I love the One Page Dungeon Contest and this is my third year competing for the coveted first place. This year’s dungeon is called Vertigo, and it’s all about dizzying heights and high flying action.

Download the dungeon here: Vertigo (pdf  374 KB)

Well done to all the winners of my “Win A Trip To The Dungeon” competition. You all win a copy of Lunatic Labyrinth from Drive Thru RPG.

If you didn’t get your free copy, remember that Claustrophobia! is still in play testing and you can get a free copy of that and the super improved version by giving me feedback here.

So today is the final day to enter the contest and get a free copy of my little adventure from Drive Thru RPG. Simply sign up for email updates on the right hand side of the page and I’ll send you your free copy, easy as that!

It’s your birthday, or it will be some time, and to celebrate I’m giving away free copies of my adventure “Lunatic Labyrinth.”

“Lunatic Labyrinth” is a solo or one-on-one adventure for a level one or two character. The adventure is compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and includes rules to facilitate entertaining solo play.

I love creative role-playing design competitions, like the One Page Dungeon Contest. They’re a great way to push the creative envelope and get work out there for the world to see. I’ve just finished work on my gnome-tastic RPG of subterranean mayhem for the 1KM1KT 24 Hour RPG Competition.

Of course, a competition like this one calls for some out of the box thinking because, as was the case in this years competition, the box was literally and figuratively rather small…

Stuffer Shack recently announced the winner of the 2012 Site Of The Year award. Well done to The Id DM on a job well done. Head on over and check it out. Also, well done to everyone else who entered, you are all giving something to the community and for that you deserve to be noted!

Your favourite Phoenix took part in the competition and was up against some big names in RPG blogging. Unfortunately we didn’t make it into the finals, but I feel proud just having been a part of the fun. We’re putting together a bigger team and looking forward to competing again in 2013.

You can read our interview with the creator of Stuffer Shack, Tourq Stevens, right here on this blog.

I’m talking about mummies, of course, how could you not get that? Well, it’s One Page Dungeon Contest time again, which I entered last year (2011) with the Lunatic Labyrinth, which was really a fun little project and something I’m still playing around with.  This year I decided to try something a little more traditional. I proudly present… Paranoia Pyramid! Eek, gasp, oh the humanity!

Fake doors, quicksand, slow sand and skeletons with bad aim... oh the horror!

Paranoia Pyramid

Somewhere is the Desert of Scales lies the pyramid of Tutmosiss (said with a snake like lisp), said to contain not only the entombed body of the snake-man pharaoh but also his valuable treasures, ripe for the picking. Of course, the legends say nothing of the undead legion protecting his sandy crypt, or the fact that the architect of the pyramid had a particularly dry sense of humour for someone born and raised in a waterless desert. Pardon the pun.

Download it here: Paranoia Pyramid (PDF, 1.92 MB)

The Science

First off, while I like science and have started enjoying maths since Varsity, I don’t consider myself to be science or maths brained much, even with my IT degree, but check this: draw a big square on an A4 page, then draw a big square in the rectangular space left over. You’re now messing with something called the Golden Ratio and might create, gasp, a Golden Spiral, with those squares getting smaller and smaller as you dice up those ever present rectangles.

Now, what do you get if you stack squares, starting with the largest at the bottom and ending with the smallest on top? A step pyramid!

So, you see, there is at least some method in my madness. While I didn’t divide up the entire A4 sheet using the golden ratio, it does, I think, provide Game Masters with a nice way to spread out the action over multiple levels on a single map.

For the Future

I’m seriously considering doing a mini solo adventure with this dungeon map, something like I did with Sentinels Watching. If you’d like to play this as a solo adventure or would rather I released something for a group why not let me know by leaving a comment. Of course, if you’re also in the running for the 1PDC why don’t you tell me where I can put in some work to beat your submission. May the most fearsome vault of fellowship fouling using a forlorn folio win the day.

I have to applaud the efforts of the organizers of the One Page Dungeon Contest. Nothing gets people thinking outside the box quite like being forced into a “box”. The one page limitation really forced me to look at adventure design in a way that regular adventure writing does not.

Imagine the scene: A long stone corridor lit only by your sputtering torch, as your hasty foot steps echo off the hard cold walls. Behind you, some unimaginable evil chases you, bent on your demise. And then you turn a corner, into a dead end. You can hear claws clattering on the tunnel floor now, gaining ground every second. Then, in a moment of clarity, you remember the ancient stone key in your pocket. You draw it out and hold it aloft, and with all the air in your lungs you shout “laloona”. The wall before you creaks, sending dust billowing out as the wall grinds past, revealing a new corridor. You run forward, shouting the magical word behind you, as you flee. Turning back to where you came, only a stone wall remains, you can hear the frustrated clawing on the other side of the wall, and know you have escaped death this time. But what mysteries and terrors lie ahead of you in this labyrinth.

The Lunatic Labyrinth is more than just a dungeon, it’s a shifting maze of monster filled corridors that gives the delvers a new take on the good old dungeon and gives the Game Master a new tool for their gaming kit. But I’ll let you be the judge. Download the latest version here.

I would love to hear your comments, especially if you have used the Lunatic Labyrinth in your own game. Happy delving.