Dungeon-A-Day.com Kickstarter

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My map for the Fane of the Sea God Level, written by Charles Ryan.For years, Dungeon A Day posted daily dungeon encounters by Monte Cook for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 OGL. It was a massive dungeon. Eventually, he brought in Super Genius Games to keep the site running and complete the Dragon's Delve mega dungeon. Afterwrads, Super Genius continued with smaller dungeons, and added the Pathfinder rules along the way.

Sadly, the site was forced to close to new subscribers last year. Fortunately, Super Genius received enough interest to start a new Kickstarter campign to make the original material available to newcomers. They hope to gain enough funding to add to the original material, and more.

Regular readers may remember that I was one of the site's cartographers near the end of Dragon's Delve and other adventures. If the kickstarter works, I may get the opportunity to do more of that in the future, plus something more...

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Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale nominated for ENnie Award!

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Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale for Dungeons & Dragons has been nominated for an ENnie Award for Best Monster/Adversary! My fellow authors Brian R. James, Matt James and Steve Townshend and I would love your support. Voting starts July 20, and the awards are announced at the ENnie Awards Ceremony at GenCon in August.

This is my first ENnie Award nomination for a D&D product.

Star Wars Wednesday - Con Season Begins

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So, I completely missed Wednesday this week, mainly due to travel, airport delays, post-midnight arrivals and fatigue thereof. Fortunately, con season is in full swing, with San Diego Comic Con this week. I haven't been to this one, but will be attending others later in the summer. More on that in later weeks. For now, I'm sure most of you are already following the typical news outlets, but I thought I'd highlight a few as well. Plus, I'm really tired.
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D&D Insider: Dungeon: Hunt for the Heretic

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My latest Dungeons & Dragons 4e adventure, Hunt for the Heretic, went live today on D&D Insider, Dungeon magazine (for subscribers only):

"Deep in the Astral Sea, a mysterious force has been raiding, plundering, and destroying isolated settlements and astral ships. The heroes must brave the bizarre and dangerous environment to follow this trail of destruction and hunt down whatever force is behind it."


Star Wars Wednesday - Kickstar-Wars

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Those who follow me on twitter or my facebook fan page, know that I've gotten into Kickstarter projects. Maybe that's not surprising, given the rise of crowdfunding over the past few years from sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. For various reasons, I wasn't in a position to jump in to some of the earliest projects that caught my interest, which was disappointing since I knew the people involved.

Instead, I tried to promote some of them here, especially those that were somewhat Star Wars related, either by game or by a past freelancer. Christopher West's maps that were Star Wars minis compatible, and Gary Sarli's e20 project come to mind, and even d20 Radio's Edition Wars. Well, in that vein, I've backed a new project that I think may appeal to fans of West End Games' d6 system.

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Star Wars Wednesday - Brak Sector MUSH/MUX & SW-X

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Back in the '90s, playing RPGs online were a text-only affair. Pre-internet, starting sometime in the '80s, someone figured out how to create a multi-user game using modems, telnet clients and bulletin board systems and frankly functioned in way I'm not totally familiar with. They were text based, not unlike Zork, but with real people playing. These were originally called Multi-User Dungeons (MUD). As computer based systems commonly do, they evolved in a variety of ways. Later versions became MUSH (multi-user shared hallucination, if wikipedia is to be believed), MUX and a variety of other acronyms.

Sometime in the mid '90s, after my first WEG Star Wars product Flashpoint! Brak Sector was released, I discovered a "Brak Sector MUSH/MUX." It used my book as the basis for their online Star Wars d6 campaign.

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Star Wars Wednesday - 35th Anniversary and other things

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This past weekend marked the 35th anniversary of the original release of Star Wars. I wasn't really thinking about it, until I saw Wired's many related articles and finally clued in. A few other things have come to light lately, so this post will be a bit like what I used to call grab bag posts on the old Delusions of Grandeur blog. Speaking of, if you're finally making the switch to reading this site, instead of over at starwars.com, welcome. Seeing as I was unable to post over there since last year, there are a lot of posts to catch up on.
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Greg Rucka's Alpha Map

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So, it's been awhile since I've had a non-Star Wars post...or any other freelance related post for that matter. Hopefully that will change in the near future. There are a number of projects at various stages in the production and release process,many going back awhile now. 

Today, though, I get to talk about a new product type for me, if not a new type of freelance, exactly. Over a year ago, Eric Trautmann, former editor of some of my WEG products, introduced me to novelist and graphic novel author Greg Rucka. Comic fans might know Greg's name from his DC, Marvel and Dark Horse titles, including 52, Punisher, Gotham Central, Hellboy and many more. He's known for his own series of intense graphic novels Whiteout and Queen and Country, through Oni Press.

Greg was looking for someone to help draw a map for the setting in his new novel. Something to aid him while developing the book. Somewhere big.

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Star Wars Wednesday - Nova Eclipse

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This week, we take a look at the Nova Eclipse - the highly customized AR-37 Paragon-class light transport from Christopher West's maps and, and his personal game.

But first, a brief note that I was sorry to hear that Lucasfilm laid off Bonnie Burton (aka @bonniegrrl) this week, their long-time social network liason (and likely other duties I know nothing about). I only had brief contact with Bonnie, several years ago when she interviewed me for an article on my blog at starwars.com. Starwars.com announced that it was revamping the official blog, with their ongoing reworking of all things starwars.com that has been underway for awhile. The latest blog post is looking for feedback on what people want to see on the site, so now is the time to comment, if you want to see particular types of content, etc.

Now, on with the Nova Eclipse. We'll start once again with Chris' description, followed by my stats for Saga and d6 systems, as usual.

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Star Wars Wednesday - AR-37 Paragon Light Transport

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This week, I finally return to the RPG stats for Christopher's West's Mass Transit III/Boarding Action map. It's time to take on the AR-37 Paragon-Class Light Transport...but there's a bit of a wrinkle. The stock version of the AR-37 doesn't actually appear on this map, it's on Christopher West's successful Kickstarter Offworld Docking Port map. The one on Boarding Action? It's the Nova Eclipse, Chris' ship in his home game, which I'll tackle next week. The second level of the AR-37 appears on the Kickstarter Nova Eclipse map.
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Star Wars Wednesday - Infographics

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Infographics seem to be all the rage on the internet. They're great ways to distill facts or data (accurate or otherwise) down to an easily understandable image that highlights the point the creator is trying to get across. A new, or rather, a rediscovered series of Star Wars related infographics began making the rounds recently. It reminded me of some of past versions and put me on the hunt for others.
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