I'm letting you guys, messageboard members of Okay--Your Turn, know about this before I post it anywhere else. I'm getting back into game design, after my almost three-year period of putting it on the back burner. (In that period the only game design I've done is basically MC's World of Darkness and the BoXMs. That may seem like a fair bit, but if you think about what I'd done in the prior ten or fifteen years, that's not very much at all.)
And I'm taking it all in a whole new direction.
Next week I'm going to be launching Dungeonaday.com, a subscription-based website that will offer new game content every weekday. Basically, what I'll be doing is building an ongoing dungeon-based campaign in the old-school tradition, but utilizing all the newest presentation options. So expect an adventure like no other with hypertext references to all the important game content (including various rules references), fluid encounters, and incredible amounts of detail.
Dungeonaday.com describes Dragon's Delve, a mysterious (mega-)dungeon of vast size, facinating secrets, and great danger. It includes such locales as the Font of Dreams, the Domain of the Venom Cult, the Prison of the Red Saint, the Aberrant Laboratory, the Sprawl of the Demon Leige, and the Secret City. It offers weird and wild encounters with the Bestial Host, the Insidious Kings, swarm-demon Czarzem the Wicked, and the Prince of Dragons. It holds treasures and secrets like the Twelve Secret Sigils, Sao's Bones, and the mystical wendways. But the adventure includes much more than just a dungeon. Dungeonaday.com also describes the surrounding area (filled with intriguing ruins), the nearby town of Brindenford (which is far more involved in the goings-on than it first appears), side trips to a mysterious island and an extradimensional tesseract, and forays into strange other planes. And that's just for starters. Seriously.
There are two other very cool things about Dungeonaday.com. One is that there I'll have a blog in which I'll discuss various aspects of the design, offer tips for running specific encounters to maximize the fun, provide insight into the hows and whys of the design involved, give background ideas for PCs, and much more. I'll even include suggestions for miniatures you might want to use, if you're into minis. The other cool thing is the community aspect of Dungeonaday.com. With the comments, forums, and even polls, I'll be interacting continually with members answering questions and providing information as you need it. Future design elements in the campaign will be based on feedback from members (want more combat? more demons? fewer orcs with pies? Just let me know!). I learned from the forums right here how valuable it is to create a community of people actually using the material, not only asking me questions but also providing suggestions and ideas to each other. (And no, I won't be abandoning these forums--I'll still come here all the time.)
As I said, the site goes live next week (at which time, the link above will take you to the real site). At that time, I hope you'll check it out. There will be plenty of free content for you to sample and get an idea of what Dungeonaday.com is all about.
Let me answer just a few questions you might have now.
1. The cost for membership--if you join in March and become a charter member--is only $7 a month.
2. The rules supported will be primarily 3.5, but let me offer up two thoughts in that regard. The first is, even as I'm writing this I'm struck by how rules-light it all is. It would be a piece of cake to use it with any edition (older or newer) of the game. The second is, if I discover that a large percentage of the membership is using another rules system, like say Pathfinder or Arcana Evolved, I'll make a point to offer up frequent conversion information, assuming that I can do so legally, respecting copyrights where needed.
3. You can print out the material and use it like a standard adventure, but navigating through it online is really cool.
4. You don't have to use it as a campaign. If you just want to get a cool encounter idea every weekday, Dungeonaday.com is for you.
There's so much more to tell! Seriously. I haven't even talked about the maps, the handouts, the partnerships with other companies, the bonus features... this is going to be cool. I'm sure you'll have more questions, but all will be explained next week when the site launches. I'm really excited about this, and I hope you'll join me for the launch of Dungeonaday.com. And thanks for supporting my work all these years, guys. You're the greatest.
