Thursday, April 3, 2014

Rocket Knights and Blink Weasels?

chainsaw naga cartoon: a snake man with a chainsaw tail, with both hands missing and bandaged.
My interpretation of Roberts'
"Chainsaw Naga".
When Mundi and I started thinking about putting together a small group of "one page dungeons (OPD)", we had a few things in mind. The first was to find past submissions that were bound together by a specific theme. There are lots of themes (Demons, tentacled otherworldly threats, undead, etc,) but we decided to go with adventures that featured pubs or taverns. The idea being that what would become the "One Page Dungeon Crawl" would be just that, a "pub crawl" from one adventure to the next.

We also wanted to avoid mixing genres and use only submissions from the previous year's contest.
While Caelum Roberts did submit his dungeon The Iron Cloud in 2013 (and was a winner by the way, good show!), it did not meet the other criteria we were looking for.

So then why did it end up in the "The Crawl"?
Because it is damned funny, that's why.

I honestly didn't realize how funny it was until I was crawling through it finding monsters and characters to turn into paper miniatures. Even then, I missed the blink weasels, and had to add them at the end of Drinking Buddies (because I was too tired to shift everything around after drawing for two days straight).

There is a lot to like about this one page dungeon. It looks good from the maps and illustrations right down to the font and layout. The characters and situations described are really clever, from Kragofax the dragonbot to the "chainsaw naga".

The Iron Cloud was definitely influential in creating the story to connect the adventures together.
Even if you didn't get the One Page Dungeon Crawl, you should download this adventure and play it. It would work great as a one shot, but with a little genre-bending and work, you can fit it into your existing campaign. Just figure out ahead of time how you will handle the characters getting laser maces and a 4wd van.

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