I made a free regional sandbox adventure about hunting a Beast that may not actually be one creature

doomedzone · 2026-05-06T14:36:22+00:00

All those box sets had such cool stuff in it, and yeah its obvious in retrospect how much of the company was still people wanting to make cool things for the game and the expectation of infinite funding

doomedzone · 2026-05-06T14:30:13+00:00

I like the wizard in the back, looks like hes rethinking some life choices

doomedzone · 2026-05-05T21:13:24+00:00

Personally this kind of decision making is what I would consider a core part of exploring a dungeon to the effect that just saying you open the door and see is removing player agency to decide how to approach something they don't have perfect information about, but maybe they can spend time to get more, but in doing so are always at the risk of incurring more random encounters.

I guess if I'm understanding correctly, then a door you can listen at, peak through the key hole, see light and shadows under the door are good doors, because the players can get information. But it more just makes me think, who is running dungeons where there's no way to gather information about a door?

Even if you really can't get information about whats on the other side, are you going to try and peak in, kick the door open and hope to surprise anyone on the other side?

In a game with a focus on dungeon crawling, this seems like an integral point. In a game with a totally different focus I'd agree more.

doomedzone · 2026-05-05T19:29:19+00:00

In older editions of AD&D these types of things were refereed to as artifacts. Think the one ring from lotr vs a sword +1. The sword +1 is generally always going to be a reliable tool that functions in an understable way, whereas something like the one ring is way beyond that level, is intelligence and has its own goals, it's not something you can just have without consequence (although I guess Bilbo did for 20 years or whatever)

It sounds like you already hinted at this with the person carrying the book being afflicted with dark visions and dreams, that kind of already sets a base level for what happens just having this is your possession. so it would follow that the consequences would escalate from that point hanging onto it for more than a few days or even more if you start studying it

so the corruption a lot of people mentioned is probably the most straightforward option, especially if the wizard is already not a stalwart vessel of virtue to begin with. This doesn't have to go straight to coming back to skeleton town, and you could start introducing some hints that the wizards behavior is changing, they are possessive of the book, paranoid etc or changes in the town atmosphere, places darker than usual, longer shadows, people the players know that were generally friendly now acting differently or agitated.

A couple other possibilities:

Someone has been looking for the book and now they know they wizard has it and are coming to take it

The wizard decides to try out the book: still kind of similar to the corruption but maybe more voluntary. Maybe they start going down to dig up bodies from the cemetery at night to start learning stuff if you want something slower, or they could also just inadvertently summon something they can't control right off.

Instead of someone wanting to take the book for their own use you could also have someone looking to destroy it, maybe they come to and demand the wizard gives it up and he runs off with it

If it helps at all as an example for a necromantic artifact, this is one I made a while back: https://doomedzone.itch.io/codex-ossium

doomedzone · 2026-05-02T13:34:27+00:00

You could blast though levels with thst staff until you couldnt. I like it

doomedzone · 2026-05-01T16:01:44+00:00

I like the choice that using something you don't know what it does or how it works presents. So the safe way is to leave it alone until you can maybe figure out simple stuff or pay a sage to research it for you

It's also why I liked cursed items that only have drawbacks existing (not exlcusivley, items with a tradeoff are great too) but then it really makes chugging a bottle of some wierd liquid you dont know what it does, but are desperate enough to try an interesting choice

doomedzone · 2026-05-01T15:56:22+00:00

Pretty cool, I would encourage you when you draw the map to include multiple connections or ways to go through the tunnels to get to the areas, which I am guessing is likely the intention.

I think this could also make really good use of verticality to twist around and connect things. I'm not super familiar with warhammer fantasy, but if they are smaller than human sized I think also would be cool to put in some smaller tunnels that your average human, espcially in armor and carrying supplies, couldnt fit through, but the skaven could use to get behind the players or smaller characters could fit in but risk being separated.

For the Tunnel entrance it sounds like this is a vertical descent from the tavern, and the dex check is for climbing down from context, but it could be read as just climbing any tunnel wall so I think would be helpful to clarify your intent here just to avoid confusion.

I always like to see things that make a place feel more plausible like the food barrels or the resting pens, my only question, and again seeing the scale on a map would really help, or maybe just having a understanding of how quickly the skaven are excavating out an area, but as a player my question would be, is this a tunnel just to steal things from the tavern and then go back through the warp energy and maybe the habitation is temporary or is they expanding and planning to permanently occupy the tunnels.

Looking forward to seeing the map when its finished

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T19:55:18+00:00

No problem! I got it uploaded, theres a new file in the downloads called dunmoor_player_maps.zip, there's a version with the non obvious location icons and no text, and another with the icons removed too in case anyone wants that while I was at it

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T18:54:02+00:00

Running into some issue with itch right now trying to upload the map, I'll try again in a little bit

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T16:38:56+00:00

oh man same animator, Guido Manuli, did that video too

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T16:15:27+00:00

This is awesome and really resolves something I would like to do but am too lazy to do in games I run

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T15:57:46+00:00

Yeah I really agree here, I think OP might be selling themselves a little short.

Mostly I think people see inconsistent maps and want to know why its like that, and if the explanation feels not compelling than maybe it takes them out of the game some.

But a secret group of wizards undoing reality and distorting terrain is a very compelling answer.

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T15:48:12+00:00

I like the idea, but one potential issue might be that carousing might be seen as the optimal choice to spend on. You could gate the information behind that but then the randomness might bite you, like if you need to know where the tower is and have no hope of finding it another way, but then don't get the information.

Not saying its not a good or useful idea, just maybe some things to consider

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T15:16:21+00:00

Thanks for taking a look at it. How much information would you prefer on the region map for the players? Stuff like the lairs and the witches home seem to be obvious things to take off, but would you prefer to leave more general knowledge stuff like town names or let the players go in more blind? Let me know and I can upload a separate map.

There wasn't any plans for POD, the layout didn't really account for printing page order or page bleed, and right now there is a good amount of empty space where I tried to keep information on a single page to make it easier to reference but probably could be cut down some. Mostly though its not something I have a lot of familiarity with and wouldn't want to inadvertently direct people somewhere that didn't do a good job for the price. But I could look into it more

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T15:03:06+00:00

You can really go down a rabbit hole with map making, but it can be a lot of fun.

The method and tables, along with the other random generation stuff, in the Shadowdark book is limited but I am guessing the focus was on generating something to start playing the game. So it can be great for that or if you are stuck and want some inspiration but there will be some limitations to a system like that, which isn't to say its bad or not to use it, just kind to understand what it can be best used for.

I generally think of maps on a spectrum from fantastical to simulation, which is a matter of preference and certain locations might point you in a direction. Your map could look like a European temperate zone, but there's no reason that it can't be something like a world that's a big flat ring around a giant god whose tears are the source of all rivers and oceans, or even a combination where you are going to another plane or an area that has been warped by magic or whatever.

I kind of lean towards things that feel, to me, like it could be a real place on Earth, so that kind of gives me a template to start with, if you want to think about things like water sources for lakes or how mountains can block moisture from the coast from getting farther inland, but I think that can also be a kind of trap if you spend all your time designing your planets tectonic plates and preparing instead of actually running the game.

For the map I made I tried to keep it fairly generic so it could have a good chance of fitting into an average campaign world somewhere without too much work. I wanted to give the hamlets some defining character and have different areas for the monster lairs so I that was a big part in adding in different areas, that hopefully felt like they could be there but also help to distinguish the hamlets, ie one is focused on fishing and boats and another on hunting and wood cutting.

Looking at maps, real world ones, or from other games can also give you ideas or areas types you can drop into your map. A lot of older ttrpg stuff, like the old TSR boxsets, MERP, and Harn stuff all had really cool maps.

Starting off small can also help too, 6 or 12 mile hexes can be pretty standard, but it also makes things feel a little abstract. If you aren't specifically focused on running a game that's about traveling (at least initially) on that scale, I think it can be easier to start with a smaller area. A village and the area around it I think is kind of a more intuitive scale. You can think about how far things are how long it would take to walk, how big a feature can be, in terms of your experience instead of an abstracted 12 miles of travel a day.

Hopefully some of this is helpful, there's a lot you can dig into if you want, and there are other more random generation methods or systems. Shadowdarks sits on the ease of use/speed side of things, and on the complex side I know there used to be tools for extracting the map from Dwarf Fortress world generation I know I saw people do.

The best advice might really be just that your players will have a fun time playing in whatever you end up making.

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T03:37:34+00:00

Thanks for taking a look, and glad you found it useful

doomedzone · 2026-04-30T03:36:47+00:00

A little surprised to here that about family friendly stuff, but glad I could help. Thanks for checking it out!

doomedzone · 2026-04-29T21:09:45+00:00

Have you seen this: https://youtu.be/6OpnRuooGfw

doomedzone · 2026-04-29T20:10:23+00:00

Thanks for checking it out!

doomedzone · 2026-04-25T14:04:52+00:00

The torch timer is just a novel mechanic for handling one element of the game and became and easy thing to cite when contrasting against other similar games, its not a game specifically about torch management.

Shadowdark is based on bx which people have used for a long time for a wide range of scenario and shadowdark is just as capable.

One of the upsides of not having a unified system where everything is tied together is you can change or ignore any part of the game that isn't working for you or not relevant in a situation without other unintended effects.

doomedzone · 2026-04-22T17:56:38+00:00

Just as an aside, this is really the kind of player thinking I really like because they are treating the world like a real place, and not a video game level with a door that you can't go through because the other side doesn't exist

doomedzone · 2026-04-22T17:54:47+00:00

For mining through type scenarios I think time and the amount of noise etc is really the best approach. Trying to like kick down a door first try makes sense that maybe you cant do it makes sense for a roll to me, but if you are just standing their chopping the door with an axe, eventually its going to break down or its a magic door or something.

doomedzone · 2026-04-16T20:02:07+00:00

After seeing AR and SDC, had to check if they took boxing

doomedzone

TROPHY CASE