Acererak’s Apprentice

Last week, I was chosen as one of the winners of the dungeon map contest held by Chris Perkins in his Dungeon Master Experience column.

A vote was held to determine who among the winners was the best, and, to my surprise, I won, earning the title of “Acererak’s Apprentice.”

How appropriate.

Thanks to everyone who cast their vote – I greatly appreciate it. With any luck, this will be a stepping stone to getting fourthcore (or fourthcore-inspired material) into DDI.

The Fourthcore Hub

I’m happy to reveal a new project I’ve finished – The Fourthcore Hub. This web service functions much like DnDBlogs, aggregating blog posts from various fourthcore sites across the net.

While the reasons for building such a service should be obvious – ease of access to fourthcore content, greater unity and collaboration between fourthcore publishers and commentators, and so on – there’s another, less obvious motive. D&D 4th Edition is nearing the end of its run, and I myself am gearing up to make the transition to D&D Next both as a player and as a designer. However, many people have expressed a desire to keep writing for 4E, and I would like the hub to play a role in connecting people with deadly, dark dungeon content for that edition now and in the future. I’ll be maintaining the hub indefinitely.

Moreover, consummate with the goals of D&D Next, I want to bring people together who share a love for classic megadungeon delving and Tomb of Horrors-style deathtraps. To this end, the fourthcore hub welcomes any site that publishes or discusses such materials regularly to submit, regardless of game system or edition.

Enjoy.

The 2012 One Page Dungeon Contest is underway, and this year I have chosen to participate. If you are not familiar with the one page dungeon concept, read the introductory remarks in the 2010 codex (23mb pdf).

My entry, The Tears of Mother Pestilence, is a system-neutral one page dungeon for low-to-mid level heroic fantasy characters.

While this adventure draws heavily from the fourthcore design philosophy and aesthetic, it is not at its core a deathtrap dungeon or tournament module. Rather, ‘Tears’ emphasizes open-ended interaction with the labyrinth’s strange chambers and the competing factions that dwell within them.

This adventure is heavy with lore and presents the crusaders with numerous paths to victory – including many that I myself cannot anticipate.

Like all one page dungeons, ‘Tears’ is intended for experienced Dungeon Masters and proactive players, all of whom must be adept at improvising. Ideally, this adventure will provide enough material for several play sessions and lay the groundwork for future adventures should you choose to integrate it into an ongoing campaign.

Download the PDF! (700kb)

In this pilot episode of our new netcast, Seance, we join Brian Patterson of d20monkey as he talks about the Crucible of the Odds charity delve.

We also answer listener questions about balancing the dread of traps and puzzles, as well as how far is ‘too far’ when it comes to writing a deathtrap dungeon.

Download the MP3! (43:01, 30 MB)
Subscribe to the netcast feed! (.xml)
This netcast is not yet available on iTunes.

SVD Press is growing, and we’re looking to add a dungeon cartographer to our lean and ambitious team. Here’s the breakdown:

Responsibilities

The cartographer will be responsible for producing print- and tabletop-quality maps for our deathtrap dungeon products. The candidate will work from sketches, minimal Photoshop outlines, and/or a loose style guide. The candidate will be responsible for producing both minimal, black and white maps and full-color, high-detail maps.

At the moment, we are scheduled to publish 3-5 dungeon products in 2012.

Requirements

The candidate must meet the following requirements:

• Ability to create black/white and full-color maps by hand in Photoshop (or a similar program). MapTool and Campaign Cartographer are not acceptable.
• Ability to format maps for print, the web, and the tabletop. This includes slicing printer-friendly encounter maps.
• Familiarity with fourthcore and our products required. We try to maintain a particular mood and aesthetic with our products, and the candidate’s work must reinforce it.

Compensation

SVD Press is a lean team of volunteers working to build a profitable, sustainable, and distinctive publishing outfit. All members of the team work on a revenue-sharing basis, plus a flat fee. This position won’t pay your bills (it certainly doesn’t pay ours), but if you’re passionate about D&D and deathtrap dungeons, it should be a good time.

If you’re interested, send a message to sersa@saveversusdeath.com with the subject line ‘Dungeon Cartographer.’ Please include a link to previous work or a portfolio. Do not attach images or other files to your message.

Last week, we organized a charity run of the fourthcore adventure Crucible of the Gods.

We settled in, chose our characters, and entered the first hall of the Crucible. In that moment, all of my bravado, my trash-talk, and my gamer courage drained away. Suddenly, I was back in the original Tomb of Horrors, afraid to move my miniature and agonizing over every single action. I was terrified… and it was fucking awesome.

In short, it was a massively fun time – three total party kills in just over three hours, earning our crusaders the worst score recorded for the adventure. For the full breakdown, jump over to d20monkey.

Thanks to everyone who participated. We’re definitely doing something like this again.

Download the MP3! (31:00, 21MB). NSFW, Mild Spoilers.

Notes:
Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls by Michael Curtis
Intro track: Enuma Elish by This M’orn Omina
Outro track: Iron Fields by Triarii

If you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out Revenge of the Iron Lich: Anniversary Edition.

(Cross-Posted at d20monkey.)

Brian Patterson, the man behind the d20monkey webcomic (and the artist for products like Fourthcore Armory and Fourthcore Alphabet) has asked for it.

After announcing he was going to be playing Crucible of the Gods tomorrow, I gave him a few words of advice. This was his reply.

Such hubris! So we decided to make it interesting.

The Challenge

This Saturday (2/25/12), Brian and a group of brave crusaders will enter the halls of the Crucible on a mission of dire importance. With Matt Roberts of Nameless PCs and Jeremy Morgan of Stormin’ Da Castle covering his ass, they will have 3 hours to collect as many divine skulls as possible and light the divine brazier at the top of the ziggurat.

So here’s how it’s all going down:

The group will enter the Crucible of the Gods and attempt to collect the 4 divine skulls within and complete the module in the time allotted without dying. Not an easy task – the average score for this adventure is less than zero.

In the comments section below (or on Brian’s site), pledge a dollar value you will donate based on the number of skulls they collect ($5 per skull for example) and double that amount if they survive the entire adventure (even if just one of them crosses the finish line alive, success).

Please pledge only what you can afford.

Once the session is over, donate what you pledged to the Child’s Play Charity.

We will work on the honor system here since it this came together quickly, but if you shoot me or Brian an email with your donation confirmation (minus sensitive info, of course) before March 10, 2012, we’ll hook you up with some cool swag for participating:

• A digital print created by Brian specially for the people who donate
• Wesley K. Hall of Nameless PCs will create a digital print as well, just for the folks who donate
• A copy of the Fourthcore Alphabet eBook

So there you have it: They delve, you donate, Child’s Play earns a few dollars, and you receive some cool and exclusive swag!

The game begins at 3 P.M. (Central Time) on Saturday and we will be live-tweeting the game (along with photos and maybe audio/video) if you would like to follow along!

My Contribution

I’ll be chipping in $20 per divine skull Brian and the others retrieve, and double that if they complete the adventure. However, being the overlord that I am, I’d be just as pleased to see them wiped out. To that end, I’ll donate $100 if the group suffers a TPK and retrieves none of the skulls. If Brian is the first to die, I’ll throw in a bonus $50, regardless of outcome.

Thanks in advance to everyone who will pledge!

Last week, I asked you to share your memories of Revenge of the Iron Lich, the very first fourthcore adventure.

Here’s what some of you had to say:

Joe Nehmer

I had been running one-shots at Gencon for many years. I thought I had my formula down. Revenge of the Iron Lich made me see the “one-shot” in a whole new light.

The way I used to run:
1. The games I used to run were ‘easy’. Few dungeoneers died, if any.
2. I always played by the XP budget. Never any save or die effects.
3. Players were assured to reach the final encounter.
4. Puzzles had no place in D&D. Would slow down the game too much.
5. A one-shot game can only be played once by a player, no repeating allowed.

What Revenge of the Iron Lich tought me:
1. Make it challenging. Make it tough. There are players who CRAVE that.
2. Forget the XP budget. Focus on evocative encounters first. The numbers can fit in later.
3. Players must EARN the final encounter. Don’t hand it to them. Don’t be afraid to TPK.
4. Puzzles not only have a place, but they can be integrated into the combats!
5. Repeat gaming is not only possible, but it can be AWESOME.

Reading Revenge of the Iron Lich felt like reading an ancient tome; as much fun to read as it is to run/play it. I loved how the entire dungeon could be a puzzle of it’s own. For me, it really brought back the GAME to the RPG, and inspired me back to 4E so much that I ended up running a play-by-blog fourthcore game that’s still going strong.

Joe Stroup

The first time I read the Revenge of the Iron Lich, I was utterly blown away. I’d read many adventures in the 4th Edition portfolio, but none that made me say out loud, “Oh hell yah!” Flipping through each chamber and challenge of the dungeon, I remember feeling more and more intrigued as I got drawn into the narrative of the underground complex, but also the sheer challenge to the players.

When I first ran the dungeon, I ran it as a dream sequence for my players (which they didn’t know at the time) and based on their performance in the dungeon I gave them certain benefits and consequences in a later adventure in our home campaign. Every room, as it unfolded spooked them further and further. They were shocked, not just by the numbers they were seeing posted on the board in terms of damage, but also the feel of danger that was present in every moment of the experience.

I was changed by the experience because, for the first time, I thought about ignoring the math of what dictates a “fair” experience in D&D. Since my players were already struggling through the troubles that come out of paragon tier, the unbelievable challenges offered by the tomb of the Iron Lich was something that really surprised them. They started thinking, “What if we can’t beat the creatures in an encounter? Do we really have the option to run and maybe try something different?” Planning things outside of the normal powers and monsters that exist already was something I had never tried and it was after running the Iron Lich that I started to see how far I could really push the game. I’d never considered myself a game designer, that was for professionals and official people, but seeing what Sersa had created and just how impressive user generated content could become, I was inspired to dabble myself and since then I’ve taken responsibility for really owning my game and the experience I put in front of my players. The standard had just been raised as to what was possible and since then I’ve expected so much more out of what I can do as a DM and as a designer.

While my design is nowhere near what Fourthcore has produced and accomplished, it is mine now and I owe the Fourthcore movement for kicking my ass into high gear and pushing me to do it myself and quit passing the buck for poor adventure design and take responsibility for my game.

Matt Gallinger

I have such fond memories of the Iron Lich… and I mean that in the most evil way possible.

I have both played and run Revenge of the Iron Lich and I think it’s brilliant. When I played the adventure Stephen Chast ran it and I know he posts regularly about Fourthcore. Let me say he does justice to your work.

Best memory of playing the adventure is solving the treasure chest puzzle. Our swordmage was a bit impetuous and ended up a gold statue before we finished our reasoning… but after the rest of us figured it out, and being greedy bastards, we brought him along to sell (or maybe raise from the dead if we were feeling generous). When contronted by the sarcophagus that transforms one into a lich (which we did not yet know– all we knew at this point is that it had necrotic runes) we put his body, now a statue, into the niche and closed it…. just to see what would happen. Our DM ruled that it reanimated him and turned him into a lich so we had a lich in our party until we faced the demi-lich at which point he was killed again and we never figured out that we could pull his soul back out of the marked squares… the player kept jumping up and down any time we came close to the triggering squares but the DM wouldn’t let him give us a hint so he missed the final combat… in which we all died.

When I ran it my favorite memory is my 11 year old daughter solving the treasure chest mystery before any of the adults at the table could… she just kept insisting on the right answer until all the adults agreed with her reasoning and they sailed through. The other thing that really struck me was that no one ever searches for secret doors at the bottom of pits… until you’ve played a fourthcore adventure :]

Finally, my first thought on reading the adventure after having played it was that I’m so glad we didn’t end up in the room where the stairs slide into the walls, with the phantom captian…knowing our party that would have been a TPK.

Robert Waluchow

I had begun to feel quite bored with 4e a little over a year ago. It felt so bland and derivative. I was unconsciously and erroneously attributing this to the game system. Then I read Revenge of the Iron Lich; it was like getting slapped in the face by Vecna! It hurt so good.

As I read through the vicious pages of this brilliantly fearless adventure, I realized something: the problem wasn’t 4e, but my own complacency in my design approach as DM. I was taking my cue from how Wizards and other publishers were presenting the game: encounter, encounter, rest, rinse, repeat. Unlike the random and crazy nature of my old games, where consistency and game-balance gave way to sheer creative lunacy and rule-of-cool, my 4e games were too like the drivel Wizards kept pumping out. This focus on encounter balance had inadvertently led me to write shitty, shitty adventures.

I was immediately inspired, and knew I had to change the way I was DMing.

The highlight for me was the rumour cards. It is such a simple tool that adds so much to the game. This is something my games have all included since. The focus on the exploratory aspect of the game was also a breath of fresh air (well fetid undead tomb air, but you get the idea). Although, I wouldn’t characterize them as fourthcore per se (as your definition is quite narrow in its scope), my designs since have been HEAVILY inspired by fourthcore and Revenge of the Iron Lich. The raw fearless fury of your approach has had a tremendous impact on me, and has reinvigorated my love of DMing.

J.C. Lundberg

It was shocking to me to see that Iron Lich has been around for a year. My group had recently started playing so the fourthcore flavor has pretty much always been a part of our games. Iron Lich was really the first time I realized, as a novice DM, that the game didn’t have to be simple, precisely and narrowly calibrated to character, or safe. Reading through it the first time, I probably sat there slackjawed a half a dozen times at the awesomeness of how things fit together and challenged not just the characters but the players. It was something that was, at least in my experience, completely novel insofar as how it approached the game.

I think my single favorite memory from the game was when three of the dungeoneers went up the final ethereal staircase led by the person wearing the amulet. As she stepped off, the stairs became insubstantial again and her two companions fell into the lack of mithril. We addressed a few other things–the party had split so we dealt with them for a few minutes when one of the dungeoneers whose character has long since turned to ash yelled “frak, I can fly.” He had some item that allowed temporary flight but had forgotten about it.

As I said above, my game has kind of always been a fourthcore game so I don’t know that it has so much influenced my play or design style but has instead become my design style. While my creative ability, especially in the D&D context is still growing, fourthcore elements either from SVD or others under the fourthcore banner show up in my games basically every session. I’ve already started plotting an arc to have the party face Sata and Ekoba when they’ve advanced a few more levels and I cannot wait.

[Unsigned]

I remember the first time playing through this module with a particular fondness, even though it ended in a TPK and the killing off of two PCs from the ongoing campaign. One thing that really struck me was the SPEED at which the combat took place. Battles were brief and brutal, and thoroughly complimented by the terrain rather than bogged down by it. The penultimate encounter with Iron Lich was a memorable experience, with sky high tension. In my particular group there was an oh so brief taste of victory (rendered the lich unconscious and prepped the imprisonment scoll), followed by the gut wrenching feeling of defeat (the reflexive save and the imminent chiming of the time limit).

The battles were just part of it though, the return to dungeon exploration was another high point that left a big impression on me. Prior to this, 4E dungeon exploration was sort of becoming a string of standard encounters connected by bland hallways. Occasionally there would be an odd trap based room in which the party would peruse their skill list and attempt to justify the use of their highest skill to strong arm there way through the challenge. The Iron Lich dungeon was different, the rumors encouraged the group to attempt to explore everything, even though all of us knew before hand that the traps here were almost always fatal but the rewards were just to great. It invoked the very old school feeling of just having to know what the hell is inside the Green Devil’s mouth, even though half the party was just killed by what ever was in it.

What I carried away from the Iron Lich was that 4E could accomplish a high tension battle well after heroic level, where usually combat starts to become more of a chore than a challenge. Imminent death can be a good thing so long as your smiling the entire time!

Stephen Chast

Simply put–Revenge of the Iron Lich is what inspired me to engage with the D&D community on Twitter and to blog about my own D&D experiences. I don’t design my own Fourthcore adventures, but I find a lot to inspire me within them.

Revenge of the Iron Lich was my introduction to Fourthcore. It seems that I’m always finding something in its desgign that makes me think about D&D in a new way. I may not be consistently capable of producing fantastic, over-the-top imagry that Fourthcore strives for, but I love the threat level presented by it’s short, decisive combats and the many ways in which player skill is demanded and rewarded.

Apart from being very impressed, whatever I thought upon reading the adventure for the first and second time was overshadowed by my experiences running the game since.

My favorite story from runing Revenge comes from the first time I ran the adventure. I had volunteered to DM at a local game day and faced down a bunch of strangers with new PCs. It was the best game I’ve run in my life!

A lone player attempted and failed to solve a riddle. The result was that he turned into a gold statue. The problem was that several key items were stored in his bag of holding, now also turned to gold. The party used the sharpest utensil available, a magic sword, to shave away at the bag and gently pierce it from teh outside in hopes of retrieving the items within.

It was a bold plan and clearly they needed what the bag contained in order to proceed. I allowed an difficult Arcana check for the plan to succeed and they failed. The botched operation causes a temporary tear in the fabric of reality that consumed the magic sword.

The players ended up carrying their statuesque companion around on a Tenser’s floating disk. Later, they found an enchanted coffin and risked putting their friend inside. I rewarded the desperate move by transmuting back to flesh & bone. The contents of his destroyed bag of holding spewed out onto the ground, releasing the key items they previously tried to recover.

The best part is that both the sword and the golden PC were destroyed again later in the game. I got ‘em twice fair and square!

Revenge on the Iron Lich has recalibrated my standards for crafting suspense and excitement in D&D. Running it has helped make me a better DM and a better player. I have fun too! I can think of no better reason to recommend it.

David Schwarm

I felt very late to the game when I first read the adventure–I had the sense that there was this huge group of 4E gamers that had been doing it ‘right’ and having a lot more fun then I was having in my home games.

Play Report: Revenge of the Iron Lich
Revenge of the Iron Lich at the Realm

RotIL brought a lot of fun back into the game. Its approach freed me up to be much more old school deadly in my home campaigns. It taught me to be a lot more patient with my players in encounters – if you don’t say much and wait players will invariablly find some trouble to get into on their own.

Jon Green

My reaction when I first read the adventure: “Wait, they can do that? That’s…evil! And awesome!”

My favorite moment when running/playing the adventure was the first time I ran that adventure. After a dramatic and tense evening, the party had just been TPK’d by the Iron Lich Necrolith, Immediately after my announcing their fate, two of the players looked at me and said “No, we’re going to play this again, and do it right!” I’d never had a group that had finished an adventure or module and demanded to do it again, and I was completely blown away by how much they enjoyed it (and how much they wanted to beat it).

This adventure completely changed my view of 4e. It showed me that the “safe” game I was running didn’t have to be there; that in spite of the balanced encounters and nice, neat skill challenges of the DMG, there was room for infinite creativity and challenge.

Revenge of the Iron Lich and Fourthcore completely changed the way I play adventures. My character sheet is now a helpful set of guidelines, because I know that the most powerful tool my character has at his/her disposal is me and my creativity. It’s changed my design style, because it’s taken away my fear and apprehension of bending the rules and pushing characters beyond their expected limits. I’ve learned that when you push PCs to new limits, they will either rise gloriously to the occasion, or die in a magnificently awesome way.

Thanks to all of the crusaders who wrote in. Have more to add? Share it in the comments!

On this day one year ago, Revenge of the Iron Lich – the very first fourthcore adventure – was released.

As part of our week-long celebration, I’m extremely happy to present Revenge of the Iron Lich: Anniversary Edition.

This Anniversary Edition is an update and makeover of the original adventure. It features:

• A fresh, easier-to-read new layout,
• Rules updates and fixes,
• Reworked encounters,
• Never-before-seen traps, monsters, and treasure,
• New, more difficult challenges, and
• High quality formatting and accessories, including over 50 full-color game cards.

The fundamentals of the adventure have not changed. Instead, we’ve given Revenge a new look, took a wrench to some of the stuff we weren’t in love with, and tossed in a bunch of new features to make the first-ever fourthcore adventure darker, meaner, and deadlier.

Download the adventure! (36 MB ZIP)

• Download the module only. (2 MB)
• Download the accessories only. (33 MB)

In this conversation, we talk about our memories of Revenge, how fourthcore has evolved since its release, what we’ve learned, and what the future might hold.

Download the MP3! (42:00, 29MB)

If you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out the previews of Revenge of the Iron Lich: Anniversary Edition, including a first look at the Tomb’s entrance and a glance at some of the new cards packaged with the module.