Undercity Design Contest

Back from the Redneck Riveria (apparently this phrase is used Tanelorn-like throughout the Gulf beach areas) and am rearing and ready to return to the imagined sights and sounds of fantasy gaming. (Guess all that whoopin' and wavin' a giant confederate battle-flag as I drove my ATV shirtless through the dunes didn't done tucker me out as much as I thought.)

Here in the Hill Cantons returns from summer interludes are always heralded with some kind of asinine and/or pointless contest for readers. Who am I to buck the weighty hand of Tradition?

I've been trying to wrap my head around how to present undercities more robustly this past month, so what a gloriously appropriate design contest. Catch up here and here if you missed the original posts.

What do I have to do? Design a single layer of an undercity. Make it big, bad, bold and weird.

There are two steps for an entry:

1. Tell us about it in a short paragraph (2-4 sentences). Who lived there? How did it get buried? How many long years have passed since it slipped below the surface? What fell beasts live there now? What strange mysteries lurk down there?

AND either (or both if you are feeling ambitious) of the following:

2. A simple pointcrawl map (see here) with notations for use in play. Feel constrained by strange schematics? Invent your own, slacker.

Or

3. A clever mechanic for stocking structures or room complexes. It could be something like Mark Pettigrew's system for generating undercities in Tekumel or something all brilliant and original.

All submissions must be in by this Wednesday noon CST. You can email me submissions at kutalik at the gmail dot com or leave them here in the comments.

First and Second place will receive a choice of one of the following prizes (first loser picks after the winner naturally):

1. $10 gift certificate to Amazon or Powell's.

2. a copy of MAR Barker's Man of Gold (that has some fantastic undercity scenes).

But wait there's more. Your entry won't just moulder on a shelf but will be used in the actual mega-undercity that I am busy designing for the Hill Cantons campaign. Get cracking.