Dungeon Of The Month
 

2019 Releases

January - Hive Of The Mellipheon
February - Unterbrawl
March - Deathspine
April - Lord Duchemin's Shadows
May - The Devil Will Drag You Under
June - Garden Of The Orobanc
July - Hooch Pooch
August - The Discomfited Dragon
September - Après Nous, Le Déluge
October - Last Call In Pandwick
November - The Stabian Baths
December - Queen Of The White Harvest

available at Dungeon Of The Month

-- original post below --

Since the beginning of the year I've been working on a project to develop a "one-page dungeon" every month for this year. Each dungeon has the descriptive text and stats on one side of the page, and any maps and/or counters on the other side. (So perhaps technically more accurate to call it a "one-sheet dungeon".) My plan was to release one every month.

Then certain things arose, like Hexagram and the Postcard Dungeon contest, and I decided to hold onto the designs in case they could be repurposed for those. But after reviewing them I've decided the original approach is the way I want to go. I ran the first four months' worth past Steve and he gave me the all-clear to proceed with this project. These are in no way officially endorsed by him or Steve Jackson Games, they are just okay'd to share with you all.

The first dungeon is now up on my site, in the new front-page section Dungeon Of The Month. They are provided in PDF format. The dungeon is Hive of the Mellipheon, and I welcome your feedback. If you run the adventure I'd be curious to hear about that too.

I will release the next ones at less than one month intervals until they finally catch up with their appropriate months, hopefully some time in June.

Hope you all enjoy!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Nice!

Chamber 1 lists the C exit as C1A (the same chamber), but A's exit is AXX - the hive exit. Should C1A be C-- instead?

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Ach! Thanks for the notification. I'll fix that and repost it later. It should be C3A.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

I've updated the Hive of the Mellipheon PDF with the above correction, and also tried to make the table a bit friendlier to read. Please let me know if you find any other errors.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Great work!

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Nice. I'm a big fan of short adventures like this. I never got into "modules" or longer published adventures because in the time it took me to read and become familiar with the material I could have created something of my own.

I like that TFT is embracing this concept with the postcard dungeons and your 2 page dungeon. My own favourite format was the sort of "dungeons" published in the early RPG magazines like Dragon and White Dwarf. Typically these were 4-6 pages which allowed room for some background material, illustrations and still a decent number of encounters; the sort of thing that could be played in a single extended session.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Thanks for the comments and feedback so far! I too am a fan of little self-contained encounters. This format in particular forces me to be succinct, and thereby gives the GM a lot of latitude in shaping the flow of the encounter themself. Some of the other forthcoming releases are even more open-ended.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

nice .. a bit hymenopteran like. if there are giant bugs then there should be many more species than all other phyla combined (if cidri critters are distributed anything like earth anyway)

hopin youll do more of these, one session adventures are just the thing to show TFT off to newbs at a con, I wanna do this with TFT next year .. Ive missed booking into the aussie cons for this year, and I only have the ancient rulesets right now anyhoo .. but yeah .. good place to direct newb TFT GMs to also

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Dang... Your web site is by far the most useful one for TFT I've found out there! Thanks for all the amazing content!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Thanks. The Mellipheon has some commonality with the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise as well, mostly because both draw heavily on terrestrial wasps for inspiration. Their name comes from a another branch of the hymenoptera insect order, the honey bee (Apis mellifera).

Definitely will be more releases. The February through April dungeons are already complete, I'm just spacing out the announcements a bit. The ones to follow are underway as well.

Very kind of you, thanks!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

A few more minor typographic and syntactic corrections made to Hive of the Mellipheon. Also made the text describing the Assassin attack consistent (it's a sting, not a bite).

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

One more quick change made to the DOTM. The Soldier patrol cycle has been cut down to once every five minutes. That should make protecting the found children until they recover more practical, and make combat less repetitive.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Nicely done. Looking forward to more.

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Thanks! I'll drop the February DOTM next week.

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The February 2019 Dungeon Of The Month is posted now - Unterbrawl. It's not a scripted dungeon so much as a setting this time. There are suggestions as to how it can be incorporated into an on-going campaign storyline, and it can also be used as a pick-up-and-play arena. Please share any feedback and corrections, and I hope you enjoy it!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

the first rule of UNTERBRAWL is that you dont talk about UNTERBRAWL

but you may start to notice heavily cut up guys with stitches in the street giving you a lil nod

PCs might go to this just to bet

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Yes, there are a number of ways you could add this to the campaign. What if the party goes there just to wager and carouse, and then gets caught up in a crackdown raid by the town guards?

I meant to add, I've reformated the head post of this thread so that there is a running list of each DOTM as it is added.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

The catch-up continues with the release of the March Dungeon of the Month - Deathspine.

This is the multi-level tower of the evil wizard Scarnsz, with a pit shaft running the entire length. Each level poses a different danger. You could sort of view it as a vertical Death Test, only without "where to go next" options. It's pretty brutal and likely to kill a number of players.

This is the first, and may remain the only, adventure where I've used Prootwaddles. I think it's pretty cruel how they are used, but then Scarnsz is a cruel man.

The map adds color keys to differential what is on each level. I know that colors don't work for everyone, but hopefully its more helpful than the original all-grey map, which I found harder to parse.

Anyway, hope you have fun with it!

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I'll be playing January's map/adventure soon!

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Great! Let me know how it goes.

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Ha, just saw from the KS that the Writer Guidelines have been updated to include 2-Page Adventures. I'm guessing my DOTM releases are already disqualified, since they've been "published" once. But it sounds like it will be fun for folks, and some have asked me on the Discord about doing their own in this format. Here's your chance!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

I'm not sure about this -- and no doubt Phil or someone will weigh in with an "official" answer on this in due time -- but I think "previously published" means in such a way that you gave someone else the rights to the item. Posting them on your blog doesn't in any way restrict your rights to the material, and so you could still "sell" them to SJG (and transfer the rights to them to SJG, which is part of the deal here) without creating any possibility of confusion as to who actually owns the rights to the material.

Put another way, I think they mean that in the "legal" sense, not the way you think they do.

Now, having said that, SJG might say they prefer to have things that HAVEN'T been put up on your blog before, just because they want something new to show, but that would be a different matter than that whole "previously published" thing.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Yes, this is the part that I think would be likely to disqualify my DOTMs. When they were soliciting other stuff like Hexagram materials and Postcard Dungeons, they asked that the work not be shared anywhere else. But it's okay either way, I'm happy just getting my stuff out there and finding folks who are using it.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

You know, I almost hate to suggest this -- but at some point, a year or two down the road maybe, consider putting them together and self-publishing over on Lulu or something. Dyson does it with his maps, and while SJG might at least want a head-nod in their direction, I would think you could probably fast-talk Steve into letting you do something like that while giving him some free advertising space in them for the Legacy Edition or something... (I know, I know -- I don't have a clue what SJGs would like or would be willing to do, but I DO know that if you don't at least ask, the answer is always "no;" whereas if you DO ask, sometimes you get a surprisingly pleasant answer!)

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

I've posted the new format versions of the adventures. These use columns and justification to hopefully make them more legible. Please let me know what you think.

Actually, I do have a sort of plan about what I might do with these once they are complete. I need to talk with some other folks first. ^_^

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Re Deathspine. You mentioned 16 levels for exit but only have 13 populated. Just a typo

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Ah cockapoopie! Good catch, thanks. That's left over from when the tower was taller. It was less focused than the current design so got whittled down. 13 is a nice number for an evil wizard anyway.

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The April release is out now.

Lord Duchemin's Shadows

This is a one-room "dungeon", in which bad things keep happening one after another. Can form the basis of a castle of your own design, or drop it into an existing layout with a little tweaking.

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Here's the May release.

The Devil Will Drag You Under

This one is set in a series of underwater grottoes. It's a capture-and-return mission on a family of pirates. I've added some new fauna inspired in large part by animals on our own world. And I've committed the cardinal sin of an adventure designer - I've added a new slime. ^_^

Grab it at the usual place - http://shadekeep.com/

Feedback and corrections welcome, as always!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Thanks to AFSchell on the TFT Discord for the suggestion of providing clean maps without markup. These are useful for printing or integrating into other play aids. I will work on producing them in PNG format and add them as an extra available download on each DotM. I'll post a follow-up here once that is all ready.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

As promised, the "clean map" downloads are available now for each DOTM. Hopefully this makes it easier to print them out for play or use them in a virtual gaming tool.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

I love the idea of these, but I am honestly stumped on how to read the map of Hive of Melphion. Where in the hex do the characters come in? Are all chambers the same Triangle shape? Are there actually passages that simply aren't shown? Where do you exit from the hex to head towards the next one?

I want to use this! Please help me be less dumb!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Sorry for the confusion, I realise it's probably not as clear as it should be. Here are the answers, such as they are.

• The party should be placed in any of the hexes in the entry megahex. Ideally near the edge of the map, but not required.
• Yes, each chamber uses the same map.
• There aren't corridors, just gaps in the walls between chambers.
• As with the entry hex, the party can exit the chamber through the hexes along the map edge in the exit megahex.

The intention was for this to be played is a style similar to Death Test, with the party transitioning en masse from one map to the next. In hindsight that's somewhat confusing, especially for new TFT players who are not familiar with that adventure. Do let me know if I can clarify things any further, and I will try to redraft the adventure at some point to address this questions better.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

If it helps, here is the complete layout map of the Mellipheon hive. This is what I used to develop the chamber mapping table as well. It shows how all the chambers connect. The map uses labyrinth scale mapping, so each hex translates to a megahex.

http://www.shadekeep.com/files/dotm/...eon-Layout.png

The yellow hex is the entrance to the hive. The green hex is the exit. The red hexes are where there are walls between chambers and thus no exit from that hex into the next room.

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The June release is out now, finally catching up the releases with their corresponding months.

Garden Of The Orobanc

This is a "state of siege" scenario with the players beset in a remote building. Trapped with them are survivors from other groups. The adventure introduces two new creatures and includes an optional counter sheet to download and print.

I liken the adventure to "Assault On Precinct 13" meets "The Day Of The Triffids".

You can find it all at the usual place - https://shadekeep.com

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

That's NICE. I love the way you build the building for this one!

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Thanks! I hope this creates some interesting interplay between the players and the survivors.

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The July release is up.

Hooch Pooch

This adventure asks the question - "What if the questgiver was a dog?"

This one also spun out of my desire to build an adventure around a magic item enchanted with the Ferment spell.

The entire adventure map can be built using just the starter set of megahexes. It's geared as more friendly introductory adventure. There are multiple combat encounters, but also opportunities for role-playing and meeting friendly allies.

Grab it at https://shadekeep.com

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Gave it a quick once-over (since I'm at work, and should probably do some), and like what I've read so far.

Will be giving it a more thorough read-through tonight.

Thanks for creating these!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

What he said!

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My pleasure, I'm glad you all are enjoying them! It's a lot of fun coming up with them for me, too.

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Time for the August release:

The Discomfited Dragon

The party is approached by the dragon Sorcandilax to do a little pest extermination work in his lair. Of course, what's merely vermin to a dragon is something else to a person...

Wanted to do an adventure with a dragon, but in a different kind of scenario. Hope you enjoy it!

Available at the usual: https://shadekeep.com

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The September release is out now:

Après Nous, Le Déluge

While the party is spending the night in an inn, a levee breaks and the village floods. The surviving residents are trapped on small islands of high ground. And out of the waters, the dead are rising...

This is the first DOTM to be set at the village map scale. The map also includes the floorplans for the various town buildings. Please let me know what you think of the approach, and the adventure.

Get it at the usual place: https://shadekeep.com

PS - I have also updated Hive of the Mellipheon and Garden Of The Orobanc. The former has the mellipheon reduced in power, as they were slaughtering parties too easily. The latter just has some minor corrections.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

I already saw it! I also posted a link to it on the TFT Discord group.

By the way, Shadekeep, stop in. The server has grown! A new campaign opened up and an entire channel category was created just to accommodate it.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Thanks! I'm in there now, looks really good with all the extra content. ^_^

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As always, fascinating work! Love 'em!

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Thanks much! It's kind of strange to have them all plotted out now. I kind of miss the franticness of the looming deadlines earlier in the experience. ^_^

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I haven't had a chance to play these yet, but they have a great format with a lot of inspired creativity.

I have this thread bookmarked.

One thing that doesn't seem to be tracked well in this fast-paced market with a glut of games is how often people revisit an "outdated" offering.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Quite so. And while there has been a retro craze ongoing for a while now, I think there is more than simple nostalgia behind it. There is a certain quality to works - be they games, films, novels, etc - that were created before their artform became codified and standardised. Nowadays there are formulaic ways of producing such works, and while this doesn't mean their isn't still innovation, the earlier works are often far more imaginative and spontaneous. That lends a special appeal to older works like The Fantasy Trip, and rediscovering them lets you find unique and idiosyncratic gaming elements that designers simply wouldn't contemplate today.

Plus the system is just damn good fun. ^_^

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

The October release is up:

Last Call in Pandwick

A bit of a masquerade for the Halloween month, as the players are tracking a werewolf who is hidden amongst a group of travelers at a remote tavern. This isn't the usual dungeon crawl, but rather a murder mystery, in which the players must suss out the killer from a group of suspicious strangers.

Happy sleuthing!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

The November release is out a day early as a Halloween treat:

The Stabian Baths

These Roman-styles baths are the scene for an Italian-style mob meeting. Locals chaffing under the criminal empire have formed a group of vigilantes and are seeking to hire the players to assist. The players will need to infiltrate the baths and take out the criminals and their cronies any way they can.

The map for this one is based on the actual Stabian Baths as illustrated in the oldest extant book of architecture, Vitruvius's The Ten Books on Architecture. (Original floorplan here.)

Time for rough justice! And a Happy Halloween/Samhain to you all!

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Since we have a holiday weekend coming up here in the states, here is the December release a bit early:

Queen Of The White Harvest

A mage calls up an ice elemental that turns on her, imprisoning her inside its body. Using the mage's magicks, the elemental finds a mountain-dwelling family of Neanderthals and grants them strange powers. Together they oppress the village of Culamonn at the mountain's base, demanding regular tribute and the sacrificial offerings of "the white harvest". Can the players defeat this False Queen and her superpowered servants?

This is the final release in the Dungeon Of The Month series. It was a fun year creating these adventures, and I hope you have found something enjoyable in them as well.

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

Love it! Thanks for all your creative offerings.

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Thank you. ^_^

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My kudos on sharing these with the TFT community, and especially on your determination to stick with this for an entire year! Thanks again!

Re: Dungeon Of The Month
 

My pleasure, and thanks for the kind words!