Thursday, February 25, 2010

Stonehell Dungeon - the deep levels - a spaceship?

[Edit] Michael Curtis dropped in on the comments below and disabused me of my fantasy.  No spaceship in Stonehell for me!  I am sure I will still love the deep levels anyway.[/Edit]

I recently interviewed Michael Curtis, outstanding member of the blog-o-sphere over at the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope, as well as the author of Stonehell Dungeon - Down Night Haunted Halls and the amazing Dungeon Alphabet.  I wrote a review of Stonehell Dungeon and the review and interview were published today at the Eye of the Vortex.

In the interview I asked Michael about the upcoming publication that will detail the deep levels of Stonehell.

In his answer, Michael let this delicious hint drop,

"... a section that I’m tentatively calling the Astronaut’s Tomb. It’s been on the list since the early days of the dungeon’s construction and I hope that people either absolutely love it or completely hate it once they see it for themselves.


I am a huge fan of mixing my genres.  Sci-Fi and Fantasy tend to blur together in my games, and I get the feeling that this level is going to really tickle my fancy.  I hope this is an entombed spaceship, deep beneath the earth.  I have my fingers crossed, and Michael, if you are reading this, keep me in mind as an illustrator because I love this idea.  


Having already horked an entire sublevel of Stonehell Dungeon for use in my Mutant Future game (the greenhouse level full of plant monsters) I am pretty sure I could plop the Astronaut's Tomb into my game with minimal alterations.  


Of course, my first thought when thinking spaceships and D&D is Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and the great booklet of art that came with the module.  To be sure, I could be reading too much into Michael's level title, but I hope that the Astronaut's Tomb is an homage of sorts to that classic module.

Sci-Fi and high tech are a lot of fun on their own rights, but they are even better when you get to experience players blundering towards an understanding of them while they try to apply their regular fantasy/D&D metagame knowledge to the situation at hand.  One of my favorite early D&D memories was getting to run through the Temple of the Swamp as a player and slowly figuring out that there were robots and aliens running around.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Sorry to burst your bubble, Carl, but it isn't going to be a spacecraft. That module was already written and I'm not about to rehash a classic.

    This doesn't necessarily mean there won't be some genre mashing in the future for Stonehell, however. I think I've already demonstrated that it can be a pretty funky place. Let's leave it at that for now

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  3. Just when I was about to get myself all worked up...

    Well I'm sure whatever it is, it will rock. Excellent work on Stonehell, even if it won't have a spaceship...

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  4. The Astronaut’s Tomb - color me interested!

    I think I have some Mage Knight Cosmonauts aroung here somewhere...

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  5. For another D&D/spaceship, try "Tale of the Comet".

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