Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Issue of Blipdoolpoolp

That is the title of the "adventure" I have entered in the 2013 One Page Dungeon Contest and when I first stumbled across the contest I was whisked back to days of yore. As a young 0-lvl NPC I first received The Purple Box, a set of basic rules for playing Dungeons & Dragons. It was a Christmas present but for a science oriented tween growing up on a 200+ year old swampy farm in New England it was like receiving a copy of the Necronomicon. After I spent all day reading, I was inspired to create my own dungeon that involved Beserkers, Trolls, and Gnomes all living in the same dungeon! All on one page. My mother's family is Swedish, so these creatures were easy to grasp. Maybe I'll redo it with updated rules and a more worldly sense of the fantastic.

Anyways, the other thing I was reading during those formative years were the horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft, who like myself, was born and raised in Rhode Island and can trace a lineage of ancestry back to the Mayflower. Somehow these ancient rivulets of interest have burbled back together and combined with subsequent streams as a marine ecologist on a research vessel in Narragansett Bay and the arcana of a geneticist. The result is my entry entilted The Issue of Blipdoolpoolp.



The entry as seen is in fact a condensed version of what was a one page two side dungeon. The challenge in reducing it to one side was to pare down the descriptive prose without losing all the flavor. I went with an old school, hand drawn, side-view map to emphasize the role tidal elevation should play in this adventure. However, it is possible that if the denizens are DMed into passive punching bags, or the DM can't manage subdual damage (from poison, water, and cold), the PCs might just waltz right through this thing. The goal of the design is to make the PCs hesitate through uncertainty at every step...and to be a little grossed out an the end...think about it carefully. Perhaps, after the contest, I'll elaborate.

1 comment:

Mike Monaco said...

Looks good! I love the tides and slow attrition. I think it's a good way to create tension. Good luck!