itch.io

Thats awesome. I hope your table enjoy it!  Let me know how it goes!

I really like a lot of things about this entry. I like the implied fantasy setting. I like the verticality of the space.  I like the pregenerated characters (kudos for harking back to old White Dwarf material). I like the colours and presentation. I like the original choice of hazards and opponents. I like the sentiment of the adventure. 

Its a great piece and one of the strongest things you've written - the jam really brought the best out of you. Well done!

Dammit, I am kicking myself at the missed opportunity to hyperlink to the Black Sword Hack SRD. Super big brain move that meant you didn't need to list all those tiresome page references.

I legit love the whole framework of this scenario and I think that when I run Vaults of Vaarn, I'll likely use this adventure to bring it to the table. It's one of the more effective ways of implementing a time loop I've seen and I like the despair mechanism that makes the looping finite. Very clever!

You've crammed this thing full of science fantasy and I adore the injured time traveller. Wish you'd had room for a little easter egg reference in naming him, but he's a standout feature nonetheless. 

The visuals are fab.  100% nailing the Vaarn vibe and evoking a blue desert that gives you the blues! The hexflower with the keys around it is a genius piece of layout and design. Another one I'm jealous of not thinking of. 

Really nicely done, sir.

Glad you like it! Brutal is on theme for a Conan style adventure, but if you look carefully, it's the price you pay for greed. There's no risk for the first Blessing of Set and it's only if you taste the venom additional times to get further blessings that you risk overdose. High risk, high reward!

Have to give credit that your advice and feedback both during the jam and over the past year has played no small part in what I created here. Thanks Murk!

Yeah, the hex crawl is deceptive as there are blocked routes. And I absolutely wanted to cram a one page dungeon in. Really pleased with what I've managed to include, reinforcing the theme as much as I could. My hope is that playing through it feels like a pulp story.

Yeah, and I wanted to write evocatively too, so it was a real challenge to fit it all together.

I mean, this whole thing is basically my love letter to Robert E Howard.

I wish I'd thought of that. :)

I've put the one shot on the clubs game roster for Mid-september. I'll be running it for a table of 4. Will give you a short report afterward!

I've been eyeballing Mountain Resonance for a while and this banger sold me on it. Absolutely getting run as a one shot at my gaming club! Superb.

Banging visuals and a great interpretation of the title. Absolutely going to run this one. The space you've created looks soooo fun to explore and describe.

Another one for the "run" pile.  Love me a spider cult and the map and interesting features made this a stand-out entry to me. Great job!

Great job! Clear layout, an inventive situation and frankly a very cool story behind it. Apotheosis via a hymn is a great way to interpret the title. Also really good job in not making a church feel too linear - that's hard to do! I'm also jealous you fitted so much in but still had room for a cover, more than I managed!

Really solid effort. I looove the cover. Really liked how you interpret the life stages of the worms. Locations were good and I think players will enjoy the investigative and exploration aspects of this scenario as much as the ice worm peril.

Another one added to my "run" pile. I was all about the vibes of this piece - felt like Mythic Bastionland and Shadowdark had a brooding, dreamy baby.

Enjoyed this - a great hex crawl, environmental and resource challenges. Locations, NPCs and antagonists all ooze flavour. Particularly liked the bowhed whale - I'm a sucker for a giant chatty creature.

Great colours, very gameable with good supporting tables and some fun maps to explore. Really enjoyed this one and it's on the "run" pile.

Clever use of the map in the cover - makes me wish I'd found a way to do that with mine. Great scenario with good pressure mechanisms and interesting "win conditions". I like the format of your location keys. Very punchy and informative in all the right ways. The creature art cracked me up.  Great job!

This one grabbed me. Tower adventures can be challenging due to their linear nature but you made a good interactive space to work through. Great map. The time effects are fun - I wish you'd used more of them or made them more frequent! Really good scenario and one I'll add to my Shadowdark pile.

Frankly blown away by this comment. I think you picked out exactly what attracted me to this jam - getting to pack so many of my favourite things into 4 pages and getting to go buck wild with all my favourite pulpy vocab.

You're right about the text block. I've got a 1.1 version with the fix in place and some other tweaks, courtesy of feedback from WatcherDM. It's going to be a long two months knowing that error is there. Infuriating!

I am sooo happy you rate this piece. Even if it gets pipped at the post in the judging, I'll be very happy that someone out there thinks so highly of it. Thank you!

Thank you! It's very different from my Dolmenwood stuff, but I found it very refreshing to write.

Oh, that's great! Please tell me how it goes if you do! I loved writing the island and the dungeon, but the main challenge was getting it to fit. Some credit to Odinson who gave me some good advice and guidance that cracked it. He's a wizard at layout.

Thank you! I really did wrestle with trying to get everything in, but it all worked out. I can honestly say layout is the part I struggled with most. The design and writing came very naturally by comparison. I hope when its run, it feels like a compilation of R E Howard stories - each hex and the final dungeon are all meant to feel like little story vignettes on their own.

That's exactly it, it's describing process, so procedures seemed apt.

I think my heart is very much worn on my sleeve when it comes to Sword and Sorcery. I suspect it shows. Thanks for the kind words and even more, thanks for the feedback you sent me - far more solid gold than my venom locks. And obviously if this hits your table I want to hear all about it.

You just named three of my favourite things. Thanks for the kind words and let me know how it goes if you run it.

You and me both! I went hard on theme, and I've always wanted to write something Conan-esque.

Great concept and use of an environmental hazard that doesn't come up so often in Mothership. I've lost count of the number of modules with extreme heat or radiation, so cool (excuse the pun) to see extreme cold put to good use. Good design of space and lots of interactive things to mess with. Hews close to Mothership's tenets of presenting a problem with hard choices that isn't necessarily "solveable". The densely presented info and the wealth of icons was a little hard to read at times due to size and I presume the orange icons are hazards/threats? Using Gradient Descent's room/text and border colour coding might have been easier to follow than the small icons, but very innovative presentation nonetheless. Great work!

Great concept and use of an environmental hazard that doesn't come up so often in Mothership. I've lost count of the number of modules with extreme heat or radiation, so cool (excuse the pun) to see extreme cold put to good use. Good design of space and lots of interactive things to mess with. Hews close to Mothership's tenets of presenting a problem with hard choices that isn't necessarily "solveable". The densely presented info and the wealth of icons was a little hard to read at times due to size and I presume the orange icons are hazards/threats? Using Gradient Descent's room/text and border colour coding might have been easier to follow than the small icons, but very innovative presentation nonetheless. Great work!

Very dream-like vibe. The coral imagery is creepy. Found it a little challenging to read the font in places.  I liked the conceit of ascending up the page mirroring the characters ascent of the spire. Cool solo module!

Loved the atmosphere in this one and was particularly drawn to the location descriptions which were all very evocative. I thought the use of keywords was very powerful and efficient. Very cool that you went with a western. Was it the canyon part of your title that sparked that?

Great art choices and love the colours.

Tentacles, elder gods, mummies and inverted pyramids, all bang on theme for Appendix N and the title.

The timer mechanism is nifty and a great pressure device.

I liked the dungeon design. Plenty of interactivity and interesting things to do.

Great job, man!

Thank you so much! I really did think I'd bitten off more than I could chew with a hex flower AND the dungeon, but got there in the end. It did mean I don't have a cover image as such, but I think the maps and spot art make up for that a little. I'm still finding my way with layout, so its nice to hear it comes off well.

Any time someone says they're going to run something I wrote, I smile uncontrollably, so thanks for that. :) I think my fondness of pulpy REH sword and sorcery bled through with this one.

Thanks! And yes, Black Sword Hack needs more love.

No way! Super psyched to hear that. Please let me know how it goes if you run it. I had a blast writing it and I put a lot of my love of Sword and Sorcery into it.

Enjoyed this! The references to Moldvay and Roddenberry made me chuckle. I liked the complexities of relationships adding a lot of texture to the scenario. The use of Cairns forest spirit through the lens of Star Trek was cleverly done with the Greenmind. The cover absolutely slaps.

Crom smiles on your excellent taste.

Really appreciate the feedback! This is my first time entering Appendix N and I've enjoyed the experience. And yes, Black Sword Hack needs more love  - it's pretty much THE appendix N game, IMHO.