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1PDC Feed The One Page Dungeon Contest (1PDC) was first announced on Musings of the Chatty DM, Chgowiz's Old Guy RPG Blog, Sham's Grog'n Blog, The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope, and Critical Hits in April 2009. If you’re looking for some background, check out Dave’s One Page Dungeons retrospective. If you’re looking for a project that really dug into the concept early on, check out Mike’s Stonehell.

2013-05-23 One Page Dungeon Contest Status Update

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Google Spreadsheet is my friend…

We’ve been tallying the nominations, looking at our favorites and comparing notes. It looks like we’re going to have 17 winners this year. This looks about right, compared to previous years. In 2009 there were a lot of honorable mentions and runner-ups but only three winners. I personally like to spread prizes around and celebrate the sheer variety of submissions we get every year. It’s a win for everyone.

Year Entries Winners
20137217
201210724
20117115
20106418
20091123/6/12

I hope we’ll be able to finalize the list soon enough!

What will happen next:

  1. assemble a PDF with the winners
  2. publish the list of winners and link to the PDF
  3. celebrate!
  4. notify winners by email and ask them to create a wish-list based on the prizes donated by our sponsors
  5. try and maximize happiness using another spreadsheet
  6. notify sponsors and winners and have sponsors send their prizes directly to the winners (except for the cash prize; I’ll handle that one since the sponsor wants to remain anonymous)
  7. celebrate again! :)

Hopefully my work is done before June 8, because that’s when I’ll leave for a two week vacation to Sardinia. Yay!

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2013-05-13 Other Favorite Entries

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I just posted my nominations for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013. I also liked the following entries.

I saw Roger the GS’ recommendations the other day. What about your favorites?

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Comments on 2013-05-13 Other Favorite Entries


Paul Gorman
Your link to your nominations points to the Edit page.

Paul Gorman 2013-05-13 19:32 UTC



AlexSchroeder
Oops, fixed. Thanks!

AlexSchroeder 2013-05-13 21:15 UTC

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2013-05-13 My One Page Dungeon Contest Nominations

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I’ve finished reading the submissions to the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013. As always, an interesting mix of styles. Less tombs than in previous years. The ever popular “get into the dungeon and trigger a trap” is there. Bandits, undead, but no pirates! This year’s popular rare monster must have been the gibbernig mouther. It showed up in three submissions. :)

Gibbering Mouthers:

I wanted to comment on my nominations for the contest winners. I’ve done this before (2010, 2011, 2012). Writing it all down helps me think it through.

  • Daniel O'Donnell, Down Among the Dead Men: beautiful map; lovely visuals such as a well surmounted by the jaws of a giant shark or acolytes on stilts “tending” the undead in the water. It’s gruesome. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Gus L., The Brittlestone Parapets: a lovely amalgam of trench warfare, undead soldiers, Beowulf, D&D as an implied post-apocalyptic setting; and it comes with an inspiring map, an interesting list of random encounters, the witch comes with the list of spells prepared, one faction can be hired for a few weeks. It’s fascinating. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Jobe Bittman, Into The Demon Idol: an iconic image, a beautiful map, the giant grab pincer. Best of all: the option of reanimating it! A potential long-term change for your campaign. It’s tempting. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Misha Favorov, Court of the King of No Men: a map that allows multiple approaches; the most important notes are on the map itself. That’s what I love! The two simple magic items are interesting without being overengineered: a sword dealing wounds that heal within 24h, a hammer that can be thrown once a day, a rod that allows you to control the movement of an opponent (but nothing else). It’s sylvan. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Paul Gorman, Faery Ring to Alpha Ari: not the only adventure using myconids and various fungus effects, but what I liked in particular was the strange mix of fantasy and present day space exploration; the observatory and the tiny island on the one hand and a map that looks appropriate for a Mars colony. I also like how enemies come in all sizes from pixies to giant. I’m not sure it would simply fit into my campaign.
  • Ramsey Hong, Something Happened At The Temple Near Glourm: a beautiful map with village and five dungeon levels; multiple stairs and entrances; notes on the map itself. This dungeon is beautiful. It’s terrifying. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Rob S, Citadel of the Severed Hand: another beautiful map with notes on the map itself; it also features myconids and “shroom effects”. The part I like is the tragic figure of the orc boss with his staghelm who hates the torturer demon because she has his son in her power. The entire setup with the two slaves is genious. It’s evil. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Roger SG Sorolla, Devil's Acre: when I first read about it on the author’s blog I thought that it was an interesting take on the complex of sin, vigil, prayer, temptation, saint and devils, and all of that in a D&D context. My campaign hasn’t featured these topics, however, so I’m not sure how well it would work for me.
  • S. J. Harris, The Baleful Spring: a small tower always comes in handy. This one has a tower with an evil master and a ship with a neutral captain. I like the framing story: two diplomats trying to secure a peace accord have gone missing. It’s nothing fancy with a functional map. It’s useful. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.
  • Simon Forster, Church of Consumption: a beatiful map; another cult trying to raise a demon. Unfortunately it’s very linear. Strangely enough it appears to be open on both ends with major treasure sitting right next to one of the two entrances. But… it’s so beautiful. And I love the imagery of the cultists eating their dead god, the meat grinder, the ghouls dreaming about eating the same dead god, one day… It’s gruesome. It stands on its own and can be placed in my campaign.

The One Page Dungeon Contest is just so damn useful it amazes me every year.

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Comments on 2013-05-13 My One Page Dungeon Contest Nominations


B. Pace
The Demon Idol is my favorite - although I’m a bit biased since that is my favorite old school book cover :)

B. Pace 2013-05-16 03:16 UTC



AlexSchroeder
Having painted the Otherworld Miniatures demon idol, I concur! Best old school cover. :)

AlexSchroeder 2013-05-16 08:17 UTC

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2013-05-01 One Page Dungeon Contest Submissions

1PDC The One Page Dungeon Contest 2013 is now officially closed. No more late submissions. This year I found two submissions in my spam folder. If you can’t find your submission on the contest page, let me know. This year I also got four late submissions, which is about average, I’d say. I asked the other judges and we decided to accept the ones I received. I have to draw the line somewhere, though… So this is it. Closed. :)

Here’s how to get all the files:

72 Submissions! :D ok star

20092010201120122013
Number of submissions112647110772

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2013-04-17 One Page Dungeon Contest

One Page Dungeon Contest 2013 A quick reminder that all of April is One Page Dungeon Contest 2013 submission writing month… :)

I hope you’re all busy writing stuff up because I’m as nervous as I am every year when I have more prizes to award than submissions received.

The list of things the generous sponsors are awarding this year:

Thank you very much! ok

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2013-04-12 The 1PDC Process

1PDC On the mailing list for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013, one of the judges asked me to go through the process again. I’ve used my reply to write this blog post.

The first thing to remember is that people can revise their submission until the very end. That’s why I personally don’t read them until the end of April.

The output of the process is a list of nominations from each of the judges. They can nominate as many or as few as they like. In the past, judges have nominated somewhere between 10 and 20 entries. Every judge determines their own criteria. There is no agreed upon checklist.

My own list of criteria will look very similar to what I wrote on 2010-02-05 Quality Dungeons. I find that having the checklist helps me score the dungeons.

I will compile all the nominations into a big spreadsheet and produce a list of winners. I’ll try to have at least three nominations from every judge on the list (ie. we are six judges and thus I expect there to be around 18 winners). I’ll also try to invent a category for each of the winners. It would be very cool if your list of nominations contained a suggested category. That is optional, however.

Last year, I wrote about the entries I nominated and the made-up categories I nominated them for, if you’d like to see an example of how I personally went about this.

Sometimes judges will then comment on the final list and propose to add a particular entry because of some very specific qualities they want to highlight and thus we might end up more winners.

Once we have announced the winners, they are invited to send me three picks from the prize list. Again, the data goes into a spreadsheet and I try to figure out a way to give every winner at least one thing that they are wishing for. Against all intuition, this seems to have worked so far! When in doubt, I’ll go back to the big spreadsheet with all the nominations on it and give precedence to those winners that received the most nominations.

This last element of the process is not entirely transparent. I wrote a blog post trying to defend the lack of transparency two years ago. I hope that it’s not a big problem. ;)

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2013-04-07 Textures and Creative Commons

Recently I got a submission for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013. It was made using the Dungeon Tiles Set by ProBono on RpgMapShare. The tiles use textures from CGTextures.com.

I stopped when I saw a passage saying “One or more textures in this pack have been created with images from CGTextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default, please visit www.cgtextures.com for more information.”

Then I found the following passage in their FAQ:

May I use these textures in my Open Source (Creative Commons, GPL, etc) project?
No. These textures may not be used in Open-Source projects. The licenses are not compatible. Almost all Open-Source licenses allow redistribution of the materials, and redistribution is not allowed for these textures.

Unfortunately, the One Page Dungeon Contest uses a Creative Commons license.

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Comments on 2013-04-07 Textures and Creative Commons


Paul Gorman
Yes. And I wish authors would look at the most permissible license they’re willing to use. Use the OGL when you utilize SRD content, but please consider using a Creative Commons license for other content. And it would be awesome if to use one of the ShareAlike licenses; derivative works are good for the community.

Paul Gorman 2013-04-08 04:37 UTC



Roland Volz
I would also make a note that some fonts I’ve seen specify that they are “not for commercial use,” which can cause a problem when they republish the entries. I recommend using only fonts from a resource like1001 Fonts' Free-For-Commercial-Use list, just to save a headache later.

Roland Volz 2013-05-01 18:54 UTC



AlexSchroeder
Absolutely! The problem for me, as somebody who hardly knows any fonts at all, is the identification of this license violation. Ideally, I’d like to stop this. I wonder whether there’s a web service where I can upload a PDF and it will identify the embedded fonts and tell me whether the fonts are CC-BY-SA compatible…

AlexSchroeder 2013-05-01 22:39 UTC

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2013-03-27 One Page Dungeon Contest

Yes, the Spring Equinox has come and gone and now it’s time the run the 1PDC again! :D vee <3 8-D star star star

One Page Dungeon Contest 2013!

Dates: Submission deadline is April 30, 0:00 GMT (Tuesday evening). If you live West of Greenwich, you will have to send in your submission a few hours before the end of the month! Winners will be announced June 1.

Help spread the word!

Prizes & Sponsors: Do you have prizes to donate? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!

Submissions: Here’s how to submit your entry.

  • Create a One Page Dungeon.
  • Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license with credit to the contest participant.
  • The submission must have a name, an author, and a link to the license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
  • The judges and readers play a variety of systems. Don’t waste valuable space with a lot of system-specific stats.
  • A link to extra material on your blog such as wandering monsters, random events, adventure background, introduction, descriptions of tricks or traps are welcome for readers but will not be considered part of your submission.
  • One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry.
  • If your font size is too small to read, you will most probably not win.
  • Many people will print your submission as a black and white document. Adding colors is no problem as long as the black and white printed copy is still good enough.
  • Help us keep file size in check. A single page should not take more than an image with 3000x2000 pixels (1-2MB is cool, 5MB still works, 10MB is too much).
  • Submission must be mailed in PDF format to Alex Schroeder → kensanata@gmail.com. Usually we can help you convert your Open Office and Microsoft Word documents to PDF.
  • If you have a blog article talking about your submission, send us the link. We’d love to link to it from the One Page Dungeon Contest page.

Process: Here’s how we’ll determine the winners.

  • Every judge nominates their favorite entries and proposes a category for each.
  • We try to make sure that every judge has at least three of their nominations in the final list. The idea is to not only reflect popular opinion but to also capture some of the more eclectic entries out there. We’ll make sure that every judge is well represented with three entries each.
  • Based on the categories proposed in the first step, we try to assign a category to each entry on the list.
  • Judges gets to check whether their favorites are still on the list.
  • We fix omissions and rename categories until we’re happy.
  • We publish our list of winners!
  • We will ask each winner for three items they’d prefer to win and any items they prefer not to win. Then we try to do a best match, giving precedence to those winners that got more nominations in the first step.
  • All the entries and a special PDF with all the winners will be available for download at no cost.

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Comments on 2013-03-27 One Page Dungeon Contest


Troy Costisick
Heya,

Looking forward to the contest this year! I’ve got a blog entry plugging your contest and talking about dungeon design in general. Your contest rules asked for blog links, so here’s mine if you’d like to add it to the contest page: http://socratesrpg.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-do-i-design-dungeon.html

Can’t wait to see what everyone produces this year!

Peace,

-Troy

Troy_Costisick 2013-03-29 14:03 UTC



AlexSchroeder
Thanks for the link! :)

AlexSchroeder 2013-03-30 12:09 UTC

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2012-06-10 Best Of 1PDC 2012

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When I had finished reading through all the submissions for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2012, I had a list of dungeons I was considering for nominations. We had agreed on twenty nominations but here I was with nearly thirty dungeons and adventures I liked!

The following are short commentaries on the entries I liked. Note that I printed all the entries using a black and white printer. If any of the maps are colorful, I probably missed it.

Also, I’d love to read your take on individual entries you want to recommend. What did you like about them? What is worth imitating in our own games?

warning Spoilers ahead! danger grin

The following list was written for referees that are staring at the pile of over one hundred submissions and wondering where to start. If you only have the time to look at a handful of dungeons, check out the stars.

  • Andrew & Heleen Durstop’s Time-Shear – a dimensional rift forces the party to cross a jungle clearing with dinosaurs, a futuristic tunnel with robots (“clockwork warrior”) and an post-apocalyptic with hell hounds in the search of some dwarven miners. Each of the three scenes has a short description of one or two sentences, an encounter listing a few creatures and with a handful of words describing what they’re doing, and a natural hazard (getting lost, getting sucked off a platform, taking radiation damage) with a very simple save mechanic. I loved the image of a party trying to make sense of the crazy chaos interfering with reality and the simple elegance of the three scenes. I also liked the simple map that gives me a little overview of the scenes. I want to use this in my game.
  • André Bogaz e Souza’s Temork’s Descending Dungeon – a vertical dungeon with a lot of enemies sticking to the walls and the ceiling. This entry shows that you can write an exciting dungeon with just a bare sketch of a map. I liked the monster progression from simple orcs at the entrance to spiders and spider-riding elves and a half-spider dwarf mage. I liked how one of the traps is a slippery floor dropping the character into the room with the ogre and I liked how the other trap is hundreds of little spiders that will ignore other spiders and spider-riding creatures (i.e. most of the monsters from the levels below). I also appreciated the “tools and magical components here which might be useful for a mage who wants to craft his own gargoyles or golems.” Yay!
  • Andrés Cuesta’s Hellmarsh Monastery – a ruined monastery overrun by swampfolk (frogmen?), bandits, goblins and an undead wizard. The first thing I noticed was the map style. I love hatching, line art and multiple factions of humanoids. I was intrigued by the suggestions of the lower levels: an ogre living in the well, a deep chasm with “entrances to deeper levels in the dungeon.” I was somewhat frustrated by the plate armor with a full plate armor with two left hand gauntlets. Why? Was the wearer a famous person? As a DM, I feel like I’d have to prepare some background before running this adventure. I liked the runic lance. It doesn’t say much more than that it is “a powerful magic weapon associated with law.” That intrigued me. I guess I just really loved the map and the idea of a runic lance of law.
  • Boric Glanduum’s The Ebony Obilisk of the Snail Demon – this is level 2 of the Watery Palace of the Ooze Behemoth. I was amazed when I realized that people had submitted different levels of the same dungeon! Unfortunately the various entries differed a lot in style. As a contributor to the Darkness Beneath megadungeon in Fight On! magazine, I know how hard it is to coordinate such a thing. I liked the use of terrain (water), intelligent opposition, the potential for permanent changes to player characters (turning into a thrall), the watery theme and that the dungeon has a secret that players can discover with a lot of effort: the obelisk can be used to summon an avatars of Urosh the Snail Demon: five huge flail snails! I felt that the map could have contained more rooms and the key could have been shorter. I don’t like rows of cells or living quarters because they don’t play well at my table. I might use this for a snail demon worshipping temple in my campaign one day.
  • Dale Horstman – The Monastery at Dor Amon star – the name alone invokes the spirit of Middle Earth. Two libraries beneath a monastery: the library, and the secret: a bound toad demon that eats books. I loved the side view of the monastery, the small maps with the monastery and the library, and the silhouette of the surrounding area including other hills with elvish names and hints of goblin tribes and ruinous black magic. I liked the graphical design elements as well. Above, light background and black text, below, dark background and white text. The increased font size to indicate priorities worked very well. The smallest font size was at the very limit of what I could read, but at the same time I knew that it optional content in case I want to expand on this location. This was one of my top candidates. I want to include it in my campaign.
  • David Gay – Water Genie vs. Undead Mermaid Gladiator star – a high-level underwater adventure involving mermen, a marid king, his daughter, a triton, mermen, a death knight, lacedons, a lich, and a squid wizard (a squizard). The NPCs have different relations and plans with each other. The touch of madness is on the entire adventure and I love it. I really liked the little hand-drawn portraits and maps that accompany the text like a little photo story, and I really liked the high-level aspects of it: a black blade of annihilation “that destroys anything it hits” and the abyssal deeps that lead to the plane of water. This adventure is so awesome, I really want to incorporate this into my campaign. This entry also one of my top candidates.
  • Diogo Nogueira – The Hidden Shrine – a little subterranean area connected to some ruins above: a perfect little dungeon to drop into my sandbox campaign. One look at the map with its line art and hatching gives me warm fuzzy feelings. The map key does not disappoint: there are intelligent humanoids (kobolds, bandits), a riddle, a treasure map to be found (you need to provide your own), and underground river, passages leading outside or deeper down, a non-linear map and a necromancer who has been kidnapping people for the party to free. It’s simple, unassuming, standard fare and I love it. (I do confess that there are many submissions for low level characters containing kobolds, goblins or bandits.)
  • Eric Harshbarger – In The Dying Light – everything is done by hand, even the key. Curious! As I start reading I realize that this is not a typical map key: this is a journal of a party that went through the (very linear) dungeon. It’s a map and a plea for help that has been teleported back to safety and now it has ended up in the hands of the party. The awesome thing is that this entire dungeon can be handed to the party as-is. Go follow this trail! (It also means that the referee needs to consider what the actual dungeon looks like and how it differs from the map the players now have.)
  • Fco. Javier Barrera’s The River of Stars star – another map in my favorite style. Or is it? It takes some studying because this entry has combined side-view and traditional maps. I felt that this slight confusion forced me to study it harder and engage more. I like it when the key facilitates skimming. A key element of that is the use of bold to highlight the important stuff. This key highlights the monsters. Thank you! The monster selection is standard fare (undead, yellow mold, goblins, dark elves, goblins, hobgoblins) with the exception of a zombie plant, a living statue of an undine, a demon and an ogre mage. I like using ogre mages myself. The treasure is guarded by a pseudodragon. Hah, haven’t seen those in a long time. I always wanted a pseudodragon familiar when we played AD&D. This seems like an ideal adventure for the mid-levels. Think of me and let one of the player characters befriend the pseudodragon!
  • Gene Sollows’ Holy Sword – when I saw this in my mail, I thought it was the most awesome thing, ever. It burst with enthusiasm! HOLY SWORD! ! As I read it more carefully, I was a bit disappointed: as I wrote elsewhere, I’m not a big fan of humor in the adventure. My players bring the humor of killerclowns and murderhobos. Our humor is the humor of desperate men in over their heads. What am I to do with a legal disclaimer pinned to the walls of the first corridor saying “Ye Olde Disclaimer DangerHigh Pwnage Intruders may be mutilated beyond recovery.” I decided to ignore the humor and take it as entertainment for the referee that is not to be communicated to the players. With that in mind, this is a great dungeon filled with dozens of traps and a lich crypt at the very end. I might use this in my game even though I’m not a big fan of death trap dungeons. We’ll see.
  • Jason “Flynn” Kemp’s Sell Swords of Mars – I confess not having seen the John Carter of Mars movie and having only read the first half of the first Barsoom novels. I do appreciate small wilderness regions. They can be excellent material if you need something to put at the other end of a teleportation gate. This is how I got to use The Forgotten Depths in my campaign. I think I’ll be using this adventure area when my players find the passage to fantasy Barsoom! Before I do that, however, I’ll need to read some source material. I’d still have to add an actual goal to the map: pick a hex with the teleportation gate back and add some rumors, NPC guides and the like.
  • Jasper Polane’s Ship of the Lost – I don’t really like ship adventures. I’m not sure why: my players do a lot of traveling by ship in my campaign. This adventure stood out because of the magic item involved: a guardian demon and a mysterious stone containing a pocket dimension holding a death titan. I don’t know exactly what it does, but it sounds awesome. I might add it to my campaign as the party reaches 7th or 8th level.
  • Jens Thuresson – Close the Gates – a simple, hand drawn dungeon, a very short key, interesting monsters (hellspawn) and an in-game challenge: to figure out that there is a problematic gate, what to do and do it. This adventure works as a potential campaign started much in the way that Death Frost Doom (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) can be a cool campaign started when you trigger the awakening of thousands of zombies.
  • Jerry LeNeave – A King With No Crown star – a beautiful map and a watery theme without going all-out gonzo like Water Genie vs. Undead Mermaid Gladiator. I like intelligent and charming monsters like sirens and nixies, and since I played a fighter wearing glamered plate armor in a campaign years ago I loved seeing one making an appearance in this dungeon. When adding this dungeon to my campaign, I will have to emphasize the danger to the shipping lanes and I will have to buy into the daughters of Lilith mythology. I like this idea. At the same time I realize that this isn’t optional: without the sirens being an obvious danger there is practically no in-character point in exploring the dungeon. Without the Lilith story, the shrine of Lilith will make little sense. Oh, and I’d make sure that the statues coming to life doesn’t result in combat. Instead, there must be a test the player characters need to pass in order to pass: cover your eyes when talking to the medusa, making sure you’re not easily aroused when talking to the succubus, that kind of thing: every daughter is a little puzzle. This will require appropriate hints by NPCs or rumors in nearby fishing villages. An interesting challenge for the referee. I look forward to using this dungeon in my campaign. This dungeon was also one of the best scoring ones in my list.
  • Kelvin Green – A Rough Night at the Dog & Bastard – last year I had started running Solar System RPG and the game suggested a new style of prep: start with an empty page, write down the names of the player characters along the edges. Add abilities, beliefs, advantages or disadvantages you find interesting to the names. Add locations non-player characters, situations, events or items to the page and connect these with the player characters where it makes sense. Make sure that every item you have on the page is involved with at least two other items. It worked for me. It requires a lot of improvisation. This adventure is nothing but a relationship map between the various non-player characters trapped in an inn during a storm: a demon in human disguise, a lady, her ex, a demon hunter, his aide, an assassin, a thief and a wizard. In order to run this adventure, you need to improvise a lot and I’m betting that it will run smoother if you manage to connect you player characters to the non-player characters on the map in multiple ways. This seems ideal for an evening filled with a lot of talking and very little dice rolling.
  • L. S. F. – Fungal Infection – Myconids occupying a water supply, their fungoid queen, a number of sluice gates, possibly some fighting, possibly a lot of poisonous and hallucinogenic spores, and an in-game riddle: assuming you want to flood the queen’s tunnel, which gates do you need to open and close? It’s a simple setup and I like it. Plus, pulling off in-game riddles is always hard.
  • Leslie Furlong – The Faerie Market – at one point in my campaign the party ventured into the goblin market, faery style. I was inspired by the Courtney Crumrin comics. At the time I tried to use Vornheim book but I was looking for interesting shopkeepers and their wares but could not find a suitable table in the book and improvised everything instead which worked just as well. This adventure is basically nothing but a collection of non-player characters and their stands plus a very thing framing story (girl lost etc). The entries are suitably weird, but they are not tightly connected. My guess is that it’d be easy to use as a backdrop for an adventure, but as an adventure in and of itself, it would need a little extra effort. It would have worked very well for me. In addition to that I was once again intrigued by this style of adventure prep.
  • Luka Rejec – Deep in the Purple Worm star – wow, what a beautiful page! Unlike some other beautiful maps such as Ankhor Deeps the Worm comes with a backstory, an integrated key (no time lost finding the appropriate entry in the text and very short and to the point by default), intelligent opposition, interesting foes such as a dire hamster – I absolutely want to use this in my game. Another one of my most favorite entries!
  • Michael Atlin & Michael Prescott – Dungeon Town – as I wrote elsewhere, I like that it has a list of interesting non-player characters: their characterization is incredibly short and evocative. The images are inspiring and short tags such as half-good or “retired” are great. I also like the inspiring map: a long stair reaching a stalagmite spire town; a slum further down, mines, a market, a tomb—these seem like interesting locales. I’d have to prepare the details for the various locales because of the one page limitation, but the map inspires me to think of something—even if some of them are not great on their own. Tomb? Again? It has interesting notes on the map: “Ants! Bring honey!” is enough to work as a rumor in town, as a problem, as a suggested solution or a combat encounter. A little comment like “Moistened Horrors (We’ll miss you Jake)” can also serve as a hook to a rumor, and suggest additional situations: recover the body; pacify the ghost, find his last surviving relative, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, the entire reputation mechanic is very much an added layer of rules that I didn’t find very interesting. As far as I’m concerned, I’d probably develop something less abstract. One example is Roll WIS. Low roll is either “framed for theft” or “pocket picked” depending on your current reputation. Using framed for theft for the first encounter and pocket picked for subsequent encounters would work just as well for me. I’m just not interested in the simple reputation mechanic.
  • Paolo Greco, Dyson Logos & Stonewerks – Axo’s Dungeon star – what a glorious mess! Based on dungeon tiles readily available online a mix of traditional and vertical sections create a multi-level dungeon full of terrible reavers, a calamari saint, a squid king, Argonauts, it’s so crazy it’s awesome and I want to add it to my campaign. It’ll be perfect for a remote sea side temple abandoned years ago. This was also one of my most favorite submissions.
  • Peter Regan – The Kobold Coalition – a simple setup: goblins and kobolds in a cave. The only notable thing is that the humanoids have taken care to build a decent defense. A shooting gallery, pi traps, wolves unchained, buckets of oil – that is what makes this entry stand out.
  • Radulf St. Germain – The Forgotten Bath House – we’ve had a few bath houses in the contest. This one stood out because it has a ghost story to go with it. The immediate stuff is simple: there are goblins poisoning the water. There is a red herring involving living and undead spiders. The two elements that make this dungeon special are aggressive water elementals that won’t leave their room. Fighting them will destroy the water supply in e long run. This rewards attentive players. The other interesting feature is a ghost that can only be appeased by restoring the place to former glory. The idea of a low to mid level campaign centered on clearing, owning, defending and maintaining a bath house appeals to me very much. That’s an adventure suggesting long term change. It also makes the adventure a cool campaign starter. Generally this is how my campaigns start: a dozen short adventures until one particular feature catches on and the players get interested in pursuing it. This bathhouse could be it.
  • Rob S. – Rot Tower – a leper colony, some caves, what could possibly go wrong? An ancient evil chained to a madness inducing bell, an innocent priest and his evil brother – two features that put this entry on my list. I also like how bold is used to highlight the important part and the idiosyncratic map.
  • Roger Carbol – The Tomb of Oddli Stone-Squarer – a map with various lairs: bandits, stirges, ghouls, nixies, all of them make sense more or less. If you wanted the party to find the crown, however, I think you would have to provide some rumors to guide the party instead of using the suggested “it can only be detected with two consecutive 1’s while searching.” I like how the crown is supposed to have a large political value. I might want to use this for my campaign.
  • Roger SG Sorolla – Old Bastard’s Barrens – a wilderness hexmap. At first, I was not impressed. Using silhouettes instead of named entires or labels on the map seemed gimmicky. The interesting features were harder to recognize. The random encounters on the map depend on the lairs in the surrounding hexes. I’d have to see how well this works at the table. As it stands, it seems to work better than my own solution which is to quickly improvise a random encounter table with eight entries for distinctive regions on my map. My tables take nearby lairs and diurnal and nocturnal preferences into account. The system presented by the author of this entry seems more dynamic, however. All it requires is an extra die roll  and looking it up on the map instead of creating a new table every now and then. In addition to all at, the encounters and locations presented also imply a dormant lich, and the map has a short list of suggested missions—the last of which is to destroy the lich! Makes me want to run it!
  • Shawn Harris – Down Draft – as adventurers gain levels they sometimes gain mounts. Ever since I heard about player characters gaining pegasi or griffins as mounts, I wanted to incorporate these into adventures. This particular adventure takes place in a flying fortress. The elf king grants you pegasi to reach it. An excellent way to start. The rest is evil elves, orcs, shadows, and an ogre mage. My guess is that this adventure would work best if the referee manages to convey the awesomeness of riding pegasi up to a flying fortress and if the party is allowed to stay in control of the flying fortress if playing well. That would be a great campaign start!
  • The Seven-Sided Die – The Tomb of Nesta the Mischievous – I’m not sure what I like about this dungeon in particular. It has all the things I like: a nice map, multiple exits, intelligent opposition, factions (undead, orcs, kobolds), traps (including a petrification trap with ample warnings and green slime, pits with centipedes). I think this dungeon might work best if players thought it was going to be a death trap, but I’m not so sure. As it is, I’d use this dungeon as a neat filler side-quest. “At the inn, you overhear a ranger saying that they recently saw some kobolds in the hills a few hours away.” That kind of thing.
  • Warren Abox – Will No One Rid Me of The Troublesome Goblins – another standard dungeon to have in your folder for an emergency. Yes, you could probably improvise all of this in a minute or two, but having it on paper, having a nice map with notes on it, having a named leader and a little strategy (guard dogs, archers, stones dropped on intruders) makes it all the more fluid. It appears that the author subscribes to the same goblin origin story I subscribe to: goblins crawl out of subterranean mud pits. Thus, the chief likes to “wile away his time on the edge of the pool of foul darkness, ready to snatch up new goblins who arise from its inky depths and brutally teach them who commands these caves.” Yes indeed! Simple, but it works.
  • Will Doyle – Tomb of Snowbite Pass star – let me finish the list with another awesome map with notes, a bit like a flow chart except that it rocks! In order to activate the eye beams that melt the snow on this pass, the party will need to solve the riddle involving fire water and the ice goblet, fight ice gargoyles, snow wolves and replicas of themselves. Ah, to remember the good old days. Anyway, the visual style makes me want to play it. In fact, I prefer the lack of irony compared to Holy Sword.

A final note: Given all of the above, I often felt that a simple way to get more of my attention (I don’t know how the other judges felt) is to have descriptive labels on the map itself so that I don’t have to read the key all the time and to use bold to highlight the important parts of each room so that I can easily skim it (monsters, treasure, anything that’s in your face and easy to spot when players enter the room). I also like my dungeons to have multiple entrances or exits and to provide for more goals, use interesting magic items (simply having an interesting magic item that can be removed by the party would result in two points)… That kind of thing. It’s not easy to balance this with the time and space constraints, I know. My own dungeons wouldn’t score too well using my own system.

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Comments on 2012-06-10 Best Of 1PDC 2012


Roger Carbol
Thanks, Alex.

My thinking behind the Crown is that this is a dungeon for a West Marches sort of sandbox. They romp around through the dungeon for a while, need to go up north to find the king’s bones, and have general hijinks. Many levels later, they come on back in and get the final treasure. It’s certainly not a “let’s finish every room in the next four sessions” sort of thing.

Hope to hear someday of how it works out in your campaign.

Roger Carbol 2012-06-12 20:21 UTC

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2012-05-31 One Page Dungeon Contest Winners Announced

One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 The winners have been announced on the contest page. See below for a copy of the list. Feel free to download the PDF with all One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 winners (32 MB) and share it!

Here they are:

Winning Entry Category
Aaron Frost & Mundi King – Meckwick’s Pair O’DiceBest Dungeon Generator
Aaron Kavli – The Return of the Hecate RoseBest Science Fiction
Alan Brodie – Splashdown in Fiend’s FenBest Science Fantasy
Dale Horstman – The Monastery at Dor AmonBest Library
David Gay – Water Genie vs. Undead Mermaid GladiatorBest Gonzo
Eran Aviram and Aviv Or – One Last TributeBest Tomb
Fco. Javier Barrera – The River of StarsBest Ruin
Gene Sollows – Holy SwordMost Fun
Greengoat – Devil Gut RockBest Theme
Jason “Flynn” Kemp – Sell-Swords of MarsBest Wilderness
Jason Shaffer – The First CasualtyBest 1st Level Dungeon
Jeff Shepherd – Four BrothersBest Riddles
Jerry LeNeave – A King With No CrownBest Temple
Kelvin Green – A Rough Night at the Dog & BastardBest Relationship Map
L. S. F. – Fungal InfectionBest Fungoid
Leslie Furlong – The Faerie MarketBest Situation
Lester Ward – Seven Spindles and a McGuffinBest Modifiable Map
Luka Rejec – Deep in the Purple WormBest Integration of Art and Story
PJ Cunningham – Operation Eagle EyeBest Espionage
Ramsey Hong – The Cave of Kull CoveBest Cave
Roger Carbol – The Tomb of Oddli Stone-SquarerBest Multiple Factions
Roger SG Sorolla – Old Bastard’s BarrensBest New Presentation
The Seven-Sided Die – The Tomb of Nesta the MischievousMost Bountiful
Will Doyle – Tomb of Snowbite PassBest Eye Beams

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Comments on 2012-05-31 One Page Dungeon Contest Winners Announced


Roger Carbol
Wow! I am in illustrious company indeed. Thanks to all the judges and especially Alex for herding all the cats on this one.

Roger Carbol 2012-05-31 17:52 UTC



AlexSchroeder
Hehe, congratulation! :)

As for what comes next, in case anybody is wondering: I’ll send an email asking each winner for some items they’d like and for some items they definitely don’t like and then I’ll put this all in a spreadsheet and ponder it for a week or two, trying to maximize happiness for all winners.

AlexSchroeder 2012-05-31 20:06 UTC



thekelvingreen
Congratulations to everyone who took part. It was a really tough competition this year, and it must have been difficult for the judges to pick their favourites.

thekelvingreen 2012-05-31 20:45 UTC



AlexSchroeder
It was!

AlexSchroeder 2012-05-31 21:41 UTC



FJBarrera
Uoooh! I am really, really happy! Thanks to all the judges! Thanks to all!

FJBarrera 2012-06-01 10:37 UTC



AlexSchroeder
I warms my heart to see happy people! :)

AlexSchroeder 2012-06-01 11:08 UTC

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