Scourge of the Barrowmaze is sort of an attempt to instill Ravenloft-style Gothic Horror and Post-Apocalyptic (think ASE) despair onto a traditional Dungeon Crawl Hack n Slash vehicle.  We never made it too far into the actual BM complex, since almost without exception the party was swamped by random groups of undead or surface-venturing parties of looters or cultists.  The community design is a pale rip-off of the Labyrinth Lord Roll20.net Barrowmaze game hosted lovingly by +Jason Paul McCartan.  His is an absolute model of what a campaign community ought to look like - frankly I don't know how he does it what with his other commitments.

I usually don't get into the crowdfunding for reasons that others may better explain, but this setting in particular has given me a lot of good times and I wish it well and Greg good luck.  Also, it would be fun to see even more hideous evil unearthed.

Announcing a Summer 2014 release of THE HOUNDS OF HALTHRAG KEEP for DCC

In my line of work (mental health therapy), we tell people that unless you have clear and concise goals and have written them down somewhere (anywhere!) then you don't really have goals.  You have ideas.

I had an idea early last year to self-publish, under the HAPLESS HENCHMAN imprint (maybe), a solo game book that captured the terror and distress that trying to stay alive in a fantasy world with no training ought to be.  Essentially, the DCC funnel, but all alone - like that first lonely Kai Initiate except without all the cool powers.  Merely a dagger and a spool of twine.

Well, my idea is a goal, and (lucky for me), I have successfully acquired a limited amount of mastery over some fundamental tools needed to make the thing a reality.  I'm drawing again, and when I am not Spelunky-ing or holding the baby or drinking whiskey, I have picked up the arts of layout via InDesign in a rudimentary fashion.

So, work proceeds!  I have acquired permission to pursue the thing from Goodman Games.  I've written the first draft of the rules.  I've written the first draft of the random encounters section of the book.  I've gone over many of my initial influences which are

Try here

also here

also here

maybe here, too

Next, in no particular order, I need to:

It takes a while to get the hand uncramped after 30 years of not drawing.

1. Finish the clumsy black and white scrawlings I call 'art'

2. Finish the game map and decision nodes - the setting itself hangs behind my eyes almost every free waking moment
3. Write the 300-400 more entries it takes to make an exciting and arduous 0-level solo funnel for DCC

Mr. Goodman (and a couple of others) have advised me - quite rightly - to seek help.  And a number of particularly cool people have offered it unsolicited, and I thank them deeply and graciously.

Here is what I propose, before motivation slips away tonight.  I must write and for that the map needs finishing - this weekend (probably tonight) I will scour the house for my first-draft map of the ruins of Halthrag Keep, outside of which the Jackal Gang holds a number of innocent people captive, forcing them to enter in and search for... Something terrible.  I know what this is, and I even have a couple of low-level endings (like you would get in the CYOA games if you didn't make a lot of good choices).  The random encounter entries for both day- and night-time are written and include a dozen or so new monsters for DCC that will be quite harrowing for your average level-0 medieval Joe or Jane.  I may release a bestiary as a teaser or something very soon.

What I need is to have goals established or else (like many other things) I will dilly dally with Spelunky and babies and never finish this thing.  So:  the official goal is to release the PDF version in the Summer of 2014, with a print-on-demand of the thing if anybody is interested.  If it sells even a single copy at PWYW then I might make a DCC module for a funnel and append it to the printable version or release it as a standalone, since most of the work will be done already (actually, that part is mostly done now IN MY HEAD)

I figure once I've gotten the map and outline, the simple thing will be to untangle the knot of entries, and that's taken care of mostly but I'll speak to it later.

Anyways, the big goal is out in the world.  Twist my arm or ear or whatever as you will.  Subgoals, officially (and I am sure there are many that are hidden to me)  Map -> Static Encounters Keyed -> Write/Edit the Entries + Draw the arts + Lay out the document -> Submit to Goodman Games for approval.  By the by, I'm trying to find a way to enable a particularly old school favorite of mine to do the cover, but we'll see how it goes.

My birthday is in May, and I have selected that as the submission date, so I hope the hellish deities that hound desktop publishers will yap at me in my sleep.

That said - I need to get off of here and write/draw/make! Or game, or something.