Dwimmermount has arrived! (Review) - UPDATED

Its finally here.

In April 2014 the Dwimmermount Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded to the tune of $48,756 with an initial goal of $10,000.  I am not going to get into all the drama that followed but it has taken several years for the final product to arrive, and boy it's a beauty.  Autarch did a fantastic job putting this together.  There are two versions available; Labyrinth Lord and Adventurer Conqueror King.  The version I have and am reviewing today is for LL.

This is a BIG, MEATY book, it's 408 pages of deep, dark adventure.  I have not had a chance to read all the way though this beast yet, its going to take some time.  I recieved three books; the adventure book, an illustration book and map book.

Dwimmermount on the left, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide on the right, River the cat in the background.

Lets get started with the Map Book.  This includes a wilderness map of the area surrounding Dwimmermount, the town of Muntburg and two page maps of all of the Dwimmermount levels.  Also included are the dungeon era illustrations and a four page side view of the entire dungeon.  Its all in black and white and is perfect bound.  The maps are big and easy to read, overall a very usable book.

Nice big maps.

Next up is the Illustration book.  This book is half the size of the map book, so roughly 8.5"x5.5".  It has a very nice color illustration on the cover that is printed on a very interesting material, it almost feels like a velour but is a paper.  I find that I keep rubbing the material, its very nice.  Inside are 44 black and while illustrations from various locations around the dungeon.  The likes of Jeff Dee, Steve Zieser and Erol Otus grace the pages, its a really nice book but I find myself wanting it to be a full sized 8.5"x11" booklet, the pictures are just to small for my liking.

Love that cover!

The illustrations are fantastic but should have been bigger!

Last but certainly not least is the main adventure book itself.  It starts with a very extensive table of contents and then its into the good stuff.  Chapter One covers the area around Dwimmermount.  Chapter Two covers the history of the dungeon.  Chapter Three is all about adventuring in the dungeon, everything from common knowledge of the dungeon to rumors and adventure seeds.  The following chapters cover the town of Muntburg which serves as the home town for adventures into Dwimmermount.  The Factions get a chapter and then its into the individual levels, one chapter each for a total of thirteen.

Following the levels are the appendices, all 91 pages of them!  They cover new magic items, new spells, new monsters, rival parties, the four worlds, Azoth and the secrets of the Turms Termax.  There's some really good stuff in here, lots of fun spells and monsters to throw at your players to keep them on their toes.

I'm really looking forward to digging  further into this book, it looks fantastic and varied enough to keep things fresh.  Unfortunately my issue with this adventure is the same I have with all mega-dungeons, I will never have the time to run this all the way through from start to finish.  One-shots are how I have to roll, my gaming time is limited these days so something we can start and finish in one or two evenings is best.  I'm sure I could use bits and pieces of this for smaller adventures, it may be the only way I get to use it!

Lots o' adventure!

If you have an itch for an epic mega-adventure, Dwimmermount will not steer you wrong.  It's a lot of material and is a steal at $10 on RPGnow.com for the .pdf.

Five beer steins out of five!

UPDATE 08/31/2014: I received an email from the Kickstarter campaign today, it stated that the Wilderness Map and Dungeon Tracker are also complete and shipping, I will update the  review once those two items have arrived!

Barrowmaze II Update

Barrowmaze II is close to completion of funding, make sure you stop by and support this project.  Right now its $200.00 shy of meeting the Barrow Mounds Generator goal, and if we can get $7000.00 (or another $1200.00) then there will be a separate Tomb of Horrors style illustration booklet!  Lets not miss out on this!

If you do decide to pledge take a careful look at the pledge options as most of the good stuff starts at Crypt Knight or higher level ($65.00).  If you do not already own the first Barrowmaze (and why not?!), then pledge at the $100.00 level, you will get BM2 and signed copy of BM1!  

Crack those wallets open people, lets get this thing funded! CLICKY HERE!

Kickstarter Updates

I just received an email from Kickstarter requesting shipping and other information for Dwimmermount Mega Dungeon, so if you supported the project check your email inbox!

Also the OGRE Designers Edition recently hit $321,000 with additional funding levels at $325,000 and $350,000.  Its already the highest revenue producing board game project ever on Kickstarter and it seems to keep on rolling.  Head on over and throw a few dollars in the pot, its going to be an amazing product, the entire game weighs fifteen pounds so far.

Barrowmaze II funding is up!!!!

Hey folks, the Barrowmaze II funding project just went up on Indiegogo.  Head on over and check it out and help get this project completed!

Linky is HERE.

Dwimmermount: Kickstarter Project - 60 hours left!

Hey folks, I just wanted to give a shout out to James Maliszewski's Dwimmermount project.  I'm sure many of you are aware of this upcoming product, but for those of you that are not, James has created a huge mega-dungeon that is currently being funded on Kickstarter.  Head on over and check out the project here:  Dwimmermount: An Old School Fantasy RPG Megadungeon.

There are only sixty hours left on the pledge drive, and the project is a little less than three thousand dollars short of the $40,000 bonus goal, so if you have not put your money in, now is the time to do it!  Also check out  Grognardia one of the best Old School Blogs out there and home of James Maliszewski's old school musings.

Stonehell Dungeon - Review

Stonehell Dungeon is an old school mega-dungeon by Michael Curtis. When I say mega-dungeon, I mean MEGA-dungeon, this is one huge adventure packed into a 134 page book. Stonehell is a fantastic product that can be purchased at Lulu.com, there are also a number of other suppliments available for it which I will discuss a little bit later on.

The first eleven pages start off with some general information on Stonehell which give the GM a bit of back story and get him caught up to the current situation, there are also sections on customizing the dungeon and dungeon rumors, then the a dungeon proper starts. Each area or level is shown as a whole and then divided up and dealt with separately. For instance, there is a Surface Level master map and on the following page is the Surface Level overview which provides basic information regarding the maps and then a Surface Level monster list. The next few pages take that master map and break it into separate sections, now instead of the Surface Level Master Map we have levels 0A-Canyon East and 0B-Canyon West, each a smaller section of the master map reproduced and shown with more detail and additional notes, new monsters and new magic item stats. The levels are divided into four quadrants, so you get one overall map that shows how everything fits together and then four small maps that include all of the details you need to run the dungeon. Quadrent example:

The layout is certainly not pretty, it fact I found it to be very cramped and a little tough to read in some sections. That said, I cannot image any other way that this could have been put together without it being 300+ pages, there is SO much information crammed into this book. There is enough material in this book to run a campaign for years, it really is am amazing product. The art is sparse but good, I don't think they had much room for art, this book is all about content. There is a very handy Dungeon Dressing and Container Contents Appendix in the back of the book with 100 separate entries, it seems very useful especially for a dungeon of this size. There are new monsters and magic items sprinkled throughout the book, it would have been nice to see them all pulled together under a New Monsters section, but they are all referenced in the Index under Monsters, New for quick look up.

As I mentioned earlier, there are several suppliments for this dungeon, they can me found here: Michael Curtis Lulu Store. They include a free Stonehell Dungeon Preview, a free Brigands Cave adventure with new monsters and the $2.99 Buried Secrets supplement, which includes adventures for low level characters.

This is honestly one of the best OSR products that is available right now, its packed with information and lots of usable material. Even if you do not intend to run the entire adventure, the individual quadrants can be broken off and used separately in any campaign of your own design. If you do not own this product go out and get it now!

My Favorite Artists - Stefan Poag

Our Favorite Artists is going to be a recurring interview with some of the best and brightest RPG artists out there.  To start things off we are speaking to artist Stefan Poag, you may have seen some of his recent work in the fantastic Labyrinth Lord mega-dungeon, Barrowmaze.  Stefan has also done work for a number of other projects including books and magazines published by Kenzer & Company, Goodman Games and Expeditious Retreat Press.  His artwork has a great retro style that brings me back to my younger years.  I'm glad he was able to take some time to speak with us!  Without further ado, here is the man himself!

• First of all, thanks for taking some time out of your day to speak with me, please introduce yourself and give us a brief bio:

I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, after a childhood in (what was then) West Germany. My mother is German and my father was a teacher of German and a Medievalist, so we always had lots of books of medieval art around the house. At some point, I think my mother started buying a series of illustrated Time-Life books through the mail on different cultures through history --- 'The Neanderthals,' 'The Norsemen,' 'The Byzantines,' etc., and I spent a lot of time looking at those as well as the books of medieval illustrations, plus I loved the Japanese monster movies and TV shows like "Johnny Socko" and "Ultraman" that they used to show on the local UHF channel. A grade school friend of mine, Eric Piccione, and I used to draw our own 'comic books;' his favorite subject was "The Pirate" (a swashbuckling superhero with a cutlass). I don't think the Pirate had any special powers; I think he was just really bad-ass and would swing around on ropes, dodge bullets, etc. My favorite was a hero called (cough) "Ivanhoe." Ivanhoe was secretly an ordinary dude who worked in an office, but he had a special ring with a secret compartment in it that contained a button. When things went bad, the office guy pressed the button and thunder struck and he turned into a guy with a cape and a weird-looking octagonal helmet and a sword and a big "I" on his chest who could fly through the air and shoot bolts of lightning from his eyes. I don't think I had any explanation as to why he was called 'Ivanhoe' or where the powers came from --- my friend Eric, however, was having a great time drawing "The Pirate" and I wanted to do it, too. I barely graduated high school and slacked my way through college and have worked a series of menial jobs, usually doing some kind of creative thing on the side, then got into doing commercial photography (mostly shooting pictures of stuff for newspaper advertisements). My significant other, Annie, got a teaching job in Michigan and we have been up here for years. The bottom fell out of the local commercial photography scene and I got burned out on that, after doing a few other things I am now a literacy tutor in Detroit Public Schools, trying to help high school kids improve their reading skills. Given what a bad student I was, this is kind of ironic, but I always enjoyed reading so this is a good fit for me.

Barrowmaze - Mega-Dungeon Extraordinaire

To my surprise and pleasure, Barrowmaze arrived in the mail yesterday. I purchased it from RPGNow.com in hardcover format, but its available in several different forms, softcover, hardcover and both soft cover and hardcover including .pdf's for a few dollars more. Barrowmaze is an old school dungeon for use with Labyrinth Lord or other comparable OSR products. The first thing that struck me was the cover, its of a group of adventures in a crypt/dungeon looking area, and they all seem to be in a bit of trouble (except the mage). Its a great looking piece by artist Stefan Poag who also did a large number of the interior black and white illustrations. Really great art that's reminiscent of some of my favorite old school products.

Barrowmaze is a mega-dungeon, it contains over three hundred encounter areas and eighty four pages of adventuring goodness. New monster stats, spells, random encounter tables and several pregenerated characters are all included. Its a lot of adventure of a decent price. Having recently also picked up StoneHell mega-dungeon I must say I prefer the format of Barrowmaze, it seems a bit less crowded and easier to read.

Another reason to love this dungeon is the enormous amount of undead included, if you don't like undead this adventure is not for you! Clerics are a must here, more than one would be very beneficial. Being an old school dungeon it's tough and deadly, expect to be running from some encounters and expect death and mayhem from others. A party of careful adventures should do well here though, plan ahead and have the right tools for the job and you can get far.

Make sure you stop by the Barrowmaze blog: Barrowmaze They have lots of added content on the site, including hex maps of the Barrow mound, session reports, character sheets and my favorite; Meatshields! The Classic Fantasy Hireling & Hernchmen Generator. All good stuff that is quite useful.

Overall I'd give Barrowmaze a solid 9 out of 10, its a great product any Labyrinth Lord will love!