Julius Wavestone Keeps Killing!

'The Shipwreck' J.M.W. Turner

Praise for Julius Wavestone Keeps Killing:

"... an absolute DELIGHT ... better than the vast majority of S&W stuff I’ve reviewed!"

-Bryce Lynch

As a longtime tenfootpole reader, I jumped at the chance to submit an entry for Bryce's Wavestone Keep adventure contest, which just got reviewed today. The short format led me to really test how far I could push brevity without compromising creativity, evocative description and sound mechanics. The end result totaled 3 pages, one of which was a (very poorly) hand-drawn map, with 9 rooms, a bit of background and some unique magic items. I once again used Melan's formatting for Castle Xyntillan. Maybe I should expand my horizons and try to actually innovate something next time. 

It looks like I did manage to make it too short; Bryce thinks I could have added a sentence or two to each room description, and expanded the introduction with rumors/omens, more background, as well as mannerisms and roleplaying tips for some characters and some more foreshadowing and buildup for the final room. The rooms also started verging on the setpiecey side, which I'm not too broken up about. 

Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. You can pick up the pdf at the bottom of the review here. 

For the future:

My habit with the description of each room, before bullet points, is to make it short enough that I could read it off verbatim or almost verbatim as though it were boxed text, while hiding the GM knowledge in the bullets. Maybe a better format in the future would split that opening description into 'this can be read aloud without dragging on or revealing secret info' and 'this is description for the GM'? I'm not sure how to format that effectively. I might just be reinventing boxed text. 

I still need to work on my traps, which feel by far the weakest part to me. It just seems they have so much less dimensionality than monsters, NPC interaction and treasure. Justifying mechanical traps especially seems very difficult outside a deliberately constructed dungeon, and magical traps beggar the imagination just as often. Maybe I should expand my conception of 'trap' to include more environmental effects and challenges, rather than an obstacle created intentionally? Do let me know any advice.