Tags
Adventure, Books, Dyson's Delves, Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, Maps, OSR, RPG
Delves 2 Cover Mockup
Dyson’s Delves II is underway.
Chapter 2 of the book is essentially done. 39 maps have been scanned in and laid out with the notes page beside each. I’ll add five more as the project nears completion and that chapter will be done.
The following adventures are complete and will definitely be in this volume – they just need to go through layout again to fit the format of the book.
- Ziggurat of Rhissel the Morning Lord
- The Secret of Jen’s Hall
- The Ruins of Corvel on the Mount
- Cavanaugh’s Hall
- Treasure Map to the Red Cave
- The Screams from Jedder’s Hole
- Atarin’s Delve (which somehow got missed while putting together the original Delves)
- A Devourer Most Foul (an adventure that’ll be in Dodecahedron #7 and posted to the blog soon)
That’s already more adventures than were included in the original Dyson’s Delves, however the original Delves included some much larger adventures – Erdea Manor and Dyson’s Delve were each around 20 pages, and none of the adventures above are much more than 5 pages in length. To make up the difference I’m going to add at least one or two more adventures into the Valley of the Red Apes set (which includes the Ziggurat, Jen’s Hall and the Devourer Most Foul), and then see how many pages I’m still short of my 140 page target.
If I need more material, I’ll go in and redraw the map for Goblin Gully and stock it with full Labyrinth Lord stats this time (instead of the system-neutral stocking I did in the one page dungeon), and probably also provide full Labyrinth Lord stats for By Esophagus Brood while I’m at it.
Then I need to put together a super-secret super-special adventure for people who buy the Deluxe Edition. Yeah, that’s right, another special thank you for those of you who step up early and pick up one of the first 100 hardcover limited editions. Last time it was a 6-page adventure for levels 8-10… who knows what I’ll throw in this time.
Design-wise the book is going to have almost identical layout to Delves I. I’m increasing the inside margins a bit so the maps aren’t quite so squeezed into the edges (and the adventures are easier to read), and I’m using the full-bleed headers and footers from Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts. My goal is that the limited edition should be 150 pages, so it will sit in perfect harmony with both Delves and Theorems. The cover will be nearly the same colour as Delves I – the background element will be slightly darker, and the foreground elements will be in a slightly lighter and greener tone (as shown above) so it is immediately distinguishable from Delves I, but also immediately recognizable as it’s companion volume.
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
Do you have a single setting that the adventures are based in? One that perhaps hooks up with the Frog God swamp adventure? My players are just finishing that adventure and will soon leave the swamp to attempt the Giants in the Dwarven Citadel and it would be great to be able to link them into a broader “realm”. I realise you issue the Delves as places that you can drop into any setting, it would just be great to have at least a world map or something I can then start to pull together for my group which features your key locations. Any plans for a realm background? Thanks
My games are based in “The Fallen Empire of the Kale”. That said, the map of said setting changes from campaign to campaign. For instance, the Black Mire (from Challenge of the Frog Idol) has appeared in four or five campaigns to date, but has varied in size and importance dramatically from game to game. The version in said adventure is probably the second smallest I’ve used to date.
What I will be including in this version of the Delves is a Hex Map of a portion of the setting with all the adventures placed on it, as well as a few blank areas for GMs to fill in themselves, and locations for most of the non-adventure maps.
Challenge of the Frog Idol was excellent. You could easily flesh that out some more (dwarven citadel maps, and the city on the coast) as well as drop a few dungeons throughout, and sell this on Lulu (hardback, please) as it’s own thing. I actually plugged the swamp in as a side-region of my main campaign.
Also very much looking forward to the next release. I have Dark Pacts and the first Delves and will certainly be looking for a hard copy rather than PDF for the next one.
Ooooo… Any way those of us who already have DD1 Deluxe can pre-order DD2 Deluxe to maintain our collection 😉
Since I publish through LuLu, pre-orders are a distinct problem.
That said, I don’t expect they will sell out that quickly. It took months to sell through the 100 limited editions of the original Delves.
With your reputation and fame increasing due to your popularity, I suspect they’ll seel faster this time.
That said, I have secret, hideous rites that I’m willing to perform in order to secure one of those DD2 Deluxe versions…..
I would like to see a regional map with some of the stocked dungeons located in it. Also, will the Black Mire and environs be in the third Dyson’s Delve?
So yeah, after some discussion about my recently posted hex map, I will be including a hex map locating all the adventures and dungeons in the volume.
However, no, Challenge of the Frog Idol will not be included in this book. I’m hoping to expand it to include the dwarven city of Kuln, more stuff in the area, and so on, and hopefully releasing it all in a new volume.
I figured that was good, which is why I suggested the third Dyson’s Delve would be good. Might be good to put in some more information on Mireport, too, and any other local features!
oops I left the above “Frog Idol” remark before reading down this far.
Hooray for the DDelves2 hex map!
I ran with your “write in the book” comments and DDelves1 quickly morphed into a “campaign region book”.
Would you consider Maybe having a page where I can make my own hexcrawl encounter tables?.
Also, in DDelves1 there were a few larger maps where the opposing page didn’t leave me nearly enough space to key the whole map. Maybe an extra page for keying the larger maps?
Also, if you include Ascending AC’s [in brackets, of course] I will give you a sincere handshake the next time we meet. I can handle LL stats, but having the [AC] there is an appreciated advantage for many of us.
All right, all right, I’ll add the OGL Section 15 from S&W White Box and put in ascending ACs, but that’s just about it.
As for “not enough room to stock”, I took to taking in additional pages, adding post-it-notes, and so on. I’ll scan one of my pages from my book one of these days.
That’s one I’m going to be watching closely.
/insert evil laugh here.
Dyson: Would you just take my next paycheck now and get it over with? I personally can’t wait for this release!