Skip to main content

Stonehell: Halfway

I am halfway through reading Michael Curtis's Stonehell and it has ruined me. I have always hated reading dungeon adventures, and now I will hate them twice as much. Nothing irritates me more than having to flip back and forth between the map and the entries. It makes it very hard for me to enjoy reading map heavy modules, even campaign settings. I keep getting yanked out of the flow by having to flip back. It will be even more irritating going forward, because I now know that IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!

If he has done nothing else with this book, and trust me he has done other stuff, Mr. Curtis has set a new standard for how dungeon adventures should be presented. Each chapter starts with a map of a whole level of the dungeon. There is also a brief discussion of the level and a list of all the monsters, with stats, on the level. This is followed by four sections, each detailing 1/4 of the level. Each of these sections starts with a more detailed description of that quarter and then discusses anything that requires extra description like stat blocks, traps, special rooms etc. The next two pages consist of a half page map of the quarter with a wandering monster table and the keyed entries for all the rooms. That's right you can always glance over at the map while you read the entries.

I have to admit that the quarters seem a little bit artificial at this point and they seem unnecessarily walled off from each other at this point. I am sure that will improve as the format gets used more. There is no reason that it has to be this way, I am sure a more organic feel will develop over time.
I'll have more to say about the content of Stonehell when I finish. For now, the presentation is awesome.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hex Crawls

Those of you who have been reading this blog know that I have never run a megadungeon before. I have always used more realistic dungeon settings, keeping all underground areas to a minimum and keeping the over all size of castles and the like fairly small. There is another style of gaming I have never indulged in: the hex crawl. I have never seen hexes as discrete chunks of the map. I always just used them as a guide to find distance if they were present and not worrying about themif they were not. I have always taken a more continuous view of overland maps. This is another streak that will be ending with my upcoming OSRIC game. I will be using James M's Outdoor Map as a starting pont in my campaign. I will be heavily modifying it for my purposes but most of the features will stay the same. I will be adding my own versions of Castles Blackmoor and Greyhawk to the map. I have been struggling with how a hex crawl works. How do I know if they find features in the hex and isn't 5 m

Traveller: Session 5

    This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar. This session was run on October 27, 2022. This session contains secret communications between me and the individual players. This means that these recaps do not cover everything that happened in the session. I will be reporting only the information that all players had access to.   131-1116   After the council meeting ended, Nashu, Archduke Ishuggi’s chief of staff, pulled him aside. Following the revelation that Yuri Lang, the emperor’s would-be assassin, had been a member of Archduke Adair’s intelligence service and had been involved in a combined operation with Gateway Intelligence, she had the staff run overlap checks on all recent contacts. The goal was to determine if there were any more unexpected connections between people that could be a threat to Ishuggi or the emperor.   She learned that, in 1113, Yuri Lang (“Baron Pazi”), Zurzi (Archduke Bzrk’s chief of st

Traveller: Session 24

    This session was run on March 30, 2023.     With the Prismatic Ray safely on the ground and camouflaged, Aryanna decided to head to the artists’ commune to monitor the situation with the pirates they had escaped from and to establish radio contact with Arenui and Mar-ven through local channels to avoid giving away their position. Mhan, Hal, and Zarf stayed behind with the ship. Using the Ray’s passive sensors, they could see that the Razer’s Blade , the 100 ton boat launched from Jugisaal’s Razer to intercept them, had finished with Jade’s cargo lighter and was entering Twinsong’s atmosphere. In Caldera, Arenui and Mar-ven were finishing up negotiations at the life support supply warehouse when the air defense alert sirens started to sound. The warehouse owner told them that they had to leave the building while he took his employees into the strong room. They attempted to convince him to allow them to shelter in the strong room as well, but he refused becau