Barrowmaze Complete

Introduction:

A couple years ago, I began a journey. It started at my dining-room table with some good friends, a bag of polyhedral dice, and a bottle of Mountain Dew. I created a fantasy adventure campaign that centered around a mysterious swamp dotted with barrow mounds and standing stones. A vast dungeon existed beneath the mounds. It teemed with undead and burial crypts filled with precious treasures. We had a lot of fun and I wondered if other people might be interested in Barrowmaze.

Not really knowing much about PDF publishing, I brought my home-game notes together and that became the basis of Barrowmaze I (published under the Open Gaming License and compatible with Labyrinth Lord and other classic fantasy role-playing games). However, there was still another half of the map yet to stock, so I ran a successful campaign for Barrowmaze II on Indiegogo that included former TSR artist Jim Holloway and brought another artist, the awesome Trevor Hammond, out of retirement. Because I love old school RPG art and gamer swag, I ran another successful campaign on Indiegogo to create some fun Barrowmaze Tees with the tag line "Get Rich or Die Tryin" which pretty much sums up the experience of the dungeon :)

Through the support of the old school gaming community, Barrrowmaze I was listed in the Top 10 on RPGnow for months and finished in Second Place for the prestigious Three Castles Game Award for RPG Design at the North Texas RPGcon last June. 

Although Barrowmaze has my name on the cover, I view the adventure as a communal expression -- it speaks to the type of game we want to play, the style of game we want to forward, and that the roots of our hobby are important and worth preserving for future gamers.

The Plan: Barrowmaze Complete

Barrowmaze I and II need to be combined into one definitive volume: Barrowmaze Complete. This new book will include all the material from the two previous books plus the new material outlined below under New Material.

Interested? Make the jump here. 

Clawing Your Way Back From the Grave

I have never been a fan of spells like Raise Dead or True Resurrection. In the past, I removed these from my games because I thought they minimized death's impact. How do players fear character death if they know they can cart their corpse down to the local temple and be up and walking again within a few hours? They don't. Removing simple magical means of resurrection presents its own problem: how does one return to the land of the living?

The DCC RPG recommends handling this matter with a quest. I think this is the right method. I've also been reading up on the megadungeon and am looking to combine these two ideas. I can't say too much right now because I'm still in the very early stages of figuring out what I want to do, but I will be working on this a lot in the coming weeks as one of my players lost his favorite character last session.