I’m pleased to announce that we’ve finished the conversion process necessary to make the 3.5 adventures and supplements from Dream Machine Productions available in print from DrivethruRPG:

The City Supplements — Dweredell, Aerie, and Anyoc — all feature a complete fantasy city: A full-page map. Gazetteer. Organizations. Characters. Adventure Seeds. They developed out of a campaign that featured a lot of overland travel: I could see my players eyes light up whenever they reached a new city and I could whip out a full map for it. I figure that other GMs might like some city supplements that could be easily slotted into their campaigns.

Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat was originally meant to be the first of several supplements that would have provided advanced sub-systems that could be plugged into your game. Then the 4E/PF shift happened and that plan got short-circuited. In this case, though, you’ve still got a great book featuring rules for flying mounts, mounts of unusual size, intelligent mounts, multiple riders, riding platforms, cavalry maneuvers, warpacks, contest jousting, and a lot more.

Spells of Light and Darkness is a hyper-specialized supplement featuring 50+ spells themed around magical light and darkness. There’s some really cool stuff in here and this book has seen a ton of use at my own gaming table.

Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies is a mini-dungeon: You can slot it into a larger complex or run it solo. One of the primary goals of this adventure was to create a zombie variant that would actually strike fear into the hearts of your players. And, according to all reports (including those from my own gaming table), it’s been a huge success. I’d recommend grabbing it just for the bloodwights, even if you ignore everything else about it. (Here’s a tale from the table featuring the events of this mini-adventure.)

Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist is a completely different type of adventure scenario. This is more of a “mega-event” which can either become the focus of an urban campaign or serve as a horrific backdrop for the other adventures that are happening at the same time. The short version is that a magical plague has visited the city: How does the city react? How do the PCs react? If you’re looking for something plug-and-play, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for something enigmatic and strange and terrible and epic… this’ll be right up your alley.

As part of the Ptolus campaign I’ve been running, my players have recently been running through Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies. Basically the entire complex has become part of Ghul’s Labyrinth (specifically, it’s where the tunnels leading from the “Trouble With Goblins” adventure from the Ptolus sourcebook end up). As part of this I replaced the large iron door in area 10 of the complex with a door of blue steel and then put the password for opening the door safely on the other side (essentially creating a dead-end for the adventure).

But, because I like to be prepared, I did make a decision regarding what the password would be. In my notes for the dungeon I wrote:

PASSWORD: Athvor Krassek (the name of the head researcher, although there’s no way to know that)

LOCATION OF THE PASSWORD: The password is located in the relief work on the other side of the door. The goblins know it (which is how they accessed the compound).

I figured there was an outside chance that the goblins might get captured and, therefore, be available for interrogation. Since the goblins must know the password (since they came from the other side of the door), there was a chance (however slim) that the PCs might get the password out of them.

I didn’t think that particularly likely, though.

What I didn’t anticipate, however, was the unlikely synergy that would develop between area 11C and a particularly clever player. In the adventure, this area is described like this:

Stasis Box (C): There is a chest in this room with a false botoom (Search check, DC 16, to find). Inside the false bottom there are two items:

First, a packet of badly baded love letters written by a woman named Athaya and addressed to a man named Oliss.

Second, a small and perfectly preserved box of cherry wood with a mosaic design of inlaid jade. This is, in fact, a stasis box (see sidebar). Inside the stasis box there is a manuscript entitled Observations of Alchemical Reductions and the Deductions Thereof by Master Alchemist Tirnet Kal. A Craft (alchemy) or Knowledge (arcana) (DC 22) reveals that this was once a well-known alchemical text, but that the last copy of it was thought lost several centuries ago. The book would be worth 3,000 gp to the proper collector.

So the PCs encounter the blue steel door and they make a few Knowledge (local) checks to determine the properties of the door — including the need for a password in order for the door to open. They shout out a couple of likely possibilities, and then one of the players says:

“I start reading the love letters out loud in front of the door.”

… son of a bitch.

I didn’t really want them to get past that door. So I figured that: (a) These letters might not even have been written when Athvor Krassek was the administrator here. (b) Even if they were, it’s quite possible that neither member of the couple would have mentioned their boss by name in their love letters.

I didn’t want to ignore the fact that this was a pretty nifty idea. But I did assign it a ridiculously low chance of happening, picked up the percentile dice, and rolled…

… 01.

So after 4d20 minutes of reading (which turned out to be about 22 minutes), the door of blue steel swung open.

I would never intentionally design an adventure with the expectation that the PCs would take a bundle of love letters from location A and use them to open a locked door at location B. But watching that kind of unexpected success materialize out of seemingly thin air is the reason I love roleplaying games: There is a magical creativity which only happens when people get together.

One of the things I thought turned out really well for Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist are the handouts. We had a very minimal art budget for this product, so I was really faced with two options: I could either wimp out and cut the handouts that I wanted, or I could step up to the plate and execute them myself. In the end, I’m really glad I decided to take the challenge. Take a look for yourself:

(click on the handouts for larger versions)

The only thing I wish I could have gotten to work somehow would have been a nice, official-looking seal at the bottom of the Ordinances of Health in a Time of Pestilence. I found a Photoshop tutorial online for making one, but the results were… well, they weren’t pretty.

I’m happy to announce the release of Mini-Adventure 2: The Black Mist.

This book is the result of a confluence of events: Several years ago I wrote several submissions for Atlas Games’ En Route II supplement. The Black Mist was originally one of them — and despite the fact that it featured what I thought was the coolest of ideas — it was the only one to be rejected. Shortly after Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies was released, I got into a discussion over at ENWorld with James D. Hargrove. He had some very positive things to say about The Complex of Zombies:

I’m a huge, rediculous, almost sick fan of all things zombie. And I’ve always wished that the flesh-eating geeks had more, better, coverage in fantasy adventure modules. Louis Porter Jr’s Cold Visitor was, until about five minutes ago, the only example of a full-blown zombie fest (albeit one dealing with alien imitations) that I could find for [D20]. The mode (i.e., survial horror) is simply not covered well in Fantasy.

Last year, I had an opportunity to discover why such adventure are so few and far between. I talked to a publisher about writing one but, without some seriously warped interpretations of the RAW, I found that making plague a real, substantial, threat in [D20] is not at all easy. In the end, I couldn’t get the job done, much to my chagrin. I did end up writing something similar for another system but that’s a different story.

Today I found out much to my frustration that I can’t debit my bank account for anything less than $20 and, since I didn’t have $20 in it, that was a problem. So. . . what to do with that lingering $8? Hit up RPGNow, of course! I had planned on picking up some of Justin Alexander’s city modules since he posted to ‘OGL Settings’ thread here — but what really caught my eye was a little thing called “The Complex of Zombies”.

This short adventure is more or less Resident Evil in Fantasy. Which rocks. It rocks hard. And it rocks because it’s not just zombies but zombie-like things. Bad things. Bad things that eat people. Bad things that are just different enough from bog standard zombies to scare the crap out of players when they first encounter them. And all for $2.00. I’ve been looking for a promising hook to start a guilty pleasure hack and slay campaign.

And, by gawd, I think I have!

When he mentioned that he had found “making plague a real, substantial threat” to not be particularly easy it reminded me of the little encounter I had written for Atlas Games all those years ago. I went digging through my files, pulled it out, and realized that it would make a pretty awesome Mini-Adventure. Plus, it was already written! All I had to do was polish it up, re-format it for the Mini-Adventure line, and I’d be good to go!

Well, nothing is ever that simple in reality. Once I started digging into The Black Mist again, I remembered why Atlas Games had rejected it in the first place: In order to make a complex scenario fit within a very limited word count, I had used every trick in my arsenal to present as much material as quickly as possible. In fact, I’d used a few too many tricks. The Black Mist, as I had written it, was an excellent scenario… but it was more like an outline for that scenario than a fully-fledged adventure.

What was missing? All the little things that make the job DMing simple and smooth instead of laborsome and time-consuming.

So I fixed it.

With an expanded word count and 5+ years of design experience, there were lots of things that could be done. A more complete range of stat blocks was included, so that the DM would always have the appropriate stats ready and at their fingertips. The entire adventure was reorganized in a way that made it easy to use and reference the material on-the-fly. Full-color handouts were added. New rules, spells, and necromantic magic items were thrown into the mix. This took a lot more effort than the simple revision I had originally planned, but it was worth it.

The result is an exciting and terrifying journey through the horrors of a magical plague. The Black Mist can be used as an adventure in its own right, but at it’s heart it’s an event that can be used in many different ways: It can be placed center stage. It can be used as a backdrop. It can be used as a history. It can be used as a hook to even grander stories.

Without more ado, I give you…

MINI-ADVENTURE 2: THE BLACK MIST

PLAGUE AND NECROMANCY…

When a city is wracked by a magical plague that cannot be cured, the PCs are trapped inside the walls by the seal of quarantine. Will they hide from the threat of death? Or stand tall against the city’s terror?

But whatever course they choose, nothing is ever as simple as it appears. Death breeds death, and before this mist-born plague has passed the entire city will be placed in a crucible of riot and fire and necromancy…

The Black Mist features…

Full-Color Handouts
Rules for Plague
Diseased Undead
Necromantic Magic Items
New Spells
Advanced Rules for Crowds and Mobs
Advanced Rules for Large Fires

Buy PDF – Print Edition

64 pages – Handouts

The Black Mist, designed for four characters of 3rd to 5th level, can be used as an exciting adventure by itself or as the dramatic backdrop for any city-based campaign!

Dream Machine Productions rolls out its second major product line today with Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies.

This release also gives me a chance to reveal a new layout for adventure modules. I’ve long felt that adventure modules in the roleplaying industry have been struggling under a legacy of inefficient and ineffective layouts. The information in adventure modules is simply not presented in a fashion which makes it easy to reference or use during gameplay. Attempts to remedy this in recent years by various companies and creators have more often resulted in either (a) artificial one-size-fits-all organizational schemes which actually make the information for many encounters more opaque and difficult to process as the author tries to cram it into the preset categories; or (b) elaborate Rube Goldberg devices that don’t seem to actually accomplish anything.

What you’ll find in The Complex of Zombies is not a radical departure. It’s not something that’s going to leap off the page at you and slap you in the face with its brilliance. It’s not going to require you to completely relearn how to process and use the adventure.

It is better thought of as a tidying. Or perhaps a tweaking.

Here are the major things I’ve tried to accomplish:

1. Each encounter is given a clear-cut possession to a slice of page space. They are positioned on the page in a way which makes it easy to quickly and easily find any given encounter key when you need to. This is accomplished by, in general, giving each encounter its own column: This means that encounter numbers can be clearly found at the top of each page, and each encounter is clearly delineated from each other. (There are two exceptions: Particularly shot encounter keys may end up being listed two to a column. Longer encounter keys may require more than a single column.)

2. The information in each encounter key is sub-divided into a number of smaller, bite-size chunks that can be quickly processed at a glance. (For example, you don’t need to dig through an entire paragraph of text to discover — buried somewhere near its center — that there is relevant information to be gained from a Spot check in this area.) These bite-size chunks of data are described with clear titles in bold-face, which makes it easy for the DM to quickly process all the important elements of an encounter at a single glance and then pull out the information they need as they need it.

3. The presentation of certain types of information — particularly skill checks — are standardized, making it easier to find that information on the page and use that information while running the adventure. (But such standardization takes place at a fairly low-level of information, where such standardization makes the most sense. At the macro-level, the description of the encounter is structured and ordered in the way which makes the most sense for that particular encounter.)

4. Boxed text for every keyed encounter area. More importantly, this boxed text is properly implemented, which means that it: (a) Makes a consistent assumption of the illumination available to the PCs (and clearly states what this standard is). (b) Never assumes that the PCs are entering an area from a particular direction or at a particular time. (c) Never assumes that the PCs will take certain actions or attempt to make decisions for the PCs. (Not everyone will use boxed text verbatim, but properly executed boxed text is valuable nonetheless because it clearly delineates between “what the PCs will immediately know (and should know) about an encounter area” (the boxed text) and “what the PCs may discover about or do in an encounter area” (everything else in the encounter description.)

As I say, none of these things are radical departures by any stretch of the imagination. But I think that you’ll find that these subtle changes, when taken together, result in an adventure module which is clearer in its presentation, cleaner in its preparation, and easier in its running than anything you’ve seen before. You can take a peek at it by following the link and looking at the Lulu preview.

SECRETS OF BLOOD, MYSTERIES OF JADE…

In a laboratory of stone, the Sons of Jade labored to unlock the arcane lore of the Jade Magi of Shandrala. But their efforts were doomed, and their entire complex was drenched in the blood of their failure.

Now the secrets of the necrosis cube and the orb of primal chaos lie in halls roamed only by desiccated, undead horrors. But these are no ordinary zombies, and those who would seek to reclaim the Jade Legacy must first learn the terror of the bloodsheen…

Buy PDF – Print Edition
20 pages – Sample Map

The Complex of Zombies, an adventure for four 3rd-level characters, features a full-page map of the complex; flexible plot hooks; three new magic items; and two new monsters in an exciting, fast-paced adventure easily incorporated into any campaign!

That beautiful cover art is the work of Bernard Bittler. Bittler is an accomplished artist who has taken an active role in developing video, board, and roleplaying games, including RuneQuest, Chill, Fable, and Iron Storm (among others). A gallery of his work can be found here. He lives in Paris, France.