Friday, November 11, 2016

Frog Demons Finishing Up the Dunes Series


Just as we close out the Op U Kickstarter (oh yeah by the by Misty Isles of the Eld and a heap of A-side OSR work is on super sale at the Bundle of Holding), we started down the last phase of the Dunes series. I finally, finally passed over the draft manuscript to the distracted hands of my editors the fourth and last adventure What Ho, Frog Demons. While it's not the 100+ page monster of the Misty Isles, at 30 pages and growing it's still a lot more than the 12-16 page product of micro-dungeons we promised.

After a good deal of insomnia agonizing about whether it all hung together as well as its sequels I think I am getting to the place about feeling good about what's rolling off the line. The master of font and trade-dress mimicry magic of Trey Causey working with a lovely anuran illustration from Luka Rejec (another brother from another mother) have us already good to go with this great little homage/satire cover--very fitting for the terribly misguided mix of Wodehouse, gonzo D&D and cosmic horror satire that's the theme for this one.

Basically beyond my usual quirky meandering sections, you get two quite different, but ballpark theme-linked small-scale adventures that have been specifically designed to be either wholly slottable in most home campaigns or run alongside the hooks and chaos index of Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, Misty Isles and the Dunes.

On one hand you have the low-level trap-hell dungeon of the Frog Demon Temple with its wandering squads of booby-trap laying frog-demonettes, gratuitous deadliness and hell-spawned literary salon on one side and on the other the building tongue-in-cheek horror of the Manor of the Beet God, with a rising Infection Index dynamically changing the nature of the site as the players chose to explore or ignore the mounting menace and mystery.

Let's see if it works.


2 comments:

  1. The Penguin Classics homage is an interesting design choice. Quite a unique aesthetic for an OSR module. Can't wait to pick this one up; looks like just my kind of gonzo (the Beet God made me chuckle). I'll make sure to get my hands on the Bundle of Holding as well. Need to complete my Hill Cantons collection!

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  2. Congratulations on getting the manuscript done! The cover-as-homage is a fun idea.

    Now I'm gonna be an asshole and ask when you except 'What Ho' is on Drivethru?

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