Devil's End is an adventure for my Monday Night crew of players who have been stumbling around my campaign setting, The Komor Forest. It is my first real 'big' dungeon. As a writer of micro-adventures, the term big is relative. But it has multiple levels and more than my typical, less than ten encounter areas.
I wanted to make a dungeon crawl. A place where the party could explore for multiple sessions, if they wished. Devil's End is that. I'm not sure how many rooms or levels it'll have, but I do know what the bottom level will look like. The evil GM in me hopes the party lasts that long to reach it.
The party worked their way through the first level and explored some of the second. Again, the evil GM in me enjoys when someone in the party exclaims, "fuck that room, let's go the other way." I feel I presented what I see in my head well enough that they saw enough to look for other options.
Cover
The cover is by Albrecht Durer called Christ's Descent into Limbo (1510). I love this guy's work. He has so many amazing pieces. I was searching through all my stock art files, selected one that looked like an entrance to Hell, but Ivy said it didn't look like my kind of cover. I did a search, saw this piece by Albrecht, and plugged it in. I added high contrast to make the details pop.
In-Game Literary Trivia
I created this visual prop for a room. One of my favorite things is the graffiti that reads, "HELL IS EMPTY ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE". I offered the players a 1000xp bonus if they could site the person who wrote this. None were able. It's one of my favorite Shakespeare
quotes. From The Tempest. I wanted to add atmosphere that others had gone before them and continued even though their doom crouched in the dark.
The Map
I drew this map by hand. Heavily influenced by Glynn Seal's style. I took my time with the line work and add details. Using Micron pens of various thicknesses. I used this style so far for all the levels.
Layout
I kept the layout simple. Not much different from the One-Page Dungeon Contest layout. I am always trying out new ways to present my adventures. This time I didn't use numbers, just arrows to represent what went where. I used text blocks with space to demonstrate the different room descriptions. I'm curious to see how it will work with stats.
The Plan
I will release these in levels unless the map is too large. Which level 2 is. I've divided it into north and south sections. Physical copies go out to my micro-adventure level patrons and I'll offer the PDF for free. Those interested in seeing what my Micro-Adventure Patreon is all about, head on over and check it out. If you like what you see, please consider joining the fun.