The Marbled Wizard’s Four Books / One Page Dungeon Contest

This is my entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2024. Gilbert Heckmann drew the picture of the goblin.

1 You stepped into a magical trap and were teleported into a circular room with a diameter of 5 meters. There are paintings on the walls with references to water, fire, earth and air. The door to room 8 is locked.

In the centre stands a marble statue of a wizard. At its feet it says (written backwards and in Greek): Bring me 4 books, one for each element, to convert stone to gold. Set me free.

If you put the books into his hands there will be a flash and a loud noise and the statue and the books will be turned to gold. The golden statue can be moved easily, revealing a hole in the floor which leads to an underground dungeon.

Prior to that every 5 minutes 1 D6 giant rats crawl out of the mouth of the statue.

2 A bath with a 3×3 m pool. The walls have beautiful mosaics of nereids and hippocampi. There are 3 goblins in swimming trunks in the pool tossing a bunch of keys at each other. These are the keys to all rooms of the dungeon. The goblins left their clothes and weapons outside the water. The door to room 4 is locked.

3 A small room with a divan bed. On the table next to it you find the book "Rivers of Glitter & Gold", one of the books you need to bring to room 1.

4 The music library. Papyrus rolls with notated music, ancient wind instruments, a bouzouki, a trumpet all the way up on a shelf but no ladder and one of the books you are looking for: "Cradle Songs for Dragons. Soothing the beast with the trumpet’s call."

5 The alchemist’s laboratory. Various objects on a large table, in dusty cupboards and on the floor between shattered glass and turned over chairs, most of them broken, useless. Alembic, crucible, mortar and pestle, a pair of tongs, bottles and vials. Rats are nibbling at old papyrus rolls, destroying texts as old as the Eastern Roman Empire.

6 The room looks like an archeological burial site. Bones, weapons and armours are scattered all over the floor. A giant skeleton sits in one corner, bent over, holding the book "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck in its hands. It wakes up to defend his possession, if you fail your pickpocketing roll.

7 The door to this room is locked. It smells like incense. A little red dragon is smoking a water pipe. She is stoned, in a funny mode, unpredictable. She is curious why you entered the room. The dragon is guarding a pile of old coins, the relics of St. Georg, the dragon slayer, and the book „The Eternal Fire of Knowledge“. Playing a song on the trumpet from room 4 can put her asleep. The dragon is a deadly opponent if angered and she possesses a distinct aesthetic sensitivity.

8 A 3×3 m room. A human sized bug sits on a pile of corroded metal.

To your surprise it starts to talk, quoting Greek philosophers and making jokes about his exoskeleton and your armour. You cannot be sure if it understands what it is saying or is randomly reciting texts like a parrot or ChatGPT.

All it is really interested in is to devour all the metal parts you carry with you. It is quite a beast.

Try to negotiate.

Working on a Dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest

I’m currently working on a dungeon adventure for the One Page Dungeon Contest. Deadline is end of July.

I tested the adventure last weekend with two groups of kids. I think I made the giant mouse in room 1 a bit too strong. It almost killed the adventurers. Both groups didn’t have much trouble stealing a book from a dragon in room 7, though.

I first thought about using Das Schwarze Auge for play testing the adventure, the ruleset which got me into roleplaying, but then decided to give GURPS another try.

It took me a couple of days to re-read the rules.

I really like the game, it gives you a lot of creative freedom and the core rules are clear and simple.

The risk with GURPS is, of course, to get lost in the vast amount of information offered. Something which can also happen in real life. 😂

So last weekend I managed to run two role playing games with GURPS Lite without getting lost and we had lots of fun.

The Shadow in the Sun / One Page Dungeon Contest

Lina (15), Hendrik (13) and Joaquín (11) wrote a dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest.

You suddenly wake up in a huge, pretentious hall filled with diamonds and furniture that was all colored in bright yellowy gold. A being, which you can't recognize because it's shining so bright, sitting on a throne starts talking:

“You have been chosen to save the sun from the shadow trying to take us over! The shadow beings have been waiting a long time to defeat the light beings, which make the sunshine, so the sun is forever dark. They are in the center of the sun, waiting until tonight, so they can eliminate us, leading to the sun never rising again. Will you help us?”

You agree to help them.

The sun ruler explains to you what awaits you in the dungeon:

The first step is to go to the weapon dealer to get weapons for the mission. The difficulty is that the dealer is very sketchy, and because you don’t come from the sun, he’ll try to scam you to get more money or give you weapons that don’t work. If you try to defend yourself, he might end up killing you, so what you need to do is be as careful as possible. From him, you'll need to buy Darkvision and the weapons or enchantments of your choice but be careful; shadow beings are immune to weapons using fire. The most effective weapons are metal, wood, or light-related weapons.

The second step is finding the secret passageway inside the weapon shop to the inside of the sun. There, you’ll find a room (1) full of traps designed to kill you. You’ll need to find the traps and then find a way to get around them. The traps are not only on the floor tiles but on the walls too. The traps include the floor disappearing, the walls crumbling, or highly venomous lizards being thrown at you. All the traps could instantly kill you, but luckily the room isn’t that big.

Once you’ve escaped, the next room (2) awaits you. There, you’ll have to fight your first group of three shadow beings, which will protect the next rooms at all costs, even at the cost of death. The downside for you is that the room is incredibly dark, so you’ll need to have Darkvision to even have a chance of making it out. The shadow beings have very powerful weapons, which can each kill you with three hits. Their problem is that the sun beings have gifted you very powerful shields, so not every attack reaches you, but you’ll still need to be careful and kill them as fast as you can.

In the next room (3), there’s venomous fog, which can kill you fast, but the door to the next room is closed, so you have to find a key for the door. The difficulty is that the room is filled with a lot of things, ranging from antique teacups to fluffy pillows, making it hard to find the right key. The time until the rise of the shadow beings to the surface of the planet is getting shorter every minute, and once they’ve gotten to the surface, nothing can stop them.

In the penultimate room (4), a huge shadow beast is waiting to kill you. It could devour you instantly, but it has one weakness: it is deadly allergic to bread and salt. You can buy bread in the weapon shop, but salt can only be found in the fourth room, so you should not only look for a key but also salt to defeat the monster.

The last room (5) is filled with shadow beings, which you’ll have to kill as fast as possible because there’s only half an hour remaining until their rise. With the right weapons, it’s easier to kill them, so choose wisely.

If all goes well, the sun shall rise; if not, we're doomed, because with the sun, all of our solar system goes down.

Are you up for the challenge?

Squirrel Planet / Entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2022

Once upon a time a group of friends came across a black squirrel. Since they had nothing else to do, they decided to follow it. After 20 minutes the squirrel disappeared. The group witnessed it going into a tree and because they were curious, they tried entering the tree, which surprisingly worked.

When they opened their eyes, they found themselves on a weird planet, ruled by squirrels. They were soon noticed and brought to the king of the planet. He explained to them that they had to go into a dungeon to either stay on the planet as squirrels or go back to earth with no memory of the planet, if they managed to get out. Otherwise they would all die.

Space Chicken Fighter (1) In this room the group encounters a space chicken fighter whose special weapon is his dangerous lightsaber which can easily be deadly.

Roboteeth Pony (2) In this room the friends encounter a pony whose roboteeth can do a lot of damage, but the pony can only use them every third round.

Turkey-Platypus (3) A turkey-platypus with dangerously long nails awaits the group in this room. One scratch robs you of half your health points, but the turkey-platypus cannot scratch that easily, because his nails are really slim.

Mutant Space Squirrel (4) This three headed space squirrel is the end boss. It has the ability to teleportate itself, read and control minds and control hair. It’s weakness is that it can’t breath without its helmet.

If you finish the dungeon every character who died will be resurrected and you have the choice between going back to earth without memories of this planet or live on the squirrel planet as a squirrel.

[Note] This is a dungeon written by Lina (14), Hendrik (12) and Joaquín (10) for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2022. After reading it, I told them that I thought it was too linear, not giving the players too many options. That it felt more like a film, not like a game.

I suggested a room, room 0, with a large machine looking like a retro arcade, that would show low resolution pictures of the four monsters and had four buttons and could teleport the adventure party to the four rooms. And maybe there could be some spray cans lying around.

My daughter got angry and screamed that they had put a lot of work into this and didn’t want to change anything. I repeated that the jury might find the dungeon too linear. She replied that she didn’t even care about the prizes. Well, I said, but maybe you want to play it with your D&D group and make the dungeon more interesting. Ok, then add a room, if you must, she said.

The Goblin Thief / One Page Dungeon Contest

This is my entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2021.

It's a simple adventure I wrote for my kids during the winter lockdown when we played a lot of RPGs using an old German ruleset called Das Schwarze Auge. (In my blog post Playing Das Schwarze Auge after 37 years I wrote about how we played the adventure.)

My daughter drew the goblin. She says he looks like me, but more evil ...

You walk through a street at night which is deserted apart from a creature the size of a child, which crosses your path, bumps into you, steals the most valuable thing you have, runs away and disappears in a cellar beneath a worn down building.

1 Stairs go down to a room, 5 m × 2 m. There is an old sofa opposite the entrance and a chest full of fancy clothes and moths in one corner of the room. An unlocked door leads to room 2. A glass cabinet hides the way to a corridor (3).

2 A room, 3 m × 3 m. Three drunk pirates, equipped with sables and knives, sleep on a bed frame or lie on the floor. One of them sings: "Wir lagen vor Madagaskar und hatten die Pest an Bord." (Really no need waking these up.) There are other things in the room, in various states of decomposition: a chair, a turned over table, a barrel, partly filled with cheap rum, a viola bastarda, missing some strings, a bucket full of crabs. The miserable scene is lit by a small lantern, standing on the floor.

3 A small corridor, 1 m wide and 7 m long. There are two doors on the left side, which are unlocked, and one door on the right side, which is locked.

4 A room, 6 m × 3 m, that is used for storing wood. Planks, full of wormholes and covered with spiderwebs, are piled up to the ceiling. There is so much wood in the room you can hardly enter it, and that’s not all: a knight’s armour, a bastard sword (two useful items, but difficult to handle or even carry for flimsy adventurers), human bones, fish bones and rags are scattered on the floor. Beneath the rubble lives a family of large rats.

5 A room, 3 m × 3 m, with two small beds inside. A beautiful lamp stands on a chest beside one of the beds. There are a couple of animal bones inside the chest, potsherds, pieces of floor tiles and a little rusty iron stick.

6 The door to this room is locked. There are two small beds inside. The goblin thief is hiding beneath one of the beds. When discovered he will try to defend himself with a kitchen knife or negotiate.

Around this time, two goblins carrying a spear and a bow return home from the street.

Playing Das Schwarze Auge after 37 Years

For some time I have been locking for a set of RPG rules to play with my children and simple enough, so they could play it by themselves.

I prepared a GURPS adventure for them during our last vacation in Greece, but got lost in the complexity of the rule system. I still have a notebook filled with monster stats and stains of Greek coffee. Who else would sit next to a swimming pool writing down advantages, disadvantages, skills and attributes for a troll and a slime monster? Nevertheless GURPS is still my favourite system and I hope to play the adventure one day.

My daughter started to play D&D with her friends at school, the 5th edition, but their GM disappeared and she can’t be bothered to read the basic rules (180 pages).

So I remembered Das Schwarze Auge, the first German role playing game, published in 1984. It is also the first RPG I ever played. DSA1 is similar to Tunnels & Trolls and basic D&D (the red box).

The rules and some adventures have been re-released recently, both as printed versions and PDFs available through DriveThroughRPG.

The game is well written and has a lot of charm. It has the level of complexity I was looking for. It is a great game to play with children and I think my children would also be able to play it on their own.

I was looking for a simple dungeon to do a test run, but finally decided to write one myself as I couldn’t find anything simple enough.

We played our first game on a Sunday morning during the second Covid-19 lockdown while it was snowing outside. It was a beautiful bright day.

Character creation in DSA1 is random. Lina, Hendrik and Joaquín ended up with two adventurers and an elf. Spells have funny names like BALSAMSALBUNDE-Heile, Wunde! and FLIM-FLAM-FUNKEL-Bring Licht ins Dunkel! and elves are magical creatures who know seven spells from the start.

I told the adventure party that they were walking around the streets of Havena, the classic DSA city, when a pickpocket the size of a child stole their money and ran away. They followed him down a cellar.

To my great surprise they attacked three sleeping pirates in room 2, wanted to talk to a rat in room 4 and when they finally found the goblin thief under a bed in room 6, who tried to defend himself with a kitchen knife, they negotiated with him, so that he could keep their money and they could leave the dungeon unharmed.

This was my best role playing session ever. I haven’t had so much fun in a long time.

Fimo Monster Rampant

The moment I finished painting Joaquín’s Fimo monster, I was eager to use it in a tabletop game. So last time I was in Dortmund before the second lockdown, I went to Krüger’s house with Joaquín and Hendrik to play Dragon Rampant.

My sons played an elven army.

Heavy Riders (Leader) / 2 Heavy Foot / Heavy Foot (Wizardling) / Heavy Missiles / Scouts

Krüger played Orcs & Goblins. I played the Fimo monster as a greater warbeast.

Bellicose Foot (Leader + Terrifically Shiny Armour) / Bellicose Foot / Light Riders / Light Missiles / Greater Warbeast

The map shows the initial deployment of the two armies. We used toy ladybugs as objectives.

The Fimo monster moved forward quickly and attacked the elven scouts, destroyed them and then destroyed a unit of spears with the help of some goblin wolf riders.

This made the elven warlock angry. He cast a fire ball and "neutralised" the greater warbeast, as my son expressed himself. (I don’t know where he picked up this verb.)

Well. I was so much focussed on playing the Fimo monster that I can’t say much else about the game.

Fortunately Hendrik also wrote a battle report:

Wir haben Elfen gegen Orks gespielt. Der Magier hat überlebt. Der Magier hat den Molch besiegt und die Wölfe vertrieben. Die Speerträger wurden zwei Mal in die Schildkrötenformation gestellt. Die Pferdereiter haben die Pfeilundbogenorks eliminiert. Zum Schluss wurde es Gleichstand.

The game ended in a tie.

This map shows how the battlefield looked at the end.

My new upcycled Waltrop Box

Happy new year!

Going through my children's old toys I found a wooden box which they don’t need any more.

I repainted it, using paints with fancy names like "Lucy in the Sky" and "Cape Town Blue", and glued a map of Waltrop on it.

I use the box to store some things we need for our Dragon Rampant games: three dice made out of bones to roll for leader traits, a tactical assault & coherency template which was produced by Gale Force 9 in 2008 and a 3" blast template, an object we need when we play with my cousin, because he likes to be very precise with unit coherency.

Unfortunately after painting and varnishing the box the lid bent. I have been trying to straighten it for some time now but it only got worse.

Also, I’m very eager to make a wooden box like this from scratch one day …

Some help needed writing an RPG adventure for 3 kids

I'm on a small island in the Aegean sea. It's a volcano and looks like this cookie. We are here for three weeks because of my wife's work. She is teaching screenwriters how to pitch their scripts.

Between 1 PM and 5 PM it's so hot, you shouldn't go outside. After that I go to a pool with the kids. It's next to a cliff, ten meters above the sea. There's not much there to protect you from falling down, besides a cable and a rusty shower. On the other side: a wall, a fence, some beautiful flowers, red and pink. Behind that: the noisy street and a hotel.

The water is heated by the volcano and leaves thick orange stains on clothes and googles. The music is loud and cheap, but somehow relaxing. While my children are swimming in the pool or floating around in safety buoys, I'm drinking some kind of mocha - έναν ελληνικό γλυκό παρακαλώ - which the waiter prepares with great care, and look at another island which is slowly but entirely being removed with excavators, trucks and ships. This fills me with melancholy because I’m conservative at heart.

I'm sitting next to the pool and read Principia Apocrypha and Gurps Light. (I forgot how complicated role playing games are, if you are out of practice.) I want to write a simple cavern adventure, taking place in ancient Greece, so we have something to do while we hide from the sun.

Maybe you have some ideas?

(For encounters, treasures, traps, etc.)

I will post the adventure later on this blog.

I can also send a bottle of Soumada or a little minotaur from the tourist shop to the first person who figures out which island we are on.

To make it easier for you: Here is a model of the island which I found on a cupboard in the local primary school.

The Village / Dragon Rampant Battle Report

The topics I mostly write about on my blog are "Krüger", "Beyond the Pillars of Heracles" and "battle reports".

Krüger is one of my best friends who lived in Berlin for a long time, studying philosophy. We have played many tabletop games and we also played Badminton regularly, talking incessantly about strategy games during the breaks.

Unfortunately, Krüger moved to Dortmund at the end of March. A few weeks before he left we wrote a scenario for Dragon Rampant, D3+2 Objectives, which we also tested several times.

This blog post is about the last game we played when Krüger still lived in Berlin. It was the 16th game of our campaign "Beyond the Pillars of Heracles", taking place on the imaginary island Waltrop. As objective markers we used some mud huts, I recently finished.

The Greeks, who had landed on the northwestern coast of Waltrop some time ago, had put the orc tribes, living there, under a lot of pressure and now made a move to attack one of their villages (hexagon 20 on the campaign map). Heracleides the Great commanded the Greek army himself.

Krüger played the orcs defending the village with this army list:

Elite Foot (Leader) / 2 Bellicose Foot / Light Foot / Heavy Riders / Light Riders (Short Range Missiles)

I played the Greek attackers:

Elite Foot (Leader + Enchanted Weapon) / 2 Heavy Foot / Light Missiles / Light Riders (Short Range Missiles) / Scouts

Both generals got the trait Boneshaker as the result of a roll on the leader traits table.

This map shows the initial deployment of both armies. Krüger wrote the following battle report which I translated from German to English. (Orcs speak German, of course.) I took the pictures and drew the maps.

Deployment

My goblins (light foot) were supposed to protect my right flank and the objective on my right side, a mud hut. I placed a unit of boar riders (heavy riders) on the other side of the mud hut and close to the second mud hut on my side of the table. This way they could secure one of these objectives later or just go forward to attack.

It was my intention to attack mainly from the centre and from my left flank, so I placed two large orc warbands (bellicose foot) and the orc boss (elite foot) in the centre. On my left, a unit of goblin wolf riders (light riders) was ready to threaten the objective on my opponent’s side.

The Greek used their light riders in a similar way, to threaten the objective on my right side. Both objectives on their side of the table were protected by units of hoplites (heavy foot).

Their centre was rather weak. It had scouts and light missiles. Heracleides, the general, (elite foot) stood in the back to protect it.

The First Turns

During the first turns not much happened. The orc boss and the boar riders moved forward. The goblin spears formed a shieldwall in front of the mud hut, while the Greek light riders moved towards them. On my left flank the two orc warbands moved forward very slowly, so the goblin wolf riders rode towards the Hoplites alone.

During their first turns, the Greek Hoplites formed shieldwalls next to the mud huts on their side. Their scouts and light shooters sent arrows in the direction of the advancing orcs which made me loose two boar riders.

The orc boss got close enough to attack the scouts and destroyed them in two turns.

The boar riders moved to the right to defend the goblin spears against the Greek light riders and to protect the objective on my right flank.

On my left flank the goblin wolf riders broke under the arrows of the Greek bows.

Now most units were close enough to move into close combat and the eventful middle phase of our game began.

The middle Phase of our Game

Turn 6

The Greeks prepared themselves for the onslaught of the orcs and fired a last volley of arrows at them, but in vain.

On my right flank the boar riders attacked the Greek light riders. Although the orcs slew two Greeks and only suffered one loss themselves, they broke and fled towards the woods. Then the goblin spears attacked the Greek riders. Both units suffered one loss. To my great disappointment the cowardly goblins broke.

Meanwhile the orc boss attacked the Greek light shooters, three archers lost their life, but my general also suffered a wound. The retreating archers were attacked by one of my orc warbands and broke.

Turn 7

Heracleides seized his chance and attacked the orc boss. The orc was wounded twice and Heracleides lost a man. This loss broke Heracleides’ moral and made him flee in the direction of the attacker’s table edge.

All the orc units rallied. The orc warband on my left angrily assaulted the Greek Hoplites who received them in a "Wall of Spears" formation. One Hoplite and two orcs died, but the orcs broke again.

Meanwhile the goblin wolf riders rode back to protect the mud hut in the centre on my side and the boar riders rode towards my general in order to help him.

Turn 8

Heracleides and his men rallied. The Greek light horse rode towards the objective in my centre, to attack the goblin riders I had just moved there.

My second orc warband also had to make a wild charge towards the hoplites on my left side. Their fate was even worse. They suffered three losses and were destroyed immediately.

Now the orc boss attacked Heracleides, but wasn’t lucky. He lost another strength point.

The End

Heracleides seized his chance, attacked the orc boss and killed him. What followed was a streak of bad luck. Each of my units had to test courage because I had lost my general. The result was that all my mounted units - the wolf riders and the boar riders - were removed from the table.

Until this happened the orcs had a real chance to win the game, but now their losses were too big. The Greeks won the game and now occupy the village in hexagon 20 on the campaign map.

Conclusion

Until turn 6 it looked very well for my orcs. I couldn’t wrap things up though, as I failed so many courage tests. Even then I had a chance to win. I had troops, able to occupy the objectives on my side and troops going for the objectives on the opponent’s side, while the Greek light cavalry was no real threat, being too far away from my objectives. The end came a bit sudden. The last two turns I lost too many troops.

The game was exciting and full of action until the end. It was lots of fun. I think our scenario works well and lets you play games that are undecided and exciting until the end.

Pentomino Dungeon / One Page Dungeon Contest

Last year my daughter participated in a math competition at school, the Kangaroo Contest, and brought home a colorful Pentomino game and a book with math problems for children.

When I asked Lina (10), Hendrik (8) and Joaquín (6) to draw a dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest this year, they made a dungeon out of 12 Pentomino shapes instead, which I turned into a map.

Hendrik had the idea that adventurers entering the dungeon should have to solve math problems, but are distracted all the time. (Maybe he came up with this, because he has a little brother who is full of energy and always wants his attention to play with him.)

Joaquín made several drawings of the big monster in room 4 and described it vividly.

The riddles are from the book Lina got at the Kangaroo Contest. I changed them a bit to avoid copyright issues and to adapt them to the stories, the children came up with.

For a year, Joaquín has been carrying little pieces of paper with German words in his school bag to learn the letters ä, ö and ü. Those are the items in room 5.

Now my introduction to our entry is already as long as the entry itself ...

1 In the first room there is a wizard. He is wearing a colourful crown, blue gloves and only has one tooth. He says: 

"This is what we are going to do. If you make it out of my dungeon, I will grant you a wish. Each room has a riddle written on the floor. You need the solution to unlock the doors. The riddles are not too difficult, but don’t be fooled. There are things in the rooms to distract you from thinking. I will stay here and also start sending things after you. The first problem is easy. I am 80 years old. My brother is 20 years younger than me. My sister, the witch, is 20 years older than me. How old are we all together? Good luck."

random monsters, summoned by the wizard in room 1:

1. a funny man with an axe and a shield
2. a very sharp triangle ruler
3. a man made of fire
4. a man who looks at you so sweet, it is hypnotizing
5. a ball with arms and legs that explodes when it gets too loud

2 Five Goblins, three with knives, two with spears.

There is a riddle written on the floor: The goblin king has 5 sons, every son has two sisters. How many children does the goblin king have?

3 A man who says blablabla.

The riddle is: How many numbers, bigger than 10 and smaller than 60, can be built, combining two different digits, using 0, 1, 2, 5 and 7?

4 A naked giant with green skin, wearing a baseball cap, a bow in one hand, an arrow in the other hand. The monster has spiky feet and leaves violet marks on the floor when moving. It can spit poison. Flames come out of his eyes and little creatures crawl out of his hair. It makes a noise like hhhhh …

The riddle is: Which is the biggest?
2+0+1+3 or 2×0×1×3 or 2×0+1×3 or 20+13 or 20×13? 

5 A goose, four hats, nine glasses, sixteen cooks. How many books?

Lina (9), Hendrik (7) and Joaquín (5) Wrote Another Dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest

1 You fall through a hole into this room. For example, if you go for a walk in Berlin and don’t respect certain signposts around construction sites or while watering flowers in your garden.

2 Eerie black and white photographs hang on the walls. A man with a hat. Four children. A doll. When it is dark, the pictures look like ghosts. In a corner of the room is a rocking chair.

3 An empty room with trap doors.

4 A window is painted on the wall. You can see a street and a field. If you stand there and look out of the window, it gives you the creeps. Because of the street. And the noises.

5 A monster with two heads. It destroys everything that comes close. Stones are scattered on the floor. The monster throws them at you.

6 A little animal with green fur. It looks harmless, but if you try to feed it, it bites and you might catch the rabies and die a couple of months later.

7 A mirror maze. It’s hard to get out without banging against the glass. If you take the wrong door, you return to room 1.

8 There are goblins and ghosts in this room who destroy furniture with knives and try to summon a giant by piling up the pieces. You have to prevent this.

9 Schleimi is evil. He can turn you into slime. Because he has slime powers.

10 There is a hole in the ceiling. A rope lies on the floor. A book shelf stands next to the wall.

Bubble Guble Super Raum / One Page Dungeon Contest

Lina (8), Hendrik (6) and Joaquín (4) wrote a dungeon adventure. This is our entry for the ONE PAGE DUNGEON CONTEST 2017. I hope it is useful or playable or whatever …

1 In the middle of the room you see a commode in Louis XIV style. If you open one of the drawers, you find two purses. Inside of them are three coins, two chicken wings and two lives. If you don’t watch out, a troll with a chainsaw and chainsaw teeth will kill you.

2 A dead camel.

3 There are a lot of keys scattered on the floor and beetles crawling around. Room 3 is full of treasures. Some treasures have beetles inside and some beetles have treasures inside.

4 Room 4 is called Bubble Guble Super Raum. Pink bubbles are floating in the air. If they burst, you die. You meet Sofie, the elf. She says: Warzenschwein führt dich heim, nach vorne, dann links und rechts. (Wart-hog takes you home, go straight ahead, turn left, then right.)

There is an invisible secret passage with a trap between room 4 and room 5. If you fall into the trap, you will never get out again.

5 There is a giant wart-hog. It’s called Hulk Schweinekotz. It has attackers on its back. One of them has three eyes and no mouth. Another one has a long neck and feet, a muzzle and two eyes. And a funny nose. I can tell you that. On the floor there is a bowl of muesli. If you eat the muesli, you will become a super hero and you can fly through the whole world in three seconds. You will develop a lot of muscles and you can knock off ten thousand attackers with one finger. And shoot red bolts out of your eyes.

How to Make a Campaign Map

There are certainly people who can draw better maps than me, you can find them in the forum Cartographer's Guild, for example, but since I got asked how I made the map for our Waltrop Campaign, two blog posts ago, here is what I did ...

With a large pen, I drew a coastal line on a copy of a hexagon grid. I scanned this and imported it into Photoshop. 

I added a blue background layer.

I added text layers in Photoshop to number the hexagons and cut out the hexagons in the top layer that I wanted to colour blue.

I drew palm trees and mountains.

I added these icons to the map as another layer in Photoshop.

All the players taking part in the campaign chose a colour. Krüger who plays wild orcs started on hexagons 20, 38, 40, 68, 78. Sven started on hexagon 61 with his Aquarians, I started on hexagon 32.

And this is how our campaign map looks like after 13 turns.

Ancient Greeks vs Orcs / Dragon Rampant Battle Report

On Friday I played Dragon Rampant with Krüger. It was our third game using Daniel Mersey’s popular ruleset and we enjoyed it a lot. It has elements of other games I like. Movement feels as free as in 40K, troop types remind me of HotT and the battles look a bit like Warhammer. On top of all that the rules are streamlined, simple and encourage creativity.

The game was part of our ongoing campaign which takes place on the tropical island Waltrop. The Greeks from Kalimera under the command of Foibos moved into a piece of jungle controlled by the orcs.

I put a lot of tropical forests and some swamps on the board and other pieces of terrain to represent the jungle.

We choose scenario A (Gory Bloodbath on the Plains of Doom), forgot to dice for leader traits and decided not to use quests in order to learn the basic rules first. Foibos’ enchanted weapon didn’t work.

We played with 24 army points. Krüger played the orcs. He was the defender and deployed his troops in this order, as seen from my perspective:

Bellicose Foot / Heavy Riders / Light Foot / Elite Foot (Leader) / Bellicose Foot / Light Riders (Short Range Missiles)

I deployed my troops like this:

Scouts / Light Riders (Short Range Missiles) / Heavy Foot / Elite Foot (Leader + Enchanted Weapon) / Heavy Foot / Light Missiles

I took two pages of notes during the game but unfortunately I can’t decipher them any more. What happened was basically this:

On my left flank I moved the Thracian scouts into a piece of swamp. I sent a unit of Thracian light riders to support them. I also had a unit of hoplites (heavy foot) in that area.

Krüger sent a unit of boar riders (heavy riders) and some night goblins (light infantry) to attack the Thracians. He also wanted to attack with a warband of orcs (bellicose foot) but couldn’t activate them during the first rounds.

The boar riders were able to destroy my light cavalry, but then I attacked them with my hoplites. The boar riders were battered and retreated into the swamp where they were attacked by the Thracian scouts. They had to retreat once more and were destroyed as the result of a failed rally test.

The orc warband arrived too late and made a wild charge into the swamp. They lost the battle against the scouts and were also destroyed.

I don’t remember how I lost my scouts. Maybe the night goblins (light foot) killed them.

I had placed a large piece of forest in the centre. Krüger’s orc boss (elite foot) and an orc warband (bellicose foot) were moving towards my general (elite foot) and a unit of hoplites (heavy foot), while some goblin riders (light riders) and a unit of psiloi (light missiles) were shooting javelins and throwing stones at each other. I didn’t want to enter the woods with my hoplites, so I formed a spearwall and waited for the orcs.

The orcs attacked. Both units were destroyed.

Then the armies’ generals and their guards (elite foot) attacked each other. After a couple of rounds only Foibos and the orc boss survived, they had lost all their companions.

I asked: What is the name of your general?

Krüger said: Gurkbatz.

I thought: Finally the orc tribes, that live on the northeastern coast of Waltrop, have a boss with a name.

In a desperate move Gurkbatz attacked my slingers (light missiles) and was slain.

(Let’s just say Gurkbatz crawled away and left the battlefield, all beaten up and in pain. Otherwise the name „Gurkbatz“ will be lost and Krüger might take two years or so to come up with a new name for another general.)

When Krüger’s night goblins were also destroyed, only four units were left on the table: a unit of goblin riders (light riders) on Krüger’s side and Foibos (elite foot), a unit of hoplites (heavy foot) and a unit of psiloi (light missiles) on my side.

We rolled a die to see if the game ended. It did. I won. The Greeks from Kalimera now control hexagon 11 on our campaign map.