Tuesday, June 19, 2018

One Thing: The Dragon's Lantern

One thing that I love about Vance Atkin's 2018 One Page Dungeon Contest entry is the use of "en media res" coupled with a "funnel".  The players find their zero level characters in a dire predicament, confronted by a dragon looking to strike a deal (and make good on it if they survive).

There are clever uses for fledgling adventurer abilities strewn throughout the worm tunnels, and a host of unsavory types for the characters to encounter as they fumble along trying to find the dragon's missing "trinket".  The stakes are particularly high as there is not an endless pool of peasants and torchbearers for the players to inhabit once their initial character falls into a chasm, is boiled alive, or meets some other untimely and probable demise.  This would make for a nice one-shot for a group of players with high level adventurers that have forgotten what the struggle for survival without any "plusses" is like, or as the start of a new campaign with a powerful dragon NPC which Vance has fleshed out enough for any DM to elaborate upon going forward.

Not only did Vance have time to create this winning entry, but he also helped out another creator by volunteering his editorial expertise.

Great work Vance!

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