I kind of got caught up finishing up the editing for XCrawl Classics RPG, some modules and other Goodman Games stuff. [Kickstarter Live Now!] Sorry about that.
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| Crawl! no.13 is sort of compatible with XCC RPG, sort of. |
With that done, I was able to turn all my attention to Crawl! no.13: Deathmatch! When I left off (part 3) I was talking about maps, and 3rd or 4th drafts. It was confusing because I'm not really sure. I think 3rd draft is when I started re-writing. There was lots of cutting and pasting with the stuff I was keeping. What I'm calling 4th now, is really the 3rd with the final map design. In part 3 I shared remnants of when no.13 was more of an arena room toolkit. The reasoning behind the simple, bullet-point-heavy area descriptions, was that the adventure was really about a bunch of adventurers running around in a hazard filled dungeon trying to kill each other, and the map pieces were designed to be quickly referenced, modular so you can switch up the map quickly, and make random rooms and corridors easily, possibly create a whole dungeon on the fly. So the original map design made a lot of sense (to me). When I changed the random deathmatch arena toolkit to a more conventional adventure, I never stopped leaning into the "your adventurers have been sucked into a realm where the hosts want you to kill each other" story. I elaborated on the story more. I wrote a standard Introduction, Adventure Background, and Ending the Adventure sections like your standard DCC RPG adventure. That, to be honest, was the easy part (and also easier when you have a good editor, thanks Brad!). But I really liked the modular maps, and the use of a pointcrawl maps design. So I kept it, but also wrote the areas in a more traditional manner, but really hybrid of the bullet points with some box text---basically I did both. The dungeon map became fixed (for the most part).
Here's over half of the adventure on one half-letter page:
Here's a full write-up of the first room, R-1: The Gates, p. 19:
[Forgive me for the maps. I didn't have time to make better ones for this release. I plan to improve them. I also plan to have full-scale maps for tabletops (and vtt, duh).]
The writing the updated maps took me the most time to finish. I used a public tool to make the conventional maps (honestly there weren't even going to be traditional maps). We only had a few weeks, and I was settled on the text, it just needed some fine tuning and helpful editing from an English major. Just waited for some art from Mario (the artist for the past few issues), he was onboard to crank out a few pieces, and Brad was ready for the final draft. I got started on the layout while they did their parts. Several days of full of pixel fudging and eyestrain it was done, approved, and sent to the printers.
In the end I was able to squeeze in 99% of the original random tables (the toolkit stuff) AND have a complete stand-alone adventure. I'm proud of it. Is it perfect, haha, no.
I'll have some final thoughts for Part 5, and I'll elaborate on the stuff I eluded to in Part 2, the Hazard die, which I renamed to the Danger die and what became of all the Cosmic Pressure/Stress/Tension stuff (I simply simplified it).
Until then, see you at Gen Con.
