Learning from One Page Dungeon Contest
This article contains affiliate links, meaning that if you decide to purchase a product through my link, I get a Commission at no additional cost to youI mentioned submitting for the One Page Dungeon Contest as I mentioned back in July. The theme this year was ‘Full Circle’ hence the dwarf inspecting the jade Ouroboros ring. How did ya boy do? Terrible. Not even in the honourable mentions pile. But to give you an example of what the winner circle looked like, here’s one of the winning Dungeons. It’s a comic book that mentions how to run this in a superhero game, fucking brilliant is what it is. If only all instructions came in such an easily understood package.
What you have to understand is that for the first time in One Page Dungeon Contest history, they decided to split first place on the podium. That’s right, they had two first place winners. There honourable mentions were also full of great examples, either distinctive style or appealing art.
I knew there was no way in hell I would be able to compete with Mr. Pun’s Death Skull Mayhem OPDC here, but I could try to improve. One of the entrants didn’t have much art in it, I could become one of those. I asked one of the judges if he could give my entry a critical eye and to my surprise, he said yes!
I managed to get some incredible instruction from one William Connors. Besides being a full time grandpa by the sounds of things, this man helped develop Ravenloft back in 2nd Edition. The Brain in the Jar was a creation of his as well as the Masque of the Red Death 2nd Edition module. Stating he is an industry veteran is an understatement.
He also does cool art. Check him out if you wish.
Hurt My Feelings to Improve My Craft
Right out of the gate, he said that my work wasn’t as appealing. He was a gentleman about it but it was pretty obvious when I was comparing mine side-by-side to others. I’m too embarassed to show it here but you can easily find it if you buy the One Page Dungeon Contest 2024 Compendium here through Drive Thru RPG. It is a ‘pay what you want’ title but purchases do go towards the prize pool for the next year’s entrants.
I failed to appeal in two different fashions.
First, the amount of time loops and moon phases submitted probably made my submission of a time loop to not be that interesting. When it coes to themed contests, you really need to go to interesting instead of the first idea that came to mind. To give an example from the Honourable Mentions is Locally Sourced by Horrorseed, which can be found on page 96. The dungeon focuses on the circle of life where you need to help a tree compost trash monsters. That’s way more interesting than at least 20% of entrants who went with a time loop theme. You need to stand out.
Second, my entry was a fortress of text. While I am not intimidated by the wall of text, that’s because I know what it says. I try to break it up with all sorts of headers but it was more text instead of an interesting addition. When Connors said so, I scrolled around and found plenty of other walls of text. When I gave them the good old college try, I felt my eyes glaze over. And that’s with me willingly subjecting myself to the horrors, the poor judges made a commitment to read each and every one.
OK, So You Were Fugly
Another lesson I received is using blank space. Hell, what makes my blog more readable than most drek out there is because I put in stupid visual gags every few paragraphs. Like the deep cut of some one hit wonder from the 90s. I will admit to the pressure of putting something on every inch of that page as you only have one page to impress but the One Page Dungeon Context is an exercise in restraint. Interrelated to my second big problem but after that mention, I could see how the other winning and Honourable Mentions weren’t afraid to leave gaps to help their adventure breath.
While I provided a map, Conners pointed something out during the initial drawing: none of the more complicated adventures felt the need to write a temporal map. The more convoluted it is, the more important it is to give answers up front for the person running a game off of one sheet of paper. Hell, one of the coolest dungeons which I am too dumb to run, is about making a functional electric circuit. Seriously, what a cool concept - Full Circuit by Matthew Lake on Page 118 of the compendium.
The simplest solution Conners proferred is to write it in two columns. There’s a reason why all of those Dungeons and Dragons texts are two columns per page.
Aesthetics Aside
Connors liked my adventure which is nice. I can stay in denial that it was formatting holding me back all along. Another compliment he gave away was that he liked how I comment on different ways for players to overcome challenges. I blame that mostly on running a West Marches game. I can never predict how my maniacs will choose to resolve an issue so I need to prepare for all eventualities and they still manage to surprise me.
His last piece of advice to reveal all the worts and imperfections is playtesting. Playtesting is notoriously undercooked in the tabletop roleplaying game scene but I put the blame on that with how expensive it is and the thin margins of printing adventures. The reason to have someone else run your adventure is to see what assumptions they make based off of your text. There’s a vast gulf of difference between what you’ve put on the page versus what you think you’ve put on the page.
Understanding Your Audience
My original foray used a lot of 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons language. I write that way because that is what I make most of my adventures for. I constantly convert B/X, OSR, DCC and the like to D&D because they’re original, interesting adventures. I’m sure y’all sick of my love for Aberrant Reflections and my new infatuation with Luke Gearing’s The Isle. That means there’s a lot of verbiage that makes the adventure very specific when Spiel Knights seem to prefer system agnostic adventures. I can understand it, as the purpose of the One Page Dungeon is to take something and be able to apply it to any system. The hardest part is crafting an adventure, a conversion is not difficult.
My final piece of advice regarding knowing your audience is that you should change your name to whatever the judges’ names are. They’ll be way more inclined towards leniency and more generous with their marking. At least that’s what I figured out after Conner praised another contestant whose name was also William.
Knowing Now
If I was armed with this information when submitting for the contest, I would’ve made this instead.
